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legionofpotatoes · 3 years

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we decided to watch all story cutscenes from the new resident evil village videogame on a whim, since it’s not really our cup of tea gameplay-wise but seems to be this massive zeitgeist moment that made us morbidly curious. And I know how much everyone cares about my thoughts on things I know very little about, so. let’s get into it huh gamers. and yeah spoilers?

for context, I’ve only played resident evil 4 and a small portion of 5. I also read the wikipedia entry for 7’s plot recently. all this to say I was only vaguely aware of how tonally wacky the series was going in

I also completely gave up following the plot of the mutagens’ soap opera, so that paid off in spades here as you might imagine

anyway so that baby in the intro. that baby’s head is just massive. humongous toddlerdome. when ethan finds the baby’s head in a jar later on. there is no way that head would fit into that jar. bad game design. no not even game design. basic stuff. one hundred years in prison for jar modeler

if I see a single functional hetero marriage in video games I will cry tears of joy. I understand their misery is kind of The Point irt them badly working through the hillbilly romp trauma but like. sheesh. at least set that up as an emotional story goal the plot will help resolve. but nope they start off miserable and it goes nowhere

I know I know the mia thing has a huge wrinkle in it but like. not really in terms of dramatic function?? set up a happy end to the re7 nightmare (miranda can keep up appearances for all she cares) and then take that all away from angry griffin mcelroy for manpain. it will still absolutely work to set up the dramatic forward momentum. why throw in this cliche Hollywood Tension in their marriage if you’re not going to address it oh maybe because it’s normalized as automatically interesting because nuclear families are a self-propagating pit of a very narrow chance at emotional happiness relying on social stigma to preserve their empty function oops my baggage slipped in yikes abort mission

I called him griffin mcelroy because I saw his face on twitter and. yeah. I will continue to do this occasionally. my house my rules

... fuck the reason I’m hung up on this is specifically because the rest of the game is so tonally dexterous (which is a shining point to me! more on that later!), and yet they felt weirdly compelled to create the aesthetic trapping of a family-at-odds trope without following it through too well. a sign of both the good and the bad stuff to come

but listen the real reason why I wanted to talk about any of this is to nitpick the fascinating backwards-engineered nucleus of the entire thing; in that this game essentially creates a melting pot of just SO many disparate horror tropes and then makes a no-holds-barred unhinged effort at weaving thick lore to piece them all together. it is truly a sight to behold. like straight up you got your backwoods fright night situation, your gothic castle vampires, your rural-industrial werewolves, and don’t forget your bloated swamp monsters over there, with then a hard left turn into robotic body horror, and the entire ass subgenre of Creepy Doll writ large, and the bloodborne tentacle monsters, and a hellboy angel bossfight, which rides on the coattails of a mech-on-mech pacific rim bonanza, and just jesus henry christ slow down

almost all of these are textural hijack jobs that don’t really get into the metaphor plain of any of those settings but the game sort-of makes an argument that the texture IS the point and revels in it. It is kind of admirable almost. The same reason why the intro felt boxed in and unmotivated is also why the rest of the game just blasts off of its hinges to the point of complete and self-indulgent tonal abandon. I kinda loved that about it. lady dimitrescu made sure to hold her hat down as she bent forward in mahogany doorways and then suddenly she’s a giant gore dragon and you settle in your temp role as dark souls man with Gun to take her ass down. Excellent??

this rhino rampage impulse to gobble up every horror aesthetic known to man comes to head when the game wrestles with its FPS trappings in what is the most hilarious solution in creating visceral player damage moments. Since most cinematics and the entire game is in first person, that leaves precious little real estate for the devs to work with if they really want to sell griffin’s physical crucible. To wit. This dude’s forearms. Specifically just the forearms. They are MASSACRED throughout the story. The poor man lives out the silent hill dimension of a hand model. by the end cutscene he looks like a neatly dressed desk clerk who had decided to stick both his grabbers into garbage disposal grinders just a few hours prior. like in addition to everything else it manages to rope in that tinge of slapstick violence into its general grievous genre collection except this time it IS for a lack of trying! truly incredible

but wait his miracle clawbacks from everything his poor paws go through are retroactively explained away, yes, but far too vaguely and far too late to console me as I sat and watched everyone’s favorite baby brother reattach an entirely severed hand to his wrist stump by just. placing it on there. and giving it a lil twist ‘n pop terminator-style. and then willing his fingers back into motion right in front of my bulging eyes. this game just does not care. it does not give a shit. and boy howdy will it work to make that into one of its strongest suits

cause generally speaking resident evil was THE premiere vanilla zombie content destinaysh for like a decade, right? and as the rest of the world and mainstream media started encroaching and bloodying its blue ocean it went and just exploded in every single conceivable horror trope direction like a smilodon on catnip. truly, genuinely fascinating franchise moves

yeah the big vampire milf is hot. other news; grass... green. although I do love the implication that her closet is just identical white dresses on a rack. cartoon network-level queen shit

apropos of nothing I’ve said there’s also this hobo dante-devimaycry-magneto man, and I can’t believe this sentence makes sense. anyway he made that “boulder-punching asshole” joke referring to chris redfield and it was probably the only easter egg that really landed for me and boy did it land hard. I have not seen him punch the boulder in re5, mind. I had only heard about how funny it is from friends. and here this dude was, probably in the same exact mindset as me, trying to grapple with that insane mental image. with you on that ian mckellen, loud and clear

I advocate vehemently against the shallow pursuit of hyper photorealism in art direction but I gotta admit it works really in favor of immersive horror like this. the european village shacks especially gave me super unchill flashbacks to my rural countryside retreat in western georgia. I could smell the linoleum dude. not cool

faces are weird in this game. can’t place it. nice textures, good animation, but the modeling template is... uuh strange? and the hair. it has that clustered-flat-clumpy look that harkens to something very specific and unpleasant but I just don’t know what. sue me

griffin’s mental aptitude to take all this shit in stride and end every seemingly traumatizing bossfight involving some fucking eldritch being yet unseen through mortal eyes by essentially throwing out an MCU quip is just. What the fuck dude? I mean that was funny how you casually yelled the f-word at a god damn werewolf that you considered a fairy tale an hour ago but are you like, all right?? it was swinging a sledgehammer the size of a bus at you, ethan

oh oh the vampires are afraid of cold and your last name is winters. I get it haha

Pro Gamer Nitpick: boss fights seemed a bit unnecessarily long?? idk why the youtuber we picked decided the ENTIRE propeller man fight counted towards the vital story scenes he was stitching together, but man mr big daddy lite there really had some get up and go huh??

why are they saying dimitrescu.. like that. is it really how you say that word or is the english language relapsing into its fetish for ending every single word with a consonant at all costs

I’m not saying it’s a dramatic miss of a twist in context of all that’s going on, but the “you died in the last game actually and have been DC’s clayface ever since” revelation is low-key. it’s. it’s just funny to me, I dont know what to say. century-old god-witch fails her evil plan after she mistakenly removes heart from what was definitely NOT just some white guy with eight fingers after all

chris realizing he’s about to become the player character and immediately swapping out his tsundere trenchcoat for the muscletight sex haver sweater

the little bluetooth speaker-sized pipe bomb he taped to his knife was nuclear?? really??? I must have missed something because that is just too good. I buy it though I totally buy it. chris just got them fun-sized nukes in his car trunk for, you guessed it, Situations

anyway this is all for now just wanted to briefly touch on how unexpectedly funny and tonally irreverent this seemingly serious game turned out to be. did not articulate any cathartic story beats whatsoever but my god it had fun connecting those plot points. he just fucking put his severed hand back on his stump and it Just Worked todd howard get in here

#text #another one in my bulleted review series with no rhyme or reason #sorry resident evil fans this could be a painful read pls turn away #i know almost nothing about it but i am gonna be super fake familiar and critical of this one hey ho

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art-gelato · 3 years

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Twice as Shiny

1. a little worse for wear, practically walking on air

Ratchet bit off a curse halfway. “If that young idiot is hanging his hopes on Starscream, of all mechs, I’ll kill him myself.”

Miko supposed that Ratchet was probably the only one around who could get away with calling Optimus Prime either young or idiot. “What hopes?” she asked. [AO3] [prev]

Miko had been given strict orders to stay out of the med bay ("I mean it, Miko," in that commanding Prime voice), so of course she set about getting in as soon as she was left unsupervised. Her timing was perfect—she approached the door to the converted storage unit just as Ratchet was exiting, and she slipped through the door behind him as he headed towards the other end of the hallway. Inside were a few beeping monitors, and a makeshift stretcher-thing that was too high up for her to see onto properly. She craned her neck, but she could only catch glimpses of a few sharp silver angles and the wings that poked out over the sides.

Undeterred, she clambered up the stretcher, which looked like it used to be some heavy-duty machinery that lifted really big stuff—probably aircraft, if its current use was anything to go by. She reached the platform with little difficulty, and found herself at the occupant's pointy feet. He wasn't moving, and his eyes were closed, and plus his wrists were chained to the rails, so she figured it was safe enough. She half-jogged along the platform until she reached his shoulder, and gave the armor plating there a nudge with the toe of her shoe. When that didn't elicit a response, she kicked him.

There was a low hum of activating machinery, and his eyes slowly opened. The creepy red glow of them was unfocused, though, and his gaze drifted aimlessly around the room before finally settling on her. "You," he croaked, and she wondered what was going on with his voice box to make it sound so crackly. It reminded her of the way Raf sounded after he pulled an all-nighter to finish his extra smart-kid homework.

She didn't like that. It made him seem more like a person.

"Me," she said, hands on her hips. "Got a problem?"

He stretched his jaw back and forth, like he was trying to get used to his own face. "Can't even remember your name," he said eventually. "But I suspect you have a problem with me."

"Duh," Miko replied. "Maybe it has something to do with all the times you've tried to kill me and my friends!"

Starscream sighed, a staticky rush of boredom. "Get in line, sparkling."

"My name is Miko," she said, giving his shoulder another kick. She wished it would leave a dent, and then maybe he'd stop looking at her with that cross between mild annoyance and vague amusement and take her seriously.

"You think I care?" Starscream asked, one side of his mouth twisting up in a mocking smile.

"I think you'd better!" Miko snapped. "Because if you do anything else to hurt my friends, I'm coming for you."

Starscream rolled his eyes. "I'm shaking." He sounded more awake now, and his attention shifted to take in the room properly. "Where's the medic? I'm surprised my new benevolent masters saw fit to allow you in here alone."

Miko crossed her arms. "They know not to underestimate me."

He looked her up and down, which didn't take him long at all. "You snuck in," he said, and his grin was almost genuine. "Nice to see a healthy disregard for authority in the youths, at least."

She burned with rage at the thought of Starscream approving of any of her actions, and she opened her mouth to give him a piece of her mind when-

"Miko! What are you doing in here?"

"NothingI'mnothere!" Miko yelped automatically, scrambling for the edge of the stretcher. She tripped on Starscream's wing, but before she could fall, Ratchet's hand was there to catch her. His fingers closed carefully around her, and he carried her out the door and deposited her in the hallway.

"We'll talk later," Ratchet said through gritted teeth, and slammed the door shut.

Miko let out a long groan, then pressed her ear to the door. Ratchet was speaking, sounding way grumpier that usual. She hadn't even known that was possible.

"-a day to make sure the transplant takes. Absolutely no transforming before then, or I'll rip that T-cog right back out of you with my bare servos."

"Charming," Starscream drawled.

"If you want a smooth talker, go back to Knock Out. Optimus will be here soon to get those coordinates from you. No," Ratchet added, apparently cutting off Starscream before the former 'Con could object, "we're not waiting until you're cleared for flight. There's too much at stake. The T-cog will take, I just don't want you to strain it. Ready or not, you're giving us-"

"Miko," said a deep voice far above her.

Miko jerked away from the door and looked up. She hadn't even heard Optimus approaching—he might be twenty tons of solid metal, but the guy was stealthy. He was also very, very good at making her feel guilty when she was doing something she wasn't supposed to. Maybe it was because he didn't actually try to make her feel guilty. He just would be disappointed, but he wouldn't say he was disappointed even though it was written all over his face. Sometimes she wished he would just get mad about stuff, because she knew how to deal with angry people, but he was too nice for that.

"I went in while Ratchet wasn't there," she admitted, so it wouldn't all get drawn out.

Optimus made a contemplative sound, then crouched down so they could talk easier. She liked it when he did that, because she really felt like he was paying attention to her. Not many adults gave her the courtesy. "Starscream shouldn't be disturbed too much right now," he said. "I know you're curious, but he did just have surgery."

"I'm not curious," she said, a little too defensively. "I was making a point."

Optimus gave her a bemused look. "And what point is that?"

Miko punched her palm. "I'll scrap him if he even thinks about double-crossing us."

"I see," Optimus said. "Was he suitably intimidated?"

"No," Miko grumbled, scuffing her shoe on the concrete floor. "But I'll show him."

Optimus reached out and placed a gentle finger on her shoulder. "Starscream is our ally, at least for now," he said. "Perhaps showing him some compassion will be a more effective way to keep him so."

"That creep probably doesn't even know what compassion is," Miko said, crossing her arms.

"All the more reason, in that case," Optimus replied with a small smile that quickly faded. "However, I would prefer it if you stayed away from him."

"Aw, c'mon!" Miko whined. "If he's gonna be here, I'm gonna run into him! What, am I supposed to leave the room if he walks in?"

"Starscream is dangerous, intentionally or otherwise," Optimus said. "He's not used to being around humans, and any of you could get hurt if he isn't careful. And if he is planning to betray us, you children would likely be his first target as the most vulnerable among us."

"If?" Miko echoed back at him, hooking air quotes around the word. "OP, he definitely is. This is Starscream!"

And Optimus… hesitated. He was quiet for a moment, clearly trying to decide how to reply. "Under normal circumstances, I would agree," he said at last. "But as it is, I am certain he no longer feels any loyalty to Megatron. He's on his own side now, and I'm hoping…" Here, he trailed off, his usually steady gaze turning inward.

Miko put her hand on his finger, still resting on her shoulder. "Are you okay, Optimus?"

Optimus closed his eyes and took a deep breath (or vent or whatever it was giant robots did). "My apologies," he said. "I don't want to concern you."

"Hey, no, it's okay!" Miko said, grabbing onto him tighter, with both hands, as he began to pull away. She couldn't actually stop him, but the attempt made him pause nonetheless. "If you wanna talk about something, I'll listen. You have a hard time being vulnerable around the bots, cuz they look up to you and stuff. But you're not my boss, you're my friend. I'll listen." The words fell out of her, quickly, desperately, before she could think about them. He always gave off an aura of distant leadership, even when he was being nice to her. Now, she'd caught a glimpse of something more underneath, something small and sad and almost scared, and she needed to know.

"I- believe that would be unwise," Optimus said, and now he did pull away. Miko's hands felt empty and cold. He must have seen the disappointment on her face, because his own softened. "Miko, the strength of your heart is admirable, but this is not a weight I can lay on it."

Miko clenched her fists. "Gimme- gimme something I can do to help, at least." Because she could see it—he needed help, and the problem wasn't something punchable, or shootable, or even medically fixable. It wasn't something any of the Autobots could help him with, she was sure of it. She wasn't certain she could help either, but she wanted to try.

Inside the med bay, Ratchet and Starscream were arguing, their words muffled but the vitriol coming through loud and clear. Optimus' eyes flicked in the direction of the closed door before returning to Miko. "This is not your war," he murmured. "Perhaps you can see things in another way."

With that, he pushed himself back to his full height, and Miko knew the conversation was over.

She threw her arms out and shouted at him anyway. "What the scrap is that supposed to mean?"

Optimus just gave her a faint smile and opened the door.

"-not a prisoner my aft! Take these chains off me right fragging now, Hatchet!"

"Sit still, you insufferable glitch, I told you-"

"I hate to interrupt," Optimus said, and that shut them both up.

That was one of the many things Miko thought was really cool about Optimus—his ability to just stop people right in their tracks, no matter what they were doing. Often just by showing up. She aspired to have that kind of power someday.

But she knew the start of a boring conversation when she saw one (something something keys, something something coordinates), so she skulked off. Bulkhead would certainly be looking for her by now, anyway. It was almost dinner time, and she had to be home in half an hour or her host family would… worry, or something. Who knew.

Besides, she had some stuff to think about.

The next day was a Saturday, which meant normally Miko would have slept in past eleven. But this Saturday, she woke up with a weird knot of anxiety in her gut around eight and couldn't fall back asleep, so she shot a message into the group chat with Jack and Raf.

u guys up?

Almost immediately, Raf responded. Wow, I'm surprised you're awake.

cant sleep, Miko typed back. i wanna head over to base u in?

Yeah why not, Jack said. My shift isn't until later anyway

Is something going on? Raf asked. I mean, besides the stuff with the Omega Keys.

Miko's thumbs hovered over her phone for a minute before she settled on a reply. idk lets talk on the way

After that, she sent a message to Bulkhead, asking him to pick the three of them up. Then she rolled out of bed and got ready as fast as she could. She pulled her hair into its second ponytail as she crept quietly down the stairs, hoping no one from her host family was around. Luck was on her side as she snagged some breakfast from the kitchen—they tended to sleep in on the weekend as well.

"Oh, hey, hun," said a voice behind her. "You're up early."

Miko's groan was muffled behind a piece of toast. So much for luck being on her side. "Morning, Mrs. Jones," she said, not bothering to swallow her mouthful of bread first. She poured coffee into her travel mug and dumped in a few heaping spoonfuls of sugar. Then she added cream, screwed the cap on the mug, and shook it.

"Big plans for the day?" Mrs. Jones asked.

Miko turned around, looked Mrs. Jones in the eye, and took her time washing down the toast with the coffee. "Yup," she said, popping the 'p'—a neat trick to insert attitude into a simple word that she'd picked up from some of the girls in afterschool detention. "I'll probably be back late."

Mrs. Jones had a tense smile. Miko wasn't sure if it was always like that, or just always like that for Miko. "Hanging out with your friends… James and Roger?"

"Close enough," Miko said, and was saved by the honk of a horn outside. "I gotta go. See you, Mrs. Jones." She brushed past the older woman and hurried out the door.

Sure enough, Bulkhead was waiting by the curb. She was usually last to get picked up if one Autobot was getting all three of them, but when it came to Bulkhead, she had automatic dibs on the passenger seat. When she opened the door, she saw Jack behind the wheel and Raf in the back seat. Both boys gave her a wave.

"Morning, guys!" she said, feeling a sudden surge of energy as she hopped in and deposited her travel mug in the center console. "Okay, so, something super weird happened yesterday."

"Seatbelt," Bulkhead reminded her.

"Weird how?" Jack asked, simultaneously.

Miko huffed and buckled herself in, and Bulkhead began to drive. "So I snuck into the med bay after Screamer got his appendix removed or whatever," she said.

"That's where you were?" Bulkhead exclaimed, then added reproachfully, "I was looking everywhere for you."

"And you didn't look in the one place I was told not to go? C'mon, Bulky, you know me better than that."

"I-" Bulkhead paused. "Yeah, that's on me. Wait, Starscream didn't do anything to you, did he?"

"No, he was just, like, kinda rude," Miko said, flapping a dismissive hand. "The weird thing happened with Optimus, actually. I was listening at the door after Ratchet kicked me out, and Optimus came up and gave me one of his dad lectures about compassion and stuff. That's the boring part. But he seems really convinced that Starscream isn't gonna double-cross us. That's weird, right? Like, double-crossing is what Starscream does."

"Mmph," Bulkhead said. He'd never been particularly good at subtlety. All three kids' full attention was immediately on the steering wheel, Raf even leaning forward through the gap between the front seats.

"Do you know something?" Miko asked.

"N-o," Bulkhead replied, drawing the word out into two uncertain syllables.

Miko drummed her hands on the dashboard. "Yes, you do! What's going on?"

If a Jeep could squirm, that's what Bulkhead would be doing. "I don't know!" he insisted. "Not anything specific!"

"But you know something," Raf said.

"Okay, okay," Bulkhead said, able to weather the worst Decepticon interrogations but caving under the pressure of a few determined juveniles. "I was with Prime when we went to negotiate with Starscream for the keys. Then halfway through, just when Starscream's threatening to go to Megatron out of spite or something, Optimus sends me 'n Smokescreen back to base! I don't know what went down, but after that, Optimus brought Starscream right into the base. Now we can't treat him like a prisoner, but we still have to take turns babysitting him just in case he decides to cause problems despite our deal—which! We don't even know the full terms of! We're getting what we want, but there's no way Starscream only wanted his T-cog replaced. Sure, we're not hunting him for sport either, but there's gotta be more, right? I think he and Prime hashed something out, but for some reason Prime ain't telling!"

The end of his rant was met with a few moments of silence.

"You… really needed to get that off your chest, huh," Jack said eventually.

"Maybe!" Then Bulkhead sighed. "Things have just been weird around base, y'know? It's great- beyond great that we've got this shot at bringing back Cybertron. But having Starscream with us for it feels…" He trailed off, searching for the right word.

"Icky?" Miko suggested.

"Icky," Bulkhead agreed.

Miko took a slow sip of her coffee as she thought. She couldn't bring herself to tell Bulkhead the last thing Optimus had said to her, and she wasn't sure why. Maybe because it had felt like it was just for her. Or—no, that wasn't right. It just wasn't for the other Autobots. That was why he'd said it to her. Because he couldn't say it to anyone else. It had been a moment of… weakness, or something that could be easily perceived as weakness.

But she couldn't figure this out on her own, and Jack and Raf had just as much insight into how Optimus' brain worked as she did.

"Would anyone know what OP is thinking?" she mused aloud.

"Ratchet, maybe," Bulkhead said. "He's known Optimus the longest. Since before the war, before the Primacy, before everything. If anyone's got a clue, it's the doc. He won't talk to us about Optimus, but maybe he'll talk to you."

When they got to base, the Autobots were holding a discussion in the main area. They stood around a stack of crates which the four Omega Keys sat atop, fused into a pyramid shape with a holographic blue orb floating above the point.

"-all the good a map does us," Arcee was saying. "We can plot routes through the wastes as much as we like, but that doesn't change the fact we can't even get there."

Bumblebee chirped something.

"Because using Megatron's spacebridge worked out so well for us last time," Ratchet replied wearily. "We've been over that already."

"They've been at this since before I left to pick you guys up," Bulkhead muttered to the kids. "Talking in circles. I was ready to make up my own excuse to get out of here by the time you texted me."

Smokescreen, separate from the rest of the Autobots, was the first to notice them. He was clearly on Starscream duty, since he and the former 'Con were leaning back against the wall to the right of the entrance. Smokescreen seemed unsure if he was disappointed about being left out of the argument or relieved. Starscream just looked bored.

"Hey!" Smokescreen called out, jerking away from the wall and making half a step towards Bulkhead and the kids before remembering his task. He glanced expectantly over his shoulder at Starscream, who made a big show of rolling his eyes and pushing out of his slouch to follow Smokescreen over to the newcomers. "They're all kinda deep in it," Smokescreen said apologetically.

"It's a wonder you lot ever get anything done," Starscream grumbled. "I've spent the last half-joor reorganizing long-term memories just to break up the monotony."

"If you would like to add your wisdom, Starscream, you are welcome to," Optimus said, his voice cutting easily through everything else. Nearly all the bots in the room jumped in surprise, and Starscream's wings flared upwards.

Then he settled them back to their default position, and slowly turned to face the rest of the Autobots. All of them were glaring at him, with the exception of Optimus. "I doubt my insight would be appreciated," Starscream said.

Arcee scoffed.

"Could you think of a way to access the spacebridge without alerting Megatron?" Optimus asked.

