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confusednarcissistwrites · 4 years

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okok hi so basically I’ve been working on this lil blurb but idk I think maybe you might be much much better than me for it , ur writing slapssss, but basically it’s a Daniel Middleton piece based off the song Lost by frank ocean where the reader is part of their dealing ring and is in love w danny and gets too wrapped up in the business but danny is too busy with his crush on mckayla to notice ? Idk I know it’s super specific but just a thought I had

OKAY SO

I took a LOT of liberties with this request, but I did it for a reason. PLEASE WRITE THIS FIC. I guarantee that no one else could write it better than you, okay? Also, I’m SO sorry this took me ages to finish and apologies to all my other requests as well. I’m really going to try and get more work out to you guys in the next few weeks.

Alright, without further ado, I hope you enjoy this raunchy ass fic lmao

Third Wheel (D.M.)

(smut, angst, blood, violence, cheating, cursing)

The Bonnie and Clyde of Cape Cod.

You and Hunter Strawberry had been together for as long as anyone could remember. Even in elementary school, you two had reigned over your peers with an iron fist; no one fucked with either of you in fear of pissing off the other. As you both got older, your relationship progressed from a platonic partnership to a romantic one. This often entailed hot and heavy sightings at the drive-in, and mangled noses on faces of guys who decided to look at you just a little bit too long.

You had been happy. He was your constant. You both had an undying loyalty to each other as business partners and lovers.

But then came Danny Middleton.

Danny was a scrawny boy from nowhere who didn’t belong anywhere. Perhaps it was fate that he would meet Hunter that hideously hot day in 1991 in that little convenience store. People didn’t notice Danny until he started running around with Hunter.

You were hesitant, bitter even that Hunter let someone else on the team without talking to you first. You were more of a distributor than a seller, but you had thought you were more involved than to be excluded. The more you heard about Danny, the less Hunter asked you to make drop-offs. You felt you were getting wedged out.

The first time you met Danny was a whirlwind. He’d claimed a cousin of his had a hookup across town, but the rendezvous went south quickly. You vividly remember stepping in between the two, your fist meeting the side of the guy’s jaw with a sickening crack. He didn’t do much to fight back as he was pretty doped up, but you weren’t about to take any risks when he pulled a gun from his belt. Danny sat cornered and slack-jawed as he watched you wail on the man he’d been threatened by just moments before. Once you got him onto the ground, you knocked the pistol from his hand and straddled his middle, slamming the butt across his face. Adrenaline blurred your vision as blood splattered, your relentless attack not stopping until he quit moving. You lifted yourself up, meeting Danny’s terrified gaze for a brief moment before walking out of the house, him tailing behind you.

Hunter was furious when you both got back into the car. “What the fuck happened?” You were both visibly bloodied.

“I took care of it. Let’s go,” you replied calmly, handing him the piece. Hunter looked up at you and then at Danny in the back seat, handing him the gun wordlessly before speeding back to the garage.

When you got back, you sat up on the counter, your head back against the cupboards. Hunter dabbed at your swollen knuckles with a soapy cloth. “You okay, doll?” he asked quietly, looking up at you through his blonde lashes.

“Mhm,” you nodded, watching as he bandaged you up. He pressed a kiss to your cheek before helping you down and walking with you to the seating area where Danny was sat, his head in his hands still lost in thought. Hunter sat down on the sofa and you laid down with your head in his lap.

“You will never pull anything like that again. You hear me?” Hunter’s voice was calm and chilling. “Do you understand me?”

Danny nodded, standing up. “We’ll find another way.”

“Are you even fucking listening to me? I just said no-“

“No, look, you’re upset, I get it. But we’ll find a way to work this out if you just let me-“

“Drop it, Middleton. Go home.”

You pinched the bridge of your nose, willing the pounding in your skull to ease. You listen as Danny walked out of the shop, the bell chiming above the door as he left.

“He’s reckless,” you mumbled, opening your eyes to look up at Hunter.

He just nodded, his fingers brushing over your collarbone as he stared into space in thought.

You didn’t like it. Nothing would change your mind. The business was for you and Hunter, and that was it. Danny was only trouble. And Hunter probably would have agreed with you if the next few days had played out differently.

••••••

In the course of a week, the group was making quadruple what you were before. Contacts were made, deliveries were driven, and money was counted in a circle every night, going three ways. It was the kind of summer we watched in movies, and now you were living the dream. The three of you spent evenings together getting high surrounded by cash; it was unreal. You all grew quite close through inebriated conversations about life and the world. You felt you could rely on either of them for anything you needed at any time.

It was because of this you didn’t speak up despite your growing insecurity in this situation. You’d felt Hunter rarely had time for you anymore, as though you were becoming a third wheel to him and Danny despite your relationship. But who were you to allow your insecurities to get in the way of the biggest break he’d had in his life? So you stayed quiet. Perhaps that was why the resentment building in you grew so poisonous.

You and Danny often jabbed at each other, usually scuffling over little bullshit that didn’t really matter. Hunter acted as a mediator when things got too heated, much to your irritation. He rarely defended you, sometimes even siding with Danny when he was feeling ballsy. You could feel the problems piling up. The rift between you and your boyfriend growing wider, and you couldn’t help but to notice that everything had been fine between you until little Middleton had shown up.

••••••

It was an especially hot August day when everything went to shit. It seemed everyone in town was a bit more irritable when the sun was beating down incessantly, an unbeatable oppressor. You could feel sweat against the small of your back, even as the wind whipped through your hair as Hunter drove across town with the top down. Danny was sprawled out in the backseat, his feet hanging over the rear passenger door. It irritated you to see him take up so much space like he owned the place. Granted, pretty much everything he did irritated you.

You arrived back at the shop, this week’s product in hand. You placed the duffle down on the coffee table, Hunter unzipping it and reaching in to retrieve an order he had to run. “I’ll be back in an hour. Try not to kill each other,” he called, hiding the weed in his bag and heading back out to the car. This wasn’t unusual, but Danny usually left right away, either running his own deliveries or just getting away from you. But today he lingered.

“Y/N, can I talk to you about something?” He sat on the arm of the couch while you fixed a pot of coffee, your back to him.

“Uh, sure?” you replied, not turning to face him. Despite knowing practically everything about each other, he rarely made conversation with you.

Danny looked down at his hands, fumbling with his fingers for a beat before speaking. “Well, you see, I just- I have this thing for this girl. And- well, not just any girl. She’s kinda just-“

“Spit it out, Middleton,” you sang, quickly losing patience with his childish ramblings. Was he seriously coming to you for girl advice of all things?

“Fuck,” he sighed frustratedly. “It McKayla. I’ve been.. talking to her, more or less, for awhile now and-“

He’s interrupted by your laugher. You finally turned around, hands behind you against the counter as you shook your head at him. “McKayla? As in McKayla Strawberry? Are you kidding?”

He gives you a look of offense, his brow drawing together. “Yes, that McKayla. Why else would I be talking to YOU about this?”

You shook your head, pinching your brow. “You’ve done a lot of stupid shit, but this really takes the cake.”

“Listen, I just-“

“After all Hunter has done for you? You’re really going to throw that all away for some girl?”

“She’s not ‘some girl,’ okay? I really like her!” Danny insisted, standing up off of the couch defensively.

“You’re right; she’s your so-called best friend’s sister! I know for a fact he’s told you to stay away from her. But you can’t keep in your pants can you?” You were angry. After all the time you’d spent being loyal to Hunter, he was ignoring you for this kid who wouldn’t even respect him enough to stay away from his little sister.

“This isn’t even about McKayla is it?” Danny jabbed, stepping closer as he threw his hands up. “You’re just jealous I’m into someone and not following you around like a puppy like everyone else, huh? Is that why you’re so shitty to me all the time? Are you into me?”

You snapped, your white-hot temper taking control. Without hesitation, you stepped up into his face, your hands clenched right at your sides. His eyes widened, reflexively stepping back, but you follow. “Shut the fuck up. You have no idea what you’re doing,” you growled, poking him in the chest.

“Just admit you want my attention, Y/N.”

The resonance of your hand colliding with his cheek travelled through the room before you even could think. His back was against the wall, his eyes round, jaw hanging slack, and his hand on his cheek. You both stood and stared at each other for a moment, the sound of the slap still resonating in your ears along with your pumping blood as you waited for him to move. He knew this and unabashedly glanced down at your lips.

You reached out, wrapping your fingers around his throat. You’re not sure why you do it, but you were unable to resist; you needed to put Danny Middleton back in his place. What you didn’t expect was the full-fledge moan that left his parted lips. It startled you for a moment before going right to your head, power-lust settling into your veins as thick as syrup. You smirked, pressing a bit harder to watch the way the scrawny boy’s eyes fluttered and his jaw clenched. He opened his mouth to speak, but you weren’t having any of it.

You crashed your lips into his. Despite knowing there was no turning back from this, you couldn’t find it in yourself to care. ‘Take that, Strawberry.’ Danny’s hands flew up to grip your hips, your kiss all tongue and teeth. It was ravenous, angry, and made you ache between your legs in a way Hunter never had, in a way that came from you knowing you were in control.

“Y/N.. what about.. Hunter?” Danny managed between kisses. He was sweating bullets, but the tent in his jeans told you he had no intention of making you stop.

You pull back half an inch, your grip returning around his throat. “I don’t want to hear anything out of that fucking mouth other than ‘yes’ and ‘no’, am I understood.

He listened to you with doe eyes, pupils blown out. “Yes, Miss.”

You smirked, leaning in and catching his bottom lip between your teeth and gave it a tug. “Good boy,” you praised.

He practically went limp at your words, another whimper escaping him. You both moved in a blur back to the couch, stripping clothes off with each stumbling step. You felt drunk without a drop of liquor in your system. Tomorrow would bring hell, and you knew it, but you didn’t care. All that mattered was then and there and making a statement.

You fell heavily into his lap, both of you clad in just your undergarments. Danny’s length prodded insistently at your thigh, and you remember recognizing that he was a lot bigger than you had anticipated. His hands gripped your waist while you ground your hips against his, kissing him ferociously. You listen intently as soft moans are pulled from his throat.

“What is it, Danny Boy? Never touched a girl before?” Your words were snide, full of contempt despite the ache that was building in you for more. His eyes fluttered, rolling back into his head in response.

You just smirked, shifting down to yank his boxers down. “Well, well, well. Looks like this is where you get all your nerve, huh?” His erection stood rigid and leaking against his navel, visibly aching to be touched. Danny bit down on his tongue, his hands tugging at his hair as he fought to keep quiet. It was bad. It was so so bad, but he knew there was no stopping you; not that he had the willpower to make you stop anyway.

“I asked you a question.”

“Y-Yes, Miss.”

You made quick work of your bra and panties, feeling his eyes on you the whole time. When you finally looked back, you were greeted by this desperate, open-mouthed, horny expression taking over his face. Feeling a surge of power run through you, you placed yourself in his lap. Danny let out a soft cry and his hands flew to your hips as you rocked your hips, sliding his length between your slick folds. It was then you came back to yourself, realizing what exactly you were about to do. It took weeks for you to realize it, but you knew your life had slipped out of your hands. Never again.

Raising your hips, you slid him inside of you. You cursed softly as the very welcome stretch made you see stars. “Fuck, good boy,” you praised.

Danny was a fucking wreck. He was gasping for air, hands gripping your hips in fear of moving anywhere else, but needing to touch you. Your praises turned him on in a way he didn’t know about before. He was reduced to a trembling mess, and you loved every second of it. If someone had held a gun to his head asked him about Hunter right then, he wouldn’t have even recognized his name.

You closed your eyes and began to rock your body, focusing on the feeling of him inside of you. He was forbidden fruit: a new sensation you’d thought you’d never experience. Little did you know how much was out there for you outside of Hunter. Your palms laid splayed out against his chest as you found your rhythm, both of you cursing like sailors.

Eventually, Danny built the courage to shift his hips, beginning to meet your thrusts with his own. You cried out, feeling him brush against your most sensitive places. “Danny, fuck, that feels so good,” you whined, hair falling around your face and swaying in time with your shared movements.

“Y/N..” Danny groaned, an edge of warning to his voice. His hands now roamed over your middle, thumbs brushing against the undersides of your breasts.

“Are you gonna cum? You gonna cum in your partner’s girl?” you taunted him cruelly.

Danny gasped, letting out a higher moan. “F-fuck, yes. I’m gonna cum,” he warned.

You reached between your bodies, rubbing quick circles against your clit. Whimpers of your own increased, the sound of skin slapping skin filling the small room.

That was when Hunter walked back through the door.

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five-rivers · 4 years

Text

Exile

Prompt by @halfaqueen. My goodness, this took forever to write. I have no idea how it got so long.

Danny hadn't realized that exile was still a thing, but when he and Jazz had gotten expelled, and their parents had been banned or barred from basically all public places, and all of them had gotten restraining orders of one sort or another, and dozens of lawsuits had been filed against Fentonworks... Well... Officially, it wasn't exile, but that was what Amity Park was clearly aiming for with this harassment campaign.

He watched his city, his haunt, disappear over the horizon from the back window of the GAV. It was all he could do not to cry out aloud. Leaving like this felt like tearing part of himself away.

"Don't worry, Danno!" said Jack, leaning over the back seat. He wasn't driving, as he had lost his license early on in the city's war against them. "Just give it a few weeks! They'll be begging for us to come back, what with all the ghost that'll attack!"

This did not make Danny feel better.

"Jack," said Maddie, drawing out her husband's name. As clear as day, her tone said, Don't get their hopes up.

"You betcha! Because nobody can catch a ghost better than the Fentons, that's for sure!"

Jack Fenton hadn't ever been good at reading things as abstract as tones.

"They think they can stop the ghosts by closing the portal? Please! If it was as easy as that, we'd have closed it ages ago!"

Danny cringed, and sunk lower in his seat. No. None of that made Danny feel better.

Amity Park had hired other ghost hunters, blatantly replacing the Fentons, but Danny didn't know how good they were. He didn't know how good he should hope they were, either. On one hand, he wanted them to be bad, so that Amity Park would drop the restraining orders and he could go home. On the other, he wanted them to be good, so that Amity Park would be safe, so that everyone would be safe and no one would be hurt. But, then, if they were good, and everything was fine, that meant that Amity Park didn't need him any more, that he wasn't helpful, and, even though it was selfish, part of him wanted to be needed.

But, worse, what if they were good enough to defeat the more common ghosts, but then someone powerful come through, someone big, and they couldn't handle it? What if the new hunters worked for the GIW and would send the ghosts they caught off to be experimented on?

Danny had warned away as many ghosts as he could about what was happening before they left, but it didn't seem to be enough. And what if that warning got to someone who would see it as an invitation? As an opportunity to strike, now that he, Phantom, was gone.

He'd been so worried, stressed, and paranoid that he'd made himself sick. He was probably going to make himself sick again before the day was out.

"Where are we going, anyway?" he mumbled.

"Didn't we tell you?" asked Maddie. Danny shrugged. "We're visiting some relatives of Jack's. They have an interest in the supernatural, and they offered to let us stay with them while we look for a more permanent solution."

"Yep!" said Jack. "My favorite cousin, Cory! She's not quite a ghost hunter, but she has that Fenton blood for sure!"

"Cordelia Nightingale," said Maddie. "I don't think that her branch of the family has been Fentons since the sixteen-hundreds."

Danny swallowed. He was not a fan of the name 'Nightingale,' all things considered. It reminded him too much of pain and Sam pushed up against a wooden stake.

He decided this, on top of everything else, was a bad omen. He bet that 'cousin Cordelia' was going to turn out to be a ghost or, somehow, something worse. Like a witch. Or she had something like Freakshows staff. Or she grew blood blossoms for fun. Or she was part of a cult.

Ugh, why did that sound like something that might happen? What was his life?

Half gone, that's what.

Jazz patted him on the knee. "Maybe it'll be nice?" she said, hopefully.

"Maybe," said Danny.

He didn't have high hopes.

Sam probably would have liked the house. Danny didn't. The Gothic architecture only accentuated his fears. He frowned up at the spikes on the railing and the darkly painted boards. No. He didn't like this house at all.

He wanted to go home.

But, at his mother's prodding, he bent and picked up his suitcase. Most of his things were still at home and, if this lasted longer than a week, would then be put into a storage locker along with the rest of the family's belongings, to await a time when they once again had a house of their own to live in.

Jack bounced up the steps and pressed the doorbell with his thumb. Almost at once, a thin woman with graying brown hair opened the door. She wore a black turtleneck and a dark, straight skirt that ended at her ankles. Somehow, she made the outfit look practically Victorian.

"Cory!" exclaimed Jack, giving her a trademark Jack Fenton hug.

Both Jazz and Danny cringed slightly. That felt a bit too familiar for someone who he hadn't seen for literally their entire lives. Danny just hoped this wouldn't be Vlad all over again.

But, to his surprise, Cordelia gave Jack a thin smile and hugged him back. She extracted herself and stepped away from the door, into the house.

"Please," she said, "come in. You must all be tired. Amity Park is hours away."

One by one, the Fentons passed through the door, Danny bringing up the suspicious and paranoid rear.

"You must be Jasmine and Daniel," said Cordelia, closing the door. It wasn't quite dark inside the house, but it did feel rather dim. It smelled sweet, but dusty. Like flowers. Old, dry flowers.

"Jazz and Danny, please, Ms. Nightingale," said Jazz.

"Call me Cordelia. We're family, after all."

Was that ominous, or was Danny just paranoid? Well, it wasn't paranoia if people really were out to get you, right?

His breath went cold in his mouth, and something moved out of the corner of his eye. He whirled, trying to trace it.

He couldn't see anything. His ghost sense hadn't gone off.

"Danny?" said Maddie. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I just thought I saw something."

"Probably my cat," said Cordelia, calmly. "She's a shy little thing, but curious. Don't be surprised if you don't see her again."

"Right," said Danny, doubtful, but not wanting to press the point.

"Now, I've cleaned out rooms for you upstairs," she gestured, and began to lead the way.

Danny started to follow, but another shadow moved at the edge of his sight, this one distinctly humanoid. He turned again, trying to find what cast it. There was nothing. He hurried to catch up with the others.

"Do you live here all alone?" he asked as they climbed the stairs.

"Oh, no," said Cordelia. "This place is much too large for one person. I let out rooms to some nice young ladies who work in town. None of them are here right now, of course, but I'll introduce all of you at dinner."

Well, there went that theory. He glanced back down the stairs. There was definitely a chill in this house.

"You didn't have to give us this much space," said Maddie, snapping Danny's attention back to the conversation. "We should pay you."

"Nonsense. You're family, and those rooms weren't being used anyway. Here, this one has a king mattress, so you two will want this one, even if it is a bit tight, and Daniel, Jasmine, you two take the ones on either side."

Danny and Jazz shared a look. It was a lot easier for Jazz to cover for Danny, or for Danny to sneak into her room for help, when they were next to each other. But there was nothing to be done. They shrugged.

It didn't matter who took which room. Jazz went left. Danny went right.

The room was a lot like the rest of the house. Old-fashioned and dark. It was also meticulously clean and decorated like something out of an old movie. It looked like a set piece. It really did.

Then again, Cordelia did say she had just cleaned the rooms. It wasn't anything to get nervous about, even if it did make Danny feel like he was the main character in a horror film.

He put down his suitcase.

"The bathroom is just down at the end of the hall. The schedule is posted next to it, make sure you write down when you want to shower, so you don't disrupt anyone," said Cordelia, still talking to Jack and Maddie in the hall. "The kitchen is downstairs and in the back. If you take the last of something from the refrigerator, write it down on the shopping list. Otherwise, go ahead and make yourselves at home. Freshen up, take a nap. Dinner is at six."

"Do you want any help with that?" asked Maddie. "You're cooking for an awful lot of people."

"No, no, I'm more than used to it."

"Alright. Did you catch all that, kids?"

"Yes," said Jazz.

"Yeah," said Danny. He wanted to look for whatever was giving him this chill. He didn't like the idea of something supernatural sneaking up on him or his family while he slept.

He couldn't find it, and it was driving him crazy.

There was something in this house, even if Danny couldn't see it as anything but a shadow in his peripheral vision. Jazz couldn't see it at all, but she believed him after that whole thing with Youngblood.

Even if they couldn't find the thing, however, they found lots of other... things. Creepy things. Dead-eyed porcelain dolls. Dusty portraits. Bundles of dried herbs. Weird sculpture things. Light fixtures that should have been updated before Danny was born. A stuffed cat. A closet full of brooms.

"You know what I haven't seen?" asked Danny, as it turned five o'clock.

"No," said Jazz. "What? Ghosts?"

"A litter box," said Danny.

"That doesn't really mean anything," said Jazz. "It could be in one of the bedrooms, or there's a cat door and the cat goes outside."

"Maybe," said Danny. "Let's check out the yard."

This far from the nearest town, the yard was big and cut into a forest that loomed darkly over them even in the bright sunlight. The yard itself was full of flowering plants, but...

"I think these are all poisonous," he said. "At least, a lot of them are."

"Isn't that normal for decorative plants?" asked Jazz. "They weren't bred to eat."

"Yeah, I guess," said Danny, frowning. "But would you necessarily want a cat out here with all this?"

"Cats are carnivores. They wouldn't eat the plants. Can you see the neighbors?"

"No. Too many trees."

"How far away are we, I wonder?"

"It can't be that far," said Danny. "Not if her boarders commute to town."

"That's true. We're not in the wilderness." Jazz scanned up and down the height of the trees. "Not really."

"Maybe a little bit," said Danny. He could imagine some of those trees being hundreds of years old. The ground might not have been untrod by human feet, but... "Does everything here just sort of feel... off? Or is that just me?"

"I don't know," said Jazz.

Gravel crunched in the driveway, audible even from the other side of the house. Jazz and Danny walked to the corner of the house so that they could see around the corner and watch what was happening.

A small white car was pulling into the driveway. It stopped next to the GAV. As they watched, three young women stepped out. One of them had long, dark hair and wore a red sweater and skirt, reminiscent of Cordelia's. The second had pale blond, almost white, hair and wore a deep brown shirt and skirt. The third had red hair, and wore white. All of them had wicked looking boots and matching leather purses.

"Okay," whispered Jazz, pulling Danny back around the corner. "I... Maybe they just like to match?"

"I hate this so much," said Danny. "I want to go home."

"Maybe whatever is going on here is friendly?"

"We are literally never that lucky," said Danny. "I hope it's just a ghost. I can deal with ghosts. It's probably a ghost."

"Really?"

"No. Let's go in. We're going to have to meet them eventually."

"This is Sofia," said Cordelia, indicating the dark haired woman. "This is Alison." She put her hand on the blonde's shoulder. "And this is Morgan." She nodded at the redhead. "Girls, these are my cousins, Jack, Maddie, Jazz, and Danny."

Three sets of eyes moved sequentially from Jack, to Maddie, to Jazz, to Danny. They stayed on Danny.

