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mindshelter · 2 years

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Under yellow sunlight, Kon is a near-perfect solar battery.

Kryptonite radiation disrupts the energy transformation process; cells lose massive amounts of heat, giving rise to extreme pain. The few thousand survivors of Krypton’s initial collapse succumbed to the poison gradually—as their ceaseless fevers burned their bodies alive, their cells began to eat themselves. Organs and blood vessels fell apart. After months of illness, the last fragments of their civilisation died with chattering teeth.

The excess energy Kryptonians store outside of red star systems accelerates the process to hours.

—on. Kon. Can you—me?

Something warm and damp brushes across his chilled skin. The world blends into light; indistinct globs and streaks. Kon tries to breathe. His lips are numb when he purses them together and takes the harshest exhale of air through his nostrils. The air smells like iron.

Can you hear me?

He nods.

Good. It’s done, alright? They’re gone. I’m so proud of you.

Kal’s lessons about Kryptonite hadn’t warned Kon of just how quiet its effects were. His blood roars, and everything about him is desperate, hungry, aflame—but the world finally becomes so, so still. For a few precious moments, everything is blessedly silent. It hurts—it hurts, and Kon wants everything to stop, but when the spasms in his legs forces him onto his knees, he remembers, with relief—

Something could kill him so easily, leave him so weak. He almost feels human.

It feels like peace.

There’s a steady hand laid across his cheek, holding his head in place. There’s the press of cloth to his face, swiping over his mouth, under his nose.

Kon tries to make use of his tenuous connection to his arms, reaching out to the source of the sound. His vision splits and wobbles. As the image recoalesces, Tim takes his hand.

The world saturates with noise. He hears the hum of the ground below him, the thunder of approaching aircraft, and the conversations of people who have gone about their days none the wiser, thousands of miles away. Kon narrows his focus towards the fibres of Tim’s leather gloves, and the steady tempo of his pulse underneath.

“Hi,” he croaks. The sound is noiseless to his own ears, but he thinks Tim smiles. It’s a faint, soft thing, peeking through Kon’s haze like daybreak.

It colours his words, too. “Hey, Conner,” Tim says back.

Kon smacks his lips, tasting metal and acid. It hurts. There’s rust between his teeth, painted onto his gums, and he needs every dredge of energy to speak. “Y’re… here.”

Tim adjusts his hold on Kon’s hand, a gloved thumb brushing over his aching knuckles. His hair begins to flutter—languid at first, and then with frenetic rhythm as the whir of a motor overhead grows louder.

“…hold on?” Kon asks, now loud enough to pass for a whisper, as a younger version of Tim’s voice echoes in his mind. You’ve got one job, Conner. Hold on. Nothing else. He’s so tired, but if Tim makes him promise—he’ll try.

“No need this time. Everyone is safe, and so are you.” Tim replies kindly, squeezing Kon’s fingers. “We’ll take care of you, okay? You can rest.”

The last thing Kon is aware of before he gives in is the wildness of Tim’s hair, and the way it flies in all directions even as the helicopter rotor gradually slows to a stop.

_____

The blade had forced its way into the flesh of Kon’s back and created an exit wound. Its trajectory had shattered part of Kon’s shoulder blade, and moments later, the tip had re-emerged just leftwards of his sternum. It was meant to be a killing strike—a blow straight through the heart. Surely even a God would have dropped dead.

Kon’s heart beats steadily under the flimsy linen overtop of his chest, between his lungs, tilted to the right side of his breastbone. The room is alit with sunshine and lamplight alike, casting a delicate glow over the outline of his knees, the metal bedframe, and the dark of Tim’s hair. Perhaps he shouldn’t be flattered that, in their haste to defeat their monster, they made the fatal mistake of overestimating how human he was.

“They think I’m,” Kon mumbles, “I’m some sort of… vampire, or something.”

Tim blinks down at him. He looks ragged.

His face remains carefully neutral, but his eyes are bloodshot—red-rimmed and swollen in a way Kon understands are from a long bout of tears, rather than too few hours of rest. He knows Tim is hoping Kon will give him the courtesy of ignoring it, but Kon isn’t sure he should.

It’s never for his own benefit, Kon knows; when Tim keeps his voice steady, his heartbeat grounded, and his temper even, he means: you will be alright. Things are under control. Everything is going to be okay. I want you to be comfortable. I want you to feel safe.

It’s not cowardice; it’s pure courage. But the very last place Tim needs to be brave is when it’s just the two of them.

“Like,” Kon adds. He mimics a stabbing motion, jabbing the imaginary weapon into chest. “Stakes. To kill me.” His body stiffens before going limp, weight sinking further into the flimsy mattress, and lets his eyes slide shut for good measure.

In his periphery, Tim scoffs.

“If you’re trying to cheer me up right now, knock it off.”

Kon cracks one eye open. “Who says I am? Not everything is about you, man.”

Tim blinks down at him, clearly aiming for unimpressed, but the nascent glare slips when Kon meets it with a smile—it wavers, loses balance, and slips away. Kon can’t quite figure out what’s left, bared on Tim’s face; he’s not sure what the subtle twitch of Tim’s jaw means, nor the restlessness of his hands, tucked close to his body, fingers drumming against his knees.

Each deep breath makes his insides prickle. “Were you here all night?”

Outside, the sun is directly overhead. Kon had only woken up and been accosted by a flurry of well-wishers an hour earlier. Tim had lingered in the background while Kon wore his best grin and said his brightest hellos, and lingered again, by the doorway, as the others cleared out, one by one. After glancing at Tim’s fidgeting stance, and his cape draped over the single chair at his bedside, Kon had waved him over to come sit back down.

Predictably, Tim bristles. “Well,” he starts, body growing animated, “I. Do you… want me to leave? If you’re tired, or you really need a nap, I can—”

That’s not a no; Kon will take it. He begins to laugh, but a flare of pain quickly cuts it short. Through a wince and a single thump of his fist against his chest, he says, “Dude, I asked you to come back over and sit with me. What do you think, idiot?”

Said idiot’s brow furrows as he, with complete seriousness, mulls the question over. It’s fucking ridiculous; Kon can’t conceive of a single instance where he wouldn’t want Tim to stay.

In that inopportune moment, something clicks.

Everything else is dwarfed by the knowledge, the joy, that Tim had chosen to be with him, seated on a rickety chair until the sun rose, waiting for Kon to stir. That he had given Kon his company and their tangled hands as they had waited for help to arrive, and the thousands of fragments of himself he had offered over the years to Kon without asking for much in return.

This gravity—this pull—Kon thinks it must have been there for nearly his whole lifetime. Contracting, growing denser until the heft of it became impossible to ignore. At some point, the light inside of him must have swelled. And swelled, and burst outwards. It rests at the core of him, now, vibrant. Roaring with life.

Oh.

Tim seems to be finished thinking when he serves Kon with his best, most frightening glower—frowny face number sixteen—as he says, “Don’t call me an idiot, idiot.”

“I’ll follow your lead,” Kon shoots back easily. He times the silence by counting to three. “Idiot. But seriously, Tim, I don’t mind. I’m…”

Thankfully, Tim doesn’t push for Kon to finish that thought, throwing him one last crotchety grunt before his attention returns to his lap.

They sit in companionable silence before Tim says, “Does your chest hurt?”

Tim has never asked him to be brave. Neither does Kon, and he can only wish that Tim knows as much. It’s unfamiliar territory, watching the subtle twitch of Tim’s jaw, the restlessness of his hands, tucked closed to his body. Looking at what’s left, bared on Tim’s face, after the charade of exasperation fades—and seeing undisguised concern.

Perhaps this is courage, too.

“Yeah.” He swallows. “It still hurts a lot.”

Maybe Tim hadn’t expected Kon to be so straightforward, because he stiffens at the answer before he says, so quietly, “Oh.”

Then, his left hand lifts from his thigh to swipe under his cheek in one hasty motion.

The twitch of his jaw turns into a quiver, and then his head lifts: Tim’s expression is red and wet and alarmed. It's horrible, and Kon can't help but liken it some sort of kicked puppy with a pollen allergy. After a long, dreadful moment, Tim must finally register the fresh tears, because he hurriedly shoves his face into his hands, curling into himself.

“Oh, hell,” Kon says. Painstakingly, he pushes himself upright, and opens up his arms. “Just… c’mere.”

“‘m already here.”

Kon snorts. “Don’t be dense,” he says, aiming for nonchalant and landing, rather inelegantly, on fond. “Dude, look at me.”

Muffled into his hands, “No.”

Suit yourself, Kon thinks, and extends his TTK down his bed, to the floor, until it creeps up Tim’s legs and nudges him forward, the force of it just enough to topple Tim forward. He smiles when Tim wraps his arms around Kon’s neck in an instant.