Starscream was quiet for a moment. Miko couldn't see his face, but his hands were clenched behind his back, one wrist caught tightly in his clawed fingers. "No," he said. "And whatever trick you used to sneak around him last time won't work again. He's a fast learner. You'd have to defeat him first to get to the bridge safely—but if you had the means to do that, you'd have done so already. Wouldn't you have?" That last bit felt pointed somehow, but the meaning was lost on Miko.

Optimus, as always, was unfazed. "Any other ideas?"

"Oh, I don't know," Starscream snapped. "I don't suppose you picked up any ancient artifacts that can just magically transform your groundbridge into a spacebridge?"

"The Forge!" Smokescreen blurted. "What about the Forge?"

Now everyone's attention was on Smokescreen, and he grew uncertain when no one said anything. "It could do that… right?"

Starscream tilted his head, turning to look at Smokescreen in an exaggerated motion. "Are you referring to the Forge of Solus Prime?" he asked, incredulity dripping from his tone. "It's real? And you have it?"

Smokescreen opened his mouth, then closed it again.

"Well," Bulkhead said. "I wouldn't say we… have it."

"That would work, though," Arcee said. "Wouldn't it?"

"I don't see why not," Ratchet replied.

Bumblebee let out a string of beeps.

"You just have to get it?" Starscream echoed. "Get it from where?"

The room fell silent.

"Ah," Starscream said, putting the pieces together. He straightened his back, suddenly exuding smooth confidence. "Well, that shouldn't be too hard."

"Oh, yes," Arcee said, cold and acidic. "Stealing a powerful artifact from Megatron will be a walk in the park."

Miko had already begun sidling around to where she could watch the full show, and she could see the shift in Starscream, like he was coming to life. Before, he'd been idling, only physically present because he had nowhere else to be. Miko was intimately familiar with the feeling—it was how she passed most of the time in school.

Now, the thin slash of his smile sharpened with purpose, and a low fire blazed through him, burning away any submissiveness in his posture. Even his eyes seemed to glow a little brighter. "Why not?" he said. "I know the Nemesis inside and out. I know where Megatron hoards his treasures. I know all the past guard shift schedules and I can accurately predict possible future ones. Even after going rogue, I was able to sneak aboard and raid the energon stores without getting caught. And with Hot Shot's favorite toy-" He gestured to Smokescreen. "-I could be in and out like a ghost."

"No way," Arcee said, taking a threatening step towards him. "There's no way we're letting you anywhere near the Nemesis. Especially not with the phase shifter."

"My apologies," Starscream said with false sweetness, mirroring her step forward with one of his own. "I wasn't aware you had another flight frame readily available. The Nemesis, in case you've forgotten, is quite high up."

Smokescreen shuddered. "Extremely high up."

"Arcee is right," Optimus said. "We can't trust you on a mission like this. Not alone."

"Not at all!" Arcee exclaimed with a swift chop of her hand, her glower fixed on Starscream.

Optimus laid a hand on her shoulder. "We have no other way to get aboard. Soundwave would detect the energy spike of a groundbridge. But if Starscream could carry someone-"

"Who?" Arcee said. "Bulkhead? You? I'm the only one small and light enough for him to…" Her eyes widened with realization.

"No!" she and Starscream shouted at the same time. They gave each other appalled looks.

Starscream coughed into his fist, struggling to regain his composure. "I could probably carry the yellow one."

Bumblebee jabbed a finger at Starscream as he chirped something distinctly displeased, his eyes narrowing.

"…carry Bumblebee," Starscream corrected himself through gritted teeth.

"You'll need speed and maneuverability on your side," Optimus said. "The less weight you're carrying, the higher the odds of success."

"Then don't make me carry anyone at all!" Starscream snarled.

Arcee's hands curled into fists. She began to move forward, opening her mouth to retort, only to be stopped when Optimus' grip on her tightened.

"Starscream," Optimus said, his voice somehow both soft and warning. "Compromise." It sounded less like an order and more like a reminder.

Starscream's wings flicked one after the other, as if he were physically trying to shake away his agitation. Then he took a shallow breath and straightened his spine, his hands going behind his back again as his stance became more formal. "Very well," he said, tone and expression carefully neutral. "I understand why I cannot be allowed alone on a high-stakes mission. Logically, Arcee is the best choice for infiltrating the Nemesis with me." His gaze shifted from Optimus to Arcee. "It would be foolish, at this point, to allow personal feelings to stand in the way of the restoration of our home planet."

Arcee's face contorted in fury—Miko felt scorched by her glare just by being in vague proximity to Starscream. Then she closed her eyes, breathing deep. When she reopened her eyes after a couple of moments, the harsh boil of her anger had reduced to a simmer. "Fine," she said, and looked up at Optimus. "Can we talk?"

"Of course," Optimus murmured, and followed her out of the main room.

After the two of them were gone, an uncomfortable silence settled over the room. Bulkhead, Smokescreen, Jack, and Raf were still clustered by the entrance, and the rest of the Autobots were by the Omega Keys. Starscream stood alone between the two groups, looking in the direction Arcee and Optimus had left in with a strange, unreadable expression on his face.

Miko decided to take action. She strode over to Starscream. "Hey, birdbrain," she called out. "You'd better not pull any tricks on Arcee."

Starscream didn't so much as twitch, eyes still fixed on the hallway. "What would you do?" he asked, sounding oddly far away.

This threw Miko for a loop. "Huh?"

He blinked, coming back to himself, and looked down at her. "What would you do?" he repeated irritably. "If it was just you and me. If you had no weapons, no powerful friends at your back. What course of action would you take? How would you, alone, damage me?"

Miko opened her mouth, but her mind was blank. Heat rose to her cheeks.

"Back off, Starscream," Bulkhead said.

Starscream's eyes widened, and he swiveled his head towards Bulkhead. "Are you seriously telling me you've allowed these organics to follow you onto the battlefield multiple times, and never gave them the tools to defend themselves?" he asked, his irritation congealing into outraged disbelief.

"Hey!" Miko said, crossing her arms. "I took out an Insecticon, you know!"

"And just how did you do that?" Starscream said, and Miko knew her answer wouldn't hold up under the weight of his condescension.

"Wheeljack's ship," she mumbled anyway.

"So you can use your surroundings, at least," Starscream said, which wasn't exactly the scathing insult she'd been expecting. "But you won't always be so lucky." Then, to her surprise, he dropped to one knee. At the sudden movement, every Autobot in the room started towards him, and he waved a hand. "Relax, I'm just going to show her something." He crooked a claw at her, beckoning her closer. "The other two should know this as well."

Miko exchanged uncertain glances with Jack and Raf, and then the three of them warily approached. Smokescreen and Bulkhead followed, while the rest hung back and watched.

Starscream traced the tip of a claw down a seam on the outside of his ankle. For a Cybertronian, it was too small to easily access, but Miko figured she could probably stick her arm in there. "Cybertronians vary massively in design, but there are always gaps at the joints, to allow for movement," Starscream explained. "Inside those joints, you will find sensitive wiring, especially in complex areas like this. If you find yourself facing an enemy you can't beat, your goal should be to cause enough of a distraction to facilitate an escape. In that regard, ankle joints should be your prime target. Use a tool, something sharp or hooked, and long enough to get to the circuitry. Just don't actually reach inside, since that would be an excellent way to lose those fleshy little servos of yours."

"You mean hands?" Miko asked.

Starscream ignored her, continuing, "The combination of pain and surprise should be enough to buy you time. If you're lucky, you may even impair your enemy's ability to give chase, albeit mildly. However, when you are so much smaller and weaker than your opponent, every advantage counts, no matter how slight." He rested his forearm on his knee. "After that, run. Not in a straight line—our motion algorithms can easily track you. Keep your movements unpredictable and seek cover. Anything that puts objects between you and your pursuer, preferably something that disguises the direction you're headed in. Find somewhere to hide, and wait for backup."

While Starscream was talking, Raf had ventured even closer to peer through the seam Starscream had indicated, trying to get a better look at circuitry. "Cool," he breathed.

"Was nothing like that ever explained to you?" Starscream asked. The annoyance, which had begun to fade during his lecture, was back full force.

"We've gotten the 'hide and wait for backup' talk a few times," Jack said.

"Unbelievable," Starscream said, aghast. "How did I never manage to kill you?" His tone was weirdly impersonal—a little frustrated, but mostly marveling at what he seemed to view as a massive oversight.

"Well, thank you," Miko said, and realized that she meant it despite his last remark. "For telling us all that."

Starscream gave her a hard look, as if trying to assess her sincerity. When he found her guileless, his eyes flicked away, discomfort crossing his face. "It's about time someone did," he muttered, and pushed himself to his feet.

At that moment, Optimus and Arcee returned, and Starscream stepped away from the kids. Miko turned her attention elsewhere, trying to ignore the fact that she hadn't felt threatened at all while being so close to him. He was a creep and a jerk, and he probably had some sinister reason for giving them potentially life-saving advice. Yeah.

Yet she couldn't help thinking about yesterday. Starscream's voice raspy after waking up. Optimus talking about compassion and war.

Miko shoved her hands in her pockets, stepping over to Jack and bumping shoulders with him. He bumped shoulders back, and she felt a little better.

Arcee still looked furious, but also a lot calmer about it. She clapped, a sharp sound that shot across the room and drew all eyes to her. "Alright, everybody," she said. "Let's plan a heist."

While the bots plotted, Miko totally thrashed the boys at Mario Kart. The three of them were, under normal circumstances, pretty evenly matched at video games. Today, though, Jack kept shooting worried glances at Arcee, and Raf's attention faltered every time Bumblebee spoke. Miko couldn't blame them, because she was anxious, too. She just channeled her anxiety differently. That was, directly into kicking ass at Mario Kart.

Eventually, Jack had to leave. His shift started at 4, and by then the planning was over, so Arcee took him. She looked like she was dying to get out of base anyway. Miko couldn't blame her.

Now, Optimus and Ratchet were looking at something on one of the big screens, and Bulkhead and Bumblebee had joined the remaining kids for TV time. As for the last two mechs in the building…

"You don't have to shadow my every step," Starscream snapped.

"You're pacing," Smokescreen said. "It's making me nervous."

"If you don't leave me be," Starscream said, his wings vibrating with tension, "I'll give you something to be truly nervous about."

"Starscream," Optimus said in reprimand, not even looking away from whatever he was working on.

Starscream let out a low growl, flexing his claws like he was aching to sharpen them on something. "Ratchet," he said, his tone cajoling. "Hasn't it been a day already?"

Miko and Raf watched from over the back of the couch, the monster truck rally on TV forgotten. "What's he mean?" Raf whispered to her.

"Docbot's making him wait a day before he can transform again," Miko whispered back. "Overheard it yesterday."

Ratchet was close enough to the couch to hear the hushed exchange, and he gave Miko a taste of his best glare before he turned it on Starscream. "Not quite," he said.

Starscream responded by taking on a pose that could only be described as 'toadying'—bent slightly at the waist, one hand curled over the other in front of his chest, his wings dipped to a nonthreatening angle. "Surely a couple of, er, hours won't make much of a difference. We need to make sure I'm in top condition for this mission, after all. With such a skilled medic as you, I'm sure I'll be-"

"Alright, alright," Ratchet said, holding up a hand. "Just stop doing- that, and we'll head up top."

Starscream straightened up, a smug smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.

"I wanna go," Miko said instantly. The only times she'd seen Starscream or any Decepticon transform was either from far away or while she was worried about her immediate safety. Without the threat of danger, there was no way she was gonna pass up the chance to see a giant robot turn into a fighter jet up close.

"I'd like to, as well," Raf said, apparently having the same thought.

"No," Ratchet said.

To her surprise, Starscream backed them up. "Oh, what's the harm, doctor?" he purred. Miko wondered if he was physically capable of not sounding like he was up to something sneaky at all times.

Ratchet squinted, looking between Starscream and the kids. Miko and Raf smiled at Ratchet, giving him their best puppy dog eyes.

"Fine," Ratchet grumbled, and he extended his hand to the kids. "But I'm gonna hold onto you. Ap-bup-bup!" he added when Miko opened her mouth to complain. "I'm not leaving you anywhere you can get accidentally squished."

Miko groaned, but Raf was already clambering into Ratchet's waiting palm, so she followed.

They took a cargo elevator to the top, which creaked ominously at the weight of two Cybertronians. Ratchet didn't seem worried, though, so Miko tried not to worry either. At one point, she thought she saw Starscream watching her from the corner of his eye.

The ceiling above them opened, and the platform grated to a halt once it was level with the flat rock around it.

"Nice view," Starscream remarked, casting a judgmental eye over the desert expanse. "So this is where your precious base is."

"Don't make us regret letting you in," Ratchet said, and held out a small disc to Starscream. "Optimus tell you about this?"

"Oh. The tracking device." Starscream's lip curled slightly, but he took the disc.

"Put it wherever," Ratchet said. "You can take it off, but we'll know if you do."

Starscream fiddled with it. "And if it gets damaged in the field?"

"Comm us and explain."

"Would you believe me?" Starscream asked.

Ratchet let out a harsh sigh. "Optimus will, at least."

Turning it over one last time in his fingers, Starscream said, "I suppose that's the best I'll get," and slipped it under a ledge in his chest. He cricked his neck, stretched his arms, and walked right up to the cliff's edge.

He inhaled deeply, his wings twitching in anticipation. Then he clicked his heels together and did a neat little about-face, giving the kids a smirk just before he tipped backwards off the edge. He transformed as he fell, and Miko found herself holding her breath as he dropped out of sight.

Engines roared, and Miko couldn't help whooping as he shot straight upwards, so fast the gust of wind he created made her and Raf stumble. Starscream must have heard her, because his wings waggled in what felt like acknowledgement. He kept going up, up, nosecone pointed to the clouds, until she had to shade her eyes to keep watching him. Abruptly, his engines cut out, and he seemed to hang suspended for a moment before toppling backwards again. Miko gripped Ratchet's index finger as Starscream spun around and around, plummeting towards the ground in freefall.

"Relax, kiddo," Ratchet said. "He's just showing off."

Miko couldn't tear her eyes away. How could falling like that be showing off? And then, just when she thought Starscream wasn't going to be able to pull up in time, his engines fired and he righted himself with a quick flick of his wings. He turned freefall into a graceful dive that hooked around the tall mesa that disguised the Autobot base, only half of one wing visible like the fin of a shark as he circled them. Then he was up and away again, doing loops and flips and barrel rolls, all because he could. For the sheer joy of it.

She wondered what that would be like, to have the wind as a friend and gravity as a plaything. She wondered if she could get him to tell her honestly.

"Hey, Ratchet," Miko said, still watching Starscream. "Optimus said something to me yesterday."

"Go on."

"It was after you kicked me out of the med bay. He seemed sad about something, so I asked how I could help, and he said that this isn't my war, and maybe I could see things another way. But then he wouldn't tell me what he meant."

Ratchet bit off a curse halfway. "If that young idiot is hanging his hopes on Starscream, of all mechs, I'll kill him myself."

Miko supposed that Ratchet was probably the only one around who could get away with calling Optimus Prime either young or idiot. "What hopes?" she asked.

Ratchet let out a heavy sigh. "He's got this notion of ending the war without winning or losing. Where both sides come back together to rebuild the world better this time. It's-" He made a frustrated grinding noise. "No one else would think it's possible. I sure don't. But he hopes." His free hand clenched, and he sounded so old and tired as he murmured, "Primus save him, he hopes."

Raf crouched to give Ratchet a comforting pat on the palm, but Miko just kept holding onto his finger, still watching Starscream. She didn't really know what any of that had to do with her or her ability to see things another way, and yet… she had a strange feeling she was starting to kind of understand.

Maybe it was something about the way Starscream cut through the sky. Exuberance radiated off him—there was nothing calculating or scheming in the twirl of his wings, the gunning of his engines. He'd been on the ground for so long, and now he was celebrating flight. She couldn't deny anymore that he was just another person, with his own motives and dreams and history. And if Starscream was a person, what about the rest of the Decepticons? She knew plenty of people did plenty of bad things for plenty of reasons, but she was used to applying that mentality to humans. It required another shift of thinking to apply it to alien robots, especially when she'd been taught by most of the Autobots that Decepticons were just plain bad.

And maybe they were bad people, but Miko was starting to think that maybe it wasn't all that simple. If Optimus thought there was a way to reconcile their differences, maybe… maybe…

Miko didn't know. But she was going to find out.

"Alright, pack it in," Ratchet said into his comm. "That's enough fancy flightwork for today. Save some fuel for your mission."

Starscream veered back towards the mesa, transforming again as he landed. "Killjoy," he said, but he was grinning, exhilarated and sincere. Then he caught himself, and the grin shifted into a haughty sneer.

Miko came to a decision. She wasn't sure if it was the right one, but that had never stopped her before. "Woo!" she crowed, throwing up horns with both hands. "Starscream, that was awesome!"

Starscream gave her a startled look, then quickly composed himself. "Of course," he said, lifting his chin. "I'm the best there is."

But some of the sincerity had returned to his smile, and Miko knew she could do this.

#transformers #transformers prime #starscream #starscream tfp #optimus prime #autobots #writing counts as art

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wlwinry · 4 years

Text

that summer breeze (the way it’s calling me): ii

eyyyyyyyyy finally updated this

prologue

chapter one

summary:

The legendary thief known as Mech finds a tower. The boy in the tower finds a way out.

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

All things considered, Mech thought today had gone pretty well. She’d just committed the crime of the century by stealing the Crown of the Sun (hello, eternal infamy), successfully ditched and double-crossed two of the most dangerous criminals in the world (no brownie points earned with the criminal underground of Xerxes and Amestris there, she supposed, but it did mean the score was all hers), and escaped the Royal Guard despite a very harrowing chase. Sure, she’d pissed off the Captain of the Royal Guard and had to deal with him shapeshifting into a giant, angry wolf the size of a horse, but one short fall off a cliff and a quick duck into a mysterious cave covered in ivy, and that problem was thankfully solved.

Temporarily solved, at least. Mustang was still after her (since when could the asshole shapeshift, anyway? Especially into one of the best tracking animals in the world? She would be screwed if she stayed in one place too long), and if she got caught it was bye-bye pretty priceless artifact, hello gallows and a public square. Luckily, she’d found that the cave was more like a tunnel, a stretch of dirt and stone going only a few feet before springy grass started popping up and sunlight once again dappled the forest floor.

Prime real estate awaited her, really—a beautiful valley, a waterfall pouring down from high, shining cliffs as a brook wound through the clearing. In the middle of it all, strangely enough, there was a tower. Narrow and tall (at least seventy feet, if not over a hundred, like it had been separated from a palace and dropped down here), made of shimmering stones and covered in crawling moss and ivy. Pretty. Possibly full of treasures. And, most importantly, no stairs, ladders, or anything a giant wolf-slash-human-guard would be able to climb up.

It only took half an hour to climb, with a little boost from her magic and using the arrows of her quiver to nudge some stones out enough to use as footholds, grasping iron-infused arrow shafts and hauling herself up step by step. The one window she’d seen near the top was, thankfully, unlocked, and she’d slipped inside, pausing for a moment on the sill to check her satchel. The crown was still in there, thankfully, shining gold and jet-black stones and diamonds—a pretty, delicate circlet meant only for the Crown Prince of Xerxes. One the current heir would never have received, and never asked for, because it belonged to his brother.

The Lost Prince. Sometimes, she wondered what had happened to him, to that little baby with those bright golden eyes she saw in those tapestries, those mosaics. Dead, probably, said the most practical part of her, but sometimes—well, sometimes she hoped. Sometimes (right now, not that she’d admit it), she felt bad for stealing from his kingdom…and his crown.

Most times, she knew just how stupid hope was, and that sympathy was even worse. Especially for a wanted criminal.

Especially for the legendary Mechanic.

She swung her legs over the sill and closed the shutters behind her with a sigh, closing the satchel with a smirk. “Alone at last,” she crooned—

Then something slammed into the back of her head, and Mech’s world went dark.

***

Ed hadn’t been having the best birthday—or day-before-his-birthday. Sure, things started off well. He’d managed to hide his Cress from his father, the Barn Owl finally flying off before he hauled him back up into the tower, got all his chores done quickly and busied himself with whatever pastimes were approved. Painting, fortunately, was still top of the list, and though he was running out of space, he’d moved the mantle-piece over the fireplace enough that he could paint the empty wall.

Inky skies, shining, floating lights, and a boy watching them with glowing golden hair. His birthday present, one he’d been looking forward to since he was old enough to have memories, let alone dreams. Or—well, he’d hoped it’d be his birthday present. He was turning eighteen, which was the age of adulthood for almost every nation according to the stories he’d found in the books Father gave him. Surely he was mature enough for a short picnic in the forest, where he could see the floating lights better, right?

Not right. Father didn’t like that he’d asked at all, even though it was his birthday and Ed felt really small and cramped (weakstarvedscaredneedlightlightlight) within the walls of his tower. He’d humored it at first, after Ed used his hair to soothe him after the wilds of the outside (he’d messed up the song by going too fast, though, and maybe that was why Father got mad), but then—well, then he’d reminded Ed about his lost leg, about the raiders who’d loved nothing more than to chop off his hair and sell him.

Reminded him that he was young, and immature, and useless. That he had a history of rambling and getting overexcited and forgetting about his surroundings to the point that he got hurt, or that people around him got hurt protecting him. That he was safer in here, and too weak to handle himself out there.

And then he’d left to get ingredients for dinner—and Ed hadn’t been able to do anything but sit on the mantle and stare at the painting he’d hoped would come true. The reality that would be nothing but a dream.

Cress had flown back in from her little nest after Father left, crooning and comforting him with gentle, fluffy wings, preening gently at his scalp. He’d managed a smile as he lowered himself to the ground carefully, setting his foot down first before putting his crutch down—and freezing as the window shutters swung open again and someone walked in. Someone who wasn’t Father. Someone who was tall, with a lithe build and narrow shoulders and thick blonde hair in a high ponytail, with cutting blue eyes and full lips and who was a girl and who definitely wasn’t Father—

Before he could think twice, he cracked his crutch over her head and scooted away with a shriek as the—person. The real, live person—toppled over soundlessly. He leveled the crutch at her with trembling hands as Cress hooted in alarm, flapping her wings wildly. Oh god. Oh my god. It’s a person, it’s a human, it’s gonna cut off my hair it has razor sharp teeth and probably claws and—and it’s a girl, I’ve never seen a girl before but that’s what they look like in illustrations, right? “Oh, gods—oh gods oh gods oh gods, Father’s going to kill me, Cress!”

The owl landed on his shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze with her talons, careful as always not to pierce the skin. He leaned against the wall and tried to breath, before hopping closer, unwilling to put down the crutch—and toppled over with a squeal as his hair snagged painfully on something. He sat up quickly, back stinging and eyes watering as he tugged it off of the whorl in the rafters it was knotted around—ow, ow, OW—and hauled himself upright, scooting over to the kitchen. He snatched the first heavy, vaguely weapon-ish item he could find as he wedged his crutch back under his arm, pointing the object (a frying pan) at the girl as he inched closer.

“What am I supposed to do?” he whispered, prodding at her. She didn’t move, evidently well and truly unconscious, and some of that terror faded. He glanced at Cress, who rotated her head and blinked big black eyes at him, before hooting again and opening her beak in a snarling face.

Right. Other people had razor-sharp teeth that they used to poison people and tear out their throats. He should probably figure out something to do with those, first.

Hesitantly, he reached out with the handle of the pan, pulling her lip up—and frowned. Her teeth were flat, normal. Like…mine?