"It's nice to meet you," said Sofia, still looking at Danny.

He tried to hide his discomfort. Could they tell he was half-ghost? He hoped not. That was his trump card if everything turned out as badly as he feared and he had to get his family out in a hurry.

What he wouldn't give for a piece of concrete evidence right now. Without it, his parents would never listen to him. They hadn't with Vlad.

They were still looking at him. Jazz slipped in front of him.

"So!" she said, brightly. "Dinner?"

Danny pushed back in front of Jazz. "Yeah! It's six, right?"

"Well, it sounds like the kids have inherited that good old Fenton appetite! Huh, Cory?" added Jack

"Yes, yes, come along. Girls, why don't you go ahead and get the table started. No, Maddie, the girls know how I like it, I'll show you later. You just sit down and relax." Cordelia disappeared into the kitchen.

The three younger women moved smoothly around the room, pulling plates and silverware- real silver silverware- from a china cabinet. They set the long table in the middle of the room with rigorous formality. There were more kinds of forks at each place setting than Danny had seen even when having dinner at Sam's. They topped it off with two candelabras.

Cordelia emerged with a casserole dish. Whatever was in it was thick, roughly cylindrical, and covered with a thick red sauce.

"Wow! Is that a roast?" asked Jack.

"Yes," said Cordelia. "I always make this when new guests arrive. The girls have all had it."

The 'girls' nodded as one, and retreated to the opposite side of the table. They almost moved in sync with one another.

Cordelia put the roast on the table, and went back to get side dishes. This gave the three women more time to stare at Danny.

On occasion, Danny did want attention, acknowledgement, what have you, but this scrutiny would have been a bit much even when he was at the height of his 'look at me' phase. He kept a tight hold on his core to keep himself from flickering invisible.

Cordelia came back with two serving dishes full of green... things. Possibly vegetables, but Danny didn't recognize them. She then started to, with excruciating slowness, carve the roast.

The slow exposure of the meat under all that sauce was enough to make Danny vaguely ill. It was too... wet. Too vibrant and too gray all at once. He swallowed against the smell.

"Wow!" said Jack, as Cordelia dropped a slab of meat on his plate. "This looks great, Cory! What kind of meat is it?" He was already sawing away at the flesh. It was all Danny could do to keep himself from slapping it away from him.

"Beef," said Cordelia, smiling at him as she carved. "Locally grown and harvested. It's an old family recipe, from before our branches split and we were all Nightingales."

"You mean Fentons!" said Jack around a mouthful of meat.

Cordelia's smile turned brittle. "However you would like to put it, Jack." She went around the table, serving herself last.

Danny made no move to pick up his utensils. The women on the other side of the table ate while watching him, barely looking at their food. Jazz was the only one who seemed to notice, and when Danny caught her eye and shook his head, she put down the bite of meat she had picked up, turning her focus to the vegetables.

"So," Jazz said, "what do you three do?"

Sofia's eyes flicked briefly to Jazz. "Graphic design," she said.

"That must be interesting."

"It's a job."

Danny didn't eat that night.

"I have some granola bars," said Jazz, grabbing his arm before he entered his guest room. Not that he intended to sleep there. Or anywhere.

"You keep them," he said. "I'm fine. You didn't eat much, either."

"You didn't eat anything," said Jazz.

"I'll be okay." Danny flared his eyes. "I've got an extra reserve, remember?"

"If you say so," said Jazz. She was frowning. "Danny... Let's share a room tonight."

"What?"

"I don't like how those three were looking at you," she said. "I can't believe Mom and Dad didn't notice..."

"They don't notice anything," said Danny. He pulled Jazz into the dubious safety of his room. He didn't want to have this conversation out in the hallway. "Wait," he said, eyes flicking over the room. "Where's my suitcase?"

Jazz shrugged. "Kind of reminds me," she said, not quite whispering. "I was thinking about barricading the door."

Danny hissed through his teeth. "I put my thermos up here when we went to eat. It's gone, too."

"If this were a horror movie, this would be when we yelled at the screen for the characters to leave."

"Think we can convince Mom and Dad?"

"Maybe together?"

Danny shrugged. "Let's give it a try."

They left the bedroom, and knocked on their parents' door. There was no answer.

Jazz frowned. "Maybe they have their earplugs in already," she said. "Can you, you know." She made a gesture where her arms crossed each other.

"Let's see," he said, going back to the bedroom. He waited until Jazz shut the door to turn invisible and phase through the wall.

Passing through the wall felt... odd. Like walking through layers of cobwebs. He shook his head as if to clear it and surveyed the room. Jack and Maddie were already in bed. He made a face and stepped back into the other room, becoming visible and tangible for Jazz.

"They're asleep," he said, shaking his head.

"First thing tomorrow morning, then," Jazz said, wringing her hands. "Maybe- Do you think we should sleep in the GAV? Put up the ghost shield?"

"I'm not even sure that this is a ghost," said Danny. He walked around the bed, part of him still looking for his missing suitcase. "But you have a point, I just..." He glanced at the wall his room shared with his parents'. If he and Jazz slept in the GAV, Jazz would be very safe, but their parents would be vulnerable. If he stayed here, and Jazz slept in the GAV, she'd be safer than sleeping alone in the house, and his parents would be safer, but if something happened to her, he wouldn't be able to react to it, he wouldn't be able to protect her. "I don't know."

"Let's at least go down and look. Maybe you left your suitcase in there, after all?"

"I don't think so," said Danny.

"We can get the weapons locker."

Danny blinked. "I almost forgot about that. Yeah. Let's go."

They were halfway down the stairs when Jazz grabbed his shoulder. "What?" whispered Danny.

"I can't hear anything."

"Huh?"

"This house is old. These stairs creaked when we were walking on it before. Why isn't it now?"

Danny bit his lip. "Let's keep going." He put his hand on Jazz's and made them both invisible.

"I can't see my feet," said Jazz.

"Just be careful," said Danny, continuing down the stairs. "I'm going to phase us through the front door, okay?"

"Fine."

It was still twilight when they stepped outside, the first stars just beginning to show. It wasn't hard for them to navigate, slipping around the white car, but when they did, and finally got a good look at the GAV, they froze.

Jazz said something very un-Jazz-like. Danny let his invisibility fade.

"What happened?" asked Jazz, in shock.

"It looks like someone beat it with a crowbar," said Danny, almost reverently, touching the crumpled metal. "A really big, really fast crowbar."

"Danny, this glass is supposed to be bulletproof."

"And ghost-proof," agreed Danny. "Let's go barricade your room. Think it can get through a dresser?"

The thing about being under high levels of stress for long periods of time was that it was tiring. Exhausting, even. So, even though Danny didn't intend to sleep, he did.

He woke up unable to move, something heavy weighing down his chest. His eyes fluttered open. Something huge and dark, the shadow he'd only glimpsed before, loomed over him, pressed down on him. He could see Jazz's bright hair hanging off of the bed above him. He tried to call out, to warn her, to get her to run, but he couldn't speak.

He couldn't breathe-

When his eyes opened again, light was weakly streaming through the thick glass of the windows, making the dust in the room sparkle gold. He sat straight up, breathing hard. He was still in Jazz's room, the dresser pulled across the doorway. Why do that and then leave him here? It didn't make sense.

"What's wrong?" asked Jazz, voice deep and crackled with sleep. She yawned.

Danny told her.

"That sounds like sleep paralysis."

"Like what now?"

"Sleep paralysis," said Jazz. She yawned again. "Some people get it. They wake up, but they're still asleep and they can't move. And also they hallucinate."

"That sounds fake."

"You sound fake."

"You know what? That's fair. That's actually fair. This whole situation sounds fake, so why not add sleep paralysis to the whole thing? It's better than an actual literal demon." He took a deep breath. "What do we do now?"

Jazz licked her lips and ran a hand through her hair.

"We tell them that the GAV has been trashed, that those women were staring at you like they wanted to eat you all dinner, and that your clothes were stolen. And then I'll spell it out for them, if I have to."

"What, that this place is probably haunted or possessed and Dad's cousin is a witch?"

"No," said Jazz, making a face. "That'll probably only make them want to stay even more. That those three are probably pedophiles who stole your clothing and wrecked the GAV so we couldn't leave, and that neither of us felt safe sleeping alone. Sorry. Then we'll make them call a cab."

"No, no, that's fine. That's a better explanation than I could come up with. Let's do that. I would honestly rather stay at Vlad's than here."

"Yeah," Jazz dragged her hand through her hair again, and grimaced. "Let me get dressed, first. Do you see my brush over there?"

"No," said Danny.

Jazz looked around the room. "Actually... Where is my suitcase?"

"It was-" Danny stopped. "It was in that corner when we came in, wasn't it?"

"Yeah," said Jazz. "Okay, forget getting dressed. We're talking to Mom and Dad now." She swung out of bed and made her way to the door.

Danny phased through her, so he would reach the dresser first and easily pushed it out of the way. He stuck his head out the door, looking both ways for Cordelia and the borders.

The door to the room next to Jazz's, their parent's room, was open.

"Shoot," said Danny. He walked over. "They're not here."

"Downstairs? Maybe they went to get breakfast." Jazz emerged from the room crossing her arms over her chest.

"Maybe," said Danny. He had a bad feeling about this.

Cautiously, they made their way down the stairs and peered into the kitchen. No one was there.

"Hello, children," said Cordelia, directly behind them.

They jumped, both trying to get away and spin at the same time. Jazz clipped her elbow on the doorway and almost fell. Danny caught her and pulled her back up.

"If you are looking for your parents, you just missed them."

"What do you mean?" asked Jazz, a little more sharply than she usually would.

"I mean, they just left," said Cordelia mildly. "They took that vehicle of yours to town to go shopping. Something about not eating me out of my house. It was very kind of them."

"But the GAV was wrecked..." said Jazz, even as Danny gave a tug on her arm.

"Was it?" asked Cordelia, smiling. "It seemed fine when they left. You should get dressed, though, Jasmine, and, Daniel, are those the clothes you were wearing yesterday?"

"Our clothes are gone," said Jazz.

"You left them in your car? Well, no wonder you're looking for your parents. I think I might have some old clothes that will fit you. Come along, now." She turned.

Possibilities tumbled through Danny's head. A large part of him wanted to just grab Jazz and fly away to find their parents in town, but he estimated that there was a pretty good chance that they weren't in town, but trapped here somewhere. Jazz had apparently made that same calculation, because she was giving him the 'don't you dare use your powers' head shake.

Fine. Okay. Play along it was, then.

Cordelia lead them into a dusty ground floor room full of chests. She opened one, knocking free a number of cobwebs. "These are a little old fashioned, I'm afraid, Daniel, but it has been a while since a boy your age lived here." She handed him a small, neat stack of clothing. "And these are for you, Jasmine. I wore them when I was about your age. I grew a few inches, after that."

"Right," said Jazz, already backing away. "We'll just go... change... then. Right Danny?"

"Yeah," said Danny.

Jazz didn't speak to him until they were back upstairs. "What now?"

"Now," said Danny, "I go ghost and see if Mom and Dad are trapped in a dungeon under the house or something. If not, I take you and get the heck out of here. If they are, I rescue them, we get the heck out of here. We'll steal Cordelia's car or something."

"Not much of a plan."

"Don't kid yourself. We never have a plan. Do you want to get dressed, first, or...?"

"Pass."

"I'll have to bring you with me. I don't want to leave you alone up here while I'm searching," warned Danny.

"I know. I don't want to be alone here, either."

Danny took a breath and-

Did not go ghost. He doubled over, gasping for breath, transformation rings flickering to nothing around him as the shadows pressed inward, suffocating him. The huge fingers around his chest- The almost-human silhouette-

"Danny?" asked Jazz, alarmed, shaking his shoulder. "What's wrong? What's happening?"

"Not," wheezed Danny, "sleep paralysis."

The shadows crept up over his eyes and everything went dark.

When he woke up, he was wearing different clothes. Very different clothes. They were all white and loose. He wasn't sure if he should call them robes, but they had that kind of feeling. His shoes were gone. He was in his guest room, on the bed. Jazz was nowhere to be seen.

Danny should have taken his family and run as soon as he saw that not-ghost shadow. He swallowed, shaking, and clenched his fists. It was still here, watching him. He could feel it, even if he couldn't see it.

Okay. First step, get out of here.

He swung his feet off the bed. As soon as they touched the floor, something twined around his ankle and rapidly climbed up his leg. He gasped and yanked himself back, trying to free his knee from the shadow twisted around it. It held fast, firmly squeezing his thigh.

Danny growled. This wasn't the first shadow he had fought. He gathered ectoplasm in his hand and poured energy into it until it burned brighter than magnesium. The shadow retreated, and Danny scrambled to stand on the middle of the bed, ectoblast still in his fist.

"Now, now, no need for any of that."

Cordelia stood in the doorway, not the least bit surprised to see Danny wielding supernatural powers.

"Where's my family?" demanded Danny.

"Safe," said Cordelia, neutrally, "and they will continue to remain so."

Danny shifted, and the bed springs squealed. "What do you want?" he asked.

"My heritage. Come along. I will explain as we go." She turned in the doorway and looked over her shoulder. "Our shadow will not trouble you, should you follow now."

Danny clenched his jaw at the threat but gingerly climbed down from the bed and followed Cordelia across the frigid floor.

"Our last common ancestor was Elizabeth Nightingale," said Cordelia. "She was married to James Fenton. They had two children, John Fenton-Nightingale and Mary Fenton-Nightingale." She paused. "Elizabeth was knowledgeable in what would have been called witchcraft, and she was very, very good at it."

They climbed down the stairs to the first floor. All of the lights were off.

"But, as these things happen, she died. A mistake with a summoning." Cordelia turned into a long hallway Danny had missed in his earlier explorations of the house. "John and Mary were divided on how to handle her legacy. John," the name was said with anger, "decided that Elizabeth's craft, her knowledge, was evil, and decided to destroy it. He burned generations of Nightingale knowledge in a single night. When Mary tried to stop him, to salvage her mother's legacy, he tried to burn her, too. He denounced her as a witch."

"I'm sorry about that," said Danny. "I really am." After all, he knew exactly what that felt like. "But I don't see what that has to do with us. That was hundreds of years ago. A bit late for revenge, don't you think?" A sufficiently disturbed ghost wouldn't, but Cordelia was, as far as Danny could tell, human.

"This isn't about revenge," said Cordelia. "Besides, it has everything to do with you. Of the two of us, you are the one who met the man, Phantom."

"What are you talking about?"

"There's no need for you to play coy with me, young man," said Cordelia. "Why else do you think I put so much time and effort into getting you here? The magics to turn your town against your parents weren't child's play, after all." She bent and seized the corner of a rug, pulling it up and back to reveal a trap door. "Neither was calling the shadow to keep you bound." She lifted the ring handle on the trap door, pulling it open. "After you."

Danny stared down the dark hole below. There was a metal ladder, but he couldn't tell where it ended. A very faint light from somewhere to the right reflected off of some of the rungs.

"Is this where you reveal you're a cannibal?" asked Danny, unimpressed. "Is that what horror movie this is?"

Cordelia rolled her eyes. "Hardly. Although you and Jasmine refusing to eat with us last night made everything harder than it had to be."

That definitely wasn't Danny's stomach growling at the reminder that he hadn't eaten since lunchtime yesterday. "Drugged, was it?"

They stared at each other over the trap door.

"If you refuse to cooperate, we can always use Jack. Or Jasmine."

Danny's lips twitched as he held back a snarl. "Fine," he snapped, angrily climbing down, into the hole.

It turned out that the ladder wasn't terribly long after all. It descended into a basement of normal height.

That was, however, the only normal thing about the space. Far from simply being unfinished, the floor of the basement seemed to be stone. So were what little he could see of the walls. It was like the basement had been carved from one huge piece of bedrock, but that couldn't be possible. Danny didn't know, well, anything about geology, but he was pretty sure houses usually weren't built on stuff like this.

To the right, there was a small table with a single burning candle on it and two chairs, one on each side. Beyond that, Danny could make out a circle on the ground marked with chalk.

The cold feeling that had been plaguing Danny since yesterday was a hundred times stronger in this room. His core was alert, but the relief that his ghost sense usually brought just never came.

The strain was beginning to ache.

"Sit down," said Cordelia, indicating the chair closest to the chalk circle.

Danny complied, tense, and Cordelia moved the candle to one side, taking out a book and setting it on the table. The book was old and singed, the edges of the leather cover and several of the pages burnt and curled. Cordelia stroked it, reverently.

"This is all that Mary managed to salvage from the flames," she said. "Just this one book, out of so many. All that knowledge lost. Elizabeth was the last one to have it."

Danny heard movement in the dark corners of the room and turned his head to Sofia, Alison, and Morgan emerging, all of them in robes similar to his own, but in their own colors. They came close, and grabbed the back and arms of his chair.

"You asked me what I wanted. I want Elizabeth Nightingale."

A surprised laugh, almost a scoff, forced its way between Danny's lips. "Well, I'm sorry, but I don't exactly have her in my back pocket. Do these pants even have pockets?"

"You might not have her," said Cordelia, annoyance creeping into her otherwise level tone, "but you can get her. Bring her back from beyond."

"Uh, not sure what's in your book, but, contrary to popular belief, not all dead people know each other. She might not even be a ghost. She might have moved on."

"She hasn't," said Cordelia, almost smiling. "Not with the summoning she was doing. We are going to send you to her, and you are going to bring her back." She tilted her head to one side. "We could do this with any blood relative. The original plan was to use Jack, but your condition makes you so much more open to this kind of thing. Your chances of success are much higher."

Danny crossed his arms. "And if I don't succeed, you'll make Dad and Jazz try."

"That's right."

"Why don't you do it?" asked Danny. "You're a blood relative, aren't you?"

"Sadly, the ritual requires four people."

"Yeah, that's the only reason, huh?" said Danny, because he liked to antagonize people he couldn't strike back against in other ways, and also because he was an idiot.

"As I said, we can always use one of the others if you do not cooperate."

"And you'll let us all go if I do?"

"If you bring back Elizabeth, yes."

"Fine," said Danny. "What do I need to do?"

"Very little," said Cordelia. "Give me your hand. Your right hand."

Reluctantly, Danny held out his hand. Cordelia took it and wrapped a thin, white cord around it.

"That will lead you to her."

"I thought you were sending me to her," said Danny.

"You won't be in exactly the same spot," said Cordelia.

Then she whipped a knife out from under the table and sliced deeply into Danny's hand. He pushed back, away, holding his bleeding hand close to his chest. The only reason the chair didn't tip back was because the other three witches were holding on to it.

"Go stand in the circle," ordered Cordelia.

In a fit of pique, Danny phased backwards through the three women holding the chair, not bothering to wait for them to move away to let him go. The shadow pushed uncomfortably against his shoulders, but did not otherwise protest.

The circle was simple, no runes or symbols, just a single line of white chalk on the dark stone. Danny stared at it for a long moment, before stepping over it and standing at the center, his elbow dripping blood as it ran down his arm from his hand.

"Alright, girls, you know what we need to do," said Cordelia.

Danny stood in a field of washed-out red grass. Overhead, the sky billowed with rolling, boiling gray clouds. They seemed too close. The air smelled of smoke. The horizon was blurred and warped, as if Danny were looking at it through thick, wavy glass, or as if in a dream.

This wasn't the Ghost Zone.

He took a deep breath, the smoke washing through him. Okay. He was here. Now he needed to find Elizabeth Nightingale.

He looked down at his hand. The white cord had been turned red with his blood, and it had grown longer, reaching back over his shoulder.

"Eat your hear out, Ariadne," muttered Danny. He looked over his shoulder.

A forest was on fire.

The tall, straight, slender trees burned from their tops, like candles. Their trunks were bare, entirely free of leaves, needles, or branches. Danny should have felt the heat, even at this distance. He didn't.

The bloody cord led between the trees.

"Right," muttered Danny, "because nothing can be easy."

Resigned, he started walking towards the trees and discovered that the 'grass' on the ground actually consisted of thin-walled ceramic-like tubes. Fragile ceramic tubes. The ones he stepped on shattered and cut into his bare feet. He hissed, resisting the urge to hop around and get even more shards stuck into him. The bottoms of his feet felt wet and hot. He tried to phase the shards out and couldn't.

"Is this hell?" asked Danny, aloud. "This has to be hell. Ancients."

He couldn't feel the shadow near him anymore, but that didn't mean it wasn't there. Despite the 'grass,' he hesitated to try and go ghost to fly over it. He didn't want to pass out onto the tubes and break them even more. He didn't want those shards in his face or hands.

The squelching of his blood as he shifted his weight decided it for him. He couldn't walk over all of this.

He sent one last look around him for the shadow and summoned his rings. He was relieved when they flowed smoothly over him, transforming him into a ghost, into Phantom.

His normal hazmat suit did not appear, however. Instead, the white robes he had been dressed in turned black. Danny frowned at this. He was not a fan. He wanted his hazmat back.

Whatever. There were more important things to focus on. For example, both his blood and the cord had turned a lurid, ectoplasmic green. Much easier to see against the red-hued backdrop of this world.

He lifted up off the ground and flew on, occasionally pausing to pull shards out of his feet. His accelerated healing made the wounds scab over quickly. The cut on his hand, however, continued to bleed freely. This was beginning to concern him. He didn't have an infinite supply of blood. Or ectoplasm. Whatever.

As he approached the burning forest, he expected to start feeling heat, but even when he was right at the treeline, hovering midway up the impossibly tall, thin tree trunks, he couldn't feel anything. It wasn't hot. It wasn't cold. The smoke didn't smell any stronger.

Even so, he knew fire didn't have to be hot to burn. Fire was a chemical reaction, and Danny had no intention of being one of the reactants.

That was, if this place obeyed anything like normal physical laws. Since the trees hadn't actually burned down at all, the fire staying at the same height, he had to conclude that they didn't.

Still. He was going to stay away from the fire. Briefly, he considered flying over the forest, but the cord angled ever so slightly down, and he didn't know how the cord would fare trailing through the fire. Nothing the witches had said made him think it was indestructible.

He flew under the fires. It was bright underneath the trees, in a sort of inverse of a real forest. Bright, dry, and somehow brittle. Danny flew cautiously. This might nor be the Ghost Zone, but he didn't trust it not to have carnivorous landscape features, and even Earthly forests had their dangers. Lions and tigers and bears.

Oh my.

The angle on the cord began to point down more sharply. Danny was getting closer. The forest was also becoming stranger. The tree trunks bled, and glowing eight-legged flies licked at the ichor. Flowers of sickly fire bloomed from the ground in intricate geometric patterns.

Then, amid the burning brightness, Danny saw a house. A big house. A castle, even, its sides built into the burning trees, its pennants alight with flame, smaller fires moving, no, patrolling the battlements.

Danny quickly went invisible. He had a horrible suspicion that Elizabeth would be in the dungeons of that castle. The cord was going to make him hilariously easy to see, not to mention that he was still dripping blood. This was going to suck so much.