Kon settles his hands over the small of Tim’s back, grip loose. Tim’s hold is gentle, too, as if he’s afraid too much force would hurt Kon further. It’s almost eerie, how silent Tim is when he cries; the fabric over his shoulder dampens, but there are no hiccups, no sobs—only shaky intakes of breath.

“I just need a bit longer,” Kon says. “A bit more time in the sun and I’ll be good as new.”

Over his shoulder, Tim lets out a long exhale while his fingers begin to skim the groove of his spine, pausing over healed-over flesh. It should be barely more than a raised, pink scar, now.

“Does this hurt too?” Tim asks, words soft.

Kon shakes his head.

This little touchpoint to mortality will blend and flatten to match his skin in the days that follow. Tim traces the edges of it over Kon’s thin shirt, like he knows exactly where the blade had entered.

Does he?

As if on cue, Tim says, “I found you first. I don’t know long you were there, but your lips were turning blue.”

Kon remembers. They were alone, he thinks, under that dark, cloudless sky. He pulls Tim closer, and he responds in kind, pressing his face against the crook of Kon’s neck.

“You were lying there on your side… there were burns all over your palms, so I guess you tried to pull it out yourself—and…” He hears Tim swallow, feels his hold tighten, and his voice cracks once he adds, “You weren’t moving, or answering. I put my boot against your back, grabbed the hilt, and the more I pulled, the more you screamed.”

Hell. “Tim,” is all Kon can say.

“No, I’m glad I did it. I’m glad I made it on time. I haven’t always.”

One day, Kon will challenge that argument and win. For now, he tells him, “I’m sorry I scared you.”

Tim buries himself further. His tears are hot. “Don’t be. If you were screaming, it meant you were alive, Kon—I was relieved. It’s worse when… you’re you, you know? Even after everything, I always had it in my head you’d be the last one standing. Out of all of us.”

But I did scare you, didn’t I? “Okay,” Kon says. “You know I would never let that happen, right?”

If the price was his life for this horrid, wonderful world they lived in, Kon would hold his back straight, stand at his full height, and keep walking forward. If he could promise tomorrow would come, that tomorrow would be better, he would do anything. Over, and over, and over.

“Yeah,” Tim concedes. “I know. I hate that about you.”

“You don’t,” Kon rebuts.

No response.

“You love me,” Kon says. And I love you.

Tim shifts, but he does not move away. Those dovetailed truths, so incontestable, sweep over him, bleeding their way into his bones, his chest, his heart. The burning core of him.

It feels like something new. He feels human.

It feels like peace.

for @misspickman, who asked for a “take on how he falls in love/realizes he has a crush on tim, or likes men”! the interpretation is kind of loose, but i’d like to think i addressed the prompt. thank you again for the request! :heart:

#timkon #kon el #tim drake #dc #my writing #fic requests #dfkdjnv yeah i would have had a blast stitching together snippets of kon gradually falling for tim but alas it would have gotten #so far away from me in terms of length #doesn't mean i'm not thinking about it though #ask to tag #merci pour votre patienceeee

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random-ykw-facts · 10 months

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Fact #84

While Yo-kai Watch 2: Psychic Specters is meant to be the definitive third version of Yo-kai Watch 2, it is actually missing content from the other versions, Bony Spirits and Fleshy Souls, namely the version-exclusive requests, which all instead have their own counterparts in Psychic Specters.

Train Lie-in with Pride/Slicenrice Under Fire are replaced with Directator's All-Star Cast, Seal No Evil/The Price of Iron are replaced with A Real Charmer, The Realest Kappa/From the Future are replaced with Trying Tangle Tango, and The Bony General/Fleshy Souls General and Enma and the Serpent/The Old Fox Shrine don't have replacements, though many new requests were added to the post-game.

#yo-kai watch facts #yo-kai watch #yokai watch #youkai watch #ykw #yw #yo-kai watch 2 #yw2 #yo-kai watch 2: psychic specters #yw2:ps #we back y'all #i think this is interesting cuz 3 doesn't do it this way and you can still get the quests from sushi/tempura in sukiyaki #(or at least in the localized version which is. basically just sukiyaki. so-)#also by the requests being replaced i mean that the chapter they're unlocked is the same #i.e. train lie-in with pride slicenrice under fire and directator's all-star cast are all unlocked in chapter 4 #this is also very stupid to me i honestly can't tell if it's intentional or a glitch. seems like it'd be easy to miss if it is a glitch so #???

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the-greatest-magic-of-all · 4 months

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17I for the ask game?

Gotchu! One Spy AU coming right up!

Send in a Number and a Letter!

Down but Not Out

Fabian didn’t mean to be rude by ignoring Acting Director Goldenhoard’s eulogy, but it seemed like he couldn’t pay attention to much of anything these days.

Sitting in a crowd of his co-workers, they all listened to Goldenhoard’s solemn words. Or at least, Fabian tried to. But the candid picture next to his podium, of a handsome Goblin with curly hair and a wry smile, only made it worse. An empty hollowness had filled his chest and refused to leave. Not since he watched his partner, Agent Riz Gukgak, die on his mission not two weeks ago.

As his mission support, he was the agent back at HQ in Riz’s earpiece that always watched his six. Feeding him any information he could to help him complete his mission. Or he was supposed to, but apparently, he was pretty shit at his job since Gukgak was dead with not even a body to recover.

They’d gotten bad intelligence somehow and Fabian hadn’t realized it until Riz was already being ambushed by KVX’s mercs. It had all happened so fast. He had tried to guide Riz through all the chaos of bullets and knives. And he’d almost gotten out too, but he’d failed a saving throw against some kind of bullshit faerie magic.

The last thing Fabian saw before Riz’s hidden camera broke was a ginger-haired pixie hovering over Riz’s prone body. The tiny man had listed off the names of a dozen of SSIS’ currently active agents and then nothing. Black. Fabian burst from his seat in HQ to sprint to their divination unit. Demanding that one of them cast Scry on Gukgak immediately and, when that didn’t work, for someone to rush to his last known location to cast Locate Creature on him.

It had all been in vain. Riz was dead. And if Fabian had been smarter, had realized that they’d been tricked and led into a trap, he’d still be alive.

Fabian wasn’t even supposed to have this job.

Once upon a time, he was a field agent too.

Years ago, he was suspended from going out into the field. A mission on Leviathan gone wrong. The director had expected him to take a six-month sabbatical until he could go through retraining. But he refused to wait that long. He showed up to work every day for a month before the higher-ups cracked. Realizing that he’d be kicking around HQ, annoying the shit out of people if they didn’t give him something to do, the director’s solution was to train him in mission support.

At first, Fabian pushed back against it hard. Being very publicly disallowed from going on any mission was already embarrassing enough. The thought of essentially being demoted to a desk job was even worse. Sure, they assured him that it was only temporary and something to keep his mind sharp. But on his first day of training, he had a sinking feeling that they’d never trust him with another mission ever again.

Nevertheless, Fabian showed up every day to learn how to support an agent best. Of which he did have a few opinions on himself, though he was encouraged to stick to the, ugh, manual. It was a slog and a grind until the day they decided to test out his skills with an actual agent. Pairing him up with a fresh-faced legacy agent, Riz Gukgak. And while his enthusiasm was a bit much at first, the test missions Fabian supported him through went well. A fact that surprised almost everyone, Fabian included, but not Riz.

For whatever reason, he had his full confidence in Fabian’s newfound abilities. He even mentioned that during their celebratory drink after their first successful real mission. Clinking glasses of champagne, Riz had said with a wistful smile that he’d miss Fabian in his ear. You know, once his suspension was up. Fabian found himself agreeing. It would be a shame.

Throughout this experiment of sorts, he’d found that he had a knack for tactics and maneuvers and getting Riz in and out of trouble. He didn’t have to be in the proverbial spotlight. He could get just as much, if not more, satisfaction from guiding Riz to success. Not to mention the fact that Riz had slowly grown on him to the point that when his six months were up.

He almost didn’t want to leave Riz’s fate in the hands of anyone else.

Which is why, when he walked into work on the first day after his suspension, he announced that he’d be staying in mission support as Riz’s partner. And so, the two of them spent the next ten years working together, saving the world one mission at a time.

Until two weeks ago.

Jawbone, the head of mission support, had sent him home early that day and expected him to take a couple of days off. Squeezing his shoulder, Jawbone had told him that losing people never got any easier. And that he should take some time for himself to let out any of the emotions he might’ve been feeling.

Fabian tried to listen to his advice. Most of those days he spent running until he couldn’t run anymore. Or he stared into the rushing waters of the Marigold River trying to force himself to grieve and mourn and do all the things everyone expected him to do. But the emptiness that had found him and wouldn’t let him go since Riz’s death remained.

Because how could he not run Riz’s last moments over and over again in his head, picking out everything he could’ve done better to get him out of there alive? Because how could he not feel like a coward for not being the one to tell Riz’s mother, who had lost his father the same way, of his death? Because how could he continue with his life when the people responsible for Riz’s death still drew breath, their plans, still intact?