He glanced around before frowning and grabbing the bag the girl had dropped when he hit her, Cress flapping up to the top of the mirror his father loved so much and perching on it. Ed perched on a stool, furrowing his brow before hopping awkwardly over to the mirror and withdrawing the contents. Something pretty, and metal, with what looked like diamonds and jewels and obsidian set in it. He ran a finger admiringly over the rose-gold, before slipping a hand through it and holding it out. It was too big, but, well, he had no idea what it was. “Like this, maybe?”

Cress flipped her head upside down, before squinting at him. He huffed (tough crowd, huh?), before holding it up to one eye and peering through one of the clear gemstones. If anything, it just made the world look weirder, and he sighed before holding it out again. Alright, well…maybe it’s a hat? Hesitantly, he lifted it up and set it on his head, and—

Oh. Oh. It was a hat, then. A very pretty, fancy hat. “Huh,” he said after a moment, tipping it into his hands before looking up at Cress and stuffing the satchel quickly into a pot by the staircase—and grinning. “See? Look at that!” He gestured at the slumped body of the girl, even as he eyed the blue-painted wardrobe carefully. “I can totally take care of myself! As soon as I show Father this, he’ll have to take me to see the floating lights, right?”

Cress made a worried, warbling sound, but Ed ignored it, hope bursting bright in his chest as he began the task of stuffing the first person who’d ever found his tower into the closet.

I’m going to see those lights after all.

#tangled au #edwin #fma #mads writes #ed is a disney princess #read and rb #ed is also a lil dumbass who is emotionally abused so yknow #winry is mech(anic) geddit haha

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shesquiinnsane-ar · 4 years

Text

UPDATED BIOS;

As a precursor to this I just thought to add that both Arkham Origins and A Matter of Family have also been edited and updated. Whilst writing new bios I'm also working on editing older bios as some are probably a couple years old and full of typos I never checked. So that's happening too. All new bios will have my new icon form. I'll try and posted whenever I so update bios though so people know. And now, onto the new bio!

BATMAN NINJA;

This verse will typically be used for any anime/manga characters that Harley may interact with as well as those who simply just wish to explore it. Please note that Batman Ninja is a mash of ideas from the Japan studios. There are lots of anime tropes and plot points that need to be simply taken for granted.

Gorilla Grodd used a Quake Engine in Arkham Asylum to send everyone back to Feudal Japan, causing a small distraction that landed Batman in that world two years later.. Two years in the making and Gotham’s villains were taking over as Feudal Lords; Two-Face, Penguin, Poison Ivy, Deathstroke, and the Joker with Harley alongside, where all the Lord’s of their state. The Joker and Harley were considered to be the closest to uniting the kingdom to be the one true King of Japan, the Joker was known to be labeling himself as the Demon King.

The pair first bump into Batman, using Harley disguised as the Joker to tease him as they realize he is now in Feudal Japan. This distraction allowed Joker to engage Batman in a fight, asking Batman to call him Lord Joker as he was believed to be the most powerful man in Japan. After changing into her outfit she met up with the Joker and the Batman after he finished throwing razor-edged fans. To keep the Joker occupied, she poured him a drink so they could instead watch Batman against seven of the Joker’s samurai warriors. As Batman and the warriors fought, Harley asked if they should follow, to which the Joker just sighed with his drink, asking her to simply enjoy the moonlight as they had all the time in the world.

Batman subsequently joined forces with Catwoman as he learned that the secret to going home was in Grodd’s time machine, currently owned by the Joker in his temple. He then learned Catwoman was lucky enough to find Alfred, who was in the Batmobile, and had been maintaining it as best he could for the occasion when Batman was to return. The loud motor roared down the street straight to the temple which Harley overheard, rushing to the Joker to inform him. Pushing open the doors of the temple she shouted at the top of her lungs that Batman was coming. She dropped her knees in front of Joker as she told Joker that Batman was coming in the Batmobile. Trying to demonstrate her point, using a puppet show she told Joker that the Batmobile had passed their gunmen and the canons that were in place to try and hold him back. Then Batman was always so clever with his technology, but Joker believed he was nothing without the Batmobile. Joker demanded Harley activated ‘Arkham Castle’. At first, she protested, after all the castle wasn’t even finished yet, but it had been made for Batman so there wasn’t any time like now to use it. She agreed, and after licking her lips, she clapped with a giggle. Behind the doors that had opened to her command was a piece of the Quake Engine that had been lost to Gorilla Grodd.

With the castle activated, the temple started to rise out of the ground, as Batman was seen approaching the building. It seemed to transform into a mechanically charged robot in the form of the temple. Batman labeled it a form of madness as the left arm of the mech readied a set of giant throwing stars. Each one was thrown at the road in an attempt to stop Batman from reaching them. The three throwing stars narrowly missed the Batmobile as Batman blew up the gate with a rocket launcher extension to the Batmobile. He was storming the gates and the mech tried to squish Batman in the Batmobile as it plucked it from the ground. The Batman escaped, dropping from the wreckage with part of the car that converted into the Batjet. To Joker though, it was a persistent yet predictable move. With Batman locked on the top floor of Arkham Castle, he was trapped by two prongs, the wings severed on the Batjet, leaving Batman in mid-air. That wasn’t the only trick Batman could pull, however, as dropping the wings converted the Batjet into a Batcycle, a motorbike he used to drive along the arm of the fortress straight into the top room.

Harley had fled from the floor to drop a trap on Batman. As the right hand of the fortress came crashing down to the ground Batman had to choose; save a woman and child down below, or finally get the Joker. Batman used the cycle to try and crash to the ground ahead of the hand and managed to fight off Bane to save the poor woman. The woman, however, was no more than Harley Quinn and her mallet. With Batman narrowly escaping being crushed to death she had time to perfectly line up her shot before her mallet hit in straight in the face and sent him flying across the floor. Using a giant slide to get out from the tower, the Joker joined Harley on the ground as they were both laughing. Harley noted that it was typical Bats, as he always fell for the same tricks. Joker continued to taunt Batman, as Harley and a few of his armed guards surrounded the Batman. Joker could only wonder what Batman had in store for a second act as he’d destroyed all of his toys now and there were no friends here to save him. A short and worried shout from Harley seemed to change the tides, however, as she pointed behind the Joker and tried to get his attention. Behind him, a huge colony of Bats seemed to fly toward them. During the flurry, Harley tried her best to swat them away with her mallet but it didn’t seem to do anything. The bats aided the arrival of what Harley could only describe as Ninja Batmen. As quickly as they appeared, they disappeared, taking the Batman with them, and leaving Harley and Joker confused.

On a handmade ship, made in the vision of the Joker, Harley and Joker met with Gorilla Grodd. They stood within the bird’s nest to see as far as they could in case anyone should sneak upon them. Joker told Grodd that he wouldn’t kill him if he handed over the Batman and wanted to see where he was. He quickly made himself known as floatation devices were set up in the water which from the Joker’s viewpoint looked like people. Batman told him he was surrounded but this wasn’t going to over that quickly. With a laugh, Joker admitted that he was surrounded as his samurai warriors appeared firing at sticks of bamboo in the water. Harley came tumbling, laughing as she was firing her gun at whatever she could, hoping to hit a few people on the way down. Then she opted to throw a bomb into the waters, which she knew would cause more damage. Batman seemed to shout out ‘no’ but as Harley hit the deck she laughed, what else was he expecting? They knew he’d have men hiding in the water. As she joined Joker, who opened fire on Batman, Batman told them that maybe he would another time, but right now he had a trick up his sleeve. The tiny boat that Batman and Grodd had arrived on rose up to expose a huge underground deck. Despite looking confused at first, the pair still laughed and Joker claimed they were still doomed, opening firing on them again.

The boat nudged forward, rocking Harley and Joker off balance as the hull of Batman’s ship opened as the Batman Ninja Clan and members of the Batman Family started to attack. Harley was confused, as they’d already killed them all, but the people in the waters were simple decoys to distract them from this new attack. As Harley put the pieces together Catwoman reached out to attack her and the pair started to fight. When swinging her mallet failed to land a hit, Harley took out her gun trying to aim for the Cat, who seemingly didn’t want to be put down. As she continued to fire, Harley was recklessly splintering the boat’s woodwork. She laughed until her bullets ran out which was when Catwoman proceeded to fight back, backflipping over Harley to kick her across her face.

Soon enough the fight was over, and Gorilla Grodd siding with Batman in the hopes of gaining an advantage. Harley and Joker were subsequently tied together around the mast of one of their sails. Batman was happy to disappoint Joker by stooping ‘that low’ and siding with Grodd. But if Grodd had turned on the Joker, then Grodd would also turn against Batman. Joker didn’t have a chance to say anymore as he had been gagged alongside Harley. In Feudal Japan, trust meant nothing as Grodd used his mind control in an attempt to control everyone on board the ship. Or at least he tried to as the Bat Clan had mastered their bodies and their minds and could not be under the influence of Grodd’s mind control. Now everyone had to prepare to be annihilated by Two-Face as bombs destroyed the Joker’s ship. With the boat in flames, they had the chance to escape from their chains and climb back up to the bird’s nest with a barrel containing explosives. The pair laughed, as Joker told Batman he’d see him in hell before Harley lit the fuse and sent the explosive to the deck. After all only Joker could kill the Batman, he couldn’t forgive himself if anyone else had done it. The explosion destroyed the boat and bats left the flaming embers. Supposedly ending the battle.

There were no signs of Joker or Harley after the explosion. Some believed them to be dead or simply gone. In the fields away from the villages a couple had been found. The male donned green hair, the female, blonde. They had seemingly spent years on a field that didn’t seem to grow any crops. A male in a red helmet, Red Hood, was taken for a monk who was traveling through the region and he asked the couple for a glass of water. The green-haired man happily agreed as the blonde woman walked past him to sort out this water. She commented that the traveler must be exhausted as it was a rather hot day after all. As she leaned over the pot to fill his bowl with water the traveler grabbed the blonde, causing her to cry out, telling her to ‘break it’. Helpless, her man told him to stop, as he genuinely had no idea what was going on and why someone would go out of their way to attack his wife. He was threatening for the blonde to show her true face, or else he’d break her arm.

This traveling monk knew the Joker was alive when everyone else had said he was dead but there was a confusion to his face no one could fake. He questioned why the man was insistent on calling him Joker. Kicking the blonde to the floor Red Hood grew more irritated. The green-haired man ran over to his darling feeling threatened and scared. He even questioned the male’s sanity, as none of the situations made any sense. Supposedly that insinuated the man in the red helmet was stupid, as he was expected to believe that the Joker had taken up farming. Harley covered her eyes whimpering as the pair received a beating from the visiting male. They didn’t understand, their confusion was genuine. As he was assaulted the male continued to deny the allegations, and he dropped to his knees as a bamboo barrel was pointed at his head. Gunfire went off but just scraped past the male’s head as they were rescued by a man in a Bat costume. Supposedly they were both here for the same reason, as reports of foreign farmers in the area matched the descriptions of Harley and the Joker had been found but the couple genuinely didn’t remember anything of their past. They had come to Japan to live a peaceful life and had spent time plowing the fields.

As the danger seemed to pass the blonde woman had gotten straight back to work when a miracle appeared before her eyes. It seemed like the pair had waited forever for this moment. She shouted for her honey to come and join her, her voice filled with excitement as there was finally a sprout in their fields. They laughed and embraced as finally, they had gotten somewhere, the blonde calling the green male her puddin’ as they toppled to the floor. Batman had concluded that the couple had at one point been Joker and Harley Quinn but had lost their memories to a point where they were no longer a threat. He promised to keep an eye on them and to take them back when the Quake Engine was fully operational but for now, they were harmless and they just had to let the couple be. Things were not quite so simple, however, as the travelers left the couple laughing their euphoria. The sprout that had finally grown was blowing pollen across the field, and over the couple kneeling next to it. This pollen had been created as a trigger to the couple’s memories. The seemingly harmless duo would now once again become the Joker and Harley Quinn as their memories were restored.

A month later, the Joker and Harley Quinn were ready to make their come back. The Feudal Lords; Two-Face, Penguin, Poison Ivy, and Deathstroke were all manipulated by Gorilla Grodd to develop a mechanical structure each which was far beyond the technologies of Japan at the time. Grodd had been setting up the battlefield to take over and become the one Lord of Japan. As the mechs joined together to become one, the party-crashers made their entrance. No one had known that Joker and Harley had regained their status and now they were ready to make a comeback. Throwing a laughing bomb into the hub of Grodd’s machine, a form of knock out gas was sprayed around the room affecting Grodd and Catwoman who was in the hold at the time. Other identical bombs seemed to explode through the mech as floating above in a hot air balloon donning the Joker’s smile was Harley Quinn and the Joker laughing hysterically and spinning around as they declared themselves back! It was out with the old and in with the new as more bombs were dropped on the battlefield as Harley made sure they knew that there were no exchanges or returns. The color bombs covered the mech as Batgliders identified the couple. Batman couldn’t believe it to be true but Joker greeted him as there was no way you could keep a crazy man down.

The hot balloon crashed through the roof of Grodd’s castle, the same one that had previously been owned by Joker and Harley themselves. he didn’t want to be too late to the party but it seemed he had come at exactly the right time. As Catwoman glared Joker down, she was pushed to the floor as Harley stood on her, whilst wearing a jester hat that mimicked her modern-day attire. She grinned and waved at the pretty kitty. Grodd had taken them by surprise back at the lake in which their ship sank but now it was time for payback. The flower that had triggered their memories, wasn’t too potent yet but Harley admitted that they were thinking of increasing the dosage. The plant had been one Harley had previously taken from Ivy who had the best plants. As the plant seemingly paralyzed Grodd, Harley kicked Catwoman over to join Grodd on the floor before wielding her mallet and taking her place at the Joker’s side with a giggle. Now it was a turn of events Joker intended to take over Grodd’s plan and ejected Grodd and Catwoman from the castle as they were pushed down the slide and sent falling downwards. They were caught by the Bat Clan and carried carefully to the ground as Joker took the central seat and Grodd’s tools to play a few mind games using the mech he had developed.

Activating the full transition, the mechs assembled again. This time, however, the transition seemed more fluid as each of the villains controlled a part of the mech, with Joker’s hot air balloon forming the structure's head. Now they were all serving Lord Joker to take over, and the contraption was better than anything the Joker himself could have created. Chaos ensued as the Bat Clan struggled to withstand the force of the mech and the power it had. He had attacked Gorilla Grodd, injuring him badly. Despite being saved from death, however, there was no telling of his injuries. In return for the said Grodd gave Batman his commanding flute which summoned many monkeys to help the Bat Clan defeat the fortress the Joker was in control of. The monkeys formed a giant structure, a samurai monkey to take down the mechs. In one punch the mech was sent to his needs, which was unexpected but the structure did pick itself back up.

As the Joker controlled the head of the structure, Harley was left to control the main body. Joker suggested cutting down on the monkey business by greeting the guests with a warm kiss. Pushing down on one of her levers, activated a huge central flame thrower but the monkeys seemingly withstood the heat as only their armor was damaged. The flurry of bats at the Bat Clan’s disposal doused the flames as the bats now enclosed the monkey samurai to take on the form of a giant Batman. Harley pushed down on the lever again, at the command of the Joker, as he told the Batman figure to feast on the fire of hell. The flames had no effect on Batman and with a single punch pushed straight through into the head, destroying the Joker's hub and freezing the machine. Batman opted to take Joker alone as each hero took on their villain to destroy the mech section by section. For Harley, this meant facing Catwoman who had in her opinion, chosen the wrong side to play with. In Catwoman’s mind, Harley needed a good ass-kicking after their previous encounter.

As Harley intended to go and help Joker, Catwoman almost whipped her mallet straight out of her hands but Harley bashed it out of the way just in time with a little giggle. Catwoman declared it was time for some girl on girl action as the two began to fight. Harley laughed her way through the hits even jumping with intentions of smashing the cat to the floor. As she looked, Catwoman had disappeared but she smirked, throwing her mallet to her left and striking the feline. Trapping her in her grip, using the mallet to help, Harley told the pretty kitty to take her medicine and say goodnight, before licking the woman’s cheek.

It all seemed to be going well but the monkey army had split, tackling the structure individually to slowly tear it apart piece by piece. As Harley held her grip on Catwoman a shudder throughout the building had caused her to slip, and Catwoman freed herself taking advantage by kicking the jester squarely in the face as she crashed into the wall. Resting her back against the wall Harley tried to catch her breath as she’d been winded by the motions as Catwoman tightly gripped her costume, pulling Harley up by her collar. Catwoman told Harley to keep her tongue to herself as she threw the Jester into the main system causing it to explode and completely crash which was where the Jester remained. Out cold, and hopefully not burnt.

After the fight, the Quake Engine was restored, presumably returning all of the Gotham residents to the present day.

#V; BATMAN NINJA.{mechs and monkeys; just to rule japan}#BIO RELEASE!!!

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itsclydebitches · 5 years

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RWBY Recaps: Volume 6 “Our Way” (The Finale!)

We made it, folks. Volume 6 is finally over and my god what a disappointment it turned out to be.

I’ve danced my whole life and I had an instructor once who gave a lecture on choreography, cautioning us that the order you put your pieces in is just as important as the pieces themselves. Though each comes together to create a whole, your audience is more likely to remember the first and the last piece—so make those two count. Volume 6 began strong with the relic and the lore, and then ended on a flat, uninspiring, illogical note. Sadly I know what part of the performance I’ll be remembering from here on out.

However, first let’s tackle what we didn’t get this episode. There was no flashback to Oscar at Argus, re-characterizing his outing as something significant that might actually impact his growth as a character. Rooster Teeth really just… did that. They gave us an exact repeat of episode four, had Jaune physically assault Oscar, no one stepped in, no one bothered to check if Oscar was okay, we set him up staring morosely at the door, a two week cliffhanger, and then we really got an episode all about Jaune’s emotions while Oscar bought new clothes and made these people a casserole. He immediately accepted an incomplete apology, went so far as to speak like he thinks he’s going to die… and the group just smiled at him. Because remember, right now they only care about outsiders—which Oscar still very much is—when they’re helping and not getting in the way. Which Oscar has now promised to do. The finale gives us a brief moment where Ruby tries to praise Oscar for his efforts and it just rang as incredibly hollow to me. It’s easy to be kind to people when everything is going your way. You show your true colors when things get tough. RWBYJNR has repeatedly demonstrated this volume that when push comes to shove they’re willing to throw Oscar (and Ozpin) under the bus.

I’d need an entire, separate recap to detail exactly how horrible their treatment of him has been and how worrying it is that the story continues to frame this behavior as not just acceptable, but the actions of heroes. Suffice to say, if you have friends who seem nice on the daily but use you as a punching bag whenever they need an outlet? Do me a favor and get far, far away from them.

In the interests of moving on, another thing we didn’t get was any mention of Raven. A few friends theorized that last volume’s end credits scene (where Tai spots Raven using his portal) might finally come into play, but no such luck. More importantly to my mind, Yang still hasn’t said anything about Raven being the Spring Maiden, so that continues to be a secret she keeps while heaping more judgement on Ozpin. We’ll get to that later.

We didn’t see that true reconciliation teased in the last shot of the opening. Ruby never fought grimm with arms like those, let alone in a sewer tunnel… even though one was right there at the farm. I’m honestly starting to believe what others are saying about whole episodes being cut to make time for GenLock. Something happened this volume because the writing took one hell of a nosedive. It’s not just that I don’t agree with the messages the show is expressing, it’s that we have dangling threads, confusing “twists,” and what honestly feels like half-assed storytelling. Like they knew they had to complete the volume but just weren’t feeling motivated, so they chucked together something shoddy and left it at that.

(We also didn’t get to hear what Ruby bought them all at the gift shop. I realize this is a comparatively tiny thing, but to my mind it was a missed opportunity. They could have bookended the premiere and the finale, revealed that tiny mystery, told us something about Ruby based on the gifts she chose—the fandom keeps complaining that she’s one-dimensional—and if she’d picked up something for Ozpin at the time, that would have been an easy moment to have the group start reflecting on their behavior, a reminder that just a few days ago he was an important member of their team. Obviously I doubt the gifts survived the train crash, but there’s no reason why Ruby couldn’t tell them about it; a quiet moment before they reach Atlas. Like the shorter season length though, this episode was short for a finale. We were barely given enough time for the plot, let alone any reflection.)

For now though, let’s dive into the actual episode. We open on a field where an airship lands, Neo transforming as she steps out. That really is a powerful semblance. She can create copies of herself, disguise herself, and (as we’ll see in just a moment), disguise a whole freaking airship too. Granted, that last one seems to take some effort, but as this finale will inform us later, it doesn’t really matter how tired you are. If the plot needs you to do a thing with your semblance, you’ll manage it. Somehow.

Cinder arrives in a new outfit as well and, like Neo’s, it’s pretty damn skimpy? I haven’t bothered to bring this up before because on the whole RT writes it’s mostly female cast very well, but considering how many other criticisms I’ve got today, why not chuck out one more. Meaning, why do these designs continually have to promote sexiness over practicality? Weiss, Nora, and Ruby all fight in skirts—hastily justified as “combat skirts”—and at least half the women on this show fight in heels. Yang sports short-shorts. Both she and Blake have bare midriffs. Now Neo is in a top that looks like it’s held up by a prayer and Cinder is sporting lingerie-like knee highs. There’s just no reason to design characters like this, especially when a good chunk of your cast is made up of teens. Cinder says herself that Neo will soon need snow boots. Just dress her appropriately for the weather from the start. You know, like how we didn’t get with Team RWBY while traveling through a kingdom filled with snow. Apparently Weiss wearing a scarf is enough to combat hypothermia for the whole team.

And yes, I realize costume changes require new models to be made, but that’s precisely why you should design your fighters as fighters from the start. You’re battling giant monsters? No one would wear heels. Or skirts. Or expose their midriff. It seems pretty convenient that aura supposedly protects them, eliminating the need for armor, and yet now it’s only our most masculine character—Jaune—who still bothers to wear it. Neo and Cinder are just the most recent examples of, “Why the hell would you wear that to a fight?”

Well, maybe these two will freeze to death before they ever reach the group… They’re heading to Solitas too and though they didn’t do anything in this scene besides reveal new and impractical clothing, I was more interested in their brief discussion than I was in the entirety of RWBYJNR’s fight. At least I’m comfortable in how I feel about Neo and Cinder. They’re bad guys. They’re gonna do bad things that the story frames as bad. They’re usually fun to watch. I don’t get frustrated and confused whenever they come on screen nowadays.

Cinder says, “Someone once asked me if I believe in destiny…and I’m happy to say I still do” as we get a final shot of them planning their nefarious deeds. We’re getting a lot of references to Pyrrha this volume—this, the statue, Ruby’s memories later—and taken on its own that’s fantastic. In a season though where Pyrrha’s death is subtly ‘justifying’ the group’s awful behavior and acting as a reminder to the fandom for why they unjustly hate Ozpin? Ehh…

We close on the villains and open on our “heroes” with rousing music to signal the upcoming battle, which… isn’t really a battle at all. The Leviathan is steadily approaching Argus and the Atlas personnel are calling for Cordovin. She’s still stuck, yelling about how “This is your fault!”

And it is. However, once again Cordovin’s exaggerated attitude makes it easy to ignore the fact that she’s right. She’s racist! She’s arrogant! She’s screaming and sounds like a child! Clearly our group is the mature ones here. Look at how calmly Ruby faces her down in contrast… It reminds me of how people (particularly women) are told that they’re being “Too emotional” in this conversation and therefore all the points they’ve made are somehow invalid. Of course Cordovin is emotional. A group of kids just lied to her, stole from her, started a battle against her, and destroyed her mech right when her city is about to be overrun by grimm. I’d be screaming in frustration too.