But as Danny approached, the fire creatures did not appear to have noticed the cord at all. Some of them even passed through it without slowing down.

Okay. So, as shocking as it was, Danny had actually caught a break.

Slowly, relying on the fire creatures to open the doors, Danny made his way through the castle and down. Down. Down.

The walls down here glowed, as if with heat, but it was a dull, old, tired glow. A rosy cherry color that burned Danny's eyes and made his head pound. Doors in the walls were made of wood that burned from the inside, veins of embers streaking their surface. The bars set in them glowed white-orange.

The green cord snaked across the floor and wove in between the bars of one of these doors.

Danny stopped. He was quite sure Elizabeth was behind that door. But...

Was freeing her the right thing to do? He had gotten the impression that she was dangerous. At least as dangerous as those witches. Even to save his family, should he set someone like that loose on the world?

But Danny had made this decision and all decisions like it the moment he died in the portal. That was the essence of an Obsession.

Besides. Elizabeth was family, too.

He held out his hands, letting frost form on his fingers and palms and pressed them against the door. Once again, he wondered why he couldn't feel any heat. He should. His ice should at least be registering the pressure, the power drain, of something trying to melt it. It didn't.

Ice spread over the door, extinguishing the light and making the metal creak. Feathery tendrils wound up the bars and encased the hinges. The wood began to fall into ash, as if the fire had been the only thing holding it together, and the bars clattered to the ground.

The inside of the cell was incandescent white. The only dark spot was a huddled, burnt black figure in the corner. The cord let straight to it.

Danny, very emphatically, did not want to go into that room. He hovered at the threshold.

"Elizabeth Nightingale?" he called, softly. If the falling bars hadn't alerted the fire creatures to his presence, he wasn't going to ruin that luck by speaking too loud. "Elizabeth?"

The figure abruptly lurched sideways and fell. Danny flinched. Bit by bit, the figure clawed their way towards the door, dragging itself onward.

Danny could hardly bring himself to watch. Part of him wanted to help. Part of him wanted to run far, far away and never come back.

But, at last, the ruined and horrible body made it to the threshold. It reached up with a claw-like hand and grasped Danny's ankle. He cringed at the feeling of the flaking burnt flesh, but didn't try to shake off the hand. He bent slightly, unsure if he should try to help the figure up.

"You," rasped the figure, ash falling from its jaw, "not from here."

"Um," said Danny. "No. I'm not."

The figure began to pull itself up. As it did so, it sort of began to piece itself back together. Danny had seen similar things before, with ghosts returning to their base form, healing, after an unusually devastating attack. Usually, though, it was slower and usually-

Danny abruptly pulled away. Usually ghosts who were doing that were draining his energy to do it. He glared.

"One of mine?" asked the figure, that was now decidedly feminine. It finally drew itself to its knees. Her knees. "One of my," she coughed, "grandchildren?"

"I'm a descendant of yours, I guess," said Danny, cautiously. He wasn't quite pressed up against the far wall, but he was close.

"You came for me," she said. Her voice was still too rough and dry for Danny to detect any emotion in it.

"I was sent," said Danny, flatly. "If I pick you up, are you going to start draining me again?"

She didn't respond for a long time. "No," she said, finally.

"Great," said Danny. "Let's go."

Elizabeth wasn't hard to carry. She wasn't much larger than Jazz, and he flew her around all the time. The problem was, he couldn't seem to extend his invisibility to her. Any power he sent to cover her was simply absorbed.

"Okay," he said, finally. "We'll just have to be fast, then." Mentally, he began to map out the path he would have to take, and how many doors he would have to blow down. It made for a discouraging picture.

"They can't harm you," croaked Elizabeth.

"What?"

"Pure soul. They can't harm you." She reached up to trace his chin and cheek with her still-charred fingers. "You don't feel the heat. You can't. You can't be harmed."

"Uh. Yeah. I don't think that's how it works. I stepped on some sharp stuff when I first got here, and, let me tell you, it hurt."

"The fires can't burn you. Sending you was clever." Elizabeth seemed to have exhausted herself at that; her hand fell back into her lap.

Right. Well. Whatever. The fires hadn't burnt him yet, but he had stayed well away from them. He was going to continue to do so.

He took a deep breath and flew out of the dungeons as quickly as he could. As expected, the fire creatures spotted him quickly, and they began to shout and shriek in a language Danny couldn't even begin to understand.

They also threw fireballs. And fire spears. And fire chains. Just, a lot of things made out of fire.

It was a good thing Danny had ice powers. Otherwise he would have had a hard time combating all this. A few fireballs passed far too close to his head for comfort. His ice also seemed to be unusually effective on doors.

Finally, Danny was able to get above ground, and, no longer constrained to follow the cord around his wrist, he escaped through a window. He spiraled up, almost high enough to hit the underside of the flames licking at the trees, and then dove away.

"So," he said, "what now?"

"You don't know?" Elizabeth looked a lot better now. Almost human.

"I wasn't given a whole lot of information when they coerced me into doing this. They just said to follow the cord to you, and I did that." Speaking of which, what had happened to the cord? It had just vanished, without Danny even noticing. "I was half-expecting to just get zapped back the moment I found you."

"Coerced?"

"They said they'd make my dad or my sister do this, if I didn't, and they can't fly."

"They're alive."

"Yeah."

There was something like a frown on Elizabeth's face. "They shouldn't have done that."

"Yeah. You don't have to tell me that." More shrieks were approaching from the direction of the castle. "They did this with one of your books. Please tell me you know how to get out of here."

Elizabeth licked her lips. Her tongue was pink. "We go out where you came in," she said.

Danny looked at the trees around him. He only knew where the castle was because of the noises coming from that direction. Otherwise, everything looked the same in every direction. He was pretty sure that even if he went back to the castle, he wouldn't be able to tell which direction he had approached it from, and after that...

They were screwed.

"Follow the blood," said Elizabeth.

It was better than nothing, Danny supposed. His green blood did stand out against the red, but he's been high in the air when he shed it. Following that trail was going to suck, and it still required going back to the castle and avoiding all the fire creatures.

Some of this must have shown on his face, because Elizabeth said, "Not like that, boy, look." She pointed to the small puddle of ectoplasm that had dripped from his hand while they had been talking.

Flowers and vines were growing from it. Ghostly green and blue flowers and vines. As he watched, the vines grew longer, the flowers opened wider.

"Oh," Danny said. "I guess that makes things easier."

Easier was, of course, a relative term. Was following the trail left by ghostly plants growing out of Danny's blood easier than stumbling blindly around the burning forest? Yes. Was it easy? No. No it was not. Especially not with the fire creatures hunting them through the trees and how far apart the blood spatters could be.

Still. Danny was able to follow the trail for an hour before the fire creatures caught up to him.

When they did, they seemed almost, confused. They didn't attack. It was like they were waiting for something.

Danny would have run, but he was worried that he'd lose the trail if he tried to do that, and he didn't think he'd be able to find it again. He and the fire creatures stared each other down. Every few seconds, one of them would make a noise and another would answer.

Rapidly, Danny was becoming surrounded. He would have to make his move soon. He really didn't want to lose the trail, but he didn't think he could win this fight.

Too many enemies. Too much fire. Maybe if he flew straight up, he-

The fire creatures attacked. Danny ducked, wove, and conjured shields of ice and ectoenergy, but there was a limit to what he could do against this many attackers, especially while carrying Elizabeth.

He saw a ball of fire coming that he couldn't dodge and instinctively twisted to spare Elizabeth.

It splashed against him harmlessly.

Everything stopped. The fire creatures froze, even their flames going still, as though they were videos that had been paused. One began to wail, and then they all fled, disappearing into the brightness of the forest.

"A pure soul," said Elizabeth again. She patted his shoulder. Her skin was a burnt red, now. Her eyes were as blue as his were when he was human. Her frown was deeper, more obvious. "It was clever to send you... but they shouldn't have."

"Sure," said Danny, a little surprised. He scanned the trees, trying to see if any of the fire creatures were waiting in ambush. Seeing none, he continued.

They reached the field of tubes, and Danny followed his blood trail back to where he had lacerated his feet.

"Now what," he said.

"Land," said Elizabeth.

Danny grimaced, remembering what had happened to his feet the last time he had tried to walk here. He landed carefully on what looked like the thickest part of the vine growing from his blood-

-and was abruptly back in the chalk circle in Cordelia's basement.

The shadow pounced on him. Unprepared, Danny dropped Elizabeth and fell. Pain sparkled along his limbs as the shadow pulled at his ghost form. It was too much. The lack of sleep, the hunger, the stress, the energy he had spent finding Elizabeth and bringing her back, the blood loss and pain from the wound in his hand, his inability to protect his family, and now this attack. He curled up, trying to protect his head and hand, and abandoned his ghost form.

"Stop this at once!"

"Grandmother, I-"

"Call off this shadow."

A beat. "Very well." The shadow stopped its assault, and Danny stumbled up and out of the circle, scuffing the lines beyond all recognition. Cordelia and Elizabeth were the only women standing. The boarders were all kneeling, faces hidden.

"Grandmother, many times great grandmother, I greet you. I am Cordelia, the last descendant of your daughter, Mary, and I have labored long to bring you back to this world, so that your works will not be lost."

Elizabeth, Danny noted, was standing very straight, her skin sunburn-pink in all but a few places, her arms crossed over the burnt rags of what might have once been a shirt. She did not look pleased.

"So my works won't be lost," repeated Elizabeth.

"Your son betrayed you," said Cordelia. "He burned all your books, all your magics. This is all that survived." Cordelia held up the singed book.

Elizabeth pressed her eyelids together briefly. "And so, you forced your cousin, a child, into that place after me, rather than coming on your own?"

"There was no choice-"

"There is always a choice," said Elizabeth, cutting her off with a sharp gesture. "Better that book should have burned as well, and I was imprisoned forever. You were lucky in my captors. Others would have delighted in taking a pure soul as an ornament for their court, even if they couldn't have harmed him."

"You can't mean that-"

"I do. Is it true you have imprisoned the other members of this boy's family?"

"He would never have agreed, otherwise. Please, this is all we have left of our heritage. We need you. This was all necessary. I beg of you, teach us."

Danny began to back away, to the ladder. Maybe if he got out fast enough, he could trap them in the basement and look for Jazz and his parents.

"Do you know how I wound up there? In that place?" asked Elizabeth. "I went too far, and I ignored the rules. What's your name?"

"Cordelia."

"Cordelia. Cordelia Nightingale-Fenton?"

"Just Nightingale."

"I begin to see," said Elizabeth.

Danny was almost to the ladder. Maybe he could tap into his ghost powers a little bit and float up, quietly.

"If you had come to get me yourself, if you had even asked him-" Elizabeth gestured to where Danny had been. Both women did a double-take, and then their eyes traced up to where Danny currently was.

"What are you doing?" hissed Cordelia. This was the first time Danny had seen her visibly angry.

"Stop," said Elizabeth, grabbing Cordelia's shoulder. "What is your name, boy?"

"It's Daniel Fenton," said Cordelia, when Danny didn't answer.

Elizabeth considered Danny for a moment. "Go to your family, Daniel. Whatever curses or enchantments Cordelia cast on them should be lifted. Including that hate curse." She ran her fingers down Cordelia's arm. "Why on earth did you cast that?" Her eyes flicked back up. "Expect to receive my correspondence, Daniel Fenton."

Danny found Jazz and his parents in the attic. Their luggage was there, too, and Danny and Jazz's missing clothing. Maddie's cell phone was going off. Danny ignored it. He started shaking them. Slowly, they came awake.

"Danny?" said Jazz. She scrubbed at her eyes. "Ugh, what's that sound?"

"Mom's phone is going off."

"What?" said Maddie, groggily. "My phone?" She fumbled at her pocket. "Yes, what is it? Yes, this is Doctor Fenton. What? Well," this last word was a bit snide. "It's about time. We'll be there before the end of the day." She snapped the phone closed. "Jack, sweetheart, wake up, we're going back home. All the charges against us have been dropped, and they want us to look into a ghost attack. Apparently, Phantom didn't show up. As we knew he wouldn't."

"Huh? Ghost? Where?"

"In Amity Park, Jack."

"In Amity Park! Alright!" said Jack, jumping to his feet, and grabbing most of the luggage. "I knew they wouldn't last two days without us! Let's go, kids!"

He ran down the stairs. Maddie took a moment to look around, pursing her lips. "How did we get up here?" she asked. She shook her head, dismissing the question. "Do either of you kids know where Cordelia is?"

"She went out," said Danny. "To town. She won't be back 'til later."

"We'll have to leave a note, then. You two should get dressed before we go, or you'll have to try and do it in the GAV bathroom."

"So what really happened?" asked Jazz, after Maddie went down the stairs.

"Long story," said Danny, throwing on a pair of jeans, "and we really do need to leave. Fast." He took his luggage and rushed down the stairs.

Danny watched Cordelia's house shrink in the rear-view mirror of the GAV, right up until it shimmered out of existence like a mirage. He clenched his teeth. He had seen worse.

He turned in his seat and put his hands in his pockets, intending to brood over what had happened, but his hand encountered a stiff piece of paper that had definitely, absolutely, not been there before. Well. Elizabeth had said to expect her correspondence.

He pulled a crisp white envelope out of his pocket. On the front, in spidery cursive, was his name. He turned it over. On the back flap was written the name Elizabeth NF.

She was family. Distantly. He put his thumb under the back flap, and began to open the letter.

#danny phantom #phic phight #phic phight 2020

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love-takes-work · 4 years

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The Art of Steven Universe the Movie: Outline & Review

The Art of Steven Universe The Movie was released March 3, 2020. It's a wonderful journey through the concept art, character development, and experience of fashioning these ideas into the movie we all love.

Nuts and bolts: The book is published by Dark Horse, and it was designed by Ryan Sands (a zine specialist), with commentary by Takafumi Hori, Kat Morris, and Rebecca Sugar. It includes art by Rebecca Sugar, Kat Morris, Takafumi Hori, Alonso Ramirez Ramos, Angie Wang, Ashley Fisher, Becky Dreistadt, Chromosphere, Danny Cragg, Elle Michalka, Hilary Florido, Ian Jones-Quartey, Jasmin Lai, Jeff Liu, Joe Johnston, Julian De Perio, Katie Mitroff, Leonard Hung, Miki Brewster, Patrick Bryson, and Paul Villeco.

Full review below with low-quality images.

[SU Book and Comic Reviews]

An introduction explains the same origin story that Rebecca Sugar told us in the movie DVD's commentary: that she accidentally restored her phone to factory settings and lost years of important stuff, and she ended up applying that devastating premise to her movie. That combined with the concept of "breaking" the main premise of a TV show to make a movie was how she got started developing the story. The opening of the movie styled like a storybook is blocked out with some great drawings and breakdowns of which narration would go to what storybook pages. This is combined with some partial sheet music for "The Tale of Steven." Rebecca writes about how she felt having to wrap pre-production on Season 5 only to take on this even bigger movie challenge. The biggest challenge was writing all these songs in such a short time--six weeks--and having to deal with the stress, being crushed under all that pressure while still wanting to do this story so badly, and it was humbling to still have to work so hard to sell the idea. The feeling of relief to finally be done that Steven expresses in "Happily Ever After" is very similar to what Rebecca went through feeling like she wanted to be finally done but still knowing what she had to do to climb an even bigger mountain. Some very cute Steven-at-age-16 and Connie in Space Camp clothes follow. Notes indicate that Steven and Connie are the same height now, but his poofy hair is just slightly higher than her head.

Notes from 2017 also give us the "Neckstravaganza": design notes on Steven's new form, with a neck and a jacket. It's very cool.

Some beautiful Joe Johnston boards follow, with sequences from the "Happily Ever After" song. We also get Angie Wang's final design (with Ashley Fisher's color) of the injector, including some sketchy concept art for it from Rebecca Sugar and Hilary Florido. In the rough concept notes, they call this the "Mega Injector," with notes for Takafumi Hori to use for scale. It looks beyond huge in a Leonard Hung drawing.

Spinel concepts are next. Some notes explain that aivi & surasshu (the usual composers) were involved very early since it was a musical, and Rebecca included them when pitching the story to the Crew so they could organically develop the sound. The heart shape was central to Spinel from the beginning, and early versions of her had an entire heart shape to her head.

(There's a doodle of what looks like a cartoon dog in the pile of drawings shown in this section. It's not clear what that was.)

Spinel was given the heart imagery partly because Rebecca had learned early on about the importance of symbols, and when it came time to assign one to Steven, the star was chosen because it's so positive and is read as gender-neutral. Rebecca still hadn't used hearts for anything, so it was time. They also incorporated really old, dated character design ideas to make Spinel feel like an outdated cartoon from the rubber hose era.

The aspect of her design with the running mascara versus cute eyelashes predated the rotation of her Gem. Rebecca likes to start with more realistic sketches when she's figuring out a character, and then she'll move to making it more cartoony. A quote from Miki Brewster is shared: "Spinel can do anything, as long as it's entertaining!" Her "best friend" form is described as "a doll for friendship fun & games! Of a different era--hokey, charming, weird...super gullible and trusting. Incredibly loyal, constant entertainment machine!"

When it comes to developing her "worst enemy" form, Rebecca explains a bit that she has a really complicated relationship with old cartoons because nostalgia is not compelling to her--the animation from the 1930s is so neat, but considering the social limits and the way the industry was at the time, Rebecca doesn't think she could have participated. Especially considering nowadays she even had to struggle to be allowed to tell the stories she needed to tell and it would have been impossible five years ago. The norms of the time aren't entirely extricable from the art itself.

Takafumi Hori weighs in with commentary on how fun it was to animate a scary but fun character on top of Miki Brewster's boards for the "Other Friends" fight sequence.

Next, moving on from the central new character, they also spend some time discussing Steg. Rebecca first explains "Steg Multiverse" as a character so uplifting he can make you fly, combining Greg's unending support and Steven's positive power. She makes reference to the early "stegosaurus" concepts they had for his look, but they didn't want to lose the opportunity to have his hair flow. Rebecca confirms that the pompadour idea was established in "Steven and the Stevens" so they wanted to give it to Steg, and she credits Paul Villeco for really finalizing his design and bringing him to life.

And of course the poofy hair from Steven and the double-necked guitar was essential for Steg.

Next, the book gives us a whole page of handwritten notes about "Drift Away." Kat Morris explains the intentional duality of the scene--how Spinel should be shown seeing her own past with new perspective, being embarrassed, blending together who she was with who she is. The partial lyrics to the song and some sketchy boards are offered.

Rebecca shares her personal connection with the subject matter--how she once left a stuffed animal in her garden and the side facing the sun faded. It really made a mark on her as a child that things changed without her, because of her actions, and that she'd left this treasured toy alone without thinking about it all that time, letting it be affected by the elements without her interference. She wrote "Everything Stays" for Adventure Time based on that plushie, and realized that she was writing about it again for the Steven Universe movie.

Many beautiful miniature boards are shown in this section.

Partial sheet music for "Drift Away" is also offered here. It's credited to Rebecca Sugar and Aimee Mann. The music sheet is followed by some lovely images of the garden by Julian De Perio, Patrick Bryson, and Leonard Hung.

Takafumi Hori returns for a discussion of the final fight sequence during "Change," which he animated from Jeff Liu's boards. He discusses trying to keep the fight feeling dramatic and serious even though Spinel's fighting style is funny. He wanted to keep her tension. Hori-san throws in a word of thanks for being allowed to work on his favorite show again, praises Jeff and Miki, and compliments Rebecca Sugar's demos. He hoped we'd get a soundtrack album. (Of course, we did.)

Some final boards by Rebecca Sugar and Becky Dreistadt of the characters in their show gear descending the steps close out the book. There are also some cute little doodles at the end on the credits page, like a head of lettuce with caption "lettuce adore you" and Spinel in a drifting go-kart laughing, captioned "drift away."

The back cover pictures Steven with his arm around a heartbroken Spinel, comforting her.

Overall, the book is wonderful--the accompanying information is generally not new to anyone who watched the DVD's documentary and commentary, and many of the sketches have been released one way or another directly by the artists through Instagram, Twitter, or Tumblr blogs. There was still plenty of wonderful new concept art that wasn't already out there, and looking at some of the iterations Spinel and Steg went through was particularly captivating. There was no new insight into the development of the plot beyond the premise and the Spinel-related conflict, though; nothing about how they decided to focus the Garnet storyline, the Pearl storyline, and the Amethyst storyline for how they would each get their memories back, and there was no spotlight on their movie versions--modern Cotton Candy Garnet, copycat baby Amethyst, and factory settings uncustomized Pearl. I was hoping especially for some Amethyst stuff because the movie was the first place we got to see her with the simple default outfit and segmented limbs. It was primarily an art book with commentary on some of the most definitive movie aspects--it didn't reach the depth that Art and Origins gave us. It has a start-to-finish feeling in a sense, but it's mostly just splashes of information that are fun to know. It's a great companion and definitely should not be missed by any fan of the movie. I recommend it heartily!

[SU Book and Comic Reviews]

#steven universe #steven universe the movie #the art of steven universe the movie #movie art book #myblog

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evanstanwrites · 4 years

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Followers cellebration drabbles #3

Bucky x reader smut

My favourite kiwi: @pawfect-melody

Request:

Yay!!! How about some smutty bucky, fancy dress party for new years and tony paired everyone off and told them coupley costumes are mandatory - @feelmyroarrrr

It was that time of the year again and with it brought an extra extravagant new years eve party hosted by Tony Stark. As every other year the party had a theme and this year it was couple costumes. Which means you and your boyfriend or girlfriend had to dress up in matching costumes, but that was where the problem was y/n didn't have a boyfriend or girlfriend. That was an easy fix for Tony as he had said before giving her a wink and leaving her confused on the couch just when Bucky walked in looking down at his feet before taking an apple from the table and rushing out behind Tony. That's how Bucky always acted, he didn't talk much only when Steve was around he seemed like himself. If Steve wasn't there Bucky mostly hid in his room. Y/n wished she could talk to him like he did with Steve, she wanted to be there for him. It wasn't a big secret that she had a thing for him.

On the day of the party when she walked into her room she saw a big box on her bed and straight away she knew that would be her costume. When she opened the box the first thing she noticed was the bright pink jacket with the words pink ladies on it, it seemed like she was going to be Sandy from Grease.

She loved the idea of finding her Danny zuko and riding off into the sunset together.

She quickly changed into the costume and did her make up before making her way to one of the biggest ballrooms stark tower had. Once the doors of the elevator opened she was stunned by how many people were in there, how the hell was she supposed to find her date in here?

She figured she would let him find her so she went to the bar got a drink and made her way to the balcony to get some air and get away from the crowd. As she reached the door she saw a man with a black leather jacket with white letters forming T birds looking over the city skyline. "So you must be the Danny Zuko to my Sandy" she joked with a laugh but as soon as the man looked up at her her laugh died down, this couldn't be true, Tony must be playing a trick on her because looking up at her was Bucky Barnes. And he definitely looked like he'd rather be somewhere else. "I don't have a clue who Sandy or Danny Zuko is but yeah I guess I’m your date for the night." He said clearly a bit uncomfortable "that is if you're okay with it." He quickly added taking a step closer to her.