Fabian couldn’t mourn or grieve.

Not yet.

“Are you sure about this?”

Agent Adaine Abernant asked from the other side of Fabian’s earpiece as a server offered him a flute of champagne. Only moments after he strolled into the gala hosted in one of the lavish ballrooms in the Red Scale Hotel. A building his target and various others within the conspiracy he and Riz were unravelling, frequented.

Plucking a flute from the tray, he flashed the server a smile before bringing it to his lips to hide the movement of them as he answered, “I’m already in the building, Adaine. It’s a little late to be getting cold feet.”

“Alright, the corridor you want is on the other end of this hall. Near the stage, right side.”

“Perfect.”

Sublime, live jazz music flowed as a lively undercurrent beneath the ambient chatter of the sea of attendees. All decked out in satin gowns and well-pressed suits, he fit right in with the deep red, three-piece tuxedo that he had to pull out of storage. Hopefully, the Disguise Self spell on him masking his missing eye and trading his distinctive silver hair for a more neutral black also made him unrecognizable.

Sure, that ginger pixie, Biz Glitterdew, he later found out, had read off all their active agents. Showing off that he and whoever he worked for knew that SSIS was onto them, but Fabian wasn’t on that list. Not on the list, not on their radar. And he’d prefer to keep it that way for as long as possible.

Clocking all the guards and other security present, he made sure not to look like he was making a direct beeline toward the back door.

“Remind me who I’m supposed to be again?” Fabian mumbled behind his glass again before taking another sip.

“Mr. Iliren Pyrefall,” Adaine answered as if she were reading off of a script. “A young, up-and-coming businessman from Fallinel who is currently on his first trip to mainland Spyre to get over a recent breakup with ‘The One’.”

“That feels targeted but I’m not sure how.”

“Just focus on not getting caught, loverboy.”

It took a bit of shaking off of some cobwebs but Fabian managed to move from group to group making charming small talk before moving on. This used to be one of his favourite parts of a mission. Putting on a new identity and taking it on for a spin on strangers he’d likely never see again. Maybe even get his kisses in, if he had the time. But right now he couldn’t enjoy being Iliren Pyrefall, not when this mission meant so much to him that it had to go well.

By the time he made it to the other end of the ballroom, he had the perfect distraction to hide his intrusion. The hostess of the evening, the ever-saccharine socialite Penelope Everpetal, had stepped on stage to make a toast. Eyeing the inconspicuous door, Fabian took one last swig of his flute before setting it down on a passing server’s tray and making his move. Slipping through the clapping crowd and past unsuspecting guards and the door undetected.

“Excellent, now, on your right there should be a corridor with three doors before the bend…”

Fabian’s footsteps didn’t make a sound on the carpeted floors as Adaine’s posh, calm voice guided him through the winding, lushly decorated halls of the Red Scale Hotel. Soon he found his way down into the bowels of the old building. Descending metal staircases until delicate cream-coloured walls turned to harsh, gritty stone hallways. Lined with rusty pipes and bright white lights.

He didn’t get to make it down the first hall before Adaine piped up once again, a sense of urgency in her voice, “You’ve got company. One heading toward you fast with two right behind him.”

“Oh, but I didn’t even put the kettle on,” Fabian whispered as he put on a pout and got into position. His back pressed up against the wall, lying in wait for his moment as he readied his arquebus. “What kind of host am I?”

“Stop being cheeky. First one’s coming around the corner… now!”

As soon as the first suited guard turned the corner, Fabian socked him in the face with the butt of his arquebus. Taking hold of his shoulder, he pressed the barrel into the guard’s stomach and fired two shots into him before shoving his body into a second guard. The two of them tumbled to the ground in a heap. Leaving the third to pull out her own firearm. But not fast enough. Bang! Bang! Bang! Fabian had three bullets lodged in her chest before she pulled her trigger.

“Guard on your six!” Adaine yelled just in time for Fabian to whip around to see the second guard up on their knees. having shoved the first guard’s body off of him, he now had his arquebus pointed at him.

The sharp, piercing sting of a bullet hitting his side was soon engulfed by adrenaline as Fabian dropped his gun. Lunging at that guard. His second shot hit the ceiling as Fabian grabbed the hand holding the arquebus, shoving it to the sky. Before ramming the guard’s back into one of the walls. The crack of bone against stone rung out into the cavernous hall. Followed by their grunts and the sound of struggle as Fabian wrestled the arquebus out of the guard’s hands. Throwing it to the side, he stomped his heel into his foot and kneed him in the stomach before knocking him out with one good punch across the jaw.

With the final guard’s body slumped against the wall, Fabian picked up his discarded arquebus, readjusted his suit, and did a little bow as Adaine said, “Well done.”

Taking a deep breath that hurt just a bit, he said, “Thank you. Where to from here?”

“The room you’re looking for shouldn’t be too far. Take a left and then a right at the first junction and then the third door on the right should be the one.” Heeding Adaine’s directions, Fabian left this scene of carnage to head toward his target. The heels of his dress shoes clicked and echoed as he moved through the tunnel-like halls with far more haste than before. As he counted one, two, three doors on the right, and approached it, Adaine warned him. “I’m getting a reading that there’s only one tiny creature in there. It should be him, but still. Be careful, Seacaster.”

“Aren’t I always?”

“Your field record would beg to differ.”

Unable to hide a smirk, it grew on his lips as he tried to steady himself. The only thing that separated him and the bastard who had killed his agent was this door. Fabian had one shot at this. He couldn’t fuck it up. One last deep breath.

For Riz.

Bursting into a dark room filled with crystals and computers with one solid kick to the door, it didn’t take a second before his eyes found Biz Glitterdew. His tiny, pixie wings glowed in tandem with the screens and crystal power sources yet still stood out against them. Once they locked eyes, Biz didn’t immediately go to attack him. Instead, he reached for a phone-like crystal on his desk. Probably trying to call for backup.

Unfortunately for Biz, Adaine was busy tampering with the Red Scale Hotel’s communication lines to give Fabian as much time as he needed.

“Oh, that won’t be necessary, Mr. Glitterdew,” Fabian said as a look of horror that dawned on Biz’s pale, little face. Filling Fabian with so much schadenfreude that he was sure that his smirk turned a little wild. His resemblance to his father must’ve been oh so obvious now. “I do believe this is a private conversation.”

Now see, Fabian had had a whole speech in his head that he’d tell Biz while holding him at gunpoint. About how he should’ve known how to pick his kills better. How it’s tragic for him that he’s the only top agent whom he didn’t know about. One line after another to show Biz how badly he fucked up.

But he didn’t get that far.

Didn’t even pull out his arquebus.

No, he went a bit… nuts.

One moment he was in the doorway staring Biz down and the next he had Biz’s head in his hands and was smashing it into the closest keyboard. Typing out who knows what into the computer. Admittedly, it wasn’t Fabian’s finest work. Not enough finesse as he had usually liked to apply during his missions. But Adaine certainly wasn’t complaining about it.

There was a moment, however, when he had a split-second regret about not being more careful. Not with Biz’s head, no. Around these machines. Sure, he could disarm a bomb or operate his rig back at HQ well enough, but he’d never been the most techy man in the world. He’s pretty sure though that crystals are not supposed to emit a large, blinding burst of light and electricity.

It mustn’t be good, seeing as he heard scream out a strangled, “NO!”

Well and properly blinded by that exploding crystal, Fabian couldn’t see a thing, but he could feel Biz get yanked out of his hands. His heart leapt in fear for a moment, terrified that the bastard was about to slip through his fingers. Instead of the sound of frantically fluttering wings though, an audible thump of someone thrown to the ground hit his ears.

All before an all too familiar voice, one that Fabian thought he’d never hear again, rang out in a barking tone. “I’m gonna give you twenty full seconds to tell me what you did with those women, Glitterdew. Or else I’m gonna blow your fucking head off.”

Fabian frenziedly whipped around toward that voice, cautious hope building in his chest. And though his vision hadn’t fully returned to him yet, what had come back was enough. Enough for him to see the silhouette of Riz Gukgak pinning Biz to the ground. Enough for tears to start pricking his eyes and for Adaine to gasp in his ears. Slowly, the details of the scene came in as well.

Riz’s wild, greenblack curls fell in his face, his lips were pulled back bear his sharp teeth, his nice, white dress shirt was rumbled and he had his gun pressed to Biz’s forehead. Fabian almost couldn’t process it all. A thousand different thoughts and emotions overwhelmed him at once. Disbelief, heaps of joy and grief in equal measure, anger and confusion, and a dash of desire for the hell of it.

Leaving him stunned, mouth agape, until he heard Adaine begrudgingly grumble in his ear. “You should keep him alive long enough for someone to cast detect thoughts on him. Or at least put him in a zone of truth to get more intelligence out of him. Fabian!”