Though of course, most don’t view it that way. I agree with what others have pointed out, that if we’d been given a calmer authority figure saying the exact same things—No you can’t go into Atlas. Why would I let anyone other than Weiss cross a closed border?—it would have been easier to see exactly how horrible the group’s actions are here. As it is, Cordovin’s personality acts as a distraction. One more way to present the group as heroic when they’re anything but.

Yang and Blake arrive on the scene, wanting to know what the hell is going on. Yang asks, “Is that a giant grimm?” and Weiss responds, “Yes…and we just ruined the only thing capable of stopping it.”

That’s an admission of facts, not necessarily an admission of guilt. The group acknowledges that they ruined the one defense capable of taking out a grimm of that size, but as we’ll see, there’s no regret attached to doing that in the first place. It’s just summarizing the situation for Blake and Yang.

Granted, we get a moment where Ruby looks worried/potentially sad as they fly away from Cordovin, but what does that mean here? Is she sad about what she’s done? Or just worried about this new situation? Their actions have been so extreme that the story can’t afford to be vague about the characters’ emotions here. Plenty of people will (and are free) to read this moment as Ruby experiencing fierce regret at her choices the last few hours… but it’s just as easy to attribute her expressions to fear about the coming battle. I’m not inclined to give these characters the benefit of the doubt here. They haven’t earned it.

Regardless, we cut to the airship where apparently Yang and Blake have already told everyone about Adam. That was not the sort of thing that should have happened off screen. By all means, be practical. There’s no time for a long-winded conversation with the Leviathan bearing down on Argus, so have Yang announce that they’re okay, yes something happened, we’ll explain things later. Now you’ve established that this very important information will be conveyed either on the airship later, or at the beginning of volume 7.

What a waste. This is the end of a villain we’ve had since the Black Trailer—the first time our protagonists have killed a fellow human being—and that admission is regulated to the 30 seconds it takes to fly from Cordovin to the middle of the fight. Ruby hugs Blake and tells her she’s safe, but that’s it. That’s currently the extent of the team’s reaction to this huge revelation and like JNR learning about Salem, the audience has no idea what sort of details they received. Do they just know Adam died in the fight or that they deliberately killed him? Did Weiss hear about the brand? We don’t know. Hopefully this conversation is given more weight in volume 7, but given what else we’ve seen lately, I’m not counting on it.

Maria then interrupts with one of the most jaw-dropping lines of the episode: “I suppose I have to be the bad guy and say it, but getting the lamp to Atlas is still our top priority.”

Are we for real right now? Where was this calm, level-headed, pragmatic Maria when she was pissing off Cordovin with cashews? Or cheering at Ruby rejecting all adults? Now she starts trying to think rationally? But of course, when she does stop her manic cackling it’s to suggest something horrific. Yes, Maria. It does make you a bad guy to want to abandon a city to the grimm you brought here. She realizes that everyone is dead if they leave, right? That without the mech or silver eyes Argus has no decent way of stopping that Leviathan? Maria is meant to be the Grimm Reaper, the greatest huntress of her generation, and the writers think it’s appropriate to not only have her encouraging a bunch of kids to recklessly commit treason, but then condemn a whole city to probable death for their mistakes?

No, the relic is not the top priority. The relic is a side mission. The top priority has always and will always be protecting humanity. At least Yang, Blake, and Weiss realize this. They say firmly that they’re not leaving and Ruby gives a little shrug like, ‘Guess we’re not leaving then.’

(They really like having Ruby treat her mistakes as jokes, don’t they?)

So Ruby announces she has an idea, the one the whole fandom saw coming a mile away, and the next second Qrow says, “Eyes up, everybody” because they’ve reached the Leviathan. Ha. Get it? Eyes up?

Okay. I’m done lol.

We get shots of the terrified Argus population, including Terra and Saphron.

Ruby asks Ren and Jaune to mask the ship which, reminder, they shouldn’t be able to do. Ren maybe, but Jaune just used all his aura to protect himself and Nora from getting splattered by Cordovin’s arm. Then he was thrown into a boulder for good measure. Last episode he couldn’t even stand without hanging off of his teammates. Now we get exactly what I was afraid we would: the plot needs someone to Do A Thing so aura burnout is conveniently forgotten. Jaune gives a confident smile. Of course he can boost Ren’s semblance and cover an entire airship!

Keep in mind that we just saw Neo dropping in exhaustion after a second of using her semblance on a whole ship. Granted, her ship is bigger, but she’s also presumably at full strength right now. If we were bothering to follow the rules established by this world, I highly doubt Jaune would have been able to pull this off.

Meanwhile the Leviathan has easily taken out Argus’s first barrier. “It tore straight through…” Oscar whispers, reminding me that he hasn’t had many encounters with grimm. If I remember correctly he mentioned to Ruby that there was an occasional one on the farm (as expected), but they must have been pretty weak if an untrained kid can take them out with farm equipment. Oscar then goes straight to Haven, battles people at the Academy, gets on that train where he fought some manticores, but then he didn’t get to see the Apathy for himself. This seems to be one of the first times Oscar is seeing grimm at all, let alone one this deadly. No wonder he sounds shocked.

With the shield destroyed in an instant the Atlas personnel start giving the order to evacuate… when Ruby interrupts them. No worries, fine people. I have a plan! Wait, why should we trust you? “I’m a huntress.”

No you’re not, Ruby. Literally and symbolically, you are not currently a huntress. Ignoring for a moment all the stunts you just pulled, undermining everything a huntress is meant to uphold, that is a formal position. It’s a title that embodies great power in this world and you achieve that title by studying four years and graduating from an academy. You don’t get to call yourself a college graduate because you did one year and then studied on your own. Same with being a doctor, or a lawyer, or literally any titled position. Ruby (in continuing with the theme of this volume) is lying to that Atlesian soldier. She’s misrepresenting herself, claiming she’s something other than what she actually is: a half-trained teen with a current chip on her shoulder.

This is also another moment where she ignores Qrow when he yells for her to stop. The issue isn’t about who’s right here—whether Ruby should tell the others about her plan or not—but that Ruby is consistently ignoring everyone around her to charge forward with whatever plan she personally thinks is best. Qrow told her not to attack the Atlas military… look what happened. Qrow told her not to go stare down Cordovin’s missiles and try to make an impossible shot… look what happened. Qrow told her not to stubbornly stand her ground against a mech when the rest of her team is beaten and exhausted, and though Ruby survives, it’s only by the will of Plot Armor. She leapt into a freaking cannon. She knocked herself out. You’d think after all this Ruby would at least pause a moment to give Qrow the time of day.

It ultimately doesn’t matter though because their ship is still flagged as hostile. Atlas isn’t going to help them on what clearly looks like a suicide mission. We get a close up of Ruby daring to do what no one else can or will. “Fine… we’ll do it alone if we have to.”

…which is precisely the problem. Atlas backing off might feel like a consequence—Oh no! Their actions lost them their backup!—but all it does is get the extras out of the way (who just happen to be adults) so we can more easily focus on the protagonists (who just happen to be teens). It’s a reward. They don’t actually need the airships here, as the group is about to demonstrate, so this ‘consequence’ is absolutely meaningless. It would be something entirely different if, say, the story actually framed the soldiers as necessary to distract the Leviathan and Ruby had to admit her faults, begging them to help despite her mistakes; if the story made it clear that teamwork was a necessity. But there’s nothing like that. This is meant to read as the hero’s crowning moment.

Also, as an aside, why in the world would Ruby tell them to wait on the rest of their evacuation? What if—a wild thought here—something went wrong? Like literally every plan you’ve ever come up with? Isn’t it better to get people to safety while you try out your idea, just in case it all falls to pieces? This is just one more moment of Ruby’s overconfidence putting others at risk. She’s endangered her team, herself, and an entire city this volume… and has learned precisely nothing from it.

But we’ll come to that. Right now Ren masks the airship’s approach, conveniently keeping it up just long enough for them to reach the Leviathan, and then he’s out. They still didn’t make it in time though. The Leviathan sends out another stream of fire that takes out the second shield and hits the top of a tower in Argus. Needing to get closer, Yang and Nora distract the Leviathan while Ruby rides in on one of Weiss’ summoned lancers. I did appreciate Blake briefly supporting Weiss as she works to keep her semblance up. Whatever else, this volume has been good about brief, non-partner interactions.

We hear Ruby encouraging herself as she flies in and then she chucks her communicator into the water to concentrate. I thought something would come of that? Why bother having Yang interrupt her if there wasn’t a serious issue (it takes another long moment for the Leviathan to turn on Ruby) and why full on get rid of the communicator if that choice wasn’t going to come into play later? Eh, whatever. Far from the first time we’ve had setups that go absolutely nowhere. This volume is full of them.

So Ruby does as Maria taught her: cycling through memories of her family and friends, trying to drum up that fierce desire to protect them.

I did appreciate that Oscar, Qrow, and Maria get brief appearances… but again, the one team member who isn’t shown is Ozpin. Apparently Ruby now hates him to the point where he’s not even a part of her very generalized thoughts about who she wants to protect. I mean she met Maria three days ago and the woman now means more to her, apparently.

(For the record, I say this because Ruby knew Ozpin primarily in his headmaster form and is drawing largely from volume 1-3 material. We might have seen him in the new engine, easily. The shot of Oscar we’re given is also the one from the training room where Ozpin didn’t speak until Ruby left. Alongside Ozpin’s absence this volume, that’s the closest we’ve ever seen Oscar as only Oscar. That choice says a lot in my opinion.)

Eventually Ruby’s memories start to segue into darker thoughts and… okay. I’m confused now. Why is thinking about bad memories the thing that doesn’t let the silver eyes work? Not only were those moments where fierce protection would be at its strongest, but Ruby has only ever been in horrible situations when her eyes went off: Watching Pyrrha die, watching Jaune about to be killed, watching Blake about to kick it via Apathy. You’re telling me that during those times Ruby somehow thought about bright and happy things, not the horror of the fact that her friends were in the process of being murdered? If anything, those flashes of Yang without her arm or Penny cut into pieces should be the very thing that does set her eyes off.

Instead they fail. Ruby opens her eyes to find the Leviathan turning her way and then, as a friend of mine pointed out, she gasps out a “What?” and looks down at the relic.

No. That relic has very conveniently done nothing the entire time the group was trekking through the woods, staying at an abandoned farm, driving who knows how far, and running around a new city. You’re not going to tell me now that suddenly it’s the cause of the Leviathan turning away from people currently attacking it. Either the relic’s draw is strong enough that Oscar should have been in trouble on the train, or it’s not strong enough to act as a justification here. The relic is the new Qrow’s semblance: turning off and on when the story wills it.

In a panic Ruby yells for Jinn, which is less the “clever” choice Jinn says it is and more a potentially clever gamble. The last time they used Jinn every creature in her vicinity remained active. Granted, all those creatures were human or faunus then, but Ruby wouldn’t know if she would freeze the grimm as well. Regardless, her gamble pays off (because of course it does) and we get another example of how the protagonists are currently super special people who can never do any wrong.

Jinn: “You do not seek knowledge, but just this once I will give it freely…I will not allow you to use me without a question again.”

Why? That’s the question you have to ask for all your characters’ decision. Why are they doing this? What’s their motivation? Jinn provides none. She has no reason to let Ruby off the hook for summoning her without a question, especially since she frames that as another bad choice that she’ll (somehow?) punish Ruby for if she does it again. But this time, once again, our protagonist is let off the hook, purely because she’s the protagonist.

With this very generous second chance Ruby re-shuts her eyes, thinks only of the good times, including a memory of Summer Rose. The fandom has been waiting a long time to see her outside of a covered photograph.

Ruby manages to activate her silver eyes. It works—mostly.

I mentioned previously how the show needs to introduce some downside to the silver eyes so that Ruby isn’t suddenly over powered against every grimm from here on out. This is a downside… but an odd one. The grimm turned to stone, but not all the way? Sort of just a stone encasing that it partly manages to break out of? Okay. I mean that works, but it’s a pretty easy downside to overcome. The grimm is still stopped in its tracks, giving the others plenty of time to take it out.

And, as always, pay attention to how it’s all framed. Despite not working exactly as she intended, this is meant to be a moment of victory for Ruby. She’s succeeded in her trial by fire. She’s single-handedly saved all of Argus. The music is rising, the people are cheering, people who have no idea what silver eyes are and will now start up legends about this girl. Who was the huntress with the magic-like power none of us understand? Ruby Rose. The girl who stood toe-to-toe against a Leviathan grimm and won.

This would indeed be a wonderful moment if it weren’t Ruby’s fault the grimm was there in the first place. Like her own claims of “I’m a huntress,” this moment misrepresents Ruby to the people. No one is going to learn that she’s the one who endangered them, only that she’s the one who came to the rescue. She’s fixing her own mistake and then allowing that to stand as a heroic act.

I was so looking forward to Ruby learning to wield her silver eyes. Not like this though.

Cordovin arrives with her pinned arm gone, ready to finish taking out the Leviathan, and she’s suddenly stupidly cheerful about it. Again, characters need motivations. If their outlook on a situation changes we need to see why that happened, especially when moving from such extremes. In a matter of minutes Cordovin went from shrieking at the group to not just sunnily helping them—which is a practical consideration. As she herself says, “I was sworn to protect the people”—but also letting them go.

….there is no reason to let them go. None. It goes against Cordovin’s entire characterization, the logic of the situation, and nothing has happened in the last few minutes to change her mind. This is the story at its laziest: “We don’t have a reason for Cordovin to let them go. She’s just gonna. Because they’re heroes.”

During this conversation we get an “I’m sorry” from Ruby and that’s admittedly something, but like Weiss’ comment about destroying the mech or Ruby’s worried looks, what is she apologizing for? Because she doesn’t seem very contrite right now. The framing isn’t telling us Ruby has anything to be ashamed of. She’s the star in this moment. So that ‘I’m sorry’ feels less like an admission of wrong doing and more, ‘I’m sorry I had to attack you and that it almost got everyone killed. But I absolutely had to. No doubt. So I guess I’m only sorry that fate screwed us over. It’s not like I had a hand in this mess or anything.’

All of which is to say: there are no consequences. None. Zip. Nada. No one in Argus died (despite the fact that all those flying grimm apparently bypassed the mass of terrified people to go battle with the airships on the opposite side of the Leviathan??), no one was arrested, no Ironwood or Winter, no Ozpin coming to their rescue, no problems with aura, the mech still manages to fight, the airship still manages to fly, no one was even reprimanded for their behavior. This volume we have seen the group betray a man they were demanding trust from, steal a secret they knew nothing about, force him to relive thousands of years of trauma while taking in the personal history that was never theirs to see, verbally and physically assault him to the point where he has to remove himself from their presence, they repeat that on an innocent kid days later, do absolutely nothing to make up for that, show no remorse for their actions, steal military property, plotted to mess with one of the few remaining relay towers the whole world depends on, beat up Atlas personnel, chucked them out of a plane, started and continued a fight with a special operative that endangered an entire city of people, destroyed a city’s primary defense, risked straining kingdom relations, nearly got friends killed with these foolish stunts ….and nothing. Not a single consequence, punishment, or reprimand. RT set up a situation where the group makes horrific mistakes and then had them learn nothing from them. Far from it. They’re rewarded, telling the audience that provided you have power—be it physical strength, access to resources, or the knowledge of a super secret mission—you can do whatever you want. There is no single stupid, illegal, dangerous, or callous thing you can do that isn’t ‘justified’ with, “Well I literally could do it, so I guess that means I’m allowed to do it, right?” Our title, “Our Way,” definitely embodies the morals we’re given this season.

I’m honestly disgusted with this volume. Just as a piece of media. This isn’t a story where we’re following anti-heroes and are well aware that they’re committing horrible deeds. This is a story about traditional heroes who are now using anti-hero means, something the story has just straight up ignored. I really didn’t think RT would take things this far… but here we are. This is apparently our group now and I personally think they’re awful.

And ugh, there’s still more of this episode. We cut to the group flying that night and Maria comments that “We should have just enough fuel to make it.” Wow you… literally didn’t think anything through, huh? No one even bothered to find out if they’d have enough fuel to not crash land in the ocean halfway there. Wonderful.

We get another entirely illogical conversation between Qrow and Ruby. He tells her she, “Did good out there today, kid” despite the fact that Qrow was consistently (and correctly) trying to get her to not do the things she was doing. Is it too much to ask for Qrow to have a firm and honest conversation about her making reckless decisions instead of more unearned platitudes? And then Qrow lowers his bottle which… what? Alcoholism doesn’t work like that. Much more importantly, no one has tackled his drinking this season. Or the reasons he was drinking in the first place. Literally, Qrow’s semblance, his place in the war, Ozpin’s secret, none of it has been addressed. He has no reason to suddenly put aside his flask like he’s actually learned something. Does RT think we’re going to just imagine scenes that never actually happened?

(I mean, that’s what fic is for, but that’s… fic. The canon should at least be attempting to hit a higher bar. This is their job, not an unpaid hobby done late at night when you’re exhausted after your own full day of work.)

Qrow and Maria also have a conversation about how he was there to “Catch them when they fell. Literally, if I recall,” implying, again, something that didn’t happen. Yes, Qrow literally caught Ruby when she fell from the cannon, but that line is meant primarily in the metaphorical sense: You were there to support them, keep them from doing something stupid, steering them back to the right path, etc. That’s what Qrow tried to do, but Ruby consistently ignored him.

This is all such a mess. Though we do get some nice shots of Blake and Yang sitting together—lots of hand-holding now—and Weiss comments that she’s glad Yang was there for Blake. Yang corrects that they were there for each other, confirming the lesson they learned off screen at some point.

A conversation starts up once again painting Ruby’s recklessness as awesome heroics. Among her clique she’s all bashful now, no more arrogance when there aren’t outsiders to push back against, and Ruby tries to foster attention off on Oscar. He corrects them about landing the airship… he didn’t actually do that himself.

Oscar: “I didn’t land the ship on my own.”

We get a flashback to him panicking as the ship crashes, but this time we hear Ozpin saying, “Stay calm. It’s going to be okay.” Back in the present Nora immediately freaks out, “He took control?!” and Oscar corrects her with no, he helped guide me.

Let’s unpack this a bit. First of all Ozpin would have been 100% justified in taking control, just like he was justified in taking control at Haven when Oscar was going to get them killed by stubbornly insisting that he fight Hazel. Like everything else in this volume, each situation has its own context. Just saying, “Ozpin took control of Oscar without permission” sounds bad, until you bother to acknowledge that dying is kinda worse. It’s like if I see a 14yo boy running towards a road an I yank him backwards. Technically I just took away his agency—I haven’t allowed him to keep running forward when he wanted to—but I did it so he wouldn’t get hit by that car. If Ozpin had taken control to keep three team members, including everyone’s precious leader, from dying a horrible death via airship crash… that’s a good thing.

But he didn’t. Even now, even after everything, Ozpin is so careful to give people as much choice as he can. He assessed the situation and decided that he could guide Oscar without taking away the use of his body, the sort of consideration most people wouldn’t even bother with during a time of crisis. And think about those lines. “Stay calm. It’s going to be okay.” The last time Oscar spoke to Ozpin he was forcefully stealing the means to allow the rest of the group to betray him. Now here Ozpin is, not angry, just endlessly reassuring.

Then he leaves again. Everyone realizes Ozpin is still doing his best to give everyone what they supposedly want, right? I mentioned ages back that the group wants a contradiction, to have Ozpin fix their problems without having to deal with Ozpin as a person, and now he’s managed that. He comes in, saves their lives, then leaves so no one has to deal with the apparent horror of speaking to him. His level of selflessness is off the charts and it astounds me that anyone thinks this man is a cruel, manipulative puppet master.

…and then there’s Yang.

Yang: “Does that mean he’s been watching us this whole time?!”

Oh yeah. I don’t like Yang much nowadays. I forgot because the last couple of episodes the show isolated Yang with Blake. She’s good with Blake because she actually likes Blake and is probably in love with her. But put Yang with someone who isn’t willing to enable her misplaced anger (Maria, Ozpin) and suddenly she’s not a very kind person anymore. Like the rest of the group right now, Yang’s basic, human empathy doesn’t extend beyond the confines of their team.

Plus, what does that accusation even mean? She makes him sound like some sort of peeping tom and not the leader she was following three days ago. Yang realizes, right, that Ozpin isn’t allowed a body of his own? That he’s connected to Oscar? That anything Oscar sees Ozpin automatically sees too? There were admittedly questions about whether Ozpin was connected to the outside world while locked that deep in Oscar’s head, but Yang makes it sound like he physically left and then started stalking the group without their permission. She makes him sound like Adam.

I really can’t with this group right now. Man arrives to save the lives of the people who betrayed/assaulted him and their reaction is basically, “How dare you even look at us?” The worst part is, you know a huge chunk of the fandom is going to agree. No matter what Ozpin does, even literally saving our title character’s life, it’s somehow twisted into an act of manipulative cruelty.

Also gotta love that Qrow is sitting right there and apparently doesn’t care about this conversation. He only interrupts with a smile to tell them they’re in Atlas.

Which is, admittedly, gorgeous as hell. I do like these shots a great deal.

The only thing that ruins the view is the fleet of airships above, stationed like they’re expecting a battle. This seems to connect to the army we see Salem building in the post credits scene… but how in the world does Atlas know about something like that? Did Ironwood hear something and come up with an excuse to scramble the fighters? Or are they prepping for something else entirely? An attack from another kingdom?

Regardless, we end on one of the personnel telling the group, “Welcome home.”

After the credits we see Emerald and Mercury utterly horrified by something below. We pan down to see Salem creating grimm from the pool… and then making them grow wings. My first thought was, “That guerrilla is going to need a much bigger wingspan to accommodate his weight.” My second thought was, “Oh. Flying monkeys.” That should tell you something about what my brain considers a priority.

Hazel comes in and reminds Mercury and Emerald of an old saying: “If you want something done right, do it yourself.” That’s admittedly unexpected. Looks like after hearing that Ozpin reincarnated and ruined her plans for the Spring relic, Salem has decided to get her own hands dirty for once. I hope we get to hear more explanations for this because she’s apparently kept to the sidelines for generations and now, pretty randomly, decides to announce her presence to the world by leading an army? Who knows. It wouldn’t make less sense than anything else RWBY has given us lately.

And that’s it! We’re done! Hallelujah I need a break. Well, pseudo-break. I still intend to upload my other recaps to tumblr, dive back into our older episodes, and there are still asks to answer. So meta-ing is far from over, but it’ll be less intense than 4000+ words every Saturday lol.

Thank you all so much for reading. I’d sill be writing these with an audience of one (me), but it’s way better when there are others as well. So kudos to you all—and happy hiatus!

Other Details of Note

Neo is fully wearing Roman’s hat now and Cinder canonically wears Louboutin heels lol.

A bit of an odd note, but Cordovin’s repetitive screams about “This is your fault” almost sound painful. Like she’s physically in pain. Obviously that’s not the case in any literal manner, but there’s something horrible about watching the group destroy a part of the mechanical body she’s currently inhabiting and then just abandoning her, watching as she tires and fails to move. I really can’t emphasize enough how callous this group has become to anyone not in Team RWBY or JNR.

I enjoyed the red of the Leviathan glowing under the water as it moved. Nice touch.

“Never get used to that view,” Maria says, once again framing her eyes only as a joke and never a legit issue when it presumably would be.

Yang has ditched the casing on her arm after Adam’s attack. Maybe she and Blake can go arm/weapon shopping together.

#rwby #rwby spoilers #RWBY Recaps #mymetas

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uncheckedtomfoolery · 6 years

Text

Deep Space

Strap yourselves in for a giant robot story that is not gritty so much as an actual gravel pit, if that’s your thing. Under the cut.

They don't tell you how terrifying space is, when you sign on. Might be because they think you'd look at the uniform and keys they hold out, and slap it right out of their hands.