"Yeah sure I’m actually really glad it's you, I feared Tony would set me up with someone I wouldn't like." She chuckles a bit nervous. "You like me?" The look on his face told her that this surprised him.

"Yeah what's not to like?" She asked a bit more sure of herself. Bucky just shook his head before pointing at her costume. " you look really beautiful "

"Thank you Bucky you look really good too." She smiled back at him glad that he hadn't ran away from her like he used to. In fact they were standing really close to each other in the door opening. She watched as Bucky looked up and whispered softly "mistletoe" before looking back at her with a strange look in his eyes focusing on her pink lips " can I kiss you?" He asked her pointing at the plant hanging above them. Thinking that he would just kiss her on the cheek she nods but froze when she felt his lips not on her cheek but on her lips. As soon as he felt her freeze he quickly pulled back and went to turn away from her muttering an apology. Fearing he would run away again she grabbed him by his lapels and pulls him back into her kissing him deeply making him melt into her. After a while that felt like only seconds they broke apart. "I like you too doll."he smiles at her "that costume sure does things to a man." He tells her clearly turned on by their kiss. "Yeah, I know the feeling. Your costume is really turning me on." She said without thinking turning red when she realised what she had said but when she looked at Bucky she saw him smirking. "We could easily do something about that doll." He said before sweeping her off her feet and carrying her out of the ballroom and into the elevator where he placed her back onto her feet before kissing her without holding back. When she moaned into the kiss he ran his tongue over hers first just a swipe of his tongue but when she didn't protested he showed her how skillful he really was with it. Y/n loved this side of him and it surely turned her on even more. When the elevator opened at Bucky's floor before she knew what was happening he was pushing her up against the door of his bedroom with her legs around his waist. She could feel his erection through his black jeans pushing against her covered folds making her grind down on him as she moaned into his mouth. "Please Bucky." She moaned as he started to kiss down her neck. "Please what doll?" "Please fuck me, you can make love to me later but please fuck me now." She practically begged him as she tried to undo his belt which made him chuckle at her eagerness but still helped her out and undid his belt for her and pushed his pants low enough for his cock to be freed. Luckily y/n was wearing a skirt that was already pulled up around her hips so he only had to push her panties to the side. They both moaned loudly at the feeling of him filling her. Bucky gave her some time to adjust to his cock and he needed it too or he would blow his load right away. When he could feel her walls tighten around him he started to thrust his hips into her setting a steady pace as he sucked a mark on the skin of her throat. "Harder, please fuck me harder." She moaned as she slipped one of her hands into his hair and softly pulled it making Bucky growl but giving into her request snapping his hips harder into her. This wasn't going to last long at this rate she could already feel the coil in her stomach tighten. But they didn't care they had the whole night and many nights to come.

"God you feel so good around me doll squeezing me so perfectly." He moans into her ear as he starts drawing circles over her clit sending her over the edge with a scream of his name and Bucky followed her soon after with his head buried in her neck. Both of them were in a trance like state when suddenly she could see fireworks go off through the windows on the other side of the room. "Happy new year Bucky"

"A happy new year it is"

#james bucky barnes #bucky barnes #bucky barnes fic #bucky x you #bucky x y/n #bucky x reader #bucky barnes smut #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes drabble #bucky barnes imagine #bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes x y/n #sebastian stan #winter solider x reader #winter solider imagine

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etherealwaifgoddess · 4 years

Text

More Time - Chpt.12

Summary: It’s first date time at last! Master list can be found HERE.

Warnings/ Content: Sweet romantic date feels

Word Count: 2.5k

Author’s Note: Hello lovelies! We made it to Friday. And after this crazy week, that feels like an accomplishment. I encourage everyone to take some chill time / self care/ relaxation time / whatever you want to call it time, at some point this weekend. Now, please enjoy the most perfect, sweet, romantic first date two super soldiers could ever take a girl on! XOXO - Ash

Chapter Twelve

Emma hadn’t been anywhere as fancy as DaVinci’s in about ten years when her parents had taken her out to celebrate her college graduation. Luckily she had a simple black dress that would work if she added her nicest set of jewelry and pulled her hair half up with a clasp. It was a swing style dress with elbow length sleeves and hidden pockets on the sides. Emma prided herself on her amazing thrift shop find and very begrudgingly pulled on a pair of Spanx to smooth out her silhouette. She was comfortable with her curves but appreciated a little extra support smoothing them out. The set of pearls that her mother had given her when she turned eighteen looked perfect against the plain black dress, a classic look she mused the guys would probably appreciate. Emma didn’t do make up often other than a quick wave of mascara, but she took the time and effort to draw neat lines with tiny wing flicks on her eyes and smoothed on a bold red lipstick.

She was fixing her hair one last time when the buzzer sounded in her apartment. Emma buzzed them up and smoothed her dress nervously in the mirror one last time. A series of quick knocks rapped on her door and she opened it to welcome the guys inside her apartment. Steve looked like he had swallowed his tongue. “Oh wow.” he said quietly, not budging.

Bucky chuckled, throwing an arm around Steve’s shoulders to herd him into the apartment. “What Stevie means is: hi Emma you look amazing.”

Emma was struggling to find words herself. They were both in suits, Bucky in navy blue and Steve in pale grey, and Bucky had pulled his hair back in stylish half up bun. They were both breathtakingly handsome in very different ways and complemented each other perfectly.

“You both look incredible.” Emma said as she gathered her purse and coat from the living room closet.

“Thanks, doll.” Bucky looked down at Steve who was blushing brightly at her compliment. “You gonna be okay pal?” he asked quietly

Steve nodded and gave Bucky a hesitant smile of assurance.

Bucky led them down to his waiting car, he wouldn’t be affected by the wine at dinner so it made the most sense for him to drive. But also he just really loved driving his car. He had bought it when the Army back pay came in and it was his one truly extravagant purchase. The government had been less than thrilled to give him the same honor as Steve but after it was publicly proven he had spent the last seventy years as a prisoner of war they had little choice.

“This is your car.” Emma looked at the sleek black Audi with wide eyes.

“This is her.” Bucky said with pride, opening the passenger side door and letting Steve slide into the back seat. Emma moved to follow but Bucky held onto her arm for a moment, “You can sit up front, doll.” he offered.

Emma shook her head, “It’s okay, I want to sit with Steve. Not that I don’t want to sit with you too but...”

Bucky nodded, “You’re not gonna hurt my feelings. Go ahead and squeeze in with Stevie.”

Bucky helped Emma into the back seat before hurrying around to the driver's seat. “When it gets warmer we can take her down the coast with the top down. There’s nothing like it.” he said after sliding into his side.

“Sounds great.” Emma agreed easily, still surprised by the luxurious car she was sitting in.

Steve gave the back of Bucky’s seat an affectionate shove, “Someone likes showing off his fancy car.”

“Says the guy who brags about his motorcycle like it’s his first born.” Bucky shot back.

“Hey, it took me years to find a restored Harley Liberator. I loved that bike back in the war and they just don’t make ‘em like they used to.”

“It’s great, but we can’t take our girl out to dinner on your bike.”

“Well, I could. You’d just have to stay at home.”

Bucky shook his head when he saw Steve sticking his tongue out at him in the rear-view mirror.

Emma bit her lip trying not to laugh, glad Steve seemed to be loosening up a little. She reached out and took his hand in hers. He looked over at her, seeming to remember she was there again, and he swallowed hard. “Hey.” she said quietly, trying to relax him a little.

“Hey.” he replied, his tone equally hushed.

Slowly Emma got Steve to come out of his shell as they chatted quietly in the backseat. Bucky was thankful Emma had picked up on his nervousness and was willing to take the time to calm him down a little. She seemed to really get Steve and it was a blessing. Not every girl was willing to take the time and patience but Emma did it as easy as breathing. He hadn’t seen Steve so smitten right off the bat since Peggy and he hoped his instincts were right about Emma.

Steve enjoyed watching Emma look around, drinking in all the little details of the restaurant as they were led through the dining room to a secluded booth near the back. It was a beautiful restaurant, the dim lighting shimmering off the chandeliers and playing off the deep wood tones. The tables were set far enough apart to keep the ambient noise subdued and the scent of fresh bread and herbs lingered in the air. The booths were wide, heavily padded semicircles and Steve and Bucky took advantage of their design to sit on opposite sides of Emma.

Emma tried not to look as overwhelmed as she felt but it was a little surreal sitting between two of the most stunning men she’d ever seen, in a restaurant she could only ever dream of seeing the inside of. “How is this my life?” she murmured quietly to herself.

Steve was sitting with Emma on the side of his good ear and he just barely caught the quiet comment to herself. Bucky’s enhanced hearing caught it easily and they shared a pleased look across her. They had wanted to give her an unforgettable night and it appeared they were succeeding.

The waiter welcomed them back to DaVinci’s and took their drink orders, Steve ordering a bottle of wine for them to share. Emma folded her hands in her lap, still feeling a little off kilter when the sommelier stopped by to uncork their bottle. Steve sipped and nodded, prompting the man to pour their glasses. After stowing the bottle in a caddy by their table the man hurried off leaving them back in their solitude.

“I didn’t know you were so well versed in wine.” Emma commented, sipping the rich red he had selected.

“I’m not, really, but we’ve been to enough fancy parties to learn what words to look out for. I’d be just as happy with a bottle of two buck chuck.”

Emma bit back a laugh, “I have a bottle at home right now. You might have to put your money where your mouth is.”

Steve shook his head, “I will drink it happily. There is nothing wrong with Trader Joe’s wine.”

“Heathens.” Bucky interjected haughtily before sipping from his glass.

Steve raised an eyebrow at him, “Should I share the story about that time you drank bathtub gin with Danny O’Neil and got so sick your ma thought you were dyin’?”

Bucky’s eyes widened, “I was fifteen and the only reason you didn’t drink it was because you were getting over pneumonia. Again.”

“You were sixteen and I told you that bathtub looked dirty.”

They shared a look and both erupted into laughter.

“I don’t want to know.” Emma said, shaking her head at them.

The tension was relieved though and gradually conversation flowed easier. By the time their meals arrived they were talking like they would have if they were back at Matty’s. The platters in front of them were enormous and artfully presented. The restaurant clearly had two Michelin stars for a reason. Two bites into her gnocchi and Emma had decided that they could have served it on a dumpster lid and still have gotten those stars. The tiny pillows of pasta were so delicate and the lemon chive pesto brightened it so that the richness wasn’t overwhelming. It was easily the best meal she’d ever had.

Steve let out a startled squeak and she looked over just in time to see Bucky shoveling a forkful of Steve’s pasta primavera in his mouth. He chewed quickly despite Steve’s shoving at him. “He started it.” Bucky pointed at Steve with his fork.

Emma looked at Steve, waiting for him to explain.

“I took one, tiny, little piece of veal.” he admitted finally.

“And so I took a fork of his pasta.” Bucky explained without remorse.

“It was a giant forkful!”

“I have a giant super soldier appetite.”

Steve huffed but this was clearly a squabble they had often.

Emma rolled her eyes at the pair of them. “I can’t take you boys anywhere…”

“Uh oh,” Bucky said kicking Steve under the table, “I think we embarrassed our date, Stevie.”

Steve sighed, playing along. “Jeez, Buck. What should we do?”

“Drag her down with us!”

Buck and Steve both had forks in Emma’s pasta before she could blink and she tried in vain to fend off their utensils with her own. They escaped with one gnocchi each and in her mind that was one too many. They were all giggling and stealing off each other’s plates when the waiter returned to pour them more wine and the trio did their best to look mature and not like they had just been acting like children.

Even with Bucky’s super soldier appetite, they all had leftover boxes to take home by the end of dinner. The chef was aware of Bucky’s birthday and brought out a thick slice of tiramisu with happy birthday written around the edge of the plate in chocolate. He chatted with Bucky for a moment and Emma sat back just watching the obviously familiar exchange. The trio tucked into their dessert as soon as the chef bid them a good night and Emma wasn’t surprised it was just as good as the pasta. The tiramisu was so light that between the three of them it disappeared quickly.

Wanting to be fair, Emma sat up front with Bucky on the way back to her apartment. He looked extremely pleased when she opted to sit there and reached over to hold her hand across the console for the entire drive. Old, gentlemanly habits dying hard, Bucky and Steve both insisted on walking Emma to her door. It was clear none of them were ready for the night to be over but Emma didn’t trust herself to invite them in. She wanted to take things slow and after such an amazing night it would be all too easy to get carried away. They stood outside her door, each holding one of her hands.

“So, how’d we do?” Bucky teased, swinging his hand and hers a little.

“Are you sufficiently wowed?” Steve joined in.

Emma pretended to think a moment, “I think I need another date to really form an opinion,”

“Do you now?” Bucky laughed, “Sorry to tell you this, but second dates are for pizza and Star Wars.”

“Oh wow. That’s some bait and switch routine you got there.” Emma giggled.

“Yep, we get you all starry eyed and then, bam!, it’s all sweatpants and greasy take out.”

Emma freed her hands and pulled Bucky close by his lapels. “I’ll take sweatpants and snuggling on the couch over fancy dinners any night.”

“Whatever you want, baby doll.” Bucky gave her a wolfish grin before lowering his mouth to hers. Emma shuddered despite herself. His lips were firm and demanding against hers and it was difficult to not get swept away. Bucky wasn’t greedy though, he pulled back after a few moments and Emma braced her hands against the hard plane of his chest to steady herself. They both remembered Steve at the same moment and looked over to see him shifting in place with his hands shoved awkwardly in his pockets. He was trying to not be obvious with his staring but he must have seen everything with not being even two feet away.

“Hey Stevie.” Emma said, blushing furiously and still clinging to Bucky.

Steve’s own blush deepened. “Hey.” he replied quietly, finally glancing up.

“See something you like?”

Steve mumbled his assent.

“Then come here. Unless you think you need to go get beaten up first?”

Bucky chuckled and turned Emma around by her shoulders so she had her back to his chest and was facing Steve.

Emma reached out for Steve and pulled him to her gently. He was so shy at times, it was endearing. Once he was all but toe to toe with her, she reached up and threaded her fingers through his hair, pushing it away from his face. Steve looked into her eyes for a moment, asking, not demanding, before leaning in slowly. Emma let him set the pace as his lips carefully danced across hers. His kisses were reverent where Bucky’s had been commanding and the difference between the two enthralled her all over again. She loved how dissimilar they were, it made for a heady experience. Emma was the one to pull back this time, watching a broad smile spread across Steve’s face. She looked up and back to Bucky who gave her a nod of approval.

“We’d better let our girl get some sleep.” Bucky told Steve who nodded in agreement.

“Thank you for tonight. It was… perfect.” Emma admitted honestly.

“We aim to please.”

They exchanged another round of quick goodbye kisses before parting finally. Inside her apartment Emma leaned against the door after closing it behind her. She was in way over her head with those two.

Bucky wrapped an arm around Steve as they headed down to the car. They were both still vibrating with happiness that the night had been a success.

“We got so damn lucky, Buck.” Steve told him once they were in the car.

“She’s one in a million.” Bucky agreed.

“Think we can convince her to come over tomorrow?”

“She works tomorrow night but we could go hang out at Matty’s with her.”

Steve nodded thinking. “I thought synching up two work schedules was going to be a pain.”

“We’re gonna need a bigger calendar.” Bucky told him with a laugh.

Steve chuckled but whipped out his phone, pulling up wall calendars on Amazon.

Tag list lovelies: @godofplumsandthunder @remilupin22 @supraveng @hiddles-rose

If anyone wants added or removed please lmk!

#more time #stucky #stucky x original character #stucky x original female character #stucky x ofc #steve rogers #preserum steve rogers #bucky barnes #post winter soldier bucky barnes #shrinkyclinks #shrinky clinks #stucky fanfic #stucky fanfiction #marvel #marvel fanfiction #post endgame #post avengers endgame #endgame fix it #endgame fixit

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confessionsofamovieaddict · 4 years

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The Edge Of Seventeen (2016)

This is one of those rare movies, that succeed on almost every level, where each character, scene, costume, and joke make a movie worth watching.

I have easily watched this movie over a thousand times. Every time I watch this movie I notice new things and see it from a different perspective.

Now lets get into the informational part of this movie review and yes, there will be spoilers the whole movie will be spoilered.

Synopsis:

Nadine Franklin (Hailee Steinfeld) is an awkward 17-year-old high school student who quickly walks to the classroom of her teacher Mr. Bruner (Woody Harrelson). She is flustered and tells Bruner she's going to kill herself and that she needs someone to listen to her. He then quips that he was writing his own suicide note, since all he wants is some peace and quiet during his lunch break.

Nadine takes us to the beginning of her story. At the age of 7 (Lina Renna), she noticed how much more popular and well-liked her older brother Darian (Christian Michael Cooper) was, to the point where it felt like their mother Mona (Kyra Sedgwick) favored him over Nadine. Her father Tom (Eric Keenleyside) was the only one who made Nadine feel secure.Nadine gets picked on by some mean girls at school and feels alone until she meets Krista (Ava Grace Cooper). Krista is holding a pet caterpillar and gives it some water, and then she asks Nadine if she wants to be the caterpillar's other mother. Nadine agrees, but she later accidentally suffocates it in her pencil case. Still, Nadine and Krista quickly become best friends. While Krista's parents argue, Nadine always had her back. At the age of 13 is when Nadine states some "really fucked up shit" happened. She becomes insecure about her looks, especially since Darian (Blake Jenner) only got more attractive. Krista (Haley Lu Richardson) tries to assure Nadine she looks fine.

While getting burgers with her dad, Tom suffers a fatal heart attack and crashes his car. His death devastated the family. In the present at age 17, Nadine is at school with Krista when she spots Nick Mossman (Alexander Calvert), a bad boy fresh out of juvie. She becomes sexually attracted to him. In Mr. Bruner's class, Nadine meets Erwin Kim (Hayden Szeto), an equally awkward but friendly boy that has a crush on her. When the girls go back to Nadine's house, they learn that Mona is leaving for the night to see a man she met online. Nadine and Krista get drunk and fool around while Darian has friends come over to swim. Nadine gets too drunk and she pukes in the toilet with Krista helping her. Nadine makes self-deprecating comments before passing out on the floor. Krista goes downstairs to find Darian cleaning up dog pee off the carpet, and they start to make small talk. Nadine wakes up with a hangover. She crawls out of the bathroom and hears giggling coming from Darian's room. To her horror, he and Krista are in bed, and she's giving him a handjob. All three are mortified, but especially Nadine. Nadine is still pissed at Krista later in the day, to the point where her frustration starts to bother Krista. She tells Nadine about a party she's going to with Darian, so Nadine opts to join them. At the party, Krista goes off with some other girls to play beer pong, leaving Nadine alone. She goes outside and meets a drunk girl that compares her and Darian to Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny Devito's characters in "Twins." Nadine calls Mona to go pick her up. She tells her daughter that the man she met online is married, and she received an email from his wife. Nadine calls Erwin to hang out. They go to a carnival and ride the Ferris wheel. Erwin tries to go for a kiss but he gets shot down since his timing was bad. Nadine later compares Erwin to a nice old man to make things even more embarrassing. On Monday, Krista approaches Nadine, but she's still mad at Krista for going off with other girls at the party. When Krista mentions that Darian asked her to be his girlfriend and go to prom with him, Nadine delivers an ultimatum - Krista must choose her or Darian. Krista refuses, but Nadine pushes it by saying he'll dump her for someone hotter. Krista leaves her. When Nadine gets home, she starts to argue with Darian over his new relationship. Mona tries to intervene but Nadine just leaves to take a walk. She gets a slushee and then goes to Petland where Nick works. She goes in and tries to talk to him, though she comes off as kind of weird. Nadine tries to talk to Mr. Bruner, though he doesn't seem interested in her problems. When he makes a crack that nobody likes her, Nadine flips out and starts insulting him and his profession. He is unfazed and gives her half his cookie and says she's his favorite student to calm her down. Nadine calls Erwin again and asks if she can go over and swim in his pool. He says yes and gets super excited. She goes over and is surprised to see that Erwin's family is wealthy. Nadine jokingly asks Erwin if he wants to have sex, which upsets him. Later, he shows her some drawings he made and talks about his project for an upcoming student film festival. Mona takes Nadine to school now that she isn't talking to Krista. Nadine makes a big deal about being dropped off close to Krista, so Mona brings Nadine to work with her. While there, Nadine gets bored and starts acting out. Mona tells Nadine that her father would be very disappointed in her. Nadine swipes Mona's car keys and leaves. Nadine goes to a playground and starts to write a long, impulsive message to Nick about how she wants to do sexual things with him. She then tries to delete the message, but accidentally sends it. Nadine freaks out and goes to show Mr. Bruner (which is where the movie began). Although she begs him to help her do something, he just gives her money for a frozen yogurt. Nadine gets her yogurt and listens to multiple angry voicemails from her mom. Nick sends her a message since she put her number in the post, and he invites her to hang out. Excited, Nadine runs home to get dolled up before Mona gets home in a cab. Nadine goes on her date with Nick, which just ends up being him taking her to an empty parking lot. They start making out and he starts groping her, but Nadine has second thoughts and tells him to get off. She wants to get to know Nick, but he is uninterested. When she's afraid he'll leave, she starts kissing him, but she pulls away again when he tries to make a move. Nadine leaves the car and starts crying. Mona calls Darian while he's on a date with Krista. He rushes home to find Mona grabbing Nadine's clothes off the floor and saying she'll donate them. Darian tries to keep her calm. Nadine gets picked up by Mr. Bruner and takes her to his house where she meets his wife and infant son. Darian and Krista show up at the house to pick up Nadine, but she refuses to go anywhere with them. Darian gets fed up and confronts her about her attitude. Nadine says that Darian only cares about himself and being seen as a hero to their mom by bringing her home safely. Darian hits back that it is stressful for him that Mona is always counting on him to be the man of the house, how he has to apply to schools nearby since he's worried about what will happen to the family if he's gone, and how he can't be with Krista without ruining his relationship with Nadine. Darian leaves, so Mr. Bruner brings Nadine home. Nadine goes to Darian's room and apologizes for her behavior. She then tearfully expresses to him how she has always hated who she is and how she acts, and how she worries she can never change it. Nadine wakes up early the next morning to go to Erwin's film festival. Darian and Krista are downstairs about to have breakfast. Darian wishes her a good day, and Nadine reciprocates. Krista asks Nadine if she can call her later, and she says yes. At the film festival, Erwin presents his film, which is about an alien who tries to win over a girl he likes, but she doesn't return his feelings. A giant monster takes her, so the little alien goes to rescue her by causing a huge rock to crush the monster. When the girl tries to return her affections, the alien has moved on and is with other gorgeous alien women. After the show, Nadine gives Erwin flowers. She says she knows the movie was about her, but he denies it. She then feels embarrassed, because she looks like someone who thinks everything is about them, but Erwin says he was just joking. He then brings Nadine over to introduce her to his friends.