That last call of his name sent him into action. He dove to intercept Riz’s point-blank shot to Biz’s head seconds before he pulled the trigger. Taking his smaller hand in his, he lifted his jet-black arquebus to the ceiling and felt the bullet destined for Biz’s brain fly into the stone above. Riz squirmed and hissed in Fabain’s hold, still focused on intimidating Biz.

It took Fabian grabbing his chin and forcing Riz to look at him to get him to concentrate on him instead. And when Riz’s pupils didn’t dilate upon seeing his face, Fabian said in the voice he used over his mic, “You can’t kill him. Not yet, Gukgak. Stand down.”

Almost all at once, all of Riz’s ferality melted away. His slitted pupils widened far past their usual dilation, his hackles lowered, and his toothy sneer turned into a gentle expression of shock. “Fabian?”

There was no way he could hide the smile growing on his face, so instead he nodded his head over a delirious Biz. “You can knock him out if you want.”

“Oh, I—” Riz turned back to target, some of that ferality returning, and smacked him with the butt of his arquebus and sent Biz into unconsciousness. “—do.”

A few moments of silence passed after that. Their twin breaths and the hum of the surrounding technology were the only sounds in the room. They sat there, Riz partially in Fabian’s lap, Fabian’s hand still on his chin, staring at each other.

It wasn’t broken until Adaine spoke up after a long while. “Fabian? I’m sending Agents Faeth and Thistlespring down to collect Biz,” There was a moment of hesitation in her voice before she added. “And tell Gukgak that it’s good to have him back.”

Fabian couldn’t help but chuckle and give a little salute. “Yes, Ma’am.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“Who’s on the line?” Riz asked, his face scrunched up in confusion and want of inclusion. Rolling his eyes, Fabian fished his earpiece out and held it up to Riz’s. His face brightened at the sound of Adaine’s voice. “Abernant! It’s good to hear from you too.”

As Riz moved to take the earpiece from Fabian’s hands to do the work of holding it to his ear, Fabian’s heart dropped at the sight of his hand. No, hands. They’re bleeding. “What the hell happened, Gukgak?”

“I had to dig my way through a crystal to get to the wiring,” Riz answered way too nonchalantly. With a barely a glance at the offending wounds and a shrug of his shoulders. “I’m fine, though. I still can complete this mission.”

“Fine?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Riz waved him off as he told Adaine he’d talk to her later before turning back to him with a smile. “I’m a little tired, a lot beat up, and super stir-crazy, but fine. It’s nice to see you out in the field again and it’s nice to have some backup but—”

“I thought you were dead,” Fabian said because he couldn’t think of a better way to put it. He got Riz’s attention though.

Any and all frivolity and levity in Riz’s face and voice left him in an instant as he stared up at Fabian with wide, confused eyes. “What?”

“Everyone thought you were dead. We couldn’t Scry on you. And Locate Creature always came up empty. When we sent agents to retrieve your body there was nothing to find except for bloodstains.” All of Fabian’s grief threatened to close his throat as tears began to run down his cheeks, but he pushed through it. His voice cracking as he tried to hold it all together. “I thought you were dead and that it was my fault. That I wasn’t—that I let you…”

Riz Gukgak was a harsh guy. Sharp cheekbones, keen, perceptive eyes, rough manners, and a no-nonsense attitude when on the job. Most days the only soft thing about him was his curls; he usually hid those underneath a hat. But at Fabian’s words, he softened. Forgetting about any clues or mission objectives, he softened. Even after being beaten black and blue, stuck in a crystal for days on end, and trying desperately to dig himself out, he softened.

“Oh, Fabian.” He said, his voice, soft, barely above a whisper. His curls bounced as he shook his head and brought Fabian’s far larger form to his chest and held him there. Letting Fabian hear the steady beating of his heart. He was alive. Riz was alive. Fabian wrapped his arms around him and hugged him back oh so tight.

In that moment, something that had been broken was suddenly mended, the hollow feeling in Fabian’s chest finally dispersing, and the world was right again.

I think my niche within this fandom is writing fabriz fics where one of them saves the other and then they hug so sweetly... and I'm not mad about it.

I hope you like it, Indigo!

#fabriz #fabian seacaster #riz gukgak #fanfic #fabian x riz #spy au #cw guns #cw gun violence #apparently also i can't write anything under 2k words #there's something wrong with me #but doesn't mean you shouldn't send me more requests!

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e-adlirez · 17 days

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Treasure Seekers 2 go brrrrr

So this sequel... exists :D

Welcome to the second entry in the Treasure Seekers trilogy that I'm gonna ramble about for the next six hours (in me time, in you time it's probably gonna be like thirty minutes or less), if you wanna read it yourself before reading this ramble, here's an Archive copy. Otherwise, enjoy the ride :D

So our story begins with the Thea Sisters locked in a basement in the dark, with Russia's penchant for matches (and the basement's lack of a smoke alarm) coming in clutch. Seems like another vacation's gone awry for them :3 How could it have possibly turned out this way?

Flashback: so the girls are vibing in Moscow, visiting all the cool sights and all that, Pam is wanting to try some Russian cuisine, when they spot this girl that's wearing what appears to be a barrette that used to belong to Aurora's sister Hannah Lane. They follow her a bit, find a THUG JUMPSCARE, follow the girl, Cassidy and co into the building they're heading into, and oh dear door with passcode is in the way. They find this dood Sergei, explain to him the situation, deal with him being like "who is u, and wth are you on about mate" until they hear a scream and oh dear turns out that girl with the barrette is Sergei's sister Irina and she's in trouble.

Sergei opens the door, they go in, walk in on Cassidy, Stan and Max (who I will from now call SM for simplicity) doing their whole thug jumpscare thing and kidnapping Irina in 4K. SM somehow rolls a high enough strength roll (or the girls roll a low enough initiative) that two roughly intimidating guys successfully trap six people into a basement without breaking a sweat get yourself some self-defense classes girls oml, and that's the end of that.

Luke's up to his shenanigans again, and it seems that he's targeted Irina Lenenko for the same reason the girls double-taked at the sight of her barrette: Irina (and Sergei in conjunction) is a descendant of Hannah Lane, and Hannah Lane may or may not have known a thing or two about one of the seven treasures. It's such a shame tho that Irina doesn't wanna spill any of the tea. What's this about a "queen's jewel"?

Oh also Luke has Aurora's third diary. I would like you to pay attention to this detail in particular. Oh and he's keeping Irina ratgrabbed until she tells them what he wants to know from her. Oh naur

Meanwhile the girls infodump all of the TS 1 LANE LOORRREEEE to Sergei in one whole sitting and finally manage to get around to "what the hell does this have to do with my sister". Sergei thinks it's not really possible for Irina to know anything about great-grandma Hannah's involvement with Aurora, but Irina's still in trouble soooo time to solve this nerdy-ass science trivia keypad puzzle to get outa the basement. Irina's nowhere to be found in the lab itself, so they regroup at Sergei's place to use his phone tracker app on his computer.

Bad news, SM dumped Irina's phone somewhere in the lab so the tracker app is useless; good news, while looking for some Lane Lore™ to get some context about the situation, the girls find some Lane Lore™ :D

Turns out Aurora was looking for one of the seven treasures again, y'know just updating her sister on that, who'd moved to Saint Petersburg with her husband Ivan.

Seems like Aurora's quest at the time involved "the queen's jewel", which Aurora said she was 1000% down to ramble about to Hannah, maybe when she's done finding all seven treasures and hiding them from Jan.

I would like to take this moment to remind you that Aurora is a British Amelia Earhart, and if you dunno what that means, look up what Earhart was famous for and then look at this with that given context :']

With that lead, the girls plus Sergei take a ride on presumably the Krasnaya Strela night train to Saint Petersburg, read some Lane Lore on the way, Peter-Griffin upon realizing that they spent the whole night reading AO3 fanfics Aurora's diaries and it's like 2AM now, land in Saint Petersburg, stop by Nevsky Prospekt Street to have some breakfast (I think they went to Venezia?), and discussion.

(For the rest of this review, please assume when I say "the girls", I'm including Sergei because Sergei tags along with them and helps them out in their entire journey. It's okay, Sergei may be biologically male but he is an honorary female in our hearts /j)

Aurora mentioned the queen's jewel in her diary, and when you're in Russia, the first queen that comes to mind is Catherine II, so maybe something relating to her? Some Lane Lore of Aurora taking interest in Catherine II's Amber Room in her palace specifically confirms their theories, sooooooooo it's time to go to the Amber Room to see if Aurora left any clu--

The girls are about to walk out of the Catherine Palace to Peter Griffin in private when SM JUMPSCARE--

So SM is stalkin' around the Catherine Palace looking for something, so the girls stalk them back and follow them out of the palace, into a car (the girls called a separate taxi to follow them), and to a little gray building in the outskirts of the city. They don't follow SM into the building because it might be dangerous, but Irina's scarf lying around near the premises confirms that Irina was in fact there and possibly being held hostage in the building.