They guessed right, in my case.

There's no sound out here. Everyone knows that, but nothing prepares you for how wrong it feels in a battle. Two giants circling each other, trying their best to turn the other into a drifting, dead hulk. It's a- what's the phrase? A clash of titans, almost literally. It should be loud, but there's nothing. Plenty of pilots end up installing a simsound system, making up the sounds the machine thinks you should be hearing, all things considered. It's against the rules, but it keeps some of us sane.

So there's the quiet. At least that just gets under your skin. They say (quietly, after their tour) that nothing makes you appreciate life and all its fragility like deep space. Thousands of tons - I never looked at the specs, I'm taking some artistic license here - of steel and plastic, flying around between planets, and you still feel fragile. Where's the justice in that?

I'm still looking, if you really want to know, but never mind that. Truth is, a mech is one little mistake away from turning into a coffin, when you take it away from cozy planetside missions. The air supply, the heating, the propulsion, the navigation, or just a little part of the hull. Any of that could break down, even in a little way, and you'd be too far from help to-

We can walk out in our EVA suit and hope, but that's about it. Wait for rescue and pretend it'll come in time. They might try; pilots are expensive. They always come back for the mech. Those are even more expensive. Stands to reason. All that's between me and cold, deadly vacuum (assuming there's nothing exciting in this part of space, like solar flares, clouds of deadlier-than-usual radiation, asteroids, you name it), is a layer of robot skin, built by the lowest bidder, on an I-Want-It-Done-Yesterday schedule. The hull of my dear old MAA Indomitable.

Let me explain. Exosuits - mechs, giant robots or whatever, coloquially - were originally amphibious units, and the army and navy had a bit of a spat over the names. The compromise we got to was Mechanised Autonomous Armour, with a designation for each mech type, shared by its flagship, and a personal name for each one. They used to be unmanned, but as soon as they figured out flying one was 'safe', they decided unmanned piloting was even worse than manned piloting, and put us in. You don't skimp on the safety of a piece of hardware that expensive, if you can help it.

A couple decades later, they even got over the radiation leakage issues in the reactors, after swearing up and down there weren't any the whole time. I've got friends with grandparents still waiting on their compensation for that one.

Thus, the MAA Indomitable. It's the only one we can afford to mass-produce that's at all relevant to today's battlefields. I'll let that speak for its quality. This one came with its name already decided by its last owner, who I never met. Pitted, battered and scorched, with 'Rosinante' painted on the side in big, black letters. When I looked that up, it killed off most of my starry-eyed hope for the machine that I'd be trusting with my life.

Here's the thing. Out here, you depend on plating. AI isn't quite there yet, not enough to take control and move out of the way when it has to, so manned or unmanned, the bottleneck is us, not it. Not the hardware, but the pilot. All the mobility in the world doesn't mean a single thing when it's bogged down by the flailing monkey reflexes of yours truly.

You cannot dodge a bullet.

Out here, we pray it doesn't hit. We pray because when facing ridiculous odds in a monstrous environment, doing things we weren't meant for in places we were never supposed to inhabit, doing it all on the back of a machine we'd have to study for years before it becomes more than a black box of sufficiently advanced technology... prayer seems like the appropriate thing to do. Out here, we try to trust in plating. Try, because plating is fallible, it can't go everywhere, and we live on a line, dancing on the breakpoint where a little more protection is more expensive than rebuilding, or repairing a ruined hulk.

That's why the future of the past lied to you, and we don't have glowing swords, or lasers, or even missiles and machine guns. Those belong planetside. Out here, it's a quiet, dull dance, tracking speeding targets with guns that fire little heated ceramic darts. One simple puncture, and explosive decompression will do the rest. Hull gives out, and you just have to hope that whoever's in the glass giant opposite you has a soft spot for drifting EVA suits.

They don't tell you what it's like, fighting in space, but I've had time to see for myself. I've made up my mind. Space and I are not friends, and never will be.

A blip on my radar tells me that even out here, in deep space, I can forget about having any privacy. On the other hand, that's probably fair; I'm not supposed to be here. It's a Jackdaw – a Europan model, close enough to the one I'm piloting that I could say they're about the same, and most pilots would nod without a second thought.

Any mechanics in the room, on the other hand, would definitely throttle me.

We see each other's colours, and it doesn't go much further than that. No point in talking it out. No one watching us scouts out here, nothing forcing our hands, and neither of us – unless I'm projecting – want to be here or have anything against the other. So, why are we taking the first shots a second or two after we saw each other?

Good question. We've been at this many years by now, it's probably habit. That's the kind of thing that makes us realise, eventually, exactly how we're going back to normal when this is all over. It's not a lie, not really, it's just a question of how we go back. A bundle of drilled-in outside-context instincts and reflexes, set free and told to go back to normal.

As visitors. Just visiting, not part of the show. Something from Out There that came back one day, something other. Maybe that's just me – I never really talked about it with anyone, and everyone tells me I've never been much of a ray of sunshine. All this- it's not something anyone ever tells you. You're trusted to figure it out for yourself and, more often than not, decide not to worry about it too much.

Not like it's going to come up, right?

Maybe you're wondering why I think I can afford to talk so much in a firefight. One, you're overestimating the pace of two giant machines trying to poke a hole in each other. Two, it relaxes me, and jittery nerves will do a lot more to get me killed than a bit of distraction. So, I'm going to keep talking.

The Jackdaw flies closer, closer, spraying ceramic everywhere. I realise it's trying to put me on the defensive for long enough to get close. The Jackdaw, I remember hearing, comes with a hydraulic stake. No plating is going to save you from that, just so long as you can get close, but if you fired it, it wouldn't move nearly fast enough without a cannon three times the Jackdaw's size. So they're closing in.

I brace myself against nothing at all, out of habit, and fire a couple rounds, calling the Jackdaw's bluff, if that's how you want to think of it. I didn't do what I was supposed to, didn't follow the script, so I've got surprise on my side. It pulls out its stake, and then slowly, quietly drifts right past me. I look at its back with a stare I haven't used since I ran over a fox a couple weeks after I got my driver's license. I didn't mean to do that.

By the time it clicks, the Jackdaw is out of range. I shot out its thrusters, but momentum stays, out here. It just keeps going, too broken to turn, but I haven't pierced the hull. I just carried it across that short bridge from war machine to coffin. Explosive decompression won't kick in. Life support probably still works, even. It'll just drift along until... well. Maybe it'll hit some planet, burn up in the atmosphere. Maybe the atmosphere will be too thin, and it'll smash right into some moon or asteroid. Or maybe it'll drift forever, and the pilot will just sit there until thirst finishes them off.

I'd pretend it's kinder than a killing blow, but pretending is a lot of effort and I was never much of an actor, so I just watch. I'm too tired to put in that kind of work. Instead I make my exosuit snap off a mock-salute, and in the privacy of my little room inside a metal giant, I mutter something that was supposed to come out as “see you in therapy”. Pilot joke. See, it's funny because most of us aren't going to last long enough to get there, and even then, chances are, you can't afford to-

Well, you've got to be a pilot to laugh at it, but it's funny. Trust me. I don't feel too bad about the joke since- maybe this is another thing I've projected, but a lot of us, certainly me, took something I used to think of as the pilot's oath. Then I got tired of anything so overblown, and now I just think of it as not kidding myself. When you hold a grudge against whoever takes you out, you're really drawing a line between if and when. If someone shoots you down, and they just had to give you the wrong answer.

For me, it's more of a 'when'. Don't shoot the messenger, right? I see it coming and I promised to myself I won't take it personally. What's that do? Maybe whoever gets me is like that too, they'll assume the same from me, and sleep better for it that night. Until then, I get to do the same.

Then I take another look at the shrinking exosuit, and throw up in my helmet, because I'm only human. It takes twelve long seconds for my filters to clean the mess up. You'll forgive me for cutting the narration for a bit there.

I've taken too many hits, so it's time to fly back for repairs and a soft be- a bed. Just set autopilot, keep one eye on the radar, and talk. Why's that? You see...

Besides the obvious – mission objectives and so on – I'm here to make tragedies.

That sounded better in my head. Less sinister.

The thing is, only a story can be a tragedy. It's something told, seen and heard. Without it, you have spreadsheets and statistics, you have terrible things happening in the cold places between stars, you have stories cut short and people that stop being people. If a tree falls and nobody is there to hear it, or... something like that.

So I talk into the air. To keep myself company, to keep myself something kind of like sane, to make up for never being able to afford simsound or hide it well enough from the brass, and...

Ah, you know.

I make tragedies. Because at this point, it's the least I can do.

#Storytime

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dearophelia · 6 years

Text

gonna set your flag on fire - chapter 3

Thirty years after the war, things are as close to normal as they’ll get. Garrus is the turian councilor and Olivia runs Galactic Affairs, helping the galaxy rebuild. They’ve happily settled into the life they’ve built. Their kids are grown, and out living their own lives. But something goes wrong on Nora’s latest mission. Very wrong.

chapter 03: there’s truth that lives and truth that dies

In which Jonah puts up with a lot from these assholes, Nora tells her teammates about The Thing, and Garrus makes an appearance. (read on AO3)

Thank you eternally to @nightingaleseeking and @tarysande, and also to everyone else who’s reading and enjoying this.

“Problem Number One,” Jonah says, writing Problem #1 on the board at the front of the room, “is the AA guns. According to these schematics - “

“Which could possibly be out of date,” Micah points out from the couch in the back of the room.

“Yeah,” Nora says, doodling on her tablet, “but we’re ignoring that.” Tucking her feet up underneath her, she accidentally kicks Micah, and whispers an apology. He gives her a small smile in response, then pokes her in the side when she isn’t looking. She sticks her tongue out at him.

Jonah clears his throat. “According to these schematics, they have a battery of AA guns here, here, and here,” he circles three locations, each about five miles away from the base. “And on the roof.”

A chorus of ideas arises from his fellow soldiers. “Hacking them would be easiest.” “EMP cannon would do the trick.” “Cloak the shuttle.” “Hayes is a pretty good shot, he could take ‘em out.” “Hayes isn’t coming and, anyway, I take offense at that.” “Sorry Nora, but you know he’s better than you.”

He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. “Can we please get all the problems on the board first before you throw solutions at me?”

Alle, sitting on the floor in front of Nora, slurps the remainder of her soda through her straw, and waves her hand through the air: continue.

“Problem Number Two,” Problem #2 goes on the board, “is the base’s shield. We’ll also have to land pretty far back, at least here,” he marks on the map about three miles away, between the AA guns and the base. “The jungle’s too dense closer in, and landing farther out means that our exit is that much farther away.”

Loud music starts to play, sounding spine-gratingly tinny out of omnitool speakers. Love beyond moons, love beyond stars, love will take you anywhere – Rachel gets it turned off before the chorus continues, but not fast enough to keep it from getting stuck in Nora’s head.

“And Montgomery will fix her buggy music app before the mission,” Jonah says.

“I don’t know, man, Kara & the Destinies is pretty solid mission music,” Carlos says with a wide grin.

Rachel throws her stylus at him. It bounces off his shoulder.

Nora catches Jonah’s eye, and jumps back in with the briefing. “While there is some valid concern about snakes during that hike, the shield is a very real problem. It surrounds the entire facility, and if we can’t get it down, we can’t get in. It’s on a cycling frequency, and anything that tries to penetrate it outside of these standard entry points,” she draws little x marks around the base, “gets fried. Predictably, said standard entry points are highly guarded.”

Rachel twists in her chair and looks over her shoulder at Nora. “Is there any chance this is one of those shields where if something’s moving slow enough or fast enough it gets through?”

“No such luck.”

“Problem Number 3,” he doesn’t write on the board this time, “is Vakarian.”

Four sets of eyes turn to stare at her.

“Yeah,” she says slowly. After she told Jonah - after Vega strongly suggested she do so - the two of them talked at length about whether to tell the others; ultimately, they decided it was better they have some mild trust issues than the worst happens and they aren’t prepared. “Cerberus put a control chip in my head when I was a kid. The Alliance fried it and it’s been dead for over twenty years, but it’s there, and a thing you guys need to know about, just in case.”

Carlos pushes himself up out of his inelegant sprawl across the bean bag and sits up straight. “Dumb question.” He looks first at Jonah, then Nora. “Why’s she coming with us?”

Rachel looks up from her omnitool, raises an eyebrow, and points at Carlos, silently seconding his question and sentiment.

“Do you want to go into an unknown situation without her covering your dumb I’m-gonna-punch-the-giant-mech ass?” Alle asks, sitting up straight.

Appreciating the backup, Nora brushes her hand against her friend’s shoulder. Alle’s known about the chip for years, since a sleepover in high school when they broke into Alle’s parents’ alcohol cabinet. Nora discovered that vodka utterly annihilates her mental barriers, and Alle discovered her best friend was walking around with a control chip. Pancakes the next morning had been a little awkward: Alle brimming with questions, and Nora having answers to none of them.

“Not particularly, but that’s – “

“Well, then shut up,” she cuts him off.

Carlos huffs. “That’s not my point, Alle.” His eyes narrow and, when it’s clear he isn’t going to be interrupted again, he continues. “Nora, I love and trust you, but why did anyone think you coming on this mission was a good idea?”

All Nora can do is shrug. Carlos can do the logistics just as well as she can, and come to the same conclusion she did: no one else is available. Chen and Rahiri are on their own mission, and the four on the eezo job are clandestine experts. Because I’m your only option if you want a full team isn’t the greatest answer, but it’s the truth.

“Vega made the call,” Jonah says, breaking the uncomfortable silence. “And until he unmakes the call, we’re going with it. Anyone unwilling to take this mission if Vakarian’s on the team – speak now, or forever shut the hell up.”

Nora holds her breath, but no one says a word.

“Right,” Jonah says. “Hopefully, it doesn’t become an issue. But we both thought you should know, in case it does. And that information is classified, not to be shared outside this room.”

“You got it,” Carlos says, looking straight at Nora.

Rachel nods, and Micah squeezes her shoulder. Alle leans her head back on the couch and smiles upside down.

Nora takes a shaky breath and manages a small smile for them. “Thanks, guys.”

With a single nod, Jonah ends that discussion. “Okay. I’m looking for solutions to Problem Number One, and Problem Number Two.”

“I have a solution to Problem Number One,” Rachel says. Long used to Jonah’s precision-like and orderly briefings, she waits for him to acknowledge her before she continues. “Zorya is about to go through an annual meteor shower.” She taps on her omnitool – silencing another snippet of music with a sigh – and projects the image up onto the wall behind Jonah. “It’s major, so they’ll have to turn off their automatic firing solution. If we bring the shuttle in on a trajectory that matches the meteors, and kill the power until we need it to land, we should be able to escape detection.”

Carlos pushes his dark hair out of his face. “Even powered down, isn’t a shuttle kind of obvious on scanners?” He frowns at his hair, too long to be practical and too short to pull out of the way.

Nora wonders how long it’ll be before he asks her to give him a haircut in the back of a shuttle. Again.

“Normally, yes. But according to the intel,” Rachel continues, scrolling through the briefing on her tablet, “their manual sensors aren’t state-of-the-art; it’s basically radar with some simplistic energy imaging. Their defenses rely mostly on their AA guns, the shield, and being in the middle of the jungle on a planet no one bothered rebuilding. If we go in at night, at the peak of the shower, with engines powered down, we’ll read as just another meteor. We’re definitely screwed if someone manages to catch us in night-vision goggles, but the likelihood of that is very small.”

Jonah turns to his board and writes fake being a meteor underneath Problem #1. “Good work,” he says. “Anyone have a solution to Problem Number Two?”

“How does the shield work?” Carlos asks. “They’ve gotta take it down to let people in and out.”

“Did you read the mission briefing?”

“No.”

Jonah’s jaw clenches.

“It’s in eight pieces, like a pie,” Nora says, before the throbbing vein in Jonah’s forehead bursts. “Each of the checkpoints controls an individual section of the shield, and they take it down as necessary. The whole thing doesn’t need to come down to let people in.”

“So Nora takes out the guards, we steal their access cards, take the shield down and run in,” Alle suggests. “Why is this an issue?”

Sighing loudly, Jonah drops his tablet onto the table. “I write these mission briefings for a reason, guys.”

Nora presses her lips together in a wry smile. She learned long ago that half her team doesn’t do well with assigned reading, and shortly thereafter gave up trying to make her own briefings have any ounce of structure and organization; she’d warned Jonah not to count on Alle or Carlos even skimming the briefing he sent out. “Because the pieces are all networked to a central control room. Even if they don’t require permission before lowering their section, someone’s definitely going to notice once it’s down. They can’t answer if they’re dead, and we don’t have nearly enough intel to bullshit our way through that conversation.”

“Back to the meteor shower,” Micah says, finally speaking up. “What are the chances a meteor makes it through the atmosphere, doesn’t completely burn up on entry, and smashes the control panel hard enough to deactivate the shield?”

Rachel blinks at him. “Anything’s possible, but we can’t predict or control that.”

He shrugs. “Don’t have to. A well-placed drill grenade could make a passable meteor crater, especially in the dark. Would also take out the guards, if they’re standing close enough.”

“We need to take out the guards first,” Alle says, and Nora peers over her friend’s shoulder to watch as she draws diagrams. “It’s really specific positioning to blow the panel completely and look like a believable impact crater.” She taps on her tablet and sends her sketchy diagram up onto the display screen.

“Good work,” Jonah says, and writes more meteors underneath Problem #2.

“Before we move on,” Carlos says, “can we go back to Problem Number Three?” He sits up and turns so he’s facing the whole room.

Nora freezes. Naively, she thought they were done with this – that everyone agreeing to forever shut the hell up meant that they were, if not okay with it, at least at peace with it being a fact. But she’s known about it for thirteen years, and she isn’t anywhere near at peace with it. They’ve known for five minutes.

“What are your concerns?” Jonah asks.

“We’re all hoping that nothing happens,” he says gently. “But if something does – what do you want us to do?” he directs his question at Nora.

Nora blinks at him, and then stares down at her hands. She’d never considered that. She doesn’t feel like she can consider that. Considering that makes it a possibility. Though she wants to give Carlos an answer, her mind’s gone completely blank. There’s nothing – no solution, no action, not even an in-poor-taste-and-not-actually-that-funny joke.

There’s nothing, except for the obvious answer. And perhaps the only answer.

When the silence turns awkward, Nora sighs. “Neutralize me,” she says softly. “If it’s clear that I’ve become a liability or a threat, knock me out. I’d rather Micah punch me and deal with the concussion than hurt any of you guys.” She pauses. “Though I’d appreciate it if you also took the effort to haul my ass out of there.”

“I wouldn’t punch you,” Micah says, as if this were any other tactical conversation. “There’s a spot, right there,” he lightly sets his fingers just underneath her jaw, “poke hard enough and you’re out like a light.”

Nora can’t help it, she bursts out laughing. “Thanks,” she says, giving him a wide grin.

He flashes her a warm smile in return and drops his hand to her knee for a moment.

She takes a breath. “I know this blows, but I appreciate you guys having my back.” The other five give her a thumbs up, or a nod, or a smile, and she exhales slowly. Nothing other than finishing the mission will calm her down completely, but she feels a little better for everyone’s support.

“I hate to do this,” Rachel says, breaking the moment, “but I might have a Problem Number Four.” She calls up a topographical map. “The area we’re landing in is thick jungle, at night, with mutated pyjaks, four varieties of poisonous –”

“Venomous,” Alle corrects.

“Whatever snakes, what looks like the occasional boiling mud pit, and it’s also the rainy season. That’s a nightmare of a hike.”

“We’ve been worse places,” Nora says. She grins at Jonah, who glowers at her.

“Carnivorous plant planet.”

“Toxic mud moon.”

“That desert with the acid flash flood.”

“Pygmy squirrels that ate holes in our tents. While we were in them.”

Exasperated, Jonah groans. “Enough. Unfortunately, there’s no great place to land closer. We’ll all just have to watch our step. You’re the medic; bring antivenin. And extra fuel for the flamethrower – fire kills everything.”

“Except for the giant murderplant,” Carlos mutters.

Micah stares at Carlos. “Are you ever going to let that go?”

“It tried to eat my entire arm,” he says, enunciating every word. “No.”

“We had knives,” Nora says. “You were fine.”

With a huff, Carlos slides a little further down, now halfway on the floor. “I hate both of you,” he grumbles.

Love beyond moons, love beyond – Rachel growls and glares at her omnitool.

“Thank you,” Jonah says. “We’re done. I’ll have an infiltration plan ready by the time we leave tomorrow. Go be somewhere else. Please.”

***

They’ve been brought to a small room, just a couch, two chairs, a coffee table, and a dying plant in the corner beside the window. They already heard the report: Chakwas’ and Miranda’s assessments were correct – it’s too risky to operate, but the chip is dead. Nora is otherwise a very healthy, very normal, little girl.

And Olivia convinced the Alliance to let them adopt her. Garrus brushes his hand against his wife’s as the other door opens, revealing Nora and an Alliance counselor. Nora stares at her feet as she shuffles in, and she looks about as unhappy as one small human can look.

The counselor gives her hand a squeeze and bends down to whisper something to her.

Somewhat reluctantly, Nora looks up. Her eyes widen, and she lets out a small gasp when she sees Olivia. She drops the counselor’s hand and runs toward Olivia as fast as her short legs can take her.

Smiling, Olivia crouches down to Nora’s level and catches her as she flings herself into a hug. “Hey,” she says softly, wrapping her arms tight around the small girl. “You okay?”

Nora buries her face in Olivia’s shoulder. Though she whimpers a little, she nods. Garrus watches as Nora almost melts into Olivia’s embrace. He’s long sworn that Olivia’s hugs have magical powers, and Nora seems just as vulnerable to that comforting magic as he and their sons are.

“I’m so sorry I had to leave,” Olivia whispers as she rubs Nora’s back. “But I promise I’m not leaving ever again.”

Garrus smiles as he watches the two of them. His heart swells, just as it did five years ago when they were introduced to the two small boys who would become their sons.

Olivia presses a kiss to Nora’s temple. She looks up at the Alliance counselor. “Can you give us a minute, please?”

The woman nods and shuts the door behind her.

Olivia effortlessly lifts Nora as she stands up. She settles her against her hip. “I want you to meet someone.”

Nora looks up and opens her eyes, following where Olivia points. She takes in a short breath and her eyes widen when she sees him – but not in fear. Garrus has seen fear on enough humans to recognize it, even in a child. No, Nora’s eyes are full of curiosity. He gives her a little wave.

“That’s Garrus,” Olivia says. “And if you’re okay with it,” she looks at him and smiles a smile that still makes his knees a bit weak, and then focuses back on Nora, “we’d like to be your mom and dad.”

Nora looks at her, and then looks at him. Back to Olivia, back to him. After a moment, she wriggles until Olivia sets her down. Slowly, she walks the few steps over to him. She looks up with the same wide, curious brown eyes and lifts up her arms expectantly.

Olivia stifles a laugh. Carefully, Garrus picks Nora up. She’s different than their boys, a little softer and wider, and it takes a few seconds to shift and get her comfortable. But once she’s settled, safe and secure in his arms, he smiles at her.

“Hi,” he says quietly. The same warmth he felt the first time he held his other two children, and the warmth that’s only grown in the five years since, brightens in his chest. She stares at him, almost through him. A curl falls into her face and he pushes it back, brushing his talon against her cheek.

Nora blinks.

“Is that a yes?” Garrus asks. He looks over at Olivia for confirmation – maybe there’s a method of human toddler communication he hasn’t read about. Olivia shrugs, but a smile grows across her face.