This is where the movie ends. I got the synopsis mostly from IMDb.

As you can see the movie’s base is really basic, but the emotional touches and original turns make this movie great. Sometimes it even feels like you’re in it, you really get attached.

Characters /cast

Now for the characters and cast. Some of the characters really annoy the hell out of me, but that’s okay.

Nadine Franklin (Hailee Steinfeld) First and foremost, Nadine is real, not like she’s a real person, but she’s just like any normal non-populair teenager. Nothing about her is glamourised. She faces difficulties that everyone has faced. And yet, it’s not portrayed like mean girls or high school musical. It’s not fake. She is a thoroughly developed character and she’s a real human being on screen. She’s connected with the watchers in a relatable way. Nadine experiences character development through the whole movie, just like you do in real life. She has ups and downs with her family, she makes and loses friends and she finds love. I can’t write this character description without saying that Hailee Steinfeld is an elite actress and that’s just shown in how well Nadine Franklin is portrayed, it’s not only how well the script it’s written, it’s also how Hailee Steinfeld put her own personality in it.

To be honest all the other characters are just side characters and are only importent to the story because they are part of the development of Nadine, so I will give them short mentions.

Krista (Haley Lu Richardson) Krista is one of those characters that if you think of them that you only see bad things. She dumped her Nadine, who she was bestfriends with since she was 7, for Nadine’s older brother Darian. Like what kind of person would do that? As you can tell krista is one of those characters that bothered me the whole movie. Darian (Blake Jenner) He’s the brother of Nadine. He outshines Nadine on every level. He blames Nadine for all his stress. I have nothing more to say about Darian, he’s pretty superficial. Mona (Kyra Sedgwick) Mona is just a Karen that’s hiding in a “I’m a cool mom” suit. Once things get to heated for her she loses control. Like that time when Nadine annoyed her and she told Nadine her father would be dissapointed in her. She reminds me of my own mom, cute right? Mr. Bruner (Woody Harrelson) Mr. Bruner is the person I aspire to be when I become a teacher, well besides his bad teaching. Mr. Bruner his humour is a perfect mix between dark en dry humour. His way of communicating is just superior. Erwin (Hayden Szeto) Erwin reminds Nadine of a nice old man. And I fully agree, he is wise and playful. His talent is drawing/animating. He draws original things like aliens.

Grading / Things I Wanted To Say

Okay so you may have noticed that this movie is catered to an audience that has gone/is in high school. So sorry for my home schooled people, this might not be the movie for you. Most of the characters have something special about them, it can be that they’re annoying or that their talent is being amazing at communicating. The plot has some bits and pieces that could have been written better.

My overal rating is a 8,9. If you would like a more detailed answer of why I would give it an 8,9 just message me, or however you can contact me. I hope you liked me review, I really do. I have put my precious homework time into reviewing a movie, and if you ask me I was way more productive in making this review than making any of my essays. Au revoir.

#movie #film #the edge of seventeen #hailee steinfeld #goofy #review #film review #movie review #english #cool #follow #like #comment #im boring lol

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lexosaurus · 5 years

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Xmas Truce 2018

askjfksjds sorry this is so late @ectoplasmbender HOPE YOU HAD A FANTASTIC HOLIDAY SEASON!

Danny padded across the wooden floors, his bare feet making small noises despite his best efforts to be silent. He was lonely, bored. Mommy and Daddy were in the basement, a place that Mommy had said was too dangerous for four-year-olds. She told him when he was a big kid that he could go see inside of it. But Jazz was a big kid. She already knew how to add and subtract, and she wasn’t allowed to go in the basement either.

Which meant she was probably in her room, playing without him.

Danny stopped walking just before her door. It was open, and he heard the sound of her voice imitating her dolls from her room. He leaned forward, peeking around the door to see Jazz in her pink pajamas. She stiffened and turned around to where Danny stood.

Danny shot back from the door, not ready to be seen. He stood frozen in the hallway, straining his ears for any sign that he was quick enough and Jazz didn’t see him. Eventually, he heard Jazz begin playing again. He let out a breath and adjusted his onesie. It was blue and had rockets all over it. It was his favorite set of pajamas.

He leaned around the door again to see Jazz’s stuffed animal, Bearbert, giving one of the dolls a ride on his back. Jazz turned around to face him again, and he hesitantly stepped through her doorway.

They stared at each other for a moment. Danny rubbed his nose and shyly asked, “Play with me, Jazzy?”

Jazz picked Miss Sally from Bearbert’s back and waved it in front of her. “I’m already playing!”

Danny’s expression fell. “Oh,” he said as he gazed longingly at Jazz’s game. He stared at the ground, trying to figure out the best solution to this problem. He wanted to play with Jazz, but Jazz was already playing a game. How could he fix this?

An idea sparked in his brain. His head snapped back up to Jazz, eyes wide and shining with hope. “Well, then can I join your game?”

“Okay!” Jazz said. She picked up Miss Sally’s best friend, Miss Emily, and held her out to the approaching child.

Danny snatched the doll from Jazz’s grasp and sat down across from his sister. He ran his hand through Miss Emily’s black hair and asked, “What do we do now?”

“Miss Sally is climbing a mountain on Bearbert so Miss Emily can help her,” Jazz answered in a matter-of-fact tone.

Danny tilted his head. A mountain? “Well, why is she climbing a mountain?”

“Because she has to get the magic sword, of course!” Jazz responded. “If she gets the magic sword, then she can save Amity Park from the evil fairies.”

Well, that didn’t make sense. Danny had seen some of Jazz’s favorite TV shows before that had fairies in them. All the fairies in those shows seemed friendly! “Aren’t fairies supposed to be nice?” Danny asked.

“Most are, but not these ones,” Jazz said. “These fairies are mean! They blow leaves at other fairies and knock them out of the air! And they shoot fire at people!”

“How is a sword gonna save the good fairies?” Danny said.

“Because,” Jazz explained, “this sword has the power to grant you a wish! So Miss Sally is going to use it to wish that all the bad fairies would disappear!”

As the information absorbed into Danny’s brain, a grin spread across his face. He stared at Jazz with a determined expression, his blue eyes sparkling with innocence. “Alright, then! Let’s go save Amity Park!”

Danny’s dull eyes gazed unseeing at the grass below him. He leaned forward, drawing his back away from the wooden walls of his house as he pulled his legs in close to his body. His head fell into his arms. With white knuckles, he gripped his elbows as if that would stop the tears that threatened to spill from his eyes.

He was fourteen. And he just witnessed everyone who ever cared about him explode. Only reversed thanks to a certain time ghost.

He was fourteen. He just saw the deaths of his friends and family. But no one knew except him.

He still had to go to school tomorrow and take that algebra quiz. Because to everyone else, nothing changed. The world went on in its mundane state just like it always did. To everyone else, it was just another crappy day with the CAT exam. Nothing changed. Nothing to anyone except Danny.

The sound of footsteps carefully making their way along the weed-covered lawn momentarily distracted Danny from his cycle of depression. He sat there, tense, already knowing who was there.

The footsteps finally halted next to Danny. He waited for her to make the first move, say the first thing, start the “you should trust me more” lecture. Like she always did.

But she didn’t.

Instead, she sat down next to him, leaned against the side of the house, and stared up at the sky.

It was so...odd. Jazz, not lecturing. Just sitting there calm. Waiting. And suddenly, everything made sense. Why she always made sure to shove Danny in a small, deserted area when a ghost appeared. Why she constantly distracted Mom and Dad when they caught up to him in ghost form. Why she was the first person to defend Phantom’s integrity at the dinner table.

She had always been waiting. This entire time, it was so obvious. How could he have missed this? She knew, probably right from the start. All the lectures, the badgering, and annoying positivity that made him want to scream—it was all an act. It was her way of supporting him without making it obvious why. Because she knew and she couldn’t tell him.

Because she was waiting.

“How long?” Danny asked.

“Huh?” she said, startled.

“How long have you known? About Phantom? About me?”

She paused. “Right after the Spectra incident. I saw you transform behind the school.”

“Oh,” Danny said, unsure how to react to the news. He shouldn’t have been surprised it had been so long. But for some reason it bothered him. No, it disappointed him. How oblivious he was. He was the ‘clueless one’ in the trio, wasn’t he?

“Why didn’t you say anything?” he asked. He needed her response. He needed to hear her say it.

“I wanted to let you tell me on your own,” Jazz replied. “How did you figure out I knew?”

Danny shifted, pulling his legs into a criss-crossed position as he shoved his hands into his sweatshirt pocket. He pulled out a teal headband and handed it to Jazz.

She stared at the headband in her fingers, eyebrows drawn together. “Where did you get this from?”

Right. She didn’t remember.

No one did.

“There was a ghost today,” Danny said, eyes trained to the ground. “You don’t remember it because a time ghost reversed everything but...it was bad. Really bad, Jazz. And...you...had to find me. I had left for a bit. In the ghost zone. I was, uh, getting help. And you sent a message to me with the headband. So I would know it was from you.” His gaze shifted up to the sky, and he cracked a smile. “It was really clever, what you did. You attached the note to the boomerang and sent it through the portal because you knew it would find me. It was...genius.”

“Okay,” Jazz said, processing the information. She wrapped the headband around her wrist. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he said. His smile fell as his gaze dropped back to the ground. “I mean, I will be. I don’t know.”

“Be honest with me then.”

“I—” Danny’s voice faltered. “No. I’m sorry, Jazz. I messed up. If it weren’t for Clockwork…”

“Do you wanna...talk about it?” Jazz asked.

“No.” Danny shook his head. “I...I’m sorry. I’ll be okay. I promise. I just...need a few days. I think. And, like, a ton of ice cream.”

The corner of Jazz’s mouth twitched up. “I’m not sure if we have ice cream in the house, but Mom just made a batch of cookies if you want.”

“Whatever works,” Danny said, making no attempt to stand.

The duo lapsed back into silence, taking in the calm spring day. Birds fluttered above them, building their nests for the eggs they would soon lay. A distant buzzing noise indicated the bees that had recently left their sleepy nests in search of pollen. Down the street, Danny heard the voices of children playing.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Danny said, breaking the spell.

“Don’t apologize,” Jazz said. “I’m sorry our home environment makes it so you felt you had to keep Phantom a secret.”

“It’s not your fault, Jazz,” Danny refuted.

“I know, but still. Even though I wish you confided in me sooner, I’m proud of everything you’ve done on your own.”

Danny tilted his head. “I mean, I haven’t really been alone. I’ve had Sam and Tucker.”

“Don’t devalue the hard work you’ve done, Danny,” Jazz said. “You’re doing amazing stuff, little brother. I’m really proud of you.”

“Yeah?” Danny said, his eyes widening.

“Yeah.” Jazz nodded. “You’ve helped so many people, Danny. Not just anyone can do that. It takes someone with a strong heart to put themselves in situations again and again, expecting nothing in return, just for the sake of helping people. You realize how many people are capable of this? Not many. And no one like you.”

Danny ducked his head, his ears peppered with red. “I’m not all that great.”

“You are though!” Jazz refuted. “Are you kidding me? Danny, you’re amazing. I’m so proud of you. And I know that behind Mom and Dad’s ignorance, if they knew it was you, they would be really proud too.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Danny said, standing. His legs groaned in protest, and he shook out the pins-and-needles feeling before turning to Jazz.“You said Mom made cookies, right?”

Jazz raised her eyebrows. “Well, she did. I don’t know if Dad left any for us though.”

Danny held out a hand. “Dad’s at the hardware store. Hasn’t come back yet. And I’ve had a shitty day, so I could really use some junk food right now. Wanna help me demolish the plate before Dad gets back?”

Jazz grabbed Danny’s hand, allowing him to pull her up. She turned towards the door. “Oh, you’re on!”

Huge thanks once again to @imekitty for editing! She’s awesome everyone go read her stuff!

#danny phantom #quality content #fanfiction #phicc #jazz #cute stuff #i tried to stay as canon as i could #christmas truce 2018

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apriumjam · 5 years

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Satsuriku no Tenshi Light Novel Volume 1 - B3 (Part 4)

Satsuriku no Tenshi - Until Death Do Them Part - B3 (Part 4)

Story by Makoto Sanada, written by Chiren Kina, illustrations by Negiyan, translations by me.

If you want to help out with translations, feel free to contact me!

Prologue | B7 | B6 | B5 | B4 (Part 1 / Part 2) | B3 (Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4) | Zack’s Memory || Index

A wide, open room spreads out before her, lit by bright fluorescent lights.

The walls and floor are both pure white. It’s as if the room was just recently built, or perhaps recently repainted. There’s not a speck of dirt to be seen. At the far end of the room is a large monitor and a complicated-looking machine; a wall of clear, bulletproof glass serves as a barrier. In other words, this is a dead end.

“…”

(There’s nowhere to go…)

She knows Zack is drawing nearer even without looking behind her.

Taking in a small breath, Ray stands completely still.

…I can’t go back anymore. There wouldn’t be a point even if I did. There’s nowhere to run…

(And nowhere to go home to…)

“Your mother and father…are waiting for you in hell – ”

As she stands there motionlessly, she dimly remembers what Danny had told her while she had lain upon the operating table.

(Doctor…is hell an even worse place than that house…?)

She slowly turns to face the entrance to the room.

Zack stands there silently, not even a bit out of breath. And the Zack staring at her right now looks different than both the Zack she had first met, and the Zack who had accompanied her to this floor. He stares at her with hollow eyes.

“…”

Wordlessly, slowly, he approaches her. Then, he lifts up the grim reaper-like scythe once more, and brandishes it toward her.

(Zack, I’m sorry…I’m going to make you a liar…)

She slowly closes her eyes.

(…But…if he kills me here, I’m sure that I can go to heaven…)

Secretly, beneath her eyelids, this is what she thinks.

And then –

“Bang!”

A loud noise reverberates throughout the room – so loud it makes her heart seize.

(…!)

A bad feeling stirs within her. After all – that was unmistakably the sound of gunfire.

She opens her eyes wide, and sees Zack kneeling on the ground, hanging his head as he crouches there. Blood spills from his calves, staining the floor like some kind of juice.

“Ahahahah!”

Cathy appears behind the glass along with that insane laughter.

“So sorry for cutting things short just while things were getting good! This is my gun room, so I shot you.” Cathy’s voice is calm as Ray stares at her dumbfoundedly.

“…Gun room.”

“Yes. Just look around at all those guns pointing at you! I can make them aaaall shoot you with just a flick of this button. Amazing, right?” As she speaks, a number of gun muzzles poke out from the white walls. They’re surrounded at all sides – this definitely isn’t something they can avoid, like at B3’s entrance.

“Ah, putting that aside…watching your fall out just now…was veeery thrilling! Especially you, Zack! You truly are my ideal sinner! You struggle and writhe, but in the end, you truly can’t hold back your impulses! How wonderful…!” Cathy speaks to him in an ecstatic tone of voice – though her words don’t match her appearance of a lovestruck maiden. Just remembering how Zack had looked as he had abruptly changed expression and given chase after Ray makes Cathy tremble in excitement.

“…Shut…up…!” Zack slowly stands, dragging himself to his feet, and glowers at Cathy from behind the wall.

“…Zack!” Reacting to his voice, Ray instinctively rushes up to him.

“Stay away! I’ll kill you!” he barks out in rejection, glaring at her sharply.

“See? It seemed like you got a little control back from the pain, but look at you. You just can’t…hold back, can you?” Cathy licks her lips as she watches Zack desperately trying to stop himself from raising a hand against Ray. She speaks with the full intent of provoking him.

“Aah?! You just try to piss everyone off! I’ll kill ya!”

“Ahahahah, I only speak the truth. And the one who is going to be killed is the sinner – in other words, you, Zack. …Look. Rachel Gardner. I’ll give you this.”

From behind the bulletproof glass, Cathy tosses a red gun over to land at Ray’s feet, as if it were a piece of trash.

“You’ll be even with that, right? Now, kill each other! And then I’ll give the winner an even more splendid punishment!” She laughs shrilly, sounding entertained from the bottom of her heart.

In her insane mind, she vividly sees Zack and Ray’s beautiful battle. Her chest bursts with her insatiable desire to see it, to see it now.

(Kill each other – )

After a brief silence –

“…What’s the point in doing something like that?” Ray asks disinterestedly. Cathy’s expression changes immediately.

“Haah? Oh, stop it. You truly are boring. What’s the point in looking for something like meaning? Do you think something will come out of it? A sinner can’t accomplish anything. So there’s no need to look for meanings in anything you do.”

Cathy’s expression doesn’t fit a beautiful woman at all.

(…Boring…)

Ray falls into silence once more.

“…How fuckin’ boring…being some doll’s tool…”

(Zack thinks I’m boring, too…)

Did mom and dad not listen to me…because they also thought I was boring…?

(…But all I wanted…was to have a puppy…)

Why did things turn out this way?

On that cold night, the puppy had stared at her from out of that dirty, broken cardboard box, as if asking for helped. Thinking of that lovely face, Ray gently leans down to pick up the gun.

(It’s heavy…)

That feeling causes Ray’s memories to grow even more vivid.

“Now, entertain me…!”

Cathy’s voice grows more excited. She sees Ray’s movement as a signal that her awaited match is about to start.

(…Entertain…)

…But that wasn’t…entertaining…

“If yer gonna shoot, hurry up,” Zack says. The girl stands motionlessly in front of him, not even lifting the gun to point it at him.

“Hey, could it be, you’re afraid of pulling the trigger? You can’t escape from being a boring, uninteresting girl?” Cathy attempts to goad her into action. It’s almost like Ray really has become a doll.

“…No.” Staring fixatedly at the gun she holds, she says this clearly.

“Hey, Ray, even if ya don’t shoot me, I can’t stop myself from killing!” Zack yells, his eyebrows furrowing beneath his bandages.

The pointed end of the scythe trembles near the skin of Ray’s pale neck, skin which has never been burnt by the sun. But the blade doesn’t feel cold anymore.

“…I won’t shoot you.” After looking away for a moment, she says this firmly and resolutely.

“…That so. But I wanna kill so bad I can’t help it!” Zack’s voice is mixed with sorrow and frustration.

(Argh, shit!)

I don’t wanna kill ya like this. This is fuckin’ humiliating. I can’t even control myself. I know I don’t wanna kill ya right now.

But he can’t – stop.

(I wanna kill…)

When I try to think, that’s all I can think about. I want to feel that thrill so much. But if I killed you right now, I wouldn’t. All I want to do…is kill someone with my own two hands. I feel like I’m going insane.

“Haah…haah…”

Zack looks as if he’s trying to stop himself. His breathing becomes more and more ragged.

“…I’m sorry. I’m going to make you kill me while I’m still boring.” Ray sounds as if she understands everything.

“Yeah, yer right…! I’ll feel like shit! That’s why I told ya t’ shoot me already! Ya won’t miss from this range!” Halfway through, his voice changes as if to try to persuade her.

“…I won’t shoot you.” This is her will. It won’t change, no matter what happens.

(I won’t kill Zack…)

Because Zack swore he would kill me –

“Hahahah…what are ya sayin’ at a time like this? Ah, but…that’s right, ya want me t’ kill ya.” Zack’s mouth curves as he laughs humourlessly. But Ray tilts her head to the side.

“That’s true, but that’s not it. …This is my will – ”

And, within the room cloaked in silence, Ray begins to speak.

“I’m fine being killed by you. But…I don’t want…I don’t want this to turn out the way that woman wants. After all…Zack, you and I…aren’t tools.”

She speaks, staring intently into Zack’s eyes.

“So…killing, and being killed…are our own choices.”

And Zack feels as if all his strength leaves him.

…I’m not a tool.

That’s right…that’s right. It’s easy. Why didn’t I realise it before? I really am an idiot.

Aah, Ray. It’s like ya said…killing and being killed are both our choices.

‘Cause if they aren’t, then what the hell are they?

(And I wouldn’t make a pointless promise in the first place – )

“…Hahahahah!”

Zack gives out a large laugh, as if reclaiming his sanity.

“Hey, Ray…what are ya doin’, sayin’ interestin’ stuff now? Aah, I can’t hold back anymore! Hey, at least give me a smile! Now!”

Somewhat agitated, he sidles up to her.

(…Smile.)

Ray closes her eyes.

…When was the last time I smiled?

She feels like it had been when she had taken the puppy home, but she can’t remember.

How did I smile back then? I feel like I always smiled when I saw something cute.

And…I liked the sound of that music box. My favourite music box.

Mom bought it for me when I was seven years old. I was so happy. I listened to it all night. Because listening to that sound always made me just a bit happy…

(I wonder if I’ll be able to smile if I remember that music…)

“…”

She slowly opens her eyes, and looks at Zack.

And shows him a smile with just the corner of her lips, with eyes that look as if they reflect the very end of the world.

“…What a shitty smile. …Yer eyes really are dead.”

That awkward expression seems to sap up the last of his strength. He slowly lifts his scythe, keeping it away from her.

“…But…if yer smile becomes real…it’ll be great. Just imaginin’ myself killin’ ya like that…makes me smile better than anyone else.”

He stares at the monstrous face, wrapped in bandages, reflected back at him from the gleaming blade. And then, he shouts in a voice as loud as the very first time they had met:

“So good…that I could just kill myself!”

And then, he stabs himself in his abdomen with his own scythe, as hard as he can.

(…!)

Dark red blood splatters across Ray’s vision.

“…Zack…!”

(What just happened…?)

She can’t grasp the situation. Overwhelmed with confusion, she rushes up to him.

“What?!” Cathy’s voice rises threateningly.

Zack’s actions have completely and utterly surpassed her expectations. Rather than confused, like Ray is, she’s also enraged. Using the machine, she opens the door in the glass wall. Then, she advances upon Ray, and slaps her pale cheek as hard as she can.

(Ow…)

As if remembering something from the impact of that blow, for an instant, Ray looks up at Cathy with eyes full of hatred.

“Ugh, disgusting! I was wrong about you! You’re a failure of a sinner! Even though I gave you that gun, and all you had to do was pull the trigger! And to think that Isaac Foster was so stupid that he would kill himself to satisfy his own urges – how disappointing!”

Cathy almost sounds as if in mourning. This is the utterly worst situation that could have happened – it doesn’t look like anything she had pictured at all.

(I wanted to see Zack kill Rachel, unable to help himself…! And then I wanted to slowly, carefully take my time punishing him…this has put a damper on everything…!)

As she watches the bright red blood seep from Zack’s wound, she bites her own lips – a vivid red of the same colour.

“Aaah…I wish Zack had been the one left. He would have surely looked better covered in bullet holes…even if you are a sinner, you’re completely boring! Oh, Rachel…you’re so, so boring…!”