The girls do a little tactic I like to call "the Ding Dong Ditch": Pam and Nicky knock on the door, SM answers it, do a little Metal Gear exclamation point "HOW DID YOU GET HERE", Nicky and Pam book it so SM chases them, and that's literally how the other girls plus Sergei sneak into the building to get Irina out. (You dunno how badly I wanted to make a videogame reference for this but I couldn't find anything so here we are--)

With that, the girls plus the Lenenko siblings book it outa there without SM being none the wiser (seriously it doesn't even cross their mind that there are more than two Thea Sisters, that's how dum they are). Irina books a hotel room at a friend's place and gives them some extra Lane Lore that she never told Klawitz despite the interrogations:

Hannah Lane was once visited by Aurora unexpectedly, a little after Hannah and her husband moved to a house near the Ob River, in Siberia. Possible lead :3c? The girls think maybe, so they decide to head on over to the exact address in Novosibirsk, Siberia.

In Siberia, the girls cross the frozen Ob River in Novosibirsk to this abandoned little house, where they find this little note with a riddle that talks about Cleopatra and an emerald she had at one point, and CASSIDY JUMPSCARE--

Cassidy busts in, snatches the note and books it away on her snowmobile before the girls can even react. You may be wondering, how the hell did Cassidy get there and know where they were? The answer is the same as the reason behind the SM jumpscares in Russia and in book 1, and that is Luke.

Luke Von Klawitz is doing a little segment that I like to call: Luke Touch Grass, where it becomes increasingly clear that Luke's spent way too much time on 4Chan (/j but you'll see what I mean). Luke hears about SM's failure and facepalms. Then he calls his friend Petrovski, who has access to the database of all of Russia's airports, for help tracking down "six mice leaving Saint Petersburg". Petrovski gives him results in minutes: the girls and Sergei are leaving Saint Petersburg and heading for Novosibirsk, Siberia (most likely Tolmachevo Airport). With that intel, Klawitz looks into his own database of Aurora Beatrix Lane, finds a picture of Hannah and Aurora together, and uses his own version of Google Lens to figure out the exact coordinates where the picture was taken, which happens to be in Novosibirsk, Siberia.

No this man does not in fact canonically touch grass on the regular, who's asking

Anyway so he sent Cassidy the coords, instructions and Aurora's diary to go, and that's how Cassidy walked in on the girls in that little abandoned hut next to Ob River. Only thing is uh, she dropped her purse on the way out. A purse that just so happened to contain Aurora's diary that Luke gave her.

So the girls scoop that puppy up and assume that the treasure is Cleopatra's emerald, thus they think it's in Egypt.

So the girls go to Egypt :D (29 and a half hour flight there good god no wonder they conked out in the plane--)

The girls read some Lane Lore, something about Aurora finding the treasure and hiding it somewhere in a desert, in an "expanse pure and white" that a star compass will lead to. First thing the girls think of at the desert bit is the White Desert (Sahara el Beyda), specifically a spot near Cleopatra's pool, so they leave the airport (not realizing Cassidy is following them now) and head over to a market to buy some supplies because might I remind you, they initially went to Moscow, Russia for vacation.

While in the market, Pam meets a guy named Omar. Pam tells him a little bit about them going to Cleopatra's pool in Sahara el Beyda, and she finds out that Omar just so happens to be an Archaeology major in Oxford University who's here on his summer vacation and works as a guide for Sahara el Beyda, and is more than down to give the girls a tour. Talk about lucky :D

The next day the girls take the scenic route and after a while make it to Siwa, where Omar books a room in a hotel for them, and the girls find this interesting myth there about Cleopatra that I will summarize here:

Cleopatra was once given a jewel that maxes out the owner's rizz and the effect is supposedly indefinite. Cleopatra liked the jewel so much that she wore it on her crown at all times... until she grew a bit self-conscious about the gem's maxxed rizz effect and how everyone kept eyeing the emerald a second too long for comfort, so she decided to hide away said rizz in a spot where none of her rivals could get to it. Oh and uh Cleopatra wrote up a dedication to Ra that's hella cryptic too.

One long rest later, the girls go to Cleopatra's pool on a donkey cart. Yes, a donkey cart. It was Omar's idea. Speaking of Omar, prepare yourself buddy because the girls have dubiously decided to give you some Lane Lore to chew on. O-oh you like it a lot. A lot a lot. Well okay cool, maybe you can help out, cool.

The girls manage to figure out the riddle in Cleopatra's dedication, find a little stone coffer that has the queen's treasure and-- SM JUMPSCARE

With a donkey as the girls' only escape method and Omar having suddenly disappeared, a scuffle ensues where the girls play hot potato with the box until SM gets their hands on it and opens it, and here we get a very accurate depiction of what SM and the girls found in the box once it was actually opened.

Description: a hand made of salt shaped in an upside-down "ok" symbol, circa 1920s-30s.

The sheer whiplash of this leaves both sides of the conflict losing enough HP that they're all on red-- SM is blaming the girls for this (how dare >:[) and dip. Omar is gone, and all the girls get as compensation is the empty box and a letter from Aurora telling them that they'll know to read the hidden clues. The girls head back feeling very hollow and dead inside, and this is the one time one of the girls questions how the hell did SM know they were at Siwa. I mean they never get any answer to this (kinda), but it is a milestone! They're aware of it now!

Once they get back to Cairo, they ask around and find that Omar's completely up and vanished, and they decide they'll just head back to Moscow since their investigation has come to a dead end. On the way, Pam comments about the falafel she bought being hella salty, which leads Violet to an epiphany that hey, the Sahara isn't the only desert that exists, let alone the only desert known for how white it is (like how Boracay Beach is known for how white and fine its sand is, but it's not the only white sand beach that exists). A quick Google search (and a long flight (35 HOURS CAIRO TO SUCRE???)) leads them to the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia.

Nicky reserves a room for them at Hotel Luna Salada (a real place you can book a stay at actually :D), and they make a friend by the name of Adriana, a local waitress in the hotel restaurant. Adriana helps them pick out a dessert, fills them in on some stuff about the Salar since the girls came here 100% out of impulse, and talks about possible itinerary locations to go to, like the Isla de Pescado, Tiwanaku (the "Gate of the Sun"), Lake Titiaca, and Laguna Colorada. Y'know, typical tourist stuff, and Adriana was so kind to show them pictures she took when she visited said places herself! :D

Anyway so while the girls long rest, Luke is mulling about in his base waiting for updates. Someone calls him about the whole Egypt thing, and Luke calls the girls incompetent? Rude, oh and something about the caller being Luke's "secret weapon". Cassidy calls him on a theory she has about the gemstone being in Cleopatra's palace, and since the girls are currently long-resting (which means they aren't doing anything), Luke figures that a little diving trip in Alexandria to search for the gem with Cassidy won't hurt. Besides, he still has his secret weapon.

Oh yeah and he knows the girls are long resting because he has a drone in Bolivia spying on them and showing him their every move. Touch grass, Luke. No, going on a diving trip in Alexandria doesn't count, there's barely any grass there /j

Morning comes in Bolivia, and the girls head out early to search the Salar as much as they can. They look around the flat white desert, eat some late breakfast, toy around with forced perspective camera shenanigans for a bit, and read up on some LANE LOOORREEEEE

So Aurora's been to Pumapunku and Tiwanaku which is cool, she paid a visit to the archaeological site probably and that's really cool. She says something about hiding the queen's treasure in a fish's stomach covered in very fine thorns. Sergei ends up having an epiphany, and that leads the girls to Isla de Pescado, which just so happens to be "Fish Island" in Spanish, and has cacti on it, it's all coming together :D

Oh and the fish drawing Aurora made is coords to the treasure seemingly so that's cool-- OMAR JUMPSCARE

The girls are very surprised to find Omar joining them, and Omar explains that he booked it when SM came over and lost his cellphone as a result. However, he managed to figure out that Aurora's riddle was about salt and not sand, and decided to head on over to Bolivia since he assumed that's where the girls are going. How did he find them? It was just out of pure coincidence, and also the fact that the girls are extremely recognizable. Hm.

Anyway, Paulina plugs the coordinates into her GPS and leads the girls plus Omar to a little cave at the bottom of a little embankment. The girls find that, lo and behold, there's an old tin box containing a bright green emerald!

Meanwhile Luke is not finding anything in Alexandria haha L, LVK L get dunked on Luke, Cassidy girlie that's not a man to simp for find someone else gurl-- oh dear Luke is alerted that the treasure has been found and now he's planning on heading over to Bolivia? Now how could he possibly know that?

In the meantime, I dunno what's up in the air or if it's the Archaeology major speaking in him but Omar's really invested in this treasure, even more so than the girls to the degree that the girls are a little freaked out by it-- RHEA JUMPSCARE-- Paulina calms the big bord down and gets it to not trample Omar please, he's still a friend of theirs. Colette picks up this blue notebook Omar seems to have dropped.