If it is a yes, Olivia will stay here with her for a few days while the Alliance creates all of Nora’s paperwork and runs a final battery of tests on the chip. He’ll bring Nico and Quentus by tomorrow to introduce her; they’re already so excited about having a little sister, and he’s promised to help them put glow-in-the-dark stars on her ceiling tonight. If it isn’t – well, he honestly can’t imagine any way that it isn’t a yes.

Nora blinks once more, and rests her head against his carapace.

He looks from his daughter, settled in his arms with her eyes closed, to his wife, standing in front of him with sparkling eyes, and smiles.

***

When she gets back to her quarters that night – new visor, strawberry-orange smoothie, and takeout noodles securely in hand – Nora drops into a chair. She’d been looking forward to having some time to herself, but now wishes she’d accepted the invitation to join Alle for dinner with her parents. The apartment they share on Tereshkova is tucked in a corner of the Alliance’s military housing section, away from the crowds and noise. She’s left with the gentle hum of the station’s power grid, and her thoughts.

She was fine about the mission. She was fine about the control chip. She was fine about Cerberus. She was fine about the control chip in her head during this Cerberus mission. At least, she’d convinced herself she was fine. And then Carlos asked what she wanted them to do if everything wasn’t fine.

And then the idea that things might not be fine became a reality. A reality she’s been trying very, very hard to ignore for years.

While there’s still time for her to head to Shenzhou and catch up with Deck’s team, there isn’t enough time to get someone else back from Shenzhou to Haliat-Gemini in time to make their departure. The meteor shower’s window of opportunity is too narrow to wait around. If she leaves, her team will be going in one man down.

One big-enough-problem-to-mention-in-the-briefing man down, but a man down all the same.

Micah could make the shot to take out the shield checkpoint guards easily enough, and Carlos is a decent enough grenadier in a pinch, but it isn’t just a matter of hastily replicating her skillset: she’s an extra body, an extra gun, an extra set of eyes.

Sighing, she stands up and moves to the table so she can eat dinner without dropping every second noodle onto her lap. She puts on the latest episode of Real World 7: Citadel Redux – she’s missed a few episodes, but this season hasn’t been that great anyway – and eats her dinner while watching a barely-legal batarian try to pick a fight with an asari matriarch about washing dishes. The matriarch silently puts the batarian in a stasis field and walks away. Half a minute later, she comes back, and sticks a handwritten sign to the batarian’s chest: I am in Time Out because I didn’t respect my elders.

That at least explains one of the memes Quentus sent her.

The episode ends, and Nora dumps her trash into the matter recycler. She exhales loudly in the quiet room, so much restless energy running through her veins she feels like she might vibrate out of her own skin.

She tidies up the living room, throws out everything unidentifiable in the fridge (which is most of its contents), takes out all the trash, starts a load of laundry, and even cleans her gun. All of it takes less than an hour, and when she puts her rifle, all shiny and clean, back together, she has to grit her teeth to keep from screaming when she can’t get the scope back in place by the third try.

With a sharp exhale, Nora forces herself to put the scope down and walk away from the weapons bench before she gets so worked up she breaks something.

Good air in, bad air out. Four deep breaths, and she’s settled enough to think clearly. Not settled enough to be calm, but at least not on the verge of smashing an extremely expensive custom-ordered piece of equipment. Progress.

A quick glance at the clock tells her it’s still daytime on the Citadel. She opens up her computer and starts her vidcall program, dialing a private and highly-secure number. It connects almost instantly.

“Councilor Vakar- oh, hello Nora.”

“Hi, Kyra.” Nora smiles at her father’s assistant. Kyra’s been around as long as she can remember. “Is my dad available?”

“Yes. One moment.”

“Thanks,” she says, even though Kyra’s already blinked out, replaced by the please hold screen.

“Well, this is a surprise.”

Nora feels like a weight’s been lifted from her shoulders. She smiles. “Hi, Dad.”

He returns the smile, and then tilts his head. “Are you okay?”

“Freaking out a little, about a mission. Do you have a minute to talk me through something?” She tries not to call him in the middle of the day, but she has twelve hours to make her decision. If she calls her mother, she’ll get nice advice about following her gut, which won’t actually help. If she calls either of her brothers, they’ll tell her to stop being stupid, and to bail and go with the eezo job. Her father will tell her something useful, he always has.

“Always. What’s going on?”

She takes a deep breath. “Mission A is infiltrating a Cerberus research base and,” she taps on her head. “We don’t know what the research is. I could be a liability.”

He nods. “Alright. What’s Mission B?”

“Mission B is a non-combat recon mission that isn’t much more than show up, see what happens. Vega wants me on the Cerberus mission, but gave me the option of switching. Like an idiot, I told him I’d do it before I really thought about it...and before I told my team about it and before one of them asked me what I wanted them to do in case, you know,” she gestures, knowing better than to tempt fate. “And now that’s kind of all I can think about and I’m freaking out and really regretting telling Vega I’d do this.” She pauses and takes a controlled breath to slow down. “But if I switch now, we can’t get someone from Mission B to join. There’s a timing thing.”

He leans forward and his mandibles flicker in thought. “So, your options are: go on the Cerberus mission, possibly putting yourself and your team in danger if they’re doing the wrong kind of research. Or leave your team one man down on a job that needed an extra man.”

Nora grimaces. Lousy choices all around. “Yeah. What do you think?”

He’s silent for a long moment as he thinks about it. The silence made her antsy as a kid, but now she can practically see the wheels turning in his head. “As your dad, I’d tell you to say screw your team and not walk into an unknown Cerberus research lab. But,” he pauses, looks away from the screen, and then looks back.

He suddenly looks so much older.

“As a soldier, I’d tell you not to leave your team one gun short because of something that might happen.”

With a quiet sigh, Nora nods. The weight settles back on her shoulders, but it’s a calmer, more resigned weight this time. It’s a terrible decision, and it’s the right one. “That’s what I thought. I just needed to hear someone else say it.”

“Are you worried about the chip?”

“More than normal, yeah.” She runs her open palm through her hair and over the back of her head. She’s been looking for years, and she’s never found a scar.

“Here’s some unsolicited advice from an old turian who once spent some time on a Cerberus ship: you can’t anticipate their every move, no matter how much you try. So, focus on the moves you can anticipate: how to get in, disable security, get what you need, and get out.”

“And if shit happens?”

“You have your entire team behind you.”

Nora smiles, and her anxiety starts to melt into background noise: low and present, but ignorable. “Thanks, Dad.”

His mandibles flick out in a smile, and then his eyes glance down to the bottom corner of his screen. “I have to go, I’m sorry.”

She nods. It’s amazing she even caught him. “It’s okay.”

“And if Blasto’s gone by the time you get back, I will pull some strings and make sure we get to see it in a theater.”

“Totally responsible use of power, Dad.”

“Hey,” he says, “if I can’t leverage it to see a terrible movie with my daughter, what’s the point of being councilor?”

Laughing, Nora shakes her head. “Go to your meeting.”

“Good luck on your mission. I love you.”

“Love you, too.”

#tarysande #nightingaleseeking #s:words #s:2018 #s:set your flag #long post for mobile ts

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hopeymchope · 6 years

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Random thoughts about bad/dumb/good things that happen in the back nine episodes of ‘Darling in the Franxx’

This post is long, and it’s mostly me griping about how Darling in the Franxx failed to stick its landing. I’ve got a lot of bullet points about what annoyed me, as well as some points about what I still liked in the back half, and eventually I’m just like “yeah, fuck this.”

That’s the short version: You had a lot going for you but ultimately blew it really bad for me, so like... fuck this.

Damn right Mitsu-WAIT, I forgot when Mitsuru had this much emotion! WHO DIS?!

The long version is more complicated, though, and I feel like rambling/ranting on, so here it goes.

There is no way to stress enough that Zero-Two literally transforms into a giant part-human part-mech creature that Hiro literally rides inside of. She becomes a skyscraper-sized girl that you can climb inside the skull of, and EVERYBODY IS OKAY WITH THIS AND DELIGHTED BY IT. There is NOT a moment where Zorome cries “WHAT THE ACTUAL FUUUUUUUUCK?!?” when she appears, flying in space, at a mass so large she could easily swallow the whole team in one gulp. Nothing like that.

This is not adequately set up, but it IS understandable with some thought: I mean, we are told in a previous ep that the franxx are essentially just recreated, retrofitted klaxosaurs. We also have seen how klaxosaurs are part-organic, part-mechanical beings, and we are told by the Klaxo Princess they are, in fact, the new version of the organic klaxosapiens, now retrofitted for war. In addition, we know that Zero-Two is part Klaxosaur - a clone of the last klaxosapien. So you see how the idea that Zero-Two could somehow “retrofit” or “transition” into a giant cybernetic war mode similar to how the klaxosapiens somehow did the same thing... you could justify that! Once I thought it all through, it kinda worked. But none of this is laid out for you, and it comes off as laugh-out-loud ridiculous in the moment that it happens. Only later, when my brain was piecing the evidence together, did I get somewhere that made sense out of it.

The Nines remained bitterly loyal to Papa when we last see them in Episode 20, snapping at Squad 13 for not showing due respect. When they return in Episode 23, Nine Alpha is suddenly on the side of Squad 13. Because Papa turned out to be an alien, you see. But like... you’ve been fighting klaxosaurs and feeling extreme loyalty to Papa your entire lives up until like, yesterday, so seeing you suddenly join the pro-klaxo side of the war is perhaps too hard a turn. Granted, a lot of time passes off-screen during this period, but still it’s sort of “Hey it’s me, Alpha. Remember how I was never anything but a total asshole to you guys? Remember how I hated emotions and shit? Yeah I wanna help Hiro reunite with Zero Two now.” Um. Okay?

Mitsuru’s speech to Kokoro about how “I want to be with you not because I love you, but because I believe that I did love you once, and I don’t remember that feeling anymore, but I still believe it existed, and I want to respect it!” is literally the worst, least-romantic declaration of non-love I’ve ever heard in my life. The music swells romantically and Kokoro seemingly weeps out of joy over it. I prefer to think she’s crying because it’s so fucking awful. It is actively offensive to real emotions and logic

Remember when Mitsuru talked about he always wished he and Hiro could co-pilot a franxx together? Remember his debilitating rage at Hiro for forgetting their promise to become soldiers together? It really feels like we had a gay or bi character here, and that maybe we were setting something up for his character. but the entire fixation on Hiro is utterly ignored once he gets reduced to “Kokoro’s sperm donor.” I mean, jeez, “my homosexual fixation on Hiro has filled me with an incoherent rage” just gave me flashbacks to Juzo from Danganronpa 3, and that’s not good, but at least it was more personality than he ultimately got.

WHY are we left with the strong sense that Ikuno is dying of the accelerated aging (she is the only one who loses ALL color in her hair and the only one we last see in a hospital bed on an IV drip, so it’s pretty blatant) even though literally no one else in the squad is suffering from it anymore, supposedly thanks to HER research?!... I assume because she’s gay. After all, the extremely gay Nines were all killed off by a mysterious ailment due to a lack of “maintenance” so we might as well kill off Ikuno too, right?! BURY YOUR GAYS. And FUCK YOU.

Goro somehow gets together with Ichigo. We do not get to see how/whether he won he over. Given that the final episode includes multiple scenes of her really missing Hiro along with a scene of her not caring much that Goro is going to travel the world without her (repeatedly), it comes off as though Itchy settled for Goro because he was the best available penis. I AM NOT ENDEARED.

We are also told that Goro has “really changed’ since the beginning of the series. There is no evidence to back this statement up. In fact, he is acting exactly the same in this scene as he always has. Granted, he had a moment in the previous episode where he got pissed and punched Hiro, and that was a big change... but he apologized and it’s not discussed again, so um. Huh. The thing that seems to be a sign of his “change” is his desire to go out alone into the world in an act of self-sacrifice for the good of everyone. Which is LITERALLY THE GORO WE’VE ALWAYS KNOWN. File his change under “informed attributes.”

By the end of the series, Hiro is full-on turning more into a Klaxosapien than a human because... honestly, I’m not sure. It’s possible it’s because he’s been “plugged into” Zero-Two, but it seems like the process is mostly done by then, because he’s immediately able to live without food or water or sleep once he plugs in, and he already had his horns glow with rage in the ep previous to this. So I think he transformed due to the fact that one time, as a kid, he licked Zero-Two’s blood, and as a teen, he’s kissed her a bunch of times. Which is... pretty goddamn extreme. I mean, I know fluid transfer can be a powerful experience — just ask Sandra Bullock — but this is some real next-level shit.

We waited all series for shit to “get real” and someone in Squad 13 to die. It takes until the very last episode for it to happen, and — in a desperate bid to make us care about what’s happening — it’s the two characters who got the most development and who most people care about. The two leads. Which comes off as too little, too late for me to even feel it, seeing as how they’re only vaguely human or relatable by this point. But I AM weirdly bitter that they kept alive everyone else, even the many people we didn’t give much of a shit about (Zorome? Miku?), so that none of the battles in the series EVER had to have real consequences for our heroes. I hate to sound bloodthirsty, and yet....

Hey, speaking of Zorome, remember how him being exposed to the “adult” in the first half of the show made her get sick? Remember how she was also immediately fascinated by and kind to him and it made you wonder how that would affect the other adults? None of this goes anywhere, because the adults all get spirited away as souls to be part of the VIRM hive-mind, so whatever, they’re gone now.

Why are these people all standing around a statue and screaming at the sky and praying? Most of them don’t even know who this girl was. This doesn’t come off as “moving” so much as a terrifying parable about religious fanaticism in cult groups. You see a group of people screaming and praying at idols you don’t understand, and gradually, more and more people just copy the behavior without understanding it. *shiver*

Was there EVER a hint that the adults watching over the squad were friggin’ IMMORTAL?! Because I don’t think there was. I’d need to go way back into earlier episodes to be sure, though.

It’s not that the ENTIRE back half of the show is awful, really. There are some legitimately excellent moments.

Good Stuff

Right when we first come back after episode 15′s big midway point in the story, the subtle way that Zero-Two discovering the gray hair on Miku’s head was handled - during a warm, lighthearted scene to boot - really made it hit home.

The overt anger and defiance of Hiro in the face of “Papa” and APE really made me like him even more. He had some great moments there, including possibly the greatest episode-ending dialogue when he declared just how fucking DONE they all are with their so-called “Papa.”

Zorome’s inability to fully embrace the idea that “Papa” could be so wrong and bad was another good touch.

The big “backstory” episode served to make me really care for Dr. Franxx in a surprise late-game twist. He goes from being a shadowy sinister presence to becoming one of the more sympathetic characters... right before getting killed shortly thereafter.

The big promise scene between Zero-Two and Hiro, where they swear to always come for each other... that one really pulled at my heart.

Also, Hiro’s dedication to caring for the ailing, zombie-like Zero-Two was both devastating and touching. It’s one of the final bits that actually hits any kind of emotion for me in the series.

I actually didn’t mind the alien twist with the VIRM very much like so damn many people did. APE was long portrayed as this unknowable higher power that was clearly hiding something while simultaneously enforcing a 1984-esque obedience and loyalty... and there’s only so many places to go with such a setup, honestly. Much more shocking, to me, is how little is done to build up to/justify the true origin of the klaxosaurs.

But, well, yeah. Like most, I wound up feeling like DitF had a couple of really excellent characters in the lead, and then proceeded to go nowhere worthwhile once it got them to finally be together. Ultimately, they didn’t even get to grow up or have real sex or face the new world. They just get shuffled off into weirdness and death so we can have a bigger cycle of disappointment.

This one has a lot of themes that feel unexplored, and maybe further analysis would make it all gel together more comprehensibly. There is definitely a lot of effort put into thematic hints and worldbuilding in the first half, some of it done in a subtle background way that recalls my favorite aspects of The Future Diary — a favorite anime of mine that ALSO admittedly fails to adequately explain some parts of the world it builds, but it keeps most of its logic intact and is so emotionally engaging that I ultimately went along for the ride and was willing to explore the background justifications and themes later in order to fully grasp that world.

In comparison, I don’t really want to put in the effort to glean the underlying details of DitF. It didn’t leave me feeling like the writers put in the work to keep me invested, so why would I?

#ditf spoilers #darling in the franxx #darling in the franxx spoilers #ditf #griping

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dominicknight · 6 years

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Moments

@threehoursfromtroy I hope your recovery is smooth! Enjoy! :D

The first time you saw Korra, she stood in a traditional Southern Water Tribe dress that fit her in all the right ways. You were elated to meet her because Mako talked about her so much, and this Gala was for her. She seemed less enthusiastic at the introduction, but you brushed it off. The world’s peace rested on her shoulders so you figured she must be adjusting to all this attention. You read somewhere that she spent time training in the South, so of course being in a big city would be a steep learning curve.

You hope to talk to her away from all this attention, someplace where she can be more herself. With all the time you’ve spent in the limelight, you imagine that she puts on a facade as much as you do. Then again, she’s sixteen to your eighteen so she’s still figuring things out, too.

The next time you see her, she’s pulling on a new pro-bending uniform with the Future Industries logo on it. You designed them, keeping in mind Korra’s physique from what you saw at the gala. It suits her, and from what you can tell, fits her better. You compliment her on her hat trick and make plans to attend every game you can to support your team, plus your boyfriend.

You never thought you’d be mad at Korra. She’s intense, and brash at times, but always seems to have the best intentions. But the instant she accuses your father of Equalist ties you’re quick to anger. The idea that your father is part of a devious plan to rid the city and the world of benders seems preposterous. Korra attempts her best to explain, but you don’t want to hear it.

She came into your house and spit on your family name. The last thing you want is for her to be right because why would she be? She doesn’t know that you watched your mom die, or the depression that your father sunk into that almost ruined the company the first time. You let Korra and Chief Beifong search the Sato Estate.

Your worst fears are confirmed.

And before you know it you’re facing your father. He wants you to join him and you can’t believe this is what your mother’s death has led to. You turn against him because he’s betrayed everything you’ve been taught. The electricity through the shock glove hums across your hand as you watch your father crumple to the ground.

You go back with every to Air Temple Island because being at the Sato Estate feels worse now because it’s only you wandering the halls covered in objects that hold little meaning other than decorations. The family lawyers are discussing with the Board of Directors what to do about Future Industries now that your father is in jail. They said they would keep in touch while decisions are made, so at least for now you can put some of that at the back of your mind. You make sure the workers are continuing to get paid because not all of them knew your father’s treachery.

This island becomes your new home with its minimalism and vegetarian diet. It’s only a place to rest your head for the night, and even then it’s not a restful sleep. You spend more time off of it with the rest of Team Avatar as vigilantes speeding around the city. It’s not the first time you’ve felt part of something bigger, but this feels more important than all the designing you did for the family business.

You assumed control of Future Industries a year ago, a wild ride that saw your company almost go under twice. Now things are improving, even if the Board seems less than pleased with a few of your mistakes. You need a drive so you find Korra and offer to teach her. She grinds the gears enough times before she gets the hang of things. You smile at her as she seems to get more comfortable behind the wheel.

It feels good to talk and clear the air about everything that happened between you two with Mako. She stares at you, and you wish you could enjoy this moment forever. You love the shade of blue of her eyes, reminding you of those glaciers you saw in the Southern Water Tribe. Something catches your eye and you both turn. Korra slams on the breaks and you’re thankful for the seatbelts or else you would have been thrown out.

The Spirit Vines have taken over whole sections of the city, ruining much of the transportation framework. You know Korra’s been struggling with her public image and people are starting to voice loud doubts they don’t need an Avatar anymore. As her friend, you assure Korra she’s more important to the world than these people realize.

You want to tell her so much more, but you steel your emotions as you head back to the Air Temple.

That island gets word that Airbenders are popping up all over the Earth Kingdom. You assemble a Future Industries airship for the occasion and the journey begins to help restore the Air Nation.

Everything happens so quick, that you’re still trying to piece it all together. You shift on the bed next to Korra where she stares at the ceiling. Her eyes are glassy and you wonder if she’s reliving the moments of the battle or if she’s waiting for exhaustion to take her so she can sleep.

You get up and start to get ready for work.

You have your own room on Air Temple Island, but you’ve taken up residence in Korra’s room. She doesn’t talk much, but you’ve filled the silence with work talk, and showing her designs. Sometimes you don’t even talk, you sit next to her and read. When she does fall asleep it’s short-lived, and you’re there for when she wakes from nightmares.

Senna has mentioned that Tonraq needs to return to the south and that Katara could work closely with Korra down there. A departure date has been set and the boat is being packed and refueled.

You do Korra’s hair every day and you always tell her you’d be willing to accompany her. She looks at you and tilts her head a bit.

“I’ll be okay. It won’t be long.” Her voice has returned over the last two weeks where she has felt comfortable to speak again. You wish you could hear it more, but you don’t want to push her too much.

“Just radio me and I’ll be down immediately. I always have an airship on standby.” You smile and put your hands on Korra’s shoulders. She returns the smile and you wish you could engrain that small gesture forever into your memory. It’s the same way you felt when you hugged Korra on the airship before she went to give herself up to the Red Lotus.

It hurts to see her go, but you’re hopeful that the time back home will lift her spirits.

You turn a page of a magazine in the small waiting area of Kwong’s. Korra called you. She called you after three years of silence, after one letter, after running away for whatever reason. But she’s back and she wants to see you. You embrace her when she walks in because you’ve wanted nothing more than to hug her full and hard to ensure she’s real, that she’s truly back in your life.

And there she is standing before you with a bob, fresh clothes, and a smile. She seems different, confident and more self-assured. You see this in the way she carries herself, how she finds Prince Wu’s location and fights off the Earth Kingdom goons with ease and then helps you all escape. Once the Prince is dropped off, you take Korra back to the island.

She heads off to a meditation spot and you catch up with Pema and Tenzin. You make Korra some tea and take it to her because the sun is setting and the ocean breeze is coming in.

She accepts the cup and sips it, smiling at you. “You remembered my favorite.”

You blush and wave it off. “How could I forget?”

Korra laments about how much trouble she’s caused the world as the Avatar. She sets her teacup down with only the tiny dregs of the leaves on the bottom. You watch her wind herself up and you put a hand on her shoulder.

“Those might all seem like mistakes, but you did more good than bad.” You counter all of her negatives with her accomplishments.

You want to keep going, telling her your feelings that you’ve bottled up since she left for the South, but again you stop yourself. There’s a time and a place for all things.

You felt the heat of the explosion wave, even from where you ducked into that stairwell. It reminded you of when your father taught you how to use a blowtorch, and the first time you saw Korra firebend. You were witness to her incredible power before. But there was something about this instance that struck you with fear.

The air cooled and you moved out of the stairwell, racing towards the epicenter. This was once a park surrounded by homes that got overgrown with spirit vines. And now its a crater with a spirit portal at the center. You start searching for Korra and Kuvira in the wreckage of the giant mech. They walk out of the portal when everyone confirmed that they couldn’t find them. You’re relieved to see Korra because you didn’t want to think about the whole in your life she would leave behind.

You hug her, and again, she’s real. This time though she has some scrapes and bruises, and she could use a shower. But then again, you all could after this battle.

You’ve been working on plans to rebuild the city around the new portal. It sucks that you have to do this again after you nearly finished the last restoration before all of this started. You went home for a few hours to get clean from walking the job sites and stopping by the refugee camp. There’s a wedding tonight and you want to look your best.

Korra is there to greet you when you step off the ferry onto the island. You smile and find seats by Mako and Prince Wu. The wedding is quite the shindig, but then again, it’s Varrick and he never does anything simple or quiet. You spend time dancing and mingling with people, glad to take this break to celebrate a couple that you’re so happy are finally together for the long haul.