Cathy hits Ray on the cheek with all her strength once more, venting her anger.

(…It hurts…)

Ray closes her eyes for an instant. Beneath her eyelids, she can see her mother and father shouting and snarling at one another as they quarrel.

She doesn’t know when it had started anymore. But her father always beat her mother when they fought. It had been painful, and maybe that was why her mother had gone mad. Because her mom hadn’t been that way when she had bought the music box for her…

(But I’m boring now, so that’s why I’m being kicked…? By this woman…)

“…I don’t remember you having the right to decide something like that.” Ray’s voice now has a bit of anger as she looks into the woman’s lined eyes.

“Hah? You’re trying to defy me, you failure of a sinner? Hey…why did someone as boring as you…even come here?”

Cathy looks down at Ray, her large eyes flaring up despite her discomfort at the girl’s actions.

“…Uugh…”

At that moment, a soft groan reaches Ray’s and Cathy’s ears. Zack.

Ray reflexively turns to look at him. The man convulses and twitches slightly.

“…Oh my, he’s still alive! He really is just like a monster…how wonderful!”

Cathy’s abrupt change in attitude is amazing. She rushes up to him as if running to her lover.

“…Are you going to kill him?” Ray asks.

“Of course. After all, I’m the only one who can judge such a splendid sinner…” Cathy answers, as if it should be obvious.

And then, Cathy recalls how Zack had looked on B6 – before he had become a sacrifice, he had been killing sacrifices himself. And his expression had been solely that of a murderer. Seeing him through her cameras – remembering him now – causes a vivid chill to rush through her. It had been so stimulating to see him kill the sacrifices as his instincts and desires bade him to. So unlike her…

(But because of this bitch, he became a sacrifice…)

But, to tell the truth, this is convenient.

Because of her, I can punish him.

“Ahahahah!”

Simply imagining herself killing him has her laughing uncontrollably.

I’ll be the one to execute him…! Because I’m the only condemner here!

(I wonder what face he’ll make as he dies? I can’t wait to see…my chest is absolutely burning!)

…Ring.

And from somewhere, a small bell rings. Of course, Ray is the only one to hear it.

“…Stop.”

As if reacting to that sound, Ray points the gun at Cathy, who looks agitated. Ray’s expression is stiff.

“Oh, my…Rachel, what are you doing now? You want to shoot me? But, sorry to say…that gun wasn’t loaded from the very start! Ahahahah! However…I’m a little impressed by your attitude to point that at me.”

Cathy sneers at Ray mockingly. To her, the girl looks like nothing more than a small deer.

(It’s not…loaded…?)

Seeing Ray waver uncertainly, Cathy reaches into her tight skirt with a smirk. She pulls out a small handgun.

“Bang!”

Her tone is jesting. But she points at the red gun Ray holds with keen precision and shoots it out of her small hand.

“Heheheh…now then, I’ll keep you alive so I can punish you.”

Cathy touches Zack’s body with her red gloved-hands.

Ring…

In that moment, Ray hears that ring again.

(…A blue…full moon…)

When she closes her eyes for just a second, she sees that blue moon. That large, almost artificially blue full moon…

Yes…she remembers the night of that blue moon very well…

Beneath the small light hanging from the ceiling, a man straddles a woman. His face is terrifying, monstrous. The man stabs the woman’s body over and over and over again. She doesn’t move at all, like a doll.

As she had looked upon that scene, she had wished it was a dream. But it wasn’t.

…What happened after, too…

“…No.”

Ray opens her eyes. She mumbles as if waking from a dream, and reaches into the purse slung about her shoulder.

(…I shouldn’t be alive…)

So –

“…I won’t let you kill Zack. Because he’s the one who is going to kill me.”

And then, almost like magic, she pulls a black handgun out of her purse, and points it at Cathy unwaveringly.

In an instant, Cathy removes herself from Zack, and whirls to face the girl.

“…Where did you get that?!” Her face twists in confusion.

One would never believe that Ray were wielding a gun with that calm face of hers.

“Bang.”

And, without even an atom of hesitation, she shoots Cathy in the abdomen.

“…!”

Cathy is mute from astonishment. She could have never expected this to happen.

(Why does she have a gun…? I don’t understand…)

But she doesn’t have time to wonder about her situation right now. A sharp pain from her abdomen makes her unable to stand. She falls to the ground.

“Aaargh…! Where did you get that gun?!” she screams, trying to drown out the pain.

“…” Ray silently looks down at her. Her eyes are cold. They hide no emotion.

But why? For an instant, as Cathy looks into those emotionless eyes and sees herself reflected in them, she feels a thrill.

“Ahahah! Rachel, you’ve shown your true colours! …Amazing!”

Cathy’s laughter becomes more and more deranged as she bathes in that strange sensation. She crawls along the floor, drawing nearer to Ray’s legs.

(…Why does she look so happy…?)

Ray tilts her head at the abnormality of the situation. For some reason, Cathy’s expression is creepily delighted to her.

“Hey, Rachel. I’ll judge you, okay…? No, I will judge you…I’ll judge the demon hiding beneath that composed face of yours…!”

Cathy speaks almost coquettishly at first as she staggers to her feet; then her voice grows rougher. She holds her gun up to point it at Ray.

“…Shut up.”

Someone whispers.

That harsh tone isn’t Ray’s.

“Eh?”

Slowly, Cathy turns around. Behind her stands Zack, thirsty for blood.

“What are ya lookin’ so happy for when ya got shot, you sadomasochistic bitch?” He sounds groggy, as if he’s just gotten up from bed. He lifts his scythe.

“’Cause of yer annoyin’ voice, I wanna kill so bad…that I woke up!”

With a bout of insane laughter, Zack slices off Cathy’s pale arm. For a second, she doesn’t recognise the shape as if falls in an arc.

“Aaargh?!” The moment she realises that arm to be hers, a hot pain of the likes she’s never felt before rushes through her body. Helplessly, lets out a scream of anguish.

“This…can’t be real…”

Her vision swims as she looks up at Zack with an expression of despair.

(Why…? I was going to punish Zack…!)

I’m not a sinner. I’m always right. So it’s not right for me to be killed…

“This is reality! Wake up!” Zack yells. He sounds as if he’s talking to both himself and to her. Then, he slices Cathy’s abdomen from top to bottom. Cathy falls, her body twisting unnaturally. Zack seems satisfied as he looks upon her and smiles.

“…Ah, but…guess ya fell asleep anyway.”

His expression turns to disgust as he looks down at Cathy’s body, lying on the ground like a motionless doll.

(Aah…this is the worst…that I would be killed by a sinner…)

Cathy’s eyes close to the world that whirls around her, as if to sleep. Her mascara is perfectly applied to her long eyelashes.

(But…it’s awful, but…it’s wonderful…)

She laughs. She has been killed by Zack.

And then, in the pool of her own blood, like melting chocolate, she stops breathing.

She will never wake up. She can’t judge people as good or bad anymore.

In her life, she had been a sheltered girl; she had fallen into ruin due to troubles in her family; and then she had worked at a jail. There was only one thing that remained the same throughout all the lives she had led. And that was that she judged sinners.

(…I am…the condemner…)

All Cathy knows is that in the darkness, there are no good or bad people.

▲▽

“…Zack.”

As Cathy’s vision grows dark, Ray rushes to Zack’s side as quickly as she can.

“Yeah…” Zack looks down at her with a somewhat uncomfortable expression. All the madness has left him.

“Zack…are you okay?”

(…Did the poison wear off…?)

Ray feels relieved to hear his gentle voice.

“Aah?! My stomach hurts, what d’ya think?!” Zack answers briskly.

“…”

(His stomach hurts…?)

Ray looks astonished.

She didn’t think she would hear those words from someone who had cut themselves a few minutes ago. After all, Zack looks calm and composed, to the point she nearly forgets her worry.

(…So he can’t be okay. But…he looks fine. But if I’m too pushy, he’ll get upset…)

“Um…don’t push yourself too much.”

After careful consideration, this is what she says.

“Shut up. You worry about yerself.”

But Zack is annoyed at her concern, and speaks with a delight one would not associate to an injured man.

“Anyway, did ya see her face?!”

“…Yeah.”

Feeling somewhat overwhelmed by how much energy he has, she gives a quiet nod.

“That was great! And ya did pretty good, too!” Zack grins as he recalls the expression of despair Cathy had made when he had raised his weapon at her. It was as if she had become just a normal woman. Simply remembering that wretched face has Zack in a good mood. He feels as if all his pain might simply melt away.

“…Really?”

“Yeah! I feel all better now!”

“…That’s good.” Looking at Zack’s satisfied expression, Ray can’t help but feel rather complicated.

(That woman really did end up getting killed by him after all…)

She feels a bit as if she’s been defeated by something.

(I wonder…if Zack had killed me back then, if I would be in heaven now.)

She’s lost in thought for a moment as she thinks of that place; a place no one on this world has ever been to.

“So, now that the bitch is gone, let’s go.”

Zack lightly smacks Ray on the top of the head as she continues to look down at the ground glumly.

“Eh…? Your stomach…are you okay now?”

“Ah? It just hurts a little, it’s nothin’,” he replies. It’s true that he’s in pain. But – it almost doesn’t seem like he’s cut himself that deep. The pain is ebbing away. And that’s impossible – but Zack doesn’t wonder about it.

All he does is think privately to himself – I really might be a monster.

Ray can only be surprised at Zack’s resilience. After getting shocked and escaping from a room of poison gas, he seems to be lively and energetic. It’s true that he has a resilience normal people don’t have.

“Okay…I’m sure there’s an elevator somewhere ahead.”

Whilst yet finding his apparent immortality to be utterly baffling, the girl points to the other side of the glass wall.

“Then let’s get goin’.”

“Okay…”

(…Is he really all right?)

In the room with Cathy’s large machine is a passageway marked EV. Ray predicts that this means it leads to the elevator. However, the door is locked.

“Hey, Ray. The door won’t open,” Zack says, kicking it.

“Wait. I’ll open it now.” Ray flicks the switch that says EV up. The machine also has numerous other buttons and switches, like “electric chair”, “dolls”, “applause”, and so on.

“Oh, it’s open now.”

“It looks like she was using that machine to do all sorts of things…”

“Aah? She was doin’ somethin’ that stupid? What an annoyin’ person.” Zack’s statement is intermingled with a yawn.

“Yeah.” Ray nods as she recalls Cathy with cold eyes. That is an expression Ray shows when she’s angry. But Zack doesn’t notice that slight change.

“Hey, Zack.”

“What is it?”

“…We aren’t tools.” As if to push away the rage she feels toward Cathy, Ray repeats the words she had said earlier.

“Yeah, we aren’t.” Laughing lightly, Zack turns his back on Cathy’s dead body.

“We goin’?”

“Yeah.”

Then, the two of them finally proceed through the now open door.

▲▽

Walking down the hall, they find that there really is an elevator there. Ray pushes the up button. But the doors don’t open. No matter how many times she presses the button, the elevator doesn’t give any indication that it will open for them.

(…Why?)

“…The elevator won’t work.” Ray tilts her head in confusion as she glances toward Zack.

“Huh? We came all this way, ‘n this happens. Maybe ya gotta use that machine?” Zack clicks his tongue.

“Maybe, but I didn’t see a switch like that…”

“So what are we gonna do?”

“I’ll think of a way to open it…”

“Hurry up, my stomach hurts.”

“Okay, I’ll try.”

(Is there some sort of mechanism…?)

Ray is somewhat worried. No matter how Zack appears to be, it’s obvious that they must get out of here quickly and treat his injury. Because it’s still slowly bleeding.

(But…is it because he won’t kill me unless the wound is healed…?)

As she comes upon that strange thought, she suddenly realises that there is something written on the opposite wall to the elevator.

“If you wish to open the door, pronounce your name to God.

“If you are free of lies, give the name that resides within you,

“And then know yourself.

“However, know that God has no need of the impure.”

There is nothing else that would appear to point toward how to open the door. Therefore, Ray can only assume that this must be a hint.

(If you wish to open the door, give your name to God…)

“Rachel Gardner.”

With a small voice, Ray faces the elevators and whispers her name. However, the doors don’t open.

(So that didn’t work…)

As if to divert her gaze from the truth, Ray looks away.

(Or maybe – )

“Hey, Zack…I want you to say your full name in front of the elevator.”

With just a slight amount of pain in her expression, Ray asks this of Zack.

“Aah? Why?” His face twists in a scowl.

“Because the doors might open…” Her voice sounds like it might fade at any moment.

“Your name won’t work?”

“…No.”

(…God has no need of the impure…)

The words scrawl across her vision. They pierce her heart.

“Well, whatever…Isaac Foster.”

Despite feeling confused by Ray’s instructions, the man recites his name as asked. And then, with splendid timing, the doors indeed open. It’s as if someone had been operating the elevator from somewhere else.

“What the hell, seriously?!”

Zack seems utterly delighted, almost viewing the door’s trick as some sort of magic. He quickly steps into the elevator.

(It opened…so, my name wasn’t good…)

I really am…

Her heart throbs in her chest. With a grim but determined expression, Ray embarks upon the elevator as well.

▲▽

“Hey, Zack…were you happy when you cut open your own stomach?” Ray asks as the elevator finally begins to move.

“Huh? Don’t compare me t’ that sadomasochistic bitch. I just thought it would be better than killin’ ya when ya got that borin’ face, and then gettin’ killed by her.” Zack’s expression is somewhat bitter as he replies.

“I see…”

“…Anyway, that gun ya used wasn’t hers. Where’d ya get it?” His voice is somewhat sharp now.

“…That was my gun…”

Despite feeling somewhat shocked, she replies carefully.

“Where were ya hidin’ that thing?”

“…I wasn’t hiding it. It was in my purse. Wrapped in a handkerchief…I witnessed a murder, so, I’ve always…”

“…Then why didncha use that in the first place?”

“…I won’t kill myself. Because God won’t allow it.”

“No, that’s not what I meant…”

“And, you’re the one who is going to kill me.” Her declaration is resolute, as if to interrupt him – or perhaps to put this topic of discussion behind them.

“Haah…I can’t really tell if yer smart or stupid. …Well, whatever. Ya were right t’ shoot her back then. Yer timing was so good, just rememberin’ it makes me want t’ laugh.” Zack smiles gleefully.

“…You’re in a good mood,” Ray says.

She isn’t sure why, but seeing him look so happy makes her happy as well. That’s what she feels.

“…I guess so. You are, too…yeah?”

But – she doesn’t notice that his voice grows softer and softer.

After a short while, the elevator doors open with what sounds like a thunk. They’ve probably arrived at B2.

Ray takes a single step into the hallway. This floor smells sweet. And the hall is lined with numerous stained-glass windows, almost like a church.

(Pretty…)

She stares down the hallway in fascination for a short time.

However, for some reason, she can’t sense Zack coming out behind her at all.

“…Zack…?”

A terrible feeling assails her from head to toe. Slowly, she turns around.

(…Eh?)

Her gaze falls upon Zack – quietly lying down on the floor in the elevator.

A large pool of blood has formed beneath him from the wound he had given himself earlier.

(…Was that sound earlier…from when he fell…?)

(…He really wasn’t okay…)

Aah…

No…

No, Zack, no…I don’t want this.

Even though he swore he would kill me. Even though he swore to God.

Ray rushes into the elevator and tightly grasps one of Zack’s hands, as if in prayer. Though this hand had previously brought countless people to despair – to Ray, that large hand was that of an angel’s, an angel who would lead her to heaven.

“…Zack…!”

Ray calls his name from the very bottom of her heart, trying to convey those emotions, wishing that he would open his eyes.

In a hollow world that doesn’t contain even despair, Zack faintly hears Ray pleadingly calling his name.

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#satsuriku no tenshi #satsuten #angels of death #satsuriku no tenshi ln volume 1 #light novel translations #light novel #satsuten light novel #mine

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dannyphantomrpg · 5 years

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Visual Aid: Danny Phantom: 3 NEW Ghosts!

Danny Phantom! There's so many cool ways to take the show, and I just love exploring new characters and new things we can put into it. In this video, I thought it'd be cool to show you guys what I've been thinking about lately. I came up with three brand new ghosts to put into the Danny Phantom show. Now, would these ghosts interact with Danny as a younger kid, or they interact with the Danny characters ten years later. You be the judge as we go into the Ghost Zone and and find out about Danny Phantom, three new ghosts. Check it out.

Ok, the first ghost I thought would be really, really cool, I'm thinking, what would be kind of a scary area for a ghost to appear in? And one of the scariest things I've ever seen in, like, scary movies, when someone looks into a mirror, there's someone behind them they weren't expecting. I thought a ghost coming out of a mirror, who only inhabits mirrors, would be very, very cool. And what would this ghost's name be? This ghost's name would be...

Funhouse. Check it out.

You know, reflection in mirrors in horror movies, the, the imagery is just crazy. Uh, and scary movie and ghost stories and things like that. Seeing reflections of things behind you and having reflections come to life and stuff like that, I thought that'd be perfect for a Danny Phantom ghost. I don't really watch a lot of horror movies, but the ones that I have seemed to feature mirrors all the time. Anyway - and, also, I've seen a lot of movies where someone gets trapped in a fun house or just reflections going on all over the place. So I thought that was a pretty cool ghost power to give a ghost villain for Danny Phantom.

So here's Danny Phantom ten year later, in his Ten Years Later outfit and all of his reflections in a fun house mirrors are coming to life. That's what Funhouse does: he brings reflections to life in a horrible, scary way. So the more reflections of you that are there, he will, he will embody, he will inhabit, so suddenly, instead of fighting just a ghost, you're fighting a hundred reflections of yourself. He probably reflects the darkest parts of you too, which would be very, very strange and very, very cool for a villain if you ask me. So I think Danny fighting this new ghost, Funhouse, would be - would it be fun? Probably not so fun. But you know what? It's be really cool. Let's reflect on that.

Alright, what's you guys think of Funhouse? I love Funhouse. I love how he can bring every one of his reflections to life so there's a virtual army of Funhouse ghosts around Danny Phantom.

Coming up next is a very cool ghost, and I think this ghost is fun because there's a lot of ghosts on Danny Phantom that control things. We have Technus that controls technology, we have Vortex that controls the weather, but this ghost controls insects. And she not only controls insects, I think her form is actually made up of insects. Speaking of form, say hello to Swarm.

After seeing Ant-Man, how Ant-Man can control ants, I thought wouldn't it be cool because, you know b- bugs make big appearance in horror movies all the time and, and let's face it. Bugs are pretty scary to being with. They're creepy, they're crawly, if used in the wrong way - even if used in the right way they're creepy and crawly - but used in the wrong way they're very creepy. They could be very terrifying. So just imagine a ghost whose entire existence is not just controlling bugs, but when he appears in any form at all, his entire body's made of bugs. Made of insects. Just constantly moving, constantly crawling, constantly, you know, undulating with with bug-weird-incest-ness. And I think that w- that jus- that would be just enough to terrify anybody. And no matter how much, how many holes you put it in it would just get refilled with more bugs because he's a constantly living, you know, e-every part of his body is moving and living. And, and I think it's very scary. Anyway, uh just an- and th- then then to draw this character, I though, oh I've got to draw a swarm of bugs. You've ever tried to draw a swarm of bugs before? It, it's a *laughs* it's, drawing a swarm of bugs is very, very challenging.

So anyway, I wanted to draw Danny here, uh, in his Ten Years Later outfit fighting Swarm, of course getting overwhelmed at first. But like any good hero, Danny would rally to the cause. But I don't even know what bugs would be the most ter- it wouldn't even be just, you know, insects, I mean I'm including spiders too. Yes, I know they're arachnids and stuff, but I'm including spiders as well, but imagine being made of spiders and bugs - I mean, this would be very terrifying. So this is a picture of Danny Phantom, ten years later, fighting a brand new ghost: the creepy, the crawly, the icky *shudders* Swarm.

All right, Swarm. What did you guys think of her? That, to me, is a pretty creepy ghost. Uh, it's like one of the plagues of Egypt in the Bible.

*dumb ad for SquareSpace I'm not dealing with*

The last ghost I thought of, this one I think is the creepiest of all because, you know, you see in movies sometimes that kids have these really creepy dolls. They'll be asleep in the room, they wake up and it's pitch black in the room but they'll see the doll staring back at them. Creepy toys, and just creepy playthings, and play, playthings hey... There's a cool name for a ghost. Say hello, to Plaything.

Alright, now this ghost I couldn't wait to draw. Plaything. How many creepy, scary movies have you seen where a doll is used as the creepy thing in a kid's room that the kid is terrified of. And of course, it ends up being the terrifying thing when the doll comes to life or whatever. Anyway, I thought this ghost, Plaything, would be the perfect ghost to inhabit or embody just, you know, child's toys and and and things you play with. I didn't want to draw the whole ghost. I think it's just great having him in the corner of a room. Uh, Danny's gonna face off with him for the first time. Probably has never met him before, has no idea how to deal with this guy, but just fighting a creepy doll-inhabiting ghost who can just, you know, take over the sweetest thing and make it super scary. That's kind of scary to me, so here's Danny Phantom, ten years later - well, his leg ten years later - about to face off with a brand new ghost: the terrifying, the creepy, Plaything.

All right, there you go. Plaything. Petty creepy, pretty cool. So we have three ghosts, Funhouse, Swarm, and Plaything. Which one of those three did you like the best? Please leave a comment in the comment section down below. What are the things I should add to the Danny Phantom universe? New powers, new ghosts, new characters? It's up to know. Let me know, I'll put it here.

#Butch Hartman #Danny Phantom: 3 NEW Ghosts!#visual aid #Danny Phantom #funhouse #swarm #plaything #sidequests #miniboss ideas #genderfluid!Swarm #did butch just accidentally invent Spiders-man?#i'll let you decide if they're set ten years later #they're all set ten years later #am i the only one that imagines all three of them hanging out together like the Amizon Trio from sailor moon?#i had to take a break for a while #but i'm back on my game #with fresh eyes #and damn it looks amazing

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upontheshelfreviews · 5 years

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Merry Christmas everyone! To conclude this month of merrymaking we’re looking at an animated Christmas cult classic that I have a bit of a soft spot for. But perhaps it’s best to start at the beginning:

ETA Hoffman’s “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King” is one of my favorite fantasy stories, though chances are you’re more familiar with the famous ballet by Tchaikovsky that it inspired. The music is gorgeous and instantly recognizable, but few know the actual story of The Nutcracker beyond what your average community production rolls out every December. Much of the plot plays out like a variation of Beauty and the Beast with a protagonist akin to The Wizard of Oz’s Dorothy and story elements that wouldn’t feel out of place in a Grimms’ fairytale. Sadly, most of those details were lost in the translation from book to light holiday entertainment. Not that I’m complaining, I love the ballet, but there’s so much more to its origins that people aren’t usually interested in delving into.