The girls plus Omar head back to the SUVs, and Omar is really trying to persuade the girls that he should bring it back to Cairo. The girls are not jazzed at the idea because Omar bringing it back alone will be too unsafe, y'know with Luke and Cassidy and SM and all. They gotta think about this rationally-- WHOA OKAY OMAR calm your man tits buddy why are you demanding they trust you like you automatically deserve your trust-- ohh that's how Klawitz has known about the girls' whereabouts, Omar was working as a double agent.

So yeah Omar snatches the box from Colette and drives off in his SUV, leaving the girls in the dust. The girls freak out and are feeling that EMOTIONAL DAMAGE, but Colette for some reason is very calm about Omar booking it with the emerald. And that's because SHE HAS IT :D she did a lil' switcheroo so now the emerald's with her while the box is with Omar.

For context about how Colette knew about this, remember the blue notebook Omar dropped? Yeah that notebook was a company LVK notebook, straight from Luke himself. Then after Colette saw it, everything about Omar became incredibly sus, so she performed this precautionary measure.

So now the girls talk to the local authorities about how the whole thing with the emerald is gonna go down, and soon the girls are waiting for a plane back to Moscow.

As for Omar, well, he goes over to Luke's super-fancy hotel in La Paz, Bolivia, and he hands the box to Luke, explicitly stating that he decided he'd let Luke open it before he himself can appreciate it.

Luke opens the box, and here we see an accurate depiction of what Luke sees.

Description: an upside-down "ok" symbol drawn in strawberry pink lip balm, signed Colette [insert last name], circa 2018.

Luke punts the box (prolly with the lip balm still inside it) into the swimming pool, tells Omar to get out, and that's the end of that. Haha Omar L Luke L

The girls head back to Moscow to drop Sergei off when SURPRISE PARTY BY IRINA'S SQUAD :DDD

Then the girls are about to return to Whale Island to presumably Peter Griffin in their dorms, when Colette suggests they make a journal a la Aurora Beatrix Lane, and they do. In a pink notebook because it was Colette's idea so we might as well give her that

And they take a black-and-white group picture of them wearing adventurer clothes like Aurora would've done. The brainrot is real, these girls are mentally ill /j

And that's the book :D

... Honestly it's the most meh out of the trilogy besides the big-brain bits in the middle and the end imo

The writing was so much more stilted in this one, even for Scholastic standards, and everything feels pretty..... kid's book. Even more so than the usual in the book's English translations. I do readings for the books in some of my Discords, and this book did not read well at aaallll. And I haven't even mentioned the typos in the book (they're not a lot, but they exist, and they're kinda egregious :D) and some grammar errors if I'm remembering things correctly. It might just be a translation thing-- I worry a bit for the translator who had to put this together.

Luke's character here is also kinda wonk? For one we see him directly contradict his anti-friendship spiel in TS 1 since he literally greets Petrovski like a friend (maybe it's a "friendship doesn't exist except in 4Chan" thing, I dunno). Then in the middle of the book, he gets... very Disney villain-y. The most egregious example here is the chapter "Lurking in the Shadows", where as you can see

I am confusion?? Luke has been described as a to-the-point brat who hardly cares for the means to his end (unless it will impact his ability to achieve the end) and is so fixated on his goal that he doesn't touch grass. Is this not-touching-grass behavior? Yeah, definitely, but this??? This is too Disney villain???? Why does the man break into an evil cackle in front of Cassidy???? I understood it in book 1 because man thinks he's doing a "You may think you have outsmarted me but I have OUTSMARTED YOUR OUTSMARTING", but this one?? Maybe it's my personal taste, but it's too cartoonish and too... deviated from what we know of him up to this point.

ALSO TWIRLING HIS MUSTACHE? WHAT MUSTACHE IS HE TWIRLING THAT THING IS NOT TWIRL-ABLE

Also time to address the one big plot hole in this book: Aurora's diary.

So in this book there's only one diary, which is infinitely simpler than the two we got in the first book. This diary supposedly contains Aurora's records of her mission in hiding Cleopatra's Rizzmerald, and the details are supposedly vague enough that Luke felt the need to kidnap and interrogate Irina, a Hannah Lane descendant, to fill in the blanks. However, when you look at the contents of the diary itself (which lord knows how many times Luke himself has looked through it), there's hardly any blanks that need to be filled, at least if you're Luke.

The diary itself is mostly in the background-- like I said, not as much Lane Lore here as the previous book, the girls mostly rely on Aurora's letters to Hannah here-- but there's one specific entry the girls read in the latter half of the book that explicitly mentions Pumapunku and Tiwanaku, and how Aurora is there for her mission to hide the emerald. Complete with coordinates hidden in a little drawing! My one question I have for Luke is, why didn't he go straight to Bolivia and started searching there? Why did he go through all the effort of kidnapping Irina, tailing the girls around Sahara el Beyda, letting SM fall for the salt replica gambit, left his base to touch grass and go on a dive with Cassidy in Egypt; all if he could've just gone straight to Bolivia to look for the treasure there? Sure, Aurora did a good job hiding the coordinates in the fish doodle, but someone as observant and as obsessed about the outcome instead of the journey like Luke would rather have sidestepped all the Aurora shenanigans and beelined straight to the goal if he was able to.

Luke hardly has an excuse here because he owned the diary at the start of the book, and most definitely read through it many times (and we know he's the type to do this, see TS 1). The plot hole is plot hole-ing, it seems :/

Maybe it was just an excuse for the girls to get a giant glowing arrow pointing in the direction of the treasure? It certainly feels like it.

Anyway, the things that carry this book and made it memorable when I first read it (and allowed me to ignore the iffy bits) are the gottems and Omar as a character. Aurora setting up a salt replica of the Rizzmerald as a gottem in a time capsule, only to be opened almost a hundred years later to still be as potent as intended when it was made so long ago? That is amazing, like c'mon, pure comedy material.

Even funnier is Colette doing the exact same thing, only with her lip balm. Luke is quaking in his bougie-ass leather boots.

Now for Omar. This may be a hot take of mine here, but Omar's sus-ness is actually at a decent level compared to the girls and what they usually deal with. On one hand, Omar is incredibly suspicious with how incredibly lucky the girls are to find an Archaeology Oxford major working as a Sahara el Beyda tour guide; but on the other hand, the girls had almost the exact same situation with Diego in Mexico (I didn't mention him in the first review, but he came in clutch in TS 1).

The girls met Diego in Merida, Mexico, and he helped them with their research into "the invisible place", which happened to be Uxmal, along the Puuc Route. Diego also just so happened to be a tour-guide-in-training for the Puuc Route, which was the place the girls just so happened to need to go to find Aurora's second journal.

In comparison, the girls meet Omar in Khan El-Khalili while they were looking for supplies for their trip to the Siwa Oasis. It comes up in conversation that the girls are headed to Siwa, and Omar just so happened to be a tour guide for Sahara el Beyda, which was where the Siwa Oasis is, and it just so happened to be where the girls needed to go. When you stack them up together, it made perfect sense that the girls thought they could trust him-- Diego didn't know much about their trip and helped them the best he could (which was a lot), so why wouldn't Omar do the same? He's an Oxford Archaeology major, too, for crying out loud, the girls struck gold in the end!

Gold that was too shiny and too good to be true. Gold that was, in the end, nothing more than pyrite, fool's gold.

Omar is a good case for why you should be careful with who you trust, and when you should start thinking a little bit when you're getting a little too lucky with the people you meet. When the girls got to know him a little more and decided to trust him and tell him the deal with their trip, he got way invested in the gem-- too invested to not be a little bit suspicious. Maybe the girls mistook it for his passion for his archaeology major, maybe they mistook it for something else-- but whatever the case, Omar pulled the cheesecloth over the girls' eyes and really only fell apart near the end, when his alibis and behavior started becoming more and more suspicious; and by then, Omar didn't need to be as inconspicuous, and the girls had gotten to know him too much to readily say to him "okay buddy can you kindly f%ck off, your vibes are not vibing here".

The girls probably should've been suspicious when Omar reappeared in Bolivia out of nowhere, but I guess his alibi was just good enough (and the girls at this point were probably running on adrenaline, caffeine and a brain on 70% capacity at most) to pass the Deception check.

Fr tho there were some bits where the girls should've found him sus but they didn't (him accidentally saying "I did it" when they uncovered the emerald, and also him handling the emerald the way he did), so shrugs. It could be a translation thing, but it could also be something else.

Anyway, kinda meh for a sequel, but it does have its standouts that allow it to somewhat stand on the same level as the first and third books. Kinda.