After a quick glance around you notice that Korra isn’t anywhere. You excuse yourself and pass off your glass of champagne to a passing waiter. On the outskirts of the party, you see Korra talking with Tenzin. She looks like you could use a break, so you approach with a lie about Varrick and airbending suits. You snicker and take a seat with Korra when she asks you to join her.

You take in the colors of the portal and then watch their glow on Korra’s skin. She looks more content now with it being just the two of you. Her eyes finally turn and she catches you staring. She starts to apologize as if you need to clear the air like you did four years ago. But there’s something about this apology that is different.

You tell her you’re happy to have her in your life because really, she’s all you have left. Korra offers her condolences when your eyes well and you turn away at the thought that you’re all that remains of the Sato family. She slides her arms around you and spirits, you wish you could have this all the time. Her skin is warm over all the firm muscle. You’re sad when she pulls away, but you don’t show it as you both look at the spirit portal.

It doesn’t take long for you two to plan a vacation. It’s spur of the moment, but you both need to get away and a whimsical place like the spirit world seems like the best option.

“Sounds perfect.”

Those are the best words to hear and they ring in your ears as you approach the spirit portal. The back of your hand brushes Korra’s and you both blush. You reach over to take her hand as you take the final last steps into the glow together.

#korrasami #asami sato #korra #legend of korra #fanfic #Shannonigans

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hark-an-x-wing · 6 years

Text

FOR EVERY ACTION

This is my first time posting fic on tumblr(or really anywhere since I was like 13) and I am TERRIFIED. This is just the intro, but chapter one will follow shortly. Care to wager a guess at who goes with which boy? 😂 Warnings: Not reeeaaally wholllyyy TLJ compliant? Also bullshit medical discourse ahoy! Summary: In the resistance, nothing ever goes as planned, and often you’ve got to learn to fly by the seat of your pants. At least that’s how its gone in Cora and Red’s experience anyways. So when the two are sent to aid the locals on a nearby planet and the First Order shows up, it’s not a life changing moment, it’s just par for the course... right? Pairings: Poe Dameron x OC, Kylo Ren x OC Words: 2.1k+, part 1/15 INTRO The thick heels of Corrin’s knee high brown boots clanked against the metal grates of the Resistance’s main hangar as she paced the entrance way. Admiral Ackbar had paged her to be there when Green squadron returned from Ryloth- her best friend’s squadron- and that could only mean one thing. Someone was hurt. Badly hurt. The door to the hangar slid open and Corrin’s pacing came to an abrupt halt as other medical personnel filed in, along with some cots, and mobile supplies. Seemed it was someones, not someone. A nasty feeling settled in Corrin’s chest. Zara had best be alright or she’d have a storm coming to her. No sooner than Corrin had managed that thought did she hear the giant pod bay doors unlocked with a deafening ‘clunk’. Her head whipped to attention at the sound and she watched as the hydraulic shocks heaved and the hinges squealed as the doors began to open. The crew was home. She reached up and tied her long blonde locks up and out of her face; it was showtime.

The transport didn’t even come close to touching the ground before the doors were flung wide open. A sigh of relief escaped Corrin when Zara’s face was the first sight she could see inside the vehicle, but it was quickly washed away when she saw the other woman rear back and hurl something through the air. The next thing she knew was the cold metal that hit her face. Hard. As more of a subconscious reaction than anything, Corrin’s hand extended out to catch the metal thing as it fell. Looking down in her hand Corrin saw a set of identification bracelets, the ones used by the Green Squadron, with a holodata port embedded in them. That snapped her back into action; she whistled, held her arm in the air, and flicked her wrist towards the ship, wordlessly ordering the beds closer to the craft as it landed. Blood pumped through her, seeming to accelerate her thoughts and movements almost at once, as her adrenaline started really flowing. Without fumbling too much with the rush, she accessed the information on the bracelet. Scanning the information, she found the injured were people she had performed an enlistment physical for. Good news, that meant their files would be quickly accessible in her droid’s memory banks. She remembered the names ‘Sketch’ and ‘Cody’ from stories Zara told her, but faces weren’t coming to mind. Corrin had never been all that great with faces. The transport finally landed and the two injured were lifted off the floor of the transport and onto the cots, leaving dirt and blood shaped pools behind them. That wasn’t a great sign. It was a good thing Zara thought to toss over their bracelets, even if they would give Corrin a black eye later, they’d definitely be needing transfusions-and fast. Corrin quickly started barking orders to the nearest medics, keep them breathing, check for all cites of hemorrhaging, calling for orders for each of their blood types. Crimson had completely soaked through the already dirtied cloth that covered their wounds, both seemed to have passed out from the pain of what appeared to be burns and cuts, all over their bodies. Wheezing and an abnormal bluish skin tone from one, the one called Sketch, Corrin thought, based on the ‘S’ stitched into the back of his uniform, seemed to indicate a collapsed lung. She snatched up the nearest medscanner and confirmed her suspicions. She’d have to focus on him first- she couldn’t do this and walk either- she’d need to do surgery in the hangar. “I need a scalpel, and get a droid so I can look in his chest!” She yelled out to another medic, Corrin briefly thought of the name Jain, who immediately put a scalpel in her hand and then hauled ass to look for a suitable droid. Without looking away from the patient in front of her she called to the rest of the medic team, “hook him up to fluids! If he’s stable enough to be moved take him back into med 5! His name is Cody Friedalessian- his records are with my droid- clean the wounds as best you can, his blood should meet you there!” Corrin then thought to address the rest of the squadron hovering around their teammates trying to catch a glimpse of what was going on with the two criticals, “Green squadron please report to med 5 to get cleared!” The scramble of feet and the sound of the cot rolling away were the only things that let Corrin know her orders were followed. At least now she didn’t have as much of an audience. As she made the incision, Corrin noted the patient wince. Corrin’s jaw involuntary clenched. Shit, he was awake. Of course he was awake. Letting out a ‘tsk’ Corrin knew she had to continue with her task, even with her patient aware, “I’m sorry, Sketch, this is going to sting.” She kind of hoped that the incision would be enough to alleviate the pressure in the man’s chest, but she knew she wouldn’t be so lucky. Not in her line of work. As Corrin worked she could over hear the officers behind her deliberating. “It was an ambush. Stormtroopers had been stationed in the village.” Zara’s voice was terse and echoed around the hangar, “even if we had known we wouldn’t have stood a chance, it was a simple recruiting and supply job we didn’t have their numbers. They flanked us and set fire to the huts with blasters.” Zara spit in anger as she reported to the Admiral, her temper getting the best of her. Her bright blue eyes narrowed their focus to a target that was probably a whole galaxy away by now, “the villagers lost more than we did- if we had only-“ Ackbar seemed to silence her with a look, “it is war, Commander. I share your feelings, but often we will never have all the pieces to a puzzle. For now we must regroup, and learn what can be learned from this tragedy.” Zara balled her hands into fists at her side and curled her toes in her boots. “Hundreds died! Some of my men included! This wasn’t supposed to happen- it wasn’t one of those missions!” She hadn’t meant to explode like that, not to her commanding officer, but the words were rattling around in her brain and needed to get out. “No, it wasn’t. And you did what you could, Commander, and brought home the rest of your men. Which is more than some can say. They live thanks to your decision to fall back. Report to med 5, as the doctor ordered to get your own wounds looked at. After that see the General for official debriefing. Dismissed.” At that the Admiral left the hangar with an upset Commander left behind. Her head hung low as she crouched to hide the tears that were stinging her eyes as they fought to get out. She let out a pained groan as she punched the hull of the transport, “FUCK!” The hit sent shocks of pain shot up her arm immediately and she snapped her arm back into her chest, cursing herself for losing her cool, or even thinking to punch something in the first place. Corrin heard the sound of fist on metal and called over her shoulder, “I’ve got a lot of injuries to look after, please try not to add to them, Zara.” “Not the time Cor.” Zara growled. “It never is.” Corrin muttered under her breath, she really wished she could help her friend but considering she was wrist deep into Sketch’s chest that would have to wait. The droid Jain brought back was thankfully a medical one, with anesthesia.Hooking the pilot up with the right dosage of knock ‘em out drugs had been a blessing, as it eased Corrin’s mind and let her focus fully on her work. The droid was easily able to point out the gashes in the man’s lungs for Corrin to suture. But she was still in the hangar and not her medical ward so the procedure wasn’t a smooth as she knew it could be. For one, and probably the worst bit, the chest tubes she’d normally use for stabilizing the pressure in the chest cavity were replaced by a droid providing suction through some cleaned unused gas tubes found sitting in the hangar. ‘That probably won’t have any repercussions later.’ She thought bitterly to herself and continued to work. Jain made haste as an excellent assistant and took care of hooking up Sketch’s fluids, including blood when it arrived. With the help of the droid and Jain, after a long stint of working to close the gashes in the mans lungs, Corrin finally had him stable enough to close him up and move him to med 5. Which meant time to look over the other patients. After walking her patient down with her two helpers, Corrin plunged her hands directly into the nearest sink. Washing off Sketch’s blood thoroughly, she accepted a report of Cody. The wounds had been cleaned to the best of the medics’ abilities. He was stable for now, but his wounds would need far more grafting and sutures. Possibly even mech replacements. She sighed sadly at the thought. She found out that another of the pilots had collapsed in the hall- but probably due to stress and over exhaustion rather than any internal injuries. She’d check on that one after her extreme patients. Briefly wondering where the other doctors on the base were for a moment, Corrin ordered the medics to clean Sketch as best they could, and had Jain get proper chest tubes to replace the horrible “make-do in a hangar” situation he was still hooked up to. Corrin figured the droid was probably of better use doing its actual job than acting like a vacuum. Making her way over to Cody, Corrin found Zara hovering over him, with a medic fussing over her arm. Zara didn’t seem to notice him, her focus completely on Cody, fists clenched so tightly the were just about as pale as her face had turned. Corrin held in her breath for a moment, what words would comfort her friend? She crouched over the now sleeping Cody to inspect his wounds, and noted his vitals. Grabbing a marker she traced the biggest wounds- plotting the course for the synthetic material she’d have to overlay before applying the growth cells to stimulate the skin’s reproduction. She pushed the tendrils of hair that had fallen from her ponytail out of her eyes with her wrist when she finished. Physical wounds she could handle. With a glance over her shoulder, she saw Red, eyeing her with a watery gaze. Emotional wounds were a different story. With a creak in her knees, Corrin stood up and placed her hand on her friends shoulder, meeting her eyes with a look of a compassion, “I’m glad you’ve made it. I heard what you said to the Admiral. I’m so sorry for your losses.” The statements went unacknowledged for awhile, and when it was clear there would be no response, weakly she tagged on, “you did what you could, Zara.” “It wasn’t enough. I should have known, I could have done better.” Her voice cracked as she looked away, towards the back of the room. Zara couldn’t face her injured private or her friend as guilt washed over her. They were her men, her responsibility. And she had let them down. Let their families down. Tears threatened to spill, and that couldn’t happen in here. Not now. “You should have known what the General or admirals didn’t know?” Keeping her voice to a low whisper, Corrin swatted away the medic that had still been trying to inspect Zara’s arm, and wrapped her arm around her friend, shuffling her to the office Corrin sometimes used as a makeshift bedroom on rough duties. “We won’t always have all the answers. A lot of our battles will be in the dark.” She walked Zara to the couch and sat her down, the woman before her buckled into the cushions. Zara placed her hand over her mouth taking in a deep breath. Instinctively Corrin lunged for the waste bin, hastily throwing it in front of Zara, anticipating a violent reaction. But the russet headed woman kept her hand in place, waving the other in dismissal before placing it on the edge of the can, letting the cold metal ground her to something besides her whirlwind of thoughts, “I’m fine.” Corrin wouldnt have believed her friend even if her statement hadn’t come out as a whine. She leaned over her desk and hit open one of the drawers which contained a canteen of water. She popped open the cap and kneeled down to face Zara, “here, drink something. I’ll be back after I check on your squad. Are you good for a few ticks?” She asked softly. “I don’t know.” Zara answered honestly.

#star wars #star wars the force awakens #star wars fan fiction #star wars fan fic #my writing #kylo ren #kylo ren x reader #kylo ren x oc #kylo x reader #kylo x oc #ben solo x reader #ben solo x oc #star wars tfa #star wars imagine #star wars imagines #poe dameron #poe dameron x reader #poe dameron x oc

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black-strike-otp · 6 years

Text

part 94

I’m delirious and require sleep. Also go play this while reading just cuz the song’s title: Shockwave’s Revenge

The aura surrounding Shockwave’s lair left a haze of shrouded evil. It was no darker or lighter than the majority of Cybertron. The lighting was similar to what the Nemesis had; dark hues of purple filtering in every direction which did provide an eerie appearance.

What stood out the most though was the feel in the surroundings. Like a haunted house, it was deathly silent. Walls were riddled with scratches from unknown sources. Untold fights perhaps; or patients struggling for escape. The upper floor almost looked normal other than these strange observations.

Lying about was some worthless supplies left sitting from pre and post war. It appeared much like any other warehouse on Cybertron before the majority were collapsed from the constant strife upon the planet. Much of the building’s few windows had long since been busted out, leaving stray glass on the floor just as much as there was dust.

“Doesn’t look like much,” Blackout testified as he looked around. “Where’s the entry into the lower levels?”

“This way,” a feminine voice chimed.

He shifted his optics over to Venus as she spoke while passing by him. There was a natural sensual sway to her hips as she walked. Hurrying by, the dark rose accented femme disappeared past some of the crates and out of sight.

Novastrike cleared her vocalizer. One of her pedes tapped on the floor as she looked up to him with her helm lowered so that it appeared she was glaring up at him.

“What?”

“I saw you looking.”

“She was speaking to me,” he stated gruffly, offering a slight smile. “And I thought you said you weren’t jealous.”

“Her optics aren’t attached to her hips,” the little femme scoffed.

“I was only watching her walk by to see where she was going,” Blackout defended, his grin growing more crafty as he added on, “But if you feel the urge to stroll ahead to prove a point, I wouldn’t mind enjoying the view a bit.”

Light faded in and out of Novastrike’s ears in a blinking rush of light as she huffed, shaking her helm. The softened blue light emitting from her optics met his fearless scarlet as she quirked a smile of disbelief.

“We’re in a crazy scientist research area, and you’re flirting with me?”

“I live on the edge.”

“By the Allspark, I love you and your dumb hi-jinks.”

Bowing his helm deeply with respect, Blackout’s tone grated as he spook deep in his chassis, “And I love you too, Novastrike.”

“Alright lady’s mech,” Nova sighed deeply as she pivoted on her heel, “let’s get a move on before Venus ditches us. We still need to gather materials to manufacture a transmitter if we’re lucky and the others who vouched to help make our case manage to convince them.”

Stalking behind the little femme, Blackout quietly rattled off in a grumpy tone, “Worst case scenario: we need to find blueprints ourselves on how to build the intergalactic transmitter.”

The quiet melody of Novastrike’s laughter had him grinning like a moron as he took large strides to keep up with the covert femmes darting ahead of him like streaks of lightning. He never had to be the fastest mech with his size; taking large gaits between each step, but they put him to shame even with his usual brisker pace.

Once the obsidian giant had joined the two down a short set of stairs into the lower level, there was nothing in sight but further cargo. With a menacing growl of annoyance, the mammoth sized mech strode further into the small basement dwelling area. Shockwave must have taken great care into concealing his lab, because nothing here stood out as looking particularly alarming. The coverage of this space wasn’t even a tenth of the upstairs size.

He turned his gaze over to Novastrike quizzically after a moemnt. She was looking back to him expectedly and gave a slight inclination of her helm over to Venus. The taller femme was busy pushing some boxes out of the way of the wall. Digging her digits along the seams that made up two panes of metal of the wall, a small section popped up to reveal a button beneath it.

Raising an optic ridge, Blackout stepped over to join the two femmes as Venus pressed the button. Further metal pieces of the wall moved; transforming and peeling to the side to reveal a large elevator platform with guard rails surrounding all but the entry point for bots to walk on.

“You’re telling me Shockwave brought that giant Predacon up on this thing?” Blackout stated with a wave of a servo to the elevator. From the size of it, it didn’t appear as though it could hold half the size of that beast.

“I don’t know,” the assassin stated, placing a single servo to her hip. “This is the only entrance I know of. There could be another one with a larger lift of some sort to get the Predacon up here. I’ve never seen that creature before, but then again, the last time I was here was years ago the one time to save ‘Cade.”

“I would imagine seeing something like that would be hard to forget,” Novastrike quietly reasoned.

Venus gave a brief laugh, nodding her helm.

Both femmes boarded the landing first. It creaked uneasily even beneath their weight. Passing a glance to one another, they turned to look up at Blackout as he tentatively placed a pede on the elevator. Primus, he prayed this thing was operational and not a ploy or no longer functional piece of scrap that was going to send them hurtling who knew how many floors down.

To his surprise and relief, the metal groaned beneath his weight a moment and bounced before settling. Blackout rigidly remained still as Venus offered him a smile that suggested nerves. She gave a brief nod to him, realizing he wasn’t going to move further onto the platform, and reached over to a short stand anchored to the floor. Upon it was two arrows that would lower them down or raise the platform.

Pressing it, they began to slowly plunge into complete darkness down the shaft.

“How many floors are there, and how many do we need to go do?” the black outline in the darkness rumbled.

“I went down to the first level below the top one to fetch Barricade,” Venus stated. “That’s where the call room was too, probably since the radio equipment is hidden somewhere outside nearby I’d imagine. You wouldn’t good reception if it was much lower I think.”

Blackout nodded his helm. “No idea on the amount of floors, then?”

“I know there’s at least one below the one we’ll be going on,” she ventured slowly. “But I don’t know what’s down there.”

“We don’t need to find out,” the smaller femme nervously whispered.

A comforting smile moved across Blackout’s faceplate as he turned his optics upon Novastrike. With his optics transitioning into a night vision filter to better see in the void of blindness, he could make out her figure but mostly, the sight of her glowing brilliant optics of cobalt, teal, and aqua drew him in.

She smiled in return, and although he couldn’t make out her appearance nearly as well as she could his, he could see the way her mood shifted in the tones of her optics and the partial shutter they underwent as they brightened. It was such minimal alterations. Subtle, but he picked up on them and found himself smiling so wide it was nearly painful.

“Maybe where he had been keeping his Predacon pet?” Venus offered.

“Could be,” he agreed, forcing himself to look over to Venus and meet her gaze. “But Novastrike’s right. We don’t need to stay here longer than necessary gathering materials. It would just jeopardize the mission and make Barricade more nervous waiting for us.”

“Believe me, I don’t plan on spending a nanoklik in here longer than I have to,” seethed the taller femme.

They dropped further into the mad mech’s hideout in silence. After another thirty or so nanokliks, light suddenly splashed in, causing everyone to squint as the lift clunked and clanked its way down to the next level.

Venus released the down button. With optics readjusting to the new white and florescent blend of illuminated lights, Blackout took a step back and off the stand slowly. It recoiled and bounced once again, raising up a bit as he removed his weight entirely by stepping off from it completely.

Venus vented quietly as she strolled casually off after him. Reaching out, she patted his shoulder as she walked by and continued marching down the hall before them.

In a flash of white, Novastrike was off and by his pede. The spooked femme shuddered slightly, rubbing the upper region of her arms as she went to shuffle beside him as he turned and began to follow after Venus.

The majority of the chambers they passed had sealed and locked doors. Behind them, chilling moans and groans seeped through. The quiet scratching of digits against some of them added to the unease. Pedes shuffled, but weren’t quite shuffling. Thuds and thumps of varying weights moved around. Somewhere, deeper in this lab, a distant delirious gurgling screaming was carrying.

Novastrike’s digits brushed against his leg. Blackout nearly jumped. He wouldn’t admit to having been spooked openly, but he hadn’t been inspecting the gesture. Glancing down to the little femme, he could read the terror in her stance alone though she wasn’t looking to him. Her helm whipped one way and the another as she restlessly looked around.

“Everything alright, dear?” he rumbled, trying to keep his voice down.

“Too much,” she barely answered.

Raising an optic ridge, he waited until Nova raised her helm up to him. Her face was written in horror, and tears glittered in her optics. Short and brief heavy vents filtered in and out of her frame rapidly.

He instantly came to a halt.

“Nova, I can take you out-”

“No,” she insisted in a breathless monotone. “Let’s just hurry. I can’t take the sensory overload. There’s so much wrong with this place.”

It was startling to witness her rubbing at her optics as the tears formed and collected along the rims of her optics. With a concerned warble emitting from his chassis as his spark chimed a soft, hardly audible collection of reverberating notes, Blackout reached down to scoop up the small femme with guilt. He should have asked her to stay outside with Barricade to keep watch rather than bring her down here with her. He hadn’t even considered how her heightened senses would take everything down here.

Blackout pressed his collected bundle against his chassis. A quiet hum moved through his armor as he looked down the hall. His optics awkwardly met Venus’. With a nervous jerk of his helm, he looked away as he took large steps to meet her where she had stopped. All the while his digits curled protectively over Novastrike’s armor; tighter than necessary but far from being damaging.

Venus made a silent gesture to his servos as she raised an optic ridge questioningly. When he didn’t reply and hardly met her optics, she offered a caring but worried smile and continued down their path.

“How much further to the call room?” he echoed in a coarse manner.

“It’s just ahead,” the cerise highlighted femme stated.

Walking by one of the rooms, a loud band caused Venus to jump slightly. She muttered a curse beneath her breath, shaking her helm as they passed it. The shivers that erupted from Novastrike had Blackout trying to calm her as best he could. Heat basked off of his armor as he pressed her a bit closer, hurrying a bit more than usual after the other femme.

The call room didn’t have a door. They slipped in with ease, and Venus jutted out a digit with relief.

“There!” she exclaimed brightly, passing a cheeky grin to Blackout. “Told you I could find what you were looking for.”

“Grab anything else you think looks valuable,” he stated, looking around with a nod. “I’ll fetch the capacitors and see what other functioning parts he may have. We’ll be needing a power supply which shouldn’t be hard to get here or elsewhere, amplifiers, an electronic oscillator, modulator, and a bunch of other slag. I could care less if you wreck the place gutting it, just make sure anything that looks remotely useful or worthy of trading is salvaged.”

Keeping an impressive poker face, Venus slowly answered in kind, “Blackout, I’d like to remind you that I’ve managed just fine on this planet with eons. Part of getting by is knowing to look at something and even if you don’t know what it is, judging it’s worth and expense.”

He offered an apologetic gesture with one servo in a sweeping gesture to her before cupping it back around Novastrike. The assassin gave a slight nod to him, dashing on the other end of the room as he stomped over the open and massive circuit board missing a panel.

Blackout faltered in front of the opened access control board. He shifted his optics down to himself to his servos. Through his digits, he could just barely make out slivers of white.

He unfurled his cage from around the little femme. She created a brief noise of fear.

“I’m sorry, dear,” the obsidian mech quietly murmured. “I’m going to need to carry this stuff. Will you be okay on my shoulder?”

Novastrike gave a small nod, lurching slightly as she pressed digits over her mouth as she resisted the urge to vomit.

“I’m sorry,” she hoarsely mumbled.

“Don’t be,” he softly whispered, brushing his digits along her ears as he offered her a smile. “You’ve nothing to be sorry for. I’m sorry I dragged you down here.”

She mumbled something incoherent that he couldn’t make out. With a frown etching into his expression, the titan curved a single servo around his femme and raised her up to slip on his shoulder. Novastrike nestled against his armor and low under the kibble so that she was hardly visible. He could feel her face close against his neck, and the ragged breaths she huffed against him.

Servos free, he reached out in the circuit board and started to disassemble it. He couldn’t risk damaging any of the equipment, so took care with his large digits in pulling wires out from their sources and disconnecting components. It was tedious, but he didn’t rush himself as he unplugged and divided areas accordingly. For the life of him, he hoped some bot knew what half this stuff was, because he wasn’t sure he’d be able to reconnect these dozens of wires himself into a new mechanism.