I say all this because today’s movie, The Nutcracker Prince, is one of the very few filmic adaptations that pays faithful tribute to both its source material and its theatrical counterpart. In spite of – or perhaps because of – the popularity of the ballet, there’s been only a handful of film versions of Hoffman’s The Nutcracker (or at least a handful compared to something like A Christmas Carol). How good you find each of them to be depends upon your taste and the production value. I’ve found remarkably little about the making of this particular adaption, but that probably has to do with the fact that it was barely a blip on the box office radar. Released through Warner Brothers (which itself would issue another Nutcracker movie starring Maculay Culkin six years later), this was the only full-length animated feature created by Canada’s Lacewood Productions. A shame, really, because looking at The Nutcracker Prince you can see the studio’s potential. But thanks to the home video circuit, the movie has found a new life as a nostalgic Christmas classic for 90’s kids like myself. Let’s unwrap the reasons why, shall we?

If there’s one thing I appreciate about The Nutcracker Prince, it’s how it plays around with the music order to emphasize a scene’s mood rather than slavishly follow the original score. Instead of the recognizable jovial overture piping over the main titles, we have the Snowflake Waltz from the finale of Act 1, building an aura of mystery and magic to lure us into the story. A series of cross-hatched stills introduce us to our cast and characters, and I tell you, when you recognize these names you will not be able to look at this movie the same way. If I told someone that Anne of Green Gables, Jack Bauer, Lawrence of Arabia, Jimmy Neutron’s grandma and several prominent cast members from Canada’s Saturday morning fixture The Raccoons shared the screen together once, they’d think I was crazy, but as you’ll see it’s the honest to Zeus truth.

Our story begins proper with Clara Stahlbaum (Meagan Follows) and her younger brother Fritz delivering last-minute gifts to their neighbors on Christmas Eve. They race through the icy streets of Germany until they reach the shop of eccentric family friend Uncle Drosselmeier (Peter Boretski), a clockmaker and expert craftsman of mechanical toys. Drosselmeier greets the children and they invite him to come light up the Christmas tree with the family, but he enigmatically tells them he has to prepare for his nephew. This comes as news to Clara and Fritz, since they’ve known Drosselmeier for their whole lives and have never heard him mention a nephew before. Drosselmeier sends them on their way promising he’ll be at the Stahlbaum’s party that evening. Once they’re gone, he hints that there may be something magical in the air this Christmas…

“Blasted pixie dust everywhere! Once the holidays are done I’ve got to get the place fumigated!”

On their way home Clara and Fritz debate what Uncle Drosselmeier’s big annual present he makes for the family will be this time. Fritz, the little future warlord that he is, wishes for a working fort with a mechanical army, while Clara dreams of an enchanted garden where swans in golden necklaces glide across the water. This conversation is a little holdover from the Hoffman story that I like. One of the most difficult challenges every writer faces is writing natural sounding dialogue for children; while Hoffman’s dialogue is a bit stilted by the conventions of the era, the meaning still comes through. Fritz laughs at Clara’s fantasy but because he finds the idea of swans wearing jewelry more ludicrous than a magic garden, which is how an ebullient boy like him would think.

Back at the Stahlbaums, preparations for the Christmas party are underway. The parents give their children their presents: older sister Louise (who’s often excised from other adaptations) receives a pretty new dress, Fritz a hobby horse and toy soldier gear, and Clara a pair of ballet slippers and a new doll she christens Marie. I have to wonder if this is some kind weird in-joke since in the story, the main character is called Marie and the doll she receives is the one who’s named Clara. What happened during the process of making this movie that resulted in their names being switched? Clara is thrilled since these slippers bring her one step closer to her dreams of joining the royal ballet, but feels a touch bemused when she overhears her mother getting choked up at the notion that this may be Clara’s last doll.

The party arrives, including Louise’s boyfriend Eric. Clara and Fritz tease the lovebirds (though to be frank, anyone who wears a powdered wig twelve years out of fashion to something that isn’t a costume party deserves to be ridiculed) but something about their shared intimacy stirs something within Clara. This on top of the adult party guests commenting on how fast she is growing marks her entrance into that state of melancholy and confusion that comes from standing between childhood and adulthood and not knowing where you belong. Clara’s age is never mentioned though I suspect she’s roughly twelve or thirteen, right on the cusp of adolescence and about the time where that mindset begins to sink in. She still plays with dolls and treats them like they were alive, but imagines a future as an adult. There’s a growing sadness over the impending decision between the two that she subconsciously acknowledges through her playing with Marie. This theme isn’t present in the Hoffman story (Marie is a confirmed seven year old in the prime of juvenescence) but it’s been incorporated into the Maurice Sendak retelling a couple of years prior to The Nutcracker Prince and I like its inclusion here as well.

“I wonder if this is anything like what my pen pal Wendy went through with that Peter boy…nah, you’re overthinking it, Clara.”

But there’s no time for her to ponder the implications as a crack of thunder, gust of wind and explosion of fireworks marks the arrival of the final party guest – Drosselmeier. He comes bearing his greatest creation, an enchanting music box castle complete with marching soldiers, seven swans a-swimming, and figures dancing inside the ballroom. In another humorous scene from the original story, Clara and Fritz fawn over the castle while frustrating Drosselmeier with their requests to make the automated figures do more, leading him to go on a brief “kids today don’t appreciate shit” rant.

As the party guests waltz to the strains of more Tchaikovsky, Clara wanders by the tree and spies a present she hadn’t noticed before – a nutcracker in the shape of a soldier. He’s not the most handsome toy in the box, but there’s something charming about him that she is drawn to. Drosselmeier confesses that he’s just part of his gift for the family and demonstrates how he works. On seeing the Nutcracker, Fritz wrestles him out of Clara’s arms and insists he has a go. But because there are no nuts left, he tries one of his toy cannonballs and breaks its jaw. Drosselmeier cheers Clara up by telling a story of how the Nutcracker came to look as he does. And this is where things get…weird.

Now I don’t mind the inclusion of the story-within-a-story. I’m happy they go into how the Nutcracker was cursed unlike most other versions, and there’s some good gags thrown in that make me chuckle. It’s how they go about it that I take some issue with. First, look at the movie’s style looked so far.

The character designs are clearly inspired by Disney – big eyes, soft rounder faces, realistic body proportions for the main characters, only slightly exaggerated for the lesser ones. The backgrounds are warmly lit and richly detailed, like an early work by Thomas Kincade. Overall it feels like something out of a classic storybook.

Now here’s some screencaps from Drosselmeier’s story.

“All right, who changed the channel to Cartoon Network?”

The scene doesn’t even look like it’s from the same movie. It goes from feature film quality to a Saturday morning cartoon, and that’s not entirely coincidental. Lacewood Productions grew out of Hinton Animation Studios which primarily made, you guessed it, cartoons for tv. And Hinton Animation itself had its roots in Atkinson Film-Arts, the studio that produced The Raccoons, hence why some of the cast makes appearances. But because I couldn’t find anything on the making of The Nutcracker Prince, we’ll never know if they went this route because the budget ran out, or the animators didn’t feel comfortable drawing the entire movie in the Disney house style and worked out some kind of compromise, or they just wanted the reveal of the Nutcracker’s human form at the end to be an even bigger surprise. Given some time and creativity they might have been able to come up with something better. You could argue this is how Clara envisions the story playing out in her head, but I don’t think a child from the 1800’s would imagine a fairy tale in the style of Danny Antonucci. In fact, if you played music from Ed Edd and Eddy over this part it wouldn’t feel out of place. Everything is played up for nothing but laughs, not even the Nutcracker’s transformation into a lifeless object, which should be an emotional gut punch. And I’d be ok with all this if it was a short sequence, but it lasts fifteen minutes. That might not seem like long, but since this movie is only seventy-five minutes that means it takes up a good portion of its first half. Plus the cuts back and forth between the story to it being told reminds you of how jarring the whole sequence is compared to the rest of the film.

But on to the story itself. Drosselmeier’s tale takes place in a faraway kingdom belonging to a King who I can only describe Yosemite Sam in his golden years right down to the ornery western accent (it wasn’t until doing my research that I discovered he’s voiced by the Texan monster from the Beetlejuice cartoon which certainly explains it), an extreme doormat Queen, and their daughter, the “beautiful” but very spoiled and unfortunately named Princess Pirlipat. They have in their employ a world-famous clock maker and magician coincidentally also named Drosselmeier and his apprentice, his shy nephew Hans (Kiefer Sutherland).

“Patience, friends. The joke you’re all expecting is coming.”

The occasion on which this flashback takes place is the King’s birthday, and the Queen has put in an order for a cake made out of his favorite food, blue cheese (would that make it a blue cheesecake?) This has the unwanted side effect of drawing out every mouse in the palace. Led by the Mouse Queen (legendary comedienne Phyllis Diller) and her dimwitted son (Mike MacDonald), they pounce upon the cake just as the Queen is putting on the finishing touches.

With no time left to make a new cake, the Queen is forced to send it out to the King and his party guests. This disaster is almost salvaged by a sycophantic Emperor’s New Clothes-style response to the dessert, but Pirlipat ruins everything by whining how she refuses to eat that repulsive offal. The King promotes Drosselmeier to the post of Royal Exterminator and soon all the mice are caught – except the Mouse Queen and her son. She takes her revenge out on Pirlipat; using her dark magic she curses the princess with extreme ugliness, cementing it with a bite to the foot.

Oh please, that’s just Kellyanne Conway before her makeup.

Eager to blame somebody for Pirlipat’s state, the King is ready to execute Drosselmeier until the Queen suddenly intervenes and begs him to consider giving the clockmaker some time to reverse the curse. It was at this moment I realized the King and Queen here are like if the monarchs from Alice in Wonderland had their personalities switched. They even have the same body types as their Disney counterparts.

The King reluctantly acquiesces, but gives Drosselmeier and Hans no more than…well…did I already mention Kiefer Sutherland is in this movie?

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“Your obligatory reference humor, all wrapped up in one neat package. Merry Christmas!”

So Hans and Drosselmeier study the princess to figure out a way to break the spell, not helped by Pirlipat’s constant ear-bleedingly grating crying. Her only comfort is Hans feeding her nuts he cracks for her himself. Inspired, Drosselmeier researches well into the night and discovers the cure for Pirlipat’s condition – the Krakatooth Nut, the hardest nut in the world. It can only be cracked open by a young man who’s never shaved or worn boots and they must take exactly seven steps to and from the person they’re feeding the nut to with their eyes shut and without stumbling, which even by fairy tale logic is some damn arbitrary rules.

The King invites noblemen from around the world to crack the Krakatooth with the promise of marrying Pirlipat and becoming heir to the kingdom if they succeed, though he has them and the rest of the court blindfolded so they won’t be scared off by her hideousness. Unfortunately each man who makes an attempt winds up with a mouth full of broken teeth. The Mouse Queen, confident in her evil plan, watches the misery play out with delight. Hans, however, decides to give it a try, and to Drosselmeier, the royal family, and the Mouse Queen and Prince’s surprise, he succeeds. Pirlipat is transformed back into her normal, terrible old self, however the court is too busy fawning over their restored icon to notice what happens next.

Enraged over being foiled, the Mouse Queen casts a curse on Hans to make him “the prince of the dolls”. Before he can take his final step backward, she bites his foot and he is transformed into a wide-smiling nutcracker. In his new form he accidentally knocks over a line of busts domino-style, the last of which the Mouse Queen is too late to escape from. I love it when villains are hit by instant karma. Alas, Pirlipat takes one look at Hans and refuses to marry a doll that’s not even half as ugly as she was moments ago.

Yep. Totally unmarriageable material.

On seeing his prospective son-in law for himself, the King accuses Drosselmeier of trying to trick his daughter into marrying one of his contraptions. He has the poor guy who’s shown nothing but years of loyalty and service to his outlandish demands banished forthwith while he and his wife and daughter celebrate their own selfish victory. I always hated how they never earned some kind of punishment for their behavior, but considering the boundary-shifting turmoil Europe endured before, during and after this tale was written, it’s more than likely these foolish monarchs will get what’s coming to them in the worst possible way down the line.

Enjoy your power while you can, assholes. Come the Napoleonic wars, you’re all royally screwed.

As for the Mouse Prince, he mourns his mother for all of ten seconds before realizing her death makes him the new Mouse King. He declares to Drosselmeier that he’ll have his revenge on the Nutcracker – not for killing mommie dearest but for smashing the end of his tail when the busts fell and making it go crooked.

With the story done, we abruptly return to the party and Clara expressing her disappointment in Hans’ unfair fate. Drosselmeier assures her that while Hans may be stuck as a Nutcracker, he’s still the rightful ruler of the magical kingdom of the dolls and the spell over him can be broken, but only if he defeats the Mouse King and wins the hand of a fair maiden. I love Clara’s reaction to this; she rolls her eyes and wonders why all fairy tales have the same solution.

Long after the party has ended and the Stahlbaums are fast asleep, a restless Clara sneaks downstairs with her kitty Pavlova to check on her Nutcracker. She introduces him to his new subjects, her toys – Marie, her old matronly doll Trudy, and Pantaloon, the ancient captain of Fritz’s toy soldiers. Taken by a music box’s melody, Clara shares a romantic song and dance with the Nutcracker to the tune of the Waltz of the Flowers, not unlike the one Louise and Eric had earlier.

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And for those of you watching, yes, Clara is clearly rotoscoped when she’s dancing. I’m not against rotoscoping as long as animators don’t rely too heavily on it (COUGHBAKSHICOUGH), though the use of it here as well as in one other scene emphasizes how uneven the rest of the film’s animation is under scrutiny. I do wish there was a full version of this song somewhere though because it’s quite pretty.

The music comes to a sudden halt as Pavlova breaks an ornament. Clara quickly stashes the Nutcracker our of fear of being caught out of bed, but before she can return upstairs she’s startled by the famous ghostly image of Drosselmeier atop the grandfather clock in place of the decorative owl, his cloak billowing out like wings. He showers the entire parlor in pixie dust, and goofy-looking mice armed with forks and needles pop up from of every crevice. Pavlova scares them away from Clara until one arrives to scare him back – the Mouse King, looking far more intimidating than he did in the flashback.

One is an animation student’s design project, the other is Ratigan’s cousin. Would you believe they’re one and the same?

Drosselmeier also douses the toy cabinet with his magic and brings them all to life. The Nutcracker is woken up and, having no idea of what’s happened since the incident with Pirlipat, quickly has to come to grips with his new form and the fact that a sociopathic mouse has sworn a vendetta against him. And you thought the Hangover guys had it bad. Marie and Trudy plead him to take up his mantle as Prince of the Dolls and fight despite his inexperience. Fritz’s soldiers vow their loyalty and Pantaloon (voiced by Peter O’Freaking Toole) is made second-in-command. Though rather than do any actual fighting the old coot drones on and on in Shakespeare references.

“So we’re not watching Ratatouille Peter O’Toole so much as Man of La Mancha Peter O’Toole. Imagine my delight.”

Actually, like the Marie/Clara name switch before, I have to wonder if this odd characteristic of Pantaloon is another subtle in-joke or reference towards the original story. Hoffman was a big Shakespeare fan and often referenced him in his writings, including The Nutcracker. In the book when Fritz’s soldiers desert the battle, the Nutcracker cries out the famous line from Richard the Third, “My kingdom for a horse!” (paired down here to a simple “Come back!” when the toy horses run free). In a weird way, having Pantaloon riff on Shakespeare is a nod to Hoffman. On top of that, one of his first lines is “All for one and one for all”, which everyone remembers from Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers. Years after Hoffman’s Nutcracker was published, Dumas wrote his own version of the story which is the lighter, softer one that the ballet takes the most cues from. So whether or not this was intentional is up for debate, but if it was I give the writers all the credit in the world for honoring both authors of The Nutcracker in such an obscure and subtle way.

The battle between the mice and the dolls promises to be an exciting one. The problem is once it gets going, it’s so wildly unfocused. The mice and dolls run around each other aimlessly firing and flailing at will. Clara could end all this just by kicking the mice to the other side of the room, but she just stands to the side and giggles at everything happening. Then there’s Marie, who in spite of Trudy strongarming her into helping the fight barely does anything other than scream in a stereotypical Southern accent and complain about how all this fighting is spoiling her complexion, like if she were a more spoiled version of Princess and the Frog’s Charlotte LaBouff. She’s marginally more tolerable that Pirlipat. Granted she does have one funny moment where her dress gets splattered with cheese and that’s what pushes her into a violent rage against the mice.

“And you will know my name is the Lord & Taylor when I lay my vengeance upon thee!”

Anyway, the mice hold down Nutcracker long enough for the Mouse King to have a go at killing him. Clara finally intervenes, throwing her slipper at the Mouse King and knocking him off his high toy horse. But she slips on a marble into the clock and falls unconscious.

Clara wakes up back in her bed on Christmas morning, her head wrapped up in bandages. Nobody believes what she saw the previous night, owing her delusions to a fever sustained from her injury. Drosselmeier pays Clara a surprise visit and presents her with a newly fixed Nutcracker. Grateful as she is, Clara calls him out for not doing anything when his own nephew was in danger, though Drosselmeier states he’s not the one who has the power to save him. Clara’s mother insists she stay in bed and do nothing for the rest of the day, which, come on Mom. Worst Christmas ever.

That evening the Mouse King also pops into Clara’s room to return her slipper. Awfully decent of him, all things considering. After making more big talk about how he’s gonna turn Nutcracker into a pile of splinters, Clara lures him into her drawer with the promise of some chocolates Fritz left her earlier and traps him in there. She flees downstairs to hide Nutcracker, but the Mouse King has mastered offscreen teleportation and threatens to kill Pavlova if she doesn’t hand him over. The owl on top of the clock changes into Drosselmeier and once again he brings the toys to life. This time it’s just for moral support as Nutcracker and the Mouse King battle mano-e-mouso up the Christmas tree. It’s a big improvement over the first battle. There’s more focus since it’s just the two of them fighting and there’s creative use of the terrain and presents around it. My one complaint is that Nutcracker doesn’t drunkenly tackle the tree itself at one point, but we can’t have everything we want for Christmas.

Whomsoever pulls the sword from the spruce shall become king of all Toyland! Oops, wrong mythos.

At one point the Mouse King nearly runs through a defenseless Nutcracker but Pantaloon bravely intervenes at the cost of a nasty back wound. Finally, Nutcracker delivers the killing blow and the Mouse King’s body crashes to the floor. The mice scatter and the toys declare victory. But Pantaloon’s batteries are about to expire, and since the Stahlbaums out of double-A’s the only way to save him is to get him to the Land of the Dolls; the gate to which is coincidentally right through Drosselmeier’s castle. Nutcracker eagerly invites Clara to join them, and after saying some mysterious something or other about time, Drosselmeier shrinks her down to their size with magic. They enter the castle, and Pavlova goes to inspect the Mouse King, which, for a decomposing corpse, seems to be growling an awful lot…

In the castle Marie gets sidetracked by the waltzing gentlemen while the rest continue on. They reach some lovely winter gardens where the snow is made of coconut icing and the royal swans Clara has fantasized earlier wait to take them on their journey. Since Marie is too late to join them, she has to settle for being dragged through the air on a common mallard.

Still better than flying United Airlines.

The swans soar over a forest of Christmas trees up to the stars and through a magical waterfall that changes Clara and Nutcracker into attire befitting royalty and restores Pantaloon to health. They all land at a beautiful palace made of sweets where Nutcracker’s subjects give them a warm welcome. Clara and Nutcracker head out on to the ballroom floor to dance to my favorite piece from the ballet – scratch that, of any classical composer – the achingly beautiful Pas De Deux.

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Like Clara’s solo before, the choreography is rotoscoped, but they’re much more clever at hiding it this time around. The dancing plays out like a dreamy montage with the moves fading in and out from one another, alternating between pink and blue silhouettes, minimally colored full-body shots, and more detailed animation reserved for closeups. There’s also an old-fashioned Vaseline-on-the-lens-style filter on, the kind normally reserved for romantic moments from Hollywood’s golden age which befits the tone they’re going for.

With the dance done, Nutcracker asks Clara to stay with him and rule the Land of the Dolls forever. Clara is sorely tempted, but something holds her back from saying yes. The idea of living in a candy castle with her dream prince and childhood friends is too good to be true, a perfect happy ending. And that’s just it – an ending. Clara has dreams beyond that will never come true if she settles, dreams of seeing the world and being a prima ballerina which can only happen if she chooses to grow up, and she wants to in spite of how much she’s fallen in love with Nutcracker. It would have hit harder if this theme of choosing to mature vs. clinging to girlhood was explored more throughout the movie, but the point still stands.

Now that the desire to grow up has taken hold, Pantaloon, Marie and Trudy change back into ordinary toys, the spark of life bestowed by childhood imagination put out. One by one, the denizens of the doll kingdom drop like flies, their number growing as Clara keeps justifying her refusal to stay.

And as if things couldn’t get any worse, guess who crashes the party?

Ohhhhhh shiiiiit….

Up to this point the Mouse King was a comical villain who was difficult to take seriously. But now here he is like Ratigan in the final act of The Great Mouse Detective, bereft of his senses and embracing his inner animal. His chest wound is still bleeding, his breathing is ragged, he doesn’t even talk, and he shuffles forward like a zombie, but nothing holds him back his single-minded pursuit of Clara. You can’t even tell if he’s going after her because he recognizes the part she played in his eventual demise or he’s desperate to stick it to Nutcracker before he drops dead. Hell, maybe in his near-death state he’s so delusional that he thinks Clara IS Nutcracker. That makes it even more terrifying; he knows he’s dying but refuses to go without taking someone, anyone out with him in as violent a manner as possible.

The circle-eyes kind of kill it for me, though. I mean, when a bad guy or monster is cornering you in their final moments, which gaze is more threatening – bloodshot, glowing and blank, or colorful cartoon rings? Unless their name is Judge Doom, the answer should always be the former.

Defenseless, all Clara can do is pelt dessert at him. But it’s only delaying the inevitable. And when Nutcracker tries to help, the change slowly and painfully takes over him and he is forced to watch as his mortal enemy corners his true love, resulting in the most arresting visual of the movie.

Nutcracker gasps out Clara’s name one last time and morphs fully back into wood. A single tear remains on his face, the only sign he was ever truly alive.

The Mouse King traps Clara on the balcony, lunges at her and goes over the railing, finally taking himself out with a classic Disney villain fall. Clara pulls herself back up and sees the palace is now completely abandoned and filling up with mist. She cries desperately for her Nutcracker as the final heartrending strings of the Pas De Deux play, and the scene to slowly fades to black.

This scene…this whole scene from the moment the Pas De Deux began…how it got me when I was a kid. It broke my heart and did an echappé all over the pieces. Everything from the visuals to the acting and especially the music still punches me in the feels. For all my gripes about the inconsistent animation, this is the part of the movie where it absolutely shines. And thanks to the ramped up tension that follows every note, I’ve always associated this piece of Tchaikovsky’s score with poignant dramatic moments. Say what you will about the past hour of this movie, it is worth it for this excellent emotional climax.