Hey, at least it's not as bad as Crystal Fairies-- that's the bar of bad-ness I'm setting. It's not as bad as Crystal Fairies and that's what matters--

Also special thanks to @ishmeowwow (it won't let me ping you for some reason bestie <:[) for making the lil' artworks haha

#geronimo stilton #thea sisters #thea stilton #book review #book rambles #book rant #thank you ishmeow for making the gottems for me :D #you came in clutch while my ipad is still dieded thank you bestie <3 #in the book it's just the lip balm but ishmeow decided to go all-out with the gottem gag and i can't be more grateful lmao #same goes with the gemstone in aurora's gottem (it's just the fake tiara plus fake gem) but hey the more salt the merrier :D #book 2 luke is so jarringly different from his other depictions but at the same time #he does not in fact touch grass and he does crack an evil cackle at least once a book so #i dunno how i feel about it . .#on one hand it adds to him not touching grass #but on the other hand it doesn't connect with his “this villain is supposed to make you shnit your pants at how intimidating he is”#he's intimidating because of his connections his ability to basically spy on the entire world and control everything from his base #and y'know he can tell his goons to do whatever and they'll literally wreak havoc to fulfill said requests #he was so intimidating in concept that they had to nerf him with incompetent goons lmao #after doing last minute research i am deeply concerned for the girls' wallets and their mental and physical health :D #like good god i thought a ten hour flight was unbearable and made your body stiff but holy damn #i'm not complaining too much about the timeline tho because this is hilarious and makes the girls look so neurodivergent #“what do you mean we flew a total of 64 hours by plane feels like it's only been a day to m--”#*dies*

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waterfallofspace · 8 months

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One Is Not Better Than None

Soooo I was scrolling through my google docs and remembered this little AU that I started writing (with the help of @themiseryandcompany) a few months back when I first joined snzblr~

And well, the actual 6 part story where they meet isn't finished, and reading it back... the parts that ARE finished could use a lot of editing~ it was one of my first attempts at snzfics, but I did find this little drabble/side story from the same AU~

It's not good, definitely not up to my current standards, but I did a little editing to make it hopefully readable, aaaaand since I've been a bit slow with content, I'll throw it out there incase anyone wants it!

~For Context: In this AU B/akugo is a doctor, and S/hoto is his boyfriend/a barista~ Word Count: 1.3k of utter nonsense that I'm posting because why not~

All Characters Written As 18+ In This Story, (picture late 20's)

~~~~~~~

Katsuki’s days off are few and far between, so when he does get time to spend at home, he finds that he often has a shadow.

Shoto seems to require constant contact, as if he fears that should their bodies stop touching for even a second, Katsuki would be out the door again. It would be annoying beyond belief, if it was anyone else. But it’s not anyone else.

He smirks over the journal he’s reading as Shoto lets out a breath that borders on a whine. He’s been trying to beat that level for an hour, and it seems like he’s just had to restart once more.

“It’s not funny,” Shoto starts, catching Katsuki’s eyes as he glares up from his perch on Katsuki’s lap. A half-hearted gaze at best. “I’ve been at this forever. I just wanna beat it but this one boss has a frankly offensive level of regen. I know the strategy but I keep messing up the timing.”

With another sigh of frustration, the glare is long forgotten, instead replaced by a look that leaves Katsuki fighting the urge to kiss him until all the breath is sucked out of their lungs.

“Why don’t you just take a break and come back to it later when you’re less frustrated?” Katsuki offers, running a hand through Shoto’s mismatched hair. “Isn’t that what you always tell me when a recipe I’m trying for the first time isn’t going the way I want it to?”

“Yeah, but…”

“What, too proud to take your own advice, Icy-Hot?”

It’s a nickname that came into being the first time Katsuki stayed over. Shoto had been sick at the time, and it was one of the first nights of pure vulnerability they’d experienced.

With a fever, his body gets incredibly hot, but at the same time, he’s always swearing it’s freezing, shivering to make his point. During the night Katsuki tried to get him to take some blankets off, lest he smother himself to death, and Shoto’s reply was “I’m an icy pop”. (To this day he still blames the fever talk for that little nugget).

To which Katsuki responded with a lighthearted “Oh yeah? Then why is said ‘icy pop’ so hot he nearly burns to the touch? Icy pop, more like Icy-Hot” and it just stuck from there. He normally saves it for playful teasing, such as today, but occasionally it slips out with a touch of softness when Shoto falls asleep in his arms.

“No, this is different. I’m not frustrated, I just wahh!-” He breaks off, and Katsuki glances at him to see his eyes glossing over, mouth hanging slightly open, right on the brink for a few seconds until-

“heH-! hH’KESHHiew!”

A beat passes, Shoto’s eyes still unfocused, Katsuki biting a blessing back on his tongue.

“Snff- Bless me.” And with that, Shoto’s back to the level, leaving Katsuki to stare at him with a mystified expression.

After several minutes of silence, and Katsuki’s eyes never leaving his face, mouth still slightly ajar, Shoto finally breaks away from his level to glance up at his boyfriend. “Uhh… what’s wrong..?”

“Y-you… sneezed…”

Shoto lets out a small chuckle, letting his phone rest on the couch as he sits up to meet Katsuki’s gaze. “Yeah? And? I do that quite often, you should know that by now.”

Katsuki rolls his eyes, as Shoto continues with a smirk. “And even if I didn’t, it’s a perfectly normal bodily function. You’re a doctor, I’m worried for your patients if hearing someone sneeze shocks you this much.”

“But… you… it was…. only one?”

“I guess so, yeah.”

There’s another pause, then Katsuki begins again, his words coming out uncharacteristically timid. “It’s… it’s never just one…”

The dumbfounded nature of Katsuki’s voice is enough to make Shoto burst into laughter. The joyous sounds finally snap his boyfriend out of the trance that the single sneeze had put him in, as he lightly punches Shoto’s arm.

Shoto pulls away, still shaking with the joyous tune dancing from his chest, rocking the couch with each burst. For a minute, Katsuki feels his heart start beating through his throat, mind running wild. His full laughter is so rare… I’d do anything to hear it for the rest of my life.

Finally coming to his senses, Katsuki fires back with, “Hey, don’t laugh at me! I’ve never heard you sneeze just once before, it’s always at least two, more often in the hundreds”

This earns him a very weak punch, laughter still dancing through Shoto’s eyes. “I’m not that bad!” Sniffling lightly to test the waters, Shoto shrugs. “But yeah, just the one, I don’t feel any more. I’m sorry, I’ll make up for it next time I’m sure.”

Shoto reaches forward, touching their lips in an apology for the harm that his lack of a fit had apparently caused. Katsuki leans into the kiss, but his eyes still seem a bit far away.

~~~~~~~

The rest of the day, it felt as if Shoto was under constant surveillance. Every time he looked over at Katsuki, his boyfriend was watching him, and would quickly avert his eyes, pretending to be doing something else.

Finally enough is enough. Shoto stands from the chair he was lounging in, and walks over to Katsuki who’s currently trying, and failing, to pull his eyes away long enough to read an article on his phone.

Wordlessly, Shoto leans down and rubs his nose against the cat-infested couch. Usually his meds are enough to starve off any really desperate attacks, but living in an apartment with your allergens is enough to set anyone off.

Add to that Shoto’s already sensitive nose, and it’s a sure thing that you’ll get at least a couple small fits per day. However, right now he needs that fit immediately, and his meds seem to be working a bit too well, so it’s time for drastic measures.

Rubbing his nose at all was a sure fire way to form a tickle, but add to that rubbing it against an allergen, and the reaction was certain to be quick and merciless.

“What are you doi-” Katsuki starts, but is cut off by Shoto’s breath catching, as he holds up a finger, attempting to explain himself before the fit can start.

“You... w- were... hehh- ihh... st- staring... at m... ESH’shiew-! Ishh’yu-! kishh’oo-! tishh’iew-!”

Still trying to catch up, Katsuki can only blink, muttering to himself, “I was staring…”

“huh- ishh-tishh-kESH’iew! Tishh’oo! Heh- hH’kschh!”

“Bless you-”

“hep’kschh-kshh-nggxt’shiew! hehh… hH’ngnt! G’nxxt!uhh Hh’ ihhh… hDT-”

Shoto pauses for a second, watery eyes pointed at the ceiling, seemingly stuck in a hitchy agony, caught between the overwhelming urge to sneeze, and the denial taunting him.

With a shaky exhale, and a snff, he tries to finish the sentence he began earlier, “Staring ahahh at-”

-which the sneezes pick as the perfect time to release themselves. “ihh’keschh’oo-! hH’ISH’hieww-! Staring at me. Oh, bless me. It was starting to scare me a little."

Katsuki flushes at the accusation, admitting to himself, and only himself, that there may be a touch of truth in it. He sheepishly hands some tissues to Shoto, who takes them with a wink and a chuckle, cleaning himself up as Katsuki averts his eyes.

Once finished, he drapes himself onto the couch, lips hungrily capturing Katsuki in a deep kiss, only stopping once he needs to take a desperate breath and duck another “hh’kssh-! Ihh… heH! hahh’keTSH’iew-!” into his shoulder.