With a gentle tug as he rocked the circuitboard back and forth, he removed the entire section along with the capacitor. It had to be about a fourth of his height in total lengthwise. Balancing it carefully in his grip, Blackout turned around to see Venus holding a mixmatched sum of loot in her arms and some equipment and cables draped over her shoulders.

Looking him up and down, the femme spoke frankly: “Do you really think you’re going to need that whole piece?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted, “But I’d rather regret not taking all of it and miss something than just take the capacitor. I can tell there’s an amplifier here, so that’s one thing, but beneath the rest of this mess of circuits it’s difficult to tell.”

“Rip open the rest of the paneling and check,” she urged.

Torn between wanting to take the one thing they did have and leaving with their prize and wanting to complete the job, Blackout vented. He tried turning his helm to look at Nova, but could only partly make out her tail, legs, and rear from her curled up position pressed into his neck.

He growled with frustration. Placing the panel of electrics and spilling wires down, he reached out with free servos to grab the metal panels covering the rest of the monitors computer board. With a sharp tug, the metal bent outwards. With another tug, Blackout managed to rip off another large area of metal to reveal further areas of the motherboard.

He grabbed another section and ripped it free.

Then another.

While he tore into the computer, Venus busily subspaced the smaller items she held that she could. The remaining items she collected she dropped into a small case she found, dumping out its contents on the floor and putting her own items inside.

Finally with the majority of the computer systems available skeleton visible, Blackout shifted his crimson optics over the scenery. His optics rested upon a modulator that looked like it had seen better days; layered with dust and grim. There was only three connections from it throughout the entire motherboard, so he yanked those free and subspaced the small item.

Trailing his optics along coils of copper wires, Blackout spotted the oscillator and yanked that as well.

“That’ll do,” he rumbled.

“Are you sure?” Venus asked. “You don’t want to track down a power supply, or try tearing out any more of the connectors?”

“Those will be easier to come by and reclaim,” snapped the large mech. “I can already tell you the power supply isn’t in this room anyway; there’s a massive line that hooks up over there so it could be a few rooms over, or on a completely different level. We don’t have time to seek it out.”

“I might not know the complete layout of this place, but was there anything else-”

“No,” Blackout cut in before she could finish. He placed the electronic oscillator into his subspace and reached down, picking up the capacitor with it’s interconnected amplifier and various unreasonable dangling wires.

Reaching around, he wrapped the majority of the cables around the board of circuits and tucked it partly beneath one arm. With a respectable nod to Venus, he strode for the door, with her quickly outpacing him in a light jog back to the lift.

It seemed like a lifetime going up the elevator shaft. This whole operation had been too easy for his liking though. No sentries, no guards, no security whatsoever. He didn’t even know if there was an anti-air strike weapon. He’d certainly not seen anything like that stationed outside of the base. He wondered how well-hidden they would have to be, but it surprised him more that that seemed to be the only defense Shockwave had to this place.

“Is there no security feeds here?” he uncomfortably grumbled impatiently, trying to will the damn elevator to go faster as he felt Nova shiver anxiously against his neck.

The taller femme shuttered her optics in thought. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“No. I mean, I always assumed there was. But I’ve literally only been here two, three times maybe. A few times I came here with Barricade as he left for his tests prior to Shockwave locking him up and tethering him to an examination table. The last time I was sneaking in to liberate him.”

“And nothing unusual happened while you were freeing him?” Blackout hedged.

Venus gave a shake of her helm as her pink optics flickered. “No. I mean, outside of the creepy things I witnessed, no. I never encountered any malicious bots or guards.”

“Was Shockwave present at the time?”

“I didn’t see him,” she vented loudly. “Though if I did, I probably would have torn out his optic. The single-eyed creep.”

“Hmm,” Blackout drawled thoughtfully. “I wonder if he was busy at the time, or if he wanted ‘Cade to escape.”

“Want him to escape? Why would he want him to escape?” she asked, her soft voice somewhat harder now and edgy.

“To test him. See what his experiment could do. See how long his resolve would last.”

Venus narrowed her gaze into slits. As the elevator came to a screeching halt to their destination, she released the upward pointing arrow button and dropped her arm. The violet overcast light from the upper levels threw strange figures and hues over her faceplate.

“Well if that was his test, he certainly failed.”

Furious, the femme pushed past Blackout and off the platform. It jostled unsteadily beneath Blackout’s pedes. Pitching as though it was a boat upon rough seas, he reached out to grasp the edge of the wall as he turned to see Venus plodding up the short staircase. He vented softly, letting go off the wall and stepping off onto the steady warehouse floor once more.

He reached up and across himself then to place a servo against Nova. The small femme winced slightly before she lifted her helm up. Her optics looked upon the former Decepticon Hound’s as he looked to her with a warm stare of glittering red optics.

“You okay dear?” he gently coaxed while stroking her ears.

Nova bobbed her helm up and down. “A bit better not being down there,” she admitted quietly. “There was a lot of terrible, horrible, disturbing scents and sounds down there penetrating my helm. I could taste the chemicals floating through the air. You could almost picture the things that happened down there from just the smells alone.”

“I’m sorry I towed you along down there,” he grumbled, kicking himself inwardly.

“That’s okay,” she answered quietly. “You didn’t know what it would be like down there. Neither did I.”

Why didn’t that make him feel any less at fault?

Adjusting his grip on the circuit board against his side, Blackout dropped his other arm to his side again and hiked up the steps after Venus. He followed his way back around the crates and through the warehouse to the front, where the femme was already busy reuniting with Barricade with the contents of her heist at her pedes.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” the small purple and ebony grounder mech urged, holding her face gently in his shaking servos.

“Yes, I’m fine,” replied the black and pink femme, smiling softly as she reached up to overlap her servos on top of his. “See? Perfectly fine. Still in one piece. Nothing bad happened and all. We’re all okay. You don’t need to worry. Inhale deeply-”

As she said this, ‘Cade calmly dragged in air through his ventilation system.

“-and exhale.”

A rush of slightly warm air escaped him as he bowed his helm, placing his forehead against hers.

“Better?” Venus whispered with her optic ridges drawn close with concern.

“Yeah,” Barricade crooned, shuttering his optics part of the way. “Better.”

Smirking a bit to himself, Blackout cast a glance to Novastrike as she observed the pair. She turned to look at him with embarrassment as she was caught staring, looking as far away from any of them as she could by craning her neck back.

With a snicker, the obsidian mech shook his helm. A quiet warbling sound captured his attention and he lifted his helm up to look beyond the couple a few yards in front of him to stare out as a portal began to form where one had previously been.

The other three bots suddenly whipped their helms to the space bridge that was beginning to form.

Blackout’s smile drained away. He quickly turned, stepping to the left and back in the direction they’d come from. His pedes skidded slightly as he glanced back, spotting Venus dropping her servos from Barricade as she tugged on his arm.

“‘Cade!”

He didn’t move.

“Barricade!”

The scream of dismay went unheard.

His violet optics were locked on the space bridge with unfocused fear. As a shadow moved out from the blinding light, Shockwave’s massively hulking frame appeared in a flicker. He appeared taken off guard, though it was hard to tell with no faceplate and a single unemoting red optic staring at them.

Blackout swiftly slid the panel he’d been carrying to the ground. Before he could make his way over to the two Shockwave raised his cannon.

An explosive blast of thunder escaped the hefty weapon as it went off.

Venus shoved Barricade just in time and was hurtled the exterior wall of the warehouse, slamming into metal. She fell to the ground with a gasp, pressing a servo to her side as energon seeped out between her buckled in armor.

Barricade let out a ghastly roar that even startled Blackout. He made a slight lunge towards Shockwave, hesitated, and looked to Venus with sickened dread as the light of her optics flashed ominously. His optics were a blinding pinkish-purple as he darted over to her, placing a servo against her side as her blood ebbed out.

Snapping up his arm, Blackout unfurled his cannon and nearly fired when he pulled his arm up with shock.

He looked to his shoulder and back to Shockwave.

In her alt-form, Novastrike had managed to eat the distance between them and the Decepticon chief scientist and had her teeth embedded in the wire that connected the cannon to Shockwave’s frame. She clamped down tighter as the purple mech tried to shake her lose.

He couldn’t risk shooting and hitting Nova.

Divided, Blackout looked to Barricade and Venus and then to Novastrike and Shockwave. The seams on ‘Cade’s faceplate were slightly visible now, like he was refraining from revealing his maw as he tried to keep pressure on her wound. He looked back to Nova, latched on to the mech standing just outside the space bridge.

There was no perfect choice to be made.

Transforming his cannon back into his arm, Blackout charged Shockwave. The mech went to raise his cannon, but no light emitted from it as Nova ripped her claws through the line, slicing ribbons of wires out as she whipped her helm to tear into the connector.

His fist struck the bot just short of his optic as he turned his helm away. Throwing his weight in to the punch, the scientist fell back a few steps, barely managing to keep on his pedes.

Blackout shook his aching servo lightly, grinning.

Standing just beside the space bridge, a darkness began to emerge from the light. His optics flickered towards it and then slowly, he craned his helm back. Something he’d only had to do a few times in his life when looking to Autobot sentinels and city-transformers in all his life.

With steely fangs bared and mandibles curved out from its face, the Predacon released an ominous growl as it slunk out from the space bridge; curling its body out slowly from the swirling light. With a lash of its mighty tail, it emerged in full and the space bridge closed behind it.

Frag.

Drawing in a rush of air, the Predacon opened its mouth wide. It’s jaws parted as an orange light flickered deep in the bowels of the beast and radiated glowing biolights in a spilling orangish-yellow glow.

As the beast lunged forward, Blackout grabbed the dragon by its upper and lower jaw. Heat just as sweltering and painful as those of the smelting pits and furnaces he’d worked for as a slave emitted from the creature’s maw. It did not release it’s fire, not yet, but hinged and worked its jaws as it tried to get him to release it’s face.

Screeching furiously, the drake tried clamping its teeth down, threatening to take his arm. Blackout grunted, straining to keep its mouth open as beads of melted metal began to drip from his side.

The creature narrowed its optics as he met its gaze. It sucked in sharply.

Before it could bath him in flames, Blackout let go of the Predacon’s jaws. They snapped shut suddenly, and the beast created a hiccuping deep in its throat. Balling up his servo in a fist, Blackout struck the monster on top of its helm, knocking it’s lower jaw into the ground.

Snorting smoke out of its nostrils, the brilliant light faded from its throat. With a whip of its tail, the beast struck him in the legs, knocking him on his back.

Staring up at the mythical legend in front of him, Blackout’s optics widened as it lunged for him again with bared fangs.

Before it clamp down upon his armor, a strong surge of electrical currents blasted outward from him.

The EMP wave suddenly drained him of energy. He’d never tried using that much at one time, but this was an incredibly massive foe.

With a massive thud and a quiet, dull groan, the Predacon’s legs gave out and it fell limp and unconscious before him. The light from its golden optics was gone as they shuttered closed.

Exhaling loudly with shock that it had worked, Blackout pushed himself unsteadily up to his pedes. His optics looked down at the black metal that had hardened on the ground and looked down himself at the strange streaks over his chassis where beads had cooled part of the way down.

Twisting his helm around fast enough to strain his neck cables painfully, Blackout looked to where he could hear the scuffle of pedes. Shockwave was trying to fend off Novastrike as she darted around him, lashing her tail out violently as Scorponok did with the shield casing around her own prongs removed.

The cyber-cat hissed venomously at the mech as he tried to swat at her. Without his single weapon, he practically defective. He relied too heavily on that over-powered source and his experiments for protection rather than fighting. Science came first and foremost; he simple lacked a means of winning.

Blackout went to take a step towards them and fumbled, nearly collapsing on the ground. He looked up with narrowed optics to the duo as they danced, venting harshly.

Growling furiously, Barricade came running from behind, slamming Shockwave in the helm with his pede. As the mech stumbled back with a painful grunt, the small mech turned on point and flicked out a whip.

Blackout recognized that whip. It belonged to Venus.

An electrical current surged out from the weapon as it lassoed around Shockwave’s leg. ‘Cade gave a quick tug, bringing the mech down on his back with a thud and a grunt.

He snapped the whip free with a single flick of his wrist, looking down at the mech as his optic dimmed and grew brighter in irregular intervals.

“‘Cade,” Blackout rasped, looking over his shoulder at the Predacon as its tail slid across the ground slowly. “‘Cade, we need to go.”

The grounder turned his helm towards Blackout slowly. The seams he’d spotted earlier were spreading slightly to reveal a hint of that threatening display of infected purplish-pink lights and the scalpel-ended feeder peeking out.

“‘Cade,” the larger mech warned in a snarl.

Forcibly, slowly, the mech closed the four-way point the majority of the way. He turned his optics quickly to where Venus laid, her servo pressed to her side. She was on her pedes once more at least.

Hasily, the three bots made their way over to the femme. Venus offered a waning smile to them, waving one of her energon smeared servos slightly as she winced.

“Do you need me to carry you?” Blackout asked quietly.

“No, I’ll be fine,” she insisted.

Doubt moved through his optics, but he nodded and quickly moved his attention on to Barricade. “You’ll need to carry the equipment Venus took, ‘Cade. I’ll get the motherboard. Venus, stay between us just in case. Novastrike, can you bring up the rear?”

With a light of courage in her blazing sapphire optics, Nova gave a single nod of her helm.

“Right.” Barricade drawled out in sinister hiss. “Yes. I can do that.”

“Focus, ‘Cade,” Blackout urged, reaching out to shake his shoulder.

The mech looked sideways to the femme standing at his side. She passed him a small but supportive smile.

“I can do this,” he stated almost like a reminder to himself; his tone slightly less gravely.

Grabbing the panel of tangled circuits and pieces of the computer, Blackout positioned himself on one side of Venus as ‘Cade stepped closer on the other side, tucking the box beneath his arm. He reached out to place an arm around her waist for support, pulling her close.

Placing his servo on the ground, Shockwave positioned himself in a seated position slowly. His Cyclops single red optic moved to the left and right. There was no sign of the bots that had attacked them, though he had a clear vision of those that did.

Highly illogical to consider Blackout treasonous, but the proof had been right in front of him.

Turning his single gaze to the Predacon, he watched as it twitched and lazily moved as it stirred from the EMP wave that had knocked his creation unconscious. With a single, thought humming sound to himself, the scientist cautiously moved to get back on his pedes.

He had to check his facility to see what was missing, and settle on making a report to Lord Megatron on the incident.

#quid pro quo au #OTP AU #OTP Lit #OTP Friends #Badass OTP

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lesbian-nautica · 7 years

Text

You is a lesbian

Hey there, like Nautica? Like blatant self insert fics? Well hey, here you go! Warning: NSFW.

Read it on ao3 here!

“Hey, mind if I ask you a question?”

You looked up from the datapad you were reading on to watch as Nautica sauntered up to you in her usual fashion, the light catching off her purple plating and glinting in the most flattering way possible, the shadows dipping just so to accentuate her figure. She looked positively radiant, as if her mere presence sucked all the light out of the room and surrounded her, and you swore every time you saw her that a choir of angels followed her every step. She had to be a goddess. A giant purple mechanical goddess. Honestly, you didn’t get what Perceptor’s big deal about Drift being “built perfectly” was; you figured that Nautica was the perfect mech, built with all the right proportions and all the right pieces, from her adorable antenna to her—

“Did you hear me?” She asked, an amused smile coming across her face. Fuck, you’d been staring again.

“Yeah, sorry! What did you want to ask?”

“Well, I came across a term in some human book I was reading, and figured that since we have a resident human on board, maybe you might know what it meant!”

“Oh? Well, perhaps. What is it?”

“Lesbian,” she said, a bit too much emphasis on the “les”. Your eyes widened ever so slightly, out of a minor surprise.

“You don’t have that word?” You asked. From what little you knew of Cybertronians (and to be honest, it was very little), you knew that they at least did not have…well, heteronormativity would be the word, you supposed. There were simply too many male Cybertronians for that nonsense. Were there simply too few fembots for there to be lesbians? Or, more likely, was there simply a different vocabulary term?

You couldn’t even bear to imagine a society without lesbians. No matter what species, society would fall apart if it weren’t for women-loving-women. It had to be the second.

“Nope. So, what’s a lesbian?” as she asked, she sat down on the side of the berth, perfect purple-tinted lips curled up into a smile.

“Me,” you said, unable to resist the joke, “me is a lesbian.”

“Not sure I follow,” Nautica said, popping her head to the side in bemused confusion.

“I mean, I’m an example of a lesbian. A lesbian is just a woman who likes other women.”

“In what context?” The look on her face! She was a mixture of genuinely curious and something else entirely, something much more…well, hot.

“Usually romantically or sexually. Or both. I myself do both,” you found yourself starting to babble as Nautica started leaning forward, her perfect chassis hovering over you ever so slightly, as she was double your size.

“Y’know…” she purred, removing the datapad from your hands and tossing it aside entirely as she loomed over you, a smirk over those well-sculpted faceplates.

“Y-yes?”

“I think I might be a lesbian.”

“In what context?” You parroted back at her, propping yourself up on your hands to close the distance between you and the mech.

“Both,” she exhaled, no louder than a whisper, as her perfect plump metal lips came down and connected with yours. It always amazed you how pliable those lips were, how warm and soft and wet—wet? Oh. Her tongue was already pushing to connect with yours, her superior strength pushing open your mouth and letting you taste that strange salivate. You always thought it was an extra bit acidic than human saliva, and it made your mouth tingle and water at the mere taste. She pulled her mouth off yours with a loud and wet pop, her dimmed optics meeting your half-lidded eyes as the thin string of saliva broke between you.

“Nautica…”you breathed, as she wordlessly moved down to kiss at your exposed flesh, her larger mouth kissing and nibbling at your neck. At one point, she licked it, causing you to hum a happy note as the air cooled your damp skin. She descended, teeth (dentae? That’s what she said they were called, right?) leaving the slightest of dents in the skin over your collarbone. You couldn’t just sit there and do nothing, so in one quick motion you grabbed her shoulder and pulled her up. She opened her mouth to protest, but you winked up at her before grabbing at your shirt, trying to rip it off in one clean motion but instead catching it on one arm, fumbling for a moment before dramatically casting it aside. Your hair was probably ruined, but you ignored it in favor of removing your bra—ironically, the same shade of purple as the mech waiting patiently above you.

“Ah, right, the weird organic chest lumps.”

“Shut up. You love them.”

“Never said I didn’t,” she mumbled as she put her mouth to better use with your “weird organic chest lumps”. She suckled on one, a hand (servo? Or were fingers servos? You can never remember) groping at the other. Her free hand grabbed your hip, pulling you down so that your entire body was under hers, back pinned against her perfect thighs.

“At least let me take the pants off first!” you whined, and the reverberating of her chuckle made your entire body shiver. She sat back on her heels, chewing on her lower lip with an expectant look. You’ve never gotten skinny jeans off that fast in your entire life.

You didn’t even so much as get your socks off before Nautica set back to trying to get your rocks off, descending upon you with the intent of devouring every inch of your skin. She seemed to hit every nerve in your body all at once, and you couldn’t help the canter of your hips up, or your tiny human hands roaming over her sleek frame as they sought purchase on her. You knew her well enough to know where her mechanical frame was most sensitive, which dips and seams to touch to get those fans kicking into overdrive. The unmistakable sound of said fans quickly filled the room, almost louder than Nautica’s panting gasps against your heated skin. With a flicker of confidence, you dug your fingers into the seams around her array, grinding your hips against hers to emphasize your point.

The snap of her panel pulling back told you that she got your point. However, Nautica’s pull backwards told you the opposite.

“Everything okay?” you asked, propping yourself up on your elbows.

“How do lesbians have sex? Human females don’t have spikes, I know.”

“Well,” you started, but you didn’t get very far before you were overcome with a giggle fit. Of all the questions to have! “Actually, some do. So you can still dick me into the floor, if you want.”

“Your terminology never fails to impress,” she said in an imperfect monotone, optics rolling, but the corners of her mouth were still turning up.

“Tell you what,” you purred, one had wandering lazily over her thigh, “lie down. I’ll give you a crash course in the most cliché and classic of positions. Good?”

“Sure thing,” she said with a chuckle, holding you in place as she spun around and switched positions, pulling you up onto her lap as she laid back. Perfect. You gently pushed her legs further apart, pulling on one thigh to convince her to lift her hips up slightly so you could straddle between them, hips perpendicular to hers.

“Comfy?” you asked, and Nautica moved her hands up behind her head, smirking up at you and nodding. You gave her a small smirk as you yanked her hips up while you sunk yours down, maneuvering in a way to push your pussy against her valve. Her fans kicked back on as you ground down, trying to find that sweet angle that would make this actually feel good. It took a lot of shifting, but your constant wiggling did earn you a few moans from the mech under you, and you knew you had found the sweet grind spot when she jerked forward, arms coming forward and grabbing around your waist. You wiggled your eyebrows at her, and she ground her hips up in retaliation. A jolt ran through you, and you pushed down to meet her, jerking your hips at a delicious angle.

“This is what humans do? Rut against each other?” She asked after a while, but you could hear her voice wavering.

“I told you earlier,” you paused, biting back a quick moan, “this is just the one you’re most likely to hear about.”

“Count me interested in other ways!” she chirped, fans kicking up an extra notch as she pushed so hard against you that she lifted you off the berth entirely.

“You know, spiking me until I can’t walk is always an option!” you hissed down, not even bothering to bite back the next moan coming from your throat. You didn’t even have to repeat yourself, as Nautica roughly held your hips and pulled you up, one hand pushing your legs further apart to fit hers between you.

There was already a lot of fluid all over your thighs, but at the sight of her smiling up at you while her spike nestled against your hipbone was enough to make you slick. She winked up at you, and you drug your hips forward achingly slow, slowly sliding over her spike until you reached the tip of it. You leaned down to give her a quick kiss, which became a lot longer when you realized you could still tease the tip of her spike while kissing her if you rolled your hips back. At least, the teasing is what you planned. What you couldn’t anticipate was Nautica’s sudden thrust up, nudging the first inch or so of her spike into you.

“You’re taking longer than usual, thought I’d speed you up,” she said when you pulled back to look at her. When you sunk your hips down and quickly took as much of her spike as you could, she suddenly became rather speechless.

You were still too small to get all the way to the bottom of that spike, but what you could take you took greedily and hungrily, pussy making the most obscene of noises as you fucked yourself on her spike. Her hands grabbed at your hips, her own hips pushing up to meet you, but not harsh enough to push too deep. She let you set the pace, but you could feel the pull of her servos trying to get you to speed up. She inadvertently pulled you down harder, and her spike rubbed at all the sensitive nerves you had, and some you didn’t even know you had. You leaned back ever so slightly, reaching behind you to rub at her valve, other hand furiously going at your own clit.

You came first, hard and loud, stuttering out of the rhythm you two had built up, and you could hear Nautica grunt at your spasms below you. She kept going, pumping into you at a punishing pace, having you see stars as she pushed you into the oversensitivity region. Without even thinking about it, you curled your fingers into her valve, and the sudden gasp coming from Nautica had you curling them again, wiggling furiously. She hit her overload almost instantly, yanking you down hard and tightening her grip on your hips. You’d have bruises tomorrow, but you didn’t even remotely care.

“So,” you started, pulling your fingers out of the beautiful mech under you, making a show of cleaning yourself with your tongue as you greedily took in the sight of a wrecked Nautica underneath you. “That’s how lesbians have sex.”

#nautica #transformers #transformers fic #mtmte nautica #mtmte fic #nautica x reader

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