“Bless you… Ya know, you shouldn’t have done that, you’re gonna be sneezing for hours now ya dumbass.” The words may sound harsh, but there’s no fire behind them.

Shoto lets his head rest on Katsuki’s chest, looking up at him, eyes alight with mischief. “Well worth it in my book. As much as I enjoy you watching me, I was starting to worry you’d forgotten how to blink.”

This earns him another light punch, but the laughter that comes with it makes his statement even more true.

Anything is worth getting to hear that laughter. The true kind, the kind he doesn’t let other people hear. I’d do anything to hear it for the rest of my life.

Slowly he lets his eyes close, drifting off to the sound of Katsuki’s heartbeat, their breathing falling in sync, exactly how it was meant to be.

La fin.

#waterfalldrabbles #because this is not a fic as much as a...#'tosses it at you and scurries away' type of drabble #it's not very good but hey! it doesn't need to be!#just a little bit of nonsense as a light apology for taking so long to fill requests or post anything worthwhile~#i am currently in the middle of a specific collab with a beautifully talented person #and I'm INSANELY excited to share our baby <333 #buuuuut for now~ have this nonsense and please forgive me for it #(i will say tho~ reading it does make me a little happy because I can definitely see improvement now!)#(whiiiich does mean that it just looks even worse haha~)#okay okay ill stop stalling and hit post #b/akugou & s/hoto doctor AU #incase i ever finish/post the actual fic theres a tag for that now

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jyou-no-sonoko19 · 8 months

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『Not so resurrected now, are you?』

#Chilling Adventures of Sabrina #Michelle Gomez #CAoS #caos Lilith #Ro gifs #Hi I'm not breaking all our hearts without reason out of nowhere #this was a request from a very special Marithist #This scene was darker than most and so I focussed on getting vividness where possible #and not worrying about the huge artefacts #soooo....... she sure is keeping herself under control there huh (T^T)#The way this whole ordeal from start to finish damaged both her sanity and her millennia of learned composure to *this * degree... i just #This is not the Lilith we've known #Certainly she's been like this in centuries past but... this isn't how things are supposed to be for her now #she's supposed to have it together (I mean from her pov ofc)#but here she is virtually sobbing in company #And she's saying 'please'#earnestly because she's desperate and no machinations are going to fix this #BUT. Just in case it doesn't work... she's still got rage. Raging against the dying of the light #she's still got that spearhead waiting just outside the room leaning up against the wall #and I enjoy (/masochistic) imagining her brief emotional and physical journey there and back #This brought her from ''fuck me...'' to ''FUCK EVERYONE THAT ISN'T ME" which is her unfortunate but helpful #default setting #cw stabbing #tw murder #cw blood

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yuwuta · 15 hours

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is this a safe space...

#i like this blog bc i can just say things i cant on my other one 😭 or at least delete it before people see it #but so many of those dating [x] character moodboards and aesthetic posts or whatever r just so.... white 😭😭#half the time it's some white dude w dyed hair or white dude cosplaying or just some racially ambiguous but pale as fuck man as the chrctr.#and then the dating aesthetic pics r always the palest and thinnest pinterest aesthetic couple pics....#like... its getting tew close to polypore-wattpad days for me...#even the ones that are like insert character's hands or body irl like........#i GET the point of those it's nice to have a visual for reference and im not saying everyone doing it w/ malicious intent #but the fact that its so common and doesn't cross peoples minds is also equally telling #and when there is a moldboard or 'inclusive' dating post its always (a) by request which means it wasn't the first thought of the op...#and (b) again is like .... the most sterilized racially ambiguous 'poc' 😭😭😭😭😭😭#the way people cant even use words in fics to describe readers or NOT make reader white and now we've been reduced to pictures #that just make it more blatant end it all i beg 😭😭😭

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ramenwithbroccoli · 4 days

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finally introducing the other character who also occupies a part of my brain:

Meet Giewont!

while the creator of it, Maria Leszczyńska, originally intended to make a war machine, she struggled a lot with finding resources then. however, with her and her family's life deeply affected by both world wars, the idea never left her mind. inspired by utopian idea of glass houses from a novel "the spring to come" ¹, she created her machine from glass. it would be cheap to make, yet durable, available as help to those in need, able to do hard work in times when it was needed - but if fragile peace was in danger again, it could fight alongside other soldiers. as if to set that role of protector in stone, she named it Giewont ². to test her creation, she gifed it to her brother Andrzej, who owned a small farm near the seaside.

Giewont worked as much as four men, not needing to be paid or fed like people would. it was a perfect solution for everybody, the new industrial revolution. that was, until about half a year into her work, glass started to shatter. it turned out not to be as durable as the utopian story made it to be, especially in contact with rough farm tools. small cracks also started to appear after they worked outside in winter, with low temperatures on the outside and hot steam circulating inside. with her fingers and edges getting sharper every day, Giewont was forbidden from taking care of animals anymore, as she would injure them. she was given the only task with no way to injure others - they recieved a showel fully made from metal and was ordered to dig. she did as she was told, even though the work put strain on her already-falling-apart fingers.

but when one day, when returning home, she noticed daughter of Andrzej, Aniela, swimming too far away from the shore and having trouble coming back, long forgotten wire snapped into its place as she jumped into the water to save her. while Giewont did bring her back home, carrying her in their arms, the girl had severe cuts on her body from coming in contact with robot's sharp hands. furious with his sister creation, Andrzej took it outside, desperate to destroy it. blinded by anger, he didn't even notice the storm gathering over the horizon

Andrzej took the metal showel and struck Giewont on the side on their head, then again, until her body fell and crumbled to pieces. He covered it with sand and raised his hands to deal the final blow.

that's when the lightning struck.

and the man fell to the ground, dead.

the sand melted from the heat around Giewont, filling the empty spaces and connecting the pieces back together. raising from their shallow grave, with body more rigid than what she was used to, she took her shovel and decided to bury the man, with what respect they had left for him. that was, after she dealt the final blow herself.

although miraculous, the lightning didn't return her to the previous state of being. their motions were stiff and some parts of theirs got lost forever among the sands of the beach. the part of her head where the first blow was dealt never worked properly again, rendering Giewont deaf in one ear (or whatever was left from it). however it did some good as well, as it widened the space around her mouth, finally making them able to talk - even if it was simillar to a whistle. determined to help people but with a body that kept hurting everyone around her, Giewont set off into the world, trying to find a home and piece herself together, leaving parts herself and a dead body behind.

footnotes below the cut:

1. "During one pause in their journey, the elder Baryka tells Cezary of an entrepreneur who, along Poland’s Baltic coast, devised an ingenious method for manufacturing durable glass from the vast reserves of pristine sands that had lain for eons beneath coastal peat fields. By a massive Rube Goldberg-type arrangement of channels and a creative method for harnessing the westerly winds (the storytelling here is a literary engineering feat in itself), an incursion of the sea provides power for converting the extracted sand into glass. From this vitreous wonder substance, prefabricated houses of glass are built inexpensively. The houses are strong as steel, hygienic, and easy to heat in winter and keep cool in summer. Whole villages are built with houses of brightly colored glass. Life becomes less of a struggle for mere existence, more civilized, and without the need to toil incessantly. People eat less meat or no meat at all, and begin to revere farm animals as sacred beings. For the reader, the digression serves to freshen the mental palate. For Cezary, however, the story is altogether beguiling, raising the utopian prospect of a more wonderful life, reunited with a homeland that might have been his to begin with and a father he has just rediscovered" - via neh.gov

wow thanks for skimming through footnotes as well! as a reward, here's the first ever design of both Janka and Giewont (which proves they were both created around the same time :] )

2. "Those knights had been in a deep sleep for hundreds of years and they only would wake up if it is time to fight on a great battle. When this day comes, the earth will move, there will be thunders that would shake the sky, many trees will fall and break, and there would be noises when the Border Mountains will break. On that moment the knights will take their horses and they will gallop to fight for Poland once again." - the legend of the sleeping knights

a lot had changed since that time :]

#i hope it wasn't too long :')#sorry if tge drawings vary in between them i kind of drew them in way different times #AND BTW i know all of them have cracks but yellow cracks were supposed to apper after they got almost killed #i just never did the drawing of original giewont. huh #me when i try nkt to give my oc a backstory the lenght of do you love the colors of the sky post -> 😰😰#OH AND ALSO she doesn't have to be purple. thats just what i went with because of my pens but. shes glass #they can be blue. they can be green. they can be yellow or rainbow or whatever. she can be see through. so if i draw her again and the colo #is different don't yell at me alright? the cracks stay yellow tho #spg fanbot #<- i mean. technically it is the same case as with janka but im even less sure now. can remive the tag at request #oc #original character #giewont spg #<- gotta remember to put spg there or mountain fans of tumblr will come for my blood #welcome to the family giewont :D

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