Fritz bursts into Clara’s room startling her awake and declares Pavlova killed a crooked-tailed mouse by the clockwork castle. Clara dashes downstairs to the toy cabinet but finds Nutcracker is gone. She sprints out of the house straight to Drosselmeier’s shop. Oddly enough, he seems to be expecting her. Clara begs Drosselmeier to tell her if the story about the Nutcracker and the Mouse King is true for the sake of her sanity. But then, a handsome young man enters from the other room.

Drosselmeier introduces him as his nephew, Hans. Despite this apparently being their first time meeting, Hans greets her with familiarity, even bowing to her just as her Nutcracker Prince did. And his voice is one Clara would know anywhere. She in turn gives the perfect response.

“Hello…Nutcracker.”

If the climax already left me nearly speechless than the finale takes whatever little words are left straight from my mouth. As far as endings go it’s near flawless. I’d say The Nutcracker Prince borrowed from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast if it weren’t for the fact that it came out the year before Beauty did. Like The Wizard of Oz, it knows how to leave you on an emotional high note. While it’s supposed to be ambiguous, it’s the kind where deep down you just know the real answer without any explanations given.

“Though I can only imagine how awkward it would have been after she said that if it did turn out to be a dream.”

“SHUT THE FUCK UP CYNICISM YOU WILL NOT RUIN THIS MOMENT FOR ME!!”

And because this was the 90’s, our end credits play over another Oscar-bait power ballad, this one being loosely inspired by the Waltz of the Flowers. Not one of the best, but still a good one to close the film on. Enjoy!

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I honestly feel a little bad critiquing The Nutcracker Prince because at the end of the day it’s a fantasy, and fantasies play by their own emotional nonsensical surrealistic rules. It’d be like if Cinema Sins tried to blast a Jean Cocteau flick (and knowing those bastards’ egos they will if they haven’t already). Sure the characters aren’t the most deep, there’s some fluff in the story that could have been put to better use and the animation is inconsistent (characters go wildly off-model and if you pause at the right moment you’ve got plenty of fodder for the “DIDNEY WORL” meme) but when they get it right it’s wonderful. I’d say this and the obscure stop-motion version done by Sanrio (yes, the Hello Kitty factory) make for the most faithful and interesting retellings of The Nutcracker out there. I credit The Nutcracker Prince along with the Nutcracker Suite segment of Fantasia for introducing me to this magical music and story in the first place. I watched the tape quite a bit up until it got lost in the home entertainment shuffle, and enjoyed seeing it several times on the Disney Channel and Toon Disney during the holidays (and the occasional Christmas in July marathon). It’s not perfect, but hey, it wouldn’t be the holidays if you didn’t enjoy at least one imperfectly animated special that hits you over the head with nostalgia feels. Some people have Rankin-Bass, I have The Nutcracker Prince. And I hope the next generation will embrace it too.

Merry Christmas, and thank you for reading! Do you have a favorite version of The Nutcracker? Let me know in the comments! If you’d like to support me and see more reviews, consider supporting me on Patreon.

I’ll see you in the new year with Abby Kane’s requested review of Disney’s Pinocchio – that is, if my special Christmas present doesn’t keep me from finishing it on time (you’re going down, Ridley!!)

Artwork by Charles Moss.

Christmas Shelf Reviews: The Nutcracker Prince (1990) Merry Christmas everyone! To conclude this month of merrymaking we're looking at an animated Christmas cult classic that I have a bit of a soft spot for.

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adriennescomingbacktolife · 4 years

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(III)

The uninitiated would be enamored with Danny’s life. The centerpiece of the tales would be this ironically named Clearwater’s Best Championship. Danny’s first title belt acquisition. He would never clarify that it was his only one. Never let the facts get in the way of a good story, he’d say. Adrienne stared at her reflection in the large curved circular bronze plate. The metal was engraved with the raised letters Clearwater’s Best around the circumference of the medallion. Finally, a looming ferocious mountain lion. Or a Florida panther. It was a solid ten pounds with a gaudy bright red leather strap. This was the belt, he’d claim. All of the talk about former championship glory had made her think about Danny’s early career more often. Matt Knox and Jonathon Willis’ parallel runs helped conjure the thoughts even more. He could hear Danny’s voice in her head as she softly recited the tale. After all, nobody was paying attention. “Let me tell you about the night that I became Clearwater’s Best. It all started when I overcame thirty nine other men.” The truth is that Danny was an unannounced entrant in this huge battle royale. Someone else won, she couldn’t remember, and Magnificent Danny Levi came out from under the ring and tossed him over the top rope. “And then in the same night, I vanquished a champion who had been to that point unconquerable.” A twenty year veteran if she recalled correctly and he’d been a hometown hero. An upstanding citizen. He had short blonde hair, a clean shaven face, and rock solid square chin. An all American boy. He went to church every Sunday and he told the children watching to always believe in their dreams. Maybe he was sincere, who knows. “But when I looked in his eyes, I saw him for what he was. Weak. Naive. Gullible.” Via Danny’s instructions, she had made sure to get on the apron at the right time. The gallant knight smashed into her and Adrienne fell backwards. She had legitimately twisted her ankle that evening - failing the last instruction to feign injury. Unbeknownst to the referee, the previous step was for the purse she had carried to be slid into the ring. Angie’s first exposure to the business was indeed this match. “And through seemingly insurmountable odds, I did it.” He sure did, he had taken a brick and broke the champion’s face. Fractured his orbital socket, actually. The referee turned around as Danny screamed for him, dove into the ring, and counted one, two, three. “It was the night I became magnificent.” Depending on the setting, the telling would vary in length. The story was however always about him. “...you lied.” This admission was to no one. After all, once more, no one was paying attention. Another admission is that she hated this belt. Danny’s lies weren’t just about what transpired that night. This title was a lie. Danny had commissioned a leatherworker to remake the belt. He spent nearly two grand and he descretated the original image by putting his face on the side plates. That wasn’t really an issue. The title was company property. No wrestler owned it. The champion just carried it to represent the company. To his credit, Danny didn’t lie about his reign. He just didn’t talk about it. Six days later, the former champion’s brother had cashed in a rematch clause. She had been banned from the building. Considering that she couldn’t stand in the heels that she would normally wear, that was a blessing. The night wasn’t about Danny. It was about a brother’s love and at the same time, stepping out of his shadow for an opportunity he had never had. Danny lost. Over the years, he would never become Clearwater’s Best again. Danny’s lies weren’t just about what transpired that night. That battle royale was invitation only and each one of those men involved had some modicum of success as their ticket. Danny had yet to win a match so it was awfully strange that he ended up in the spot. The promoter had stated that Danny Levi’s surprise inclusion was in effort to shake things up. He had proclaimed that the new champion was the future. James Fairman was a portly, balding, pale businessman in his fifties. Mr. Fairman also owned Clearwater’s Best Wrestling in addition to a car wash, a couple of laundromats, and a Shoney’s. Adrienne’s pink nails reflexively dug into the leather. The Levis, married for just a year at the time, had met Jimmy at that restaurant the night before. That was the thing about Danny. He was always a self-starter. He was planning and plotting on how to get to that next level despite limited means and ability. Maybe that is why Adrienne fell for him. He just never gave up. He didn’t take no for an answer. But it surprised him when Fairman invited him out of the blue. Well, both of them. Jimmy insisted. “Wear the blue dress, high heels, the works, A. Doll up. This is big for me. Big for us.” “To a Shoney’s?” Yeah, at a Shoney’s. So there she was, out of place, eating a country fried steak dripping in gravy and trying not to dribble all over the shimmery wholly uncomfortable attire. Not only that, she was crunched into one of those high wooden booths in a corner. Danny was across from her. Fairman, next to her. Next to her. Downing his second vodka infused tea, Jimmy laughed at one of her husband’s jokes. His voice was very raspy as if he was always exasperated at someone. “That’s a good one…” The conversation drifted to Jimmy’s real purpose. “Alright, enough of that.” Jimmy steepled his hands on the table. He stared down Danny with his bifocals on the edge of his nose. On close inspection, the blood vessels were burst throughout. “Daniel. Let’s be real honest here. You’ve been in my company for half a year now. I only know that because I sign your checks. You know why?” “Sir?” “You’re a bum, Daniel.” Adrienne involuntarily dropped her fork on the plate. It rattled about but was lost quickly in the noisy din of the restaurant. “But you show up on time and do your job. That’s okay, I suppose.” Business paused as a waitress came by and refilled all of their drinks. Danny’s slack jawed expression showed that the assessment started to sink in for him. Adrienne burrowed into the corner, clutching a glass of water with both hands and sipping at it. “Just a little constructive criticism. But you intrigue me. Helps that you got some good gash following you about.” He said that without even acknowledging her presence. In fact, Fairman’s only interaction was to kiss her hand when they had all first met in the parking lot. “What are you doing tomorrow night?” “Uh, you’ve got me scheduled for a preliminary bout.” “Good spot for you. You’re facing some guy who’s coming in from Texas. Big cowboy looking dork but the locals eat that sort of shit up.” “Yeah.” “What if you weren’t doing that? I got that battle royale. Big hot shot sort of deal. Got guys coming in from all over the world and we’re going to draw a nice house. Later that night, winner’s gonna fight Stan. Clearwater’s Best.” Danny was tight lipped. All of that bravado was sapped dry in front of someone with some real power. “You aren’t in that. Invitation only like I said, Daniel,” he paused, “But maybe you could be.” “What? Really? You serious?” Fairman chuckled at Danny’s sudden burst of exuberance. “Sure. But I need something from you. Well, actually the both of you.” Adrienne sat up, timidly offering a reply. “Me?” “That’s right.” He dug into his pants pocket, retrieving a keycard, then tossing it on the table. “I got a room at the Hyatt. Nice view of the ocean. Come up and we can talk further.” Adrienne discretely shoved the belt off of the table. This wasn’t something she felt like dwelling on. After all, why should it matter? Things got so much better after that. Danny may have been inconsequential as a champion but suddenly he had a guaranteed contract. His pockets were flush with cash and despite the results being a contradiction, Magnificent Danny Levi was a megastar. And Adrienne? She was a nobody. Part of her wanted to take all of the compliments at face value. After all, it was rare to get that sort of notice. Part of her found it infuriating. After all, she knew this business. Easy to patronize a rookie who had been branded this company’s newest loser. Also discounted her ability. Her mind. Her drive. Infantilized her when she had been in the industry her whole adult life. Not that it mattered. There she was, after the show, by herself. Not by choice, too. At a gimmick table. She’d blown her last paycheck from Kaplan to get shirts made that showcased her big debut dive. She’d hastily signed a stack of photos with a bright pink paint marker with a big looping signature. And for some reason, she brought Danny’s stupid title. But alas, no one wanted to see her. After all, there were returning legends, current and past champions, and larger than life personalities. The show seemed to be a crowd pleaser. Every champion had retained. And through some precautionary measures and like every good regional show, some of the talent stayed afterwards to maybe make someone’s night. The idle time had her dwelling on her effort. Adrienne was sure that she had made an impression. Her abdomen was sore from the impact of leaping off a ring post onto three other human beings. But in the end, Jon Willis had reversed her momentum and had ended the match with his hand raised in victory. Backstage, Adrienne had been informed that she’d be the opponent for a new acquisition that was reportedly monstrously huge at the next event. She’d cross that bridge later. Casting a glance to the side, she checked the time on her phone. Only five more minutes and she could pack this junk up and disappear. In the bustle of the crowd, she heard a quiet murmur. Sounded something like … “Hello.” It was a meek soft voice but also clearly one of a child. Looking forward, she saw a little girl place a crisp ten dollar bill on her table. She couldn’t be more than seven years old. She had brown mousy hair, dark almond eyes, and a slight overbite. Her show branded shirt reached below her knees and she already had a stack of autographs tucked under her arm. Adrienne finally realizing that she was on - smiled in reply. “...hello to you.” Adrienne slid over the photo across the table. Just behind her, she could see what she concluded to be her mother watching with a slight smile on her face. “...I’m sorry you didn’t win.” Adrienne’s smile didn’t flinch. “I am, too. Did you still have fun?” The kid nodded while staring down at Adrienne’s picture. “Neat. Well, so did I.” “...thank you.” “You’re certainly welcome. Do … do you want a free shirt?” Levi snatched the top one off the stack, this one would actually fit her. Graciously, the shy child took the shirt and photo. Waving goodbye, she turned back towards her minder and into the next actual line. She looked down at the Founding Father’s face. Danny had once promised to get her tickets to Hamilton. He had connections after all. Adrienne pocketed the tenner, mumbling to herself. “You were full of shit.” It wasn’t until a few days later that she decided to crack open the tale of the Lab Rat King. The internet provided just speculation and rumors. A tale too depressing to be true. Adrienne considered that this Zane King was just putting on a show. Danny tried that. Usually failed. But the ones that succeeded? Their tall tales melded seamlessly with their real lives. Was he new? Or has he done this before? No one seemed to really know. Her mother’s words echoed in her head. You drew the short straw again. Scouting reports indicated that he was a terror in the ring but at the same time a controlled frenzy, so to speak. Either he was a learned veteran or a natural blue chipper. You don’t have a chance in Hell. That was Danny, he always had something smart to say these days. Mister “Too Busy to Call His Wife” was still living it up big in Japan. Time for a change of scenery, she decided. It was a nice day for Florida Woman to maybe get arrested for something decidedly Florida. Or maybe lay about on the beach, watching the waves lap at the sand. She could say something about this Zane person there. Interacting with him was fruitless. He seemed unhinged. Although, the thought of such a huge man hunched over a small phone, tapping his fingers away on a virtual keyboard was kinda funny. When the smartphone camera finally switched on, there was Adrienne Levi in a modest dark blue one piece. Her eyes were protected by a pair of knockoff Italian designer shades. The rest by a slathering of suntan lotion and a Tampa Bay Lightning ball cap. “No offense to Baltimore but the weather there is pretty dreary.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Oh, sorry. Adrienne here. You guys haven’t got rid of me yet. So the first time around, Starburst got me good. And just this past week: different faces, same result. I’m not going to lie. Losing is not optimal. But you won’t catch me moping about. There’s always next time.” Adrienne thought about next time. “And oh, boy. Next time happens to be the Lab Rat King. Facing former world champions was a daunting task but how do you prepare for someone that doesn’t seem to care about all of that? That wasn’t rhetorical, she’d been wondering that for days. “...and well, I don’t know.” There was a pungent pause. The ambience of the setting took over briefly. The water, the kids playing in the background, and the gulls overhead. “Mister King has already written me off as his next meal. I’m used to that.” And so she addressed him directly, in a more deliberate tone. The shades hid the apprehension in her eyes as best they could. “Well, you sure made an impression. You’re scary and I haven’t even seen you in person yet. I don’t know what you really think of me and at this point, I’m not sure I care to hear. You don’t seem like a good person. But after looking around, there seems to be a lot of bad people here. So maybe you’ll fit right in. Your mask is a little public so maybe work on that.” She paused, the dumbest thought crossed her mind and before she could stop herself, Adrienne blurted it out. “Imagine the smell.” She snickered despite her own sensibilities. “I’m guessing you’re just trying to be socially mindful these days but probably no one was brave enough to tell you that leather isn’t very breathable.” Adrienne shook her head, stifling more laughter. “Sorry, sorry, I’m being mean. Look, Zane, whatever you’re going to do to me?” Almost on a dime, she kinda trailed off. “...it won’t be what you expect. I’ve fought bigger monsters than you and I’m still here. Perception is that Lab Rat King is a sure bet. I’m not going to spout off some biblical cliches today about having a slingshot in hand. It’s too nice of a day for that bunk. I am however going to make sure you know that Adrienne Levi kneels to no king.” The feed cut abruptly. Totally not because Adrienne dropped her phone in the sand.

#carnage wrestling lab rat king

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aleatoryalarmalligator · 7 years

Text

my life story - part 50

Since there wasn't going to be any help for me being able to lose weight like a normal person, I started popping diet pills constantly. I found some cheap stuff at Canned Grocery Outlet and I just kept pounding down those capsules, they were oddly powerful for a cheap brand. It seemed to help with me losing more weight. I remember the taste of those particular capsules. The gel they were made of had this slightly salty taste and they would stick to your tongue at first. I would swallow them down, and then about a half hour later I would begin to feel the effects of a pounding heart and a need to go out and do more exercise. It helped me drop a little bit of weight here and there for the remainder of the summer, and it was helpful to have them, since every time I felt hungry, discouraged or empty inside, I could just pop one of these pills and my outlook would get a bit brighter. I think it developed in me, a way of consciously finding external ways to keep things in check.

I wrote this poem near the end of that summer, I think I called it The Rose at Emily's Windowsill or something like that. It was basically about this girl who was never courted and so she instead dedicates her life to her garden, and she gets older and older and the only rose she ever gets is one that falls by her window. I don't have a copy of it, but I remember later learning that there was a song on the album Oracle and Odyssey by The Zombies written back in the late 60's that has a very similar theme, with a rose, a girl named Emily, and dying alone. The song is much better than my poem was – my poems were never decent. The thing was, I had never heard The Zombies 'Rose for Emily' nor did I know who The Zombies were, and wouldn't be discovering them for several years to come.

This, along with a few other lucid things that came upon me throughout my life always gave me this superstitious suspicion that ideas exist in some kind of cosmic soup and we can feel things and find things in that soup that others have left by others, this strange soup we all share is where all ideas exist before they are conscious, sometimes perhaps even that our ancient ancestors left behind ideas. It's like some kind of library that we all draw from. It's hard to explain, and it's just a theory. I am not saying things for sure work this way, or that I even believe in it myself wholeheartedly. But there are certain elements of art and story that keep coming up with all people throughout all ages, certain coincidences, certain symbols. It's somewhat mystifying to me. Creativity is very strange and mysterious.

I had started working on one of the best art projects I had up to that point ever embarked on. Basically, I had uniquely strange and cheaply made doll house that you could look into from above. There wasn't really a true upstairs or downstairs, it was all in one story. Their were bedrooms and a kitchen, a checked tiled bathroom, and even a garage. I don't know where Allison got this dollhouse, but she was never the type of girl who played with dolls, and she agreed to give it to me. I had all these plans for the dollhouse. Basically, I wanted to make it a loony bin murder house. Over the course of that summer, I would sometimes work on it. I ended up getting a lot of cheap dolls at the Good Will that were just magically perfect for what I had in mind. Each room in the house was set up as a stage for something gruesome or disturbing. I used a lot of paint and splatter to make it look like murders were being taken place. I gave the dolls knives, and of course, the kitchen sink had a hand in it, and the refrigerator had a human head. It was all too perfect, and I still don't know how I was able to get lucky enough to get all the props I wanted.

I was going to set up murder scenes, as well as many other disturbing scenes – some of them being more abstract and surreal like a David Lynch film. I intended on even repainting the faces of the dolls and giving them new looks. I was going to make this murderhouse something I focused on, maybe for a year or more until I got it just right. There was even a point where I cut my finger while cooking by accident. Yes, I ended up using that blood as a part of the murderhouse, as the stains on a wrapped up dead person. It was the first time I had felt inspired to do something of this scale. And then sadly, I came back to my mom's house one day, and it was gone from the place where I had it set up. I looked around, and eventually asked my mother. She had thrown it away because she thought it was disturbing and disgusting. Once again, I cried at the loss of my art project that I was incredibly dedicated to, but there was nothing I could do to bring it back, and it just went into the bag with so many other disappointments in the end. I have sometimes thought about trying to make another one, but the right kind of prototype for a dollhouse that would work, as well as the dolls to go with, simply haven't come my way ever since. I suppose someday, if I ever have a lot of time, I might try something like that again.

I had scoped out three records at Hastings that I really wanted at the time, but given that all my money was going to be tied up in getting gas money to go to and from school each day, I didn't have any money for anything I ever really wanted. I was low on clothes, I had a very small record collection. I was living off borrowed everything. I scavenged through my mother's old things just to find old half used lipsticks and a bunch of beauty supplies she had bought and half discarded back when she had first gotten her divorce money. I really wanted Live Through This, by Hole, London Calling by The Clash, and The Velvet Underground and Nico album. My mother had this big container shaped like a Budweiser Bottle, and after bartending each night she would empty all of her loose change into it. She saved it up, and then played darts with her boyfriend Danny with the money. I always felt that it was a tremendous waste of money, and I would often times wish that she would pay me for babysitting. Yes, the job wasn't the most difficult. But babysitting had caused me to miss out on many adventures back in the days when I had had friends. It seemed unfair that she gave no appreciation or compensation for what I was doing, that I was making it possible for her and my father to work as much as they did.

So, eventually, the impulse became too great for me to withstand. It was the day that I knew The White Stripes would be playing at the Gorge, and I decided to dip into her oversized piggy bank bottle. She had no idea how much money she had in that bottle, and it turned out being over 100$ of change. I took about 30$ of it, went out and bought myself those albums, which I never once regretted. All three of those albums became some of the most important albums I was able to get my hands on as a young person. She asked me about a week later if I wanted to count the money in the change jar for her. She trusted me as most people would since I wasn't a thief (my two older sisters had stolen thousands by the time they were my age), and I have always been known as the type of person that really does enjoy sorting out small parts, categorizing, filing, and organizing things in a specific way. She was happy to hear she had 70$, she had thought she had had less than that. So I got away with stealing in this instance.

This isn't to say I am go around stealing from others by any means, or that I have no respect for the human contract of not taking from one another. But it is to say that, when faced with a problem in life, I don't always rule out doing something a person is not supposed to do. I think this little situation proved as an example of how I see a lot of things. My parents code of conduct and their personal system of living with other people outside of work has always been an opportunistic one. In fact, even though my mother and father are very different, if you get to know them, they are both very similar in their bordering on criminal mindset of what they will do if they can get away with it. I am trying not to use the sensitive artist card here either, but they really and quite mindlessly took advantage of me for being trusting and easy to bruise, for years. Neither one of them cared about my future, regardless if it was one of a creative person or becoming the checker at the nearest gas station. They simply had no interest in anything about me that wasn't involved with them in some way. If it didn't involve them personally, than it basically did not exist. It's fair play to take what you need from a system that takes the same from you, as long as you don't get greedy about it or dumb in what you think you can get away with. You have to keep yourself in check to make sure you don't end up too much like them. But under some conditions, it's actually in my opinion a far greater stance of morals to know that what you take will have a greater impact in the long run.

Everything seemed to be going well at the Nyes, but my mom and her boyfriend Danny were getting more serious at the time, and I guess he had encouraged her and all of us – at least on weekends to come live in his cramped one room little house. This meant we would have to move out of the Nyes. She took him up on it – maybe perhaps hoping he would marry her or decide to be our new dad. I personally liked living at the Nyes and I was sorry to have to leave, but she was smitten with the opportunity to be with Danny and there was really no going back in her mind. Though she sometimes would take David along with her when she visited Danny, generally speaking we never really saw him too often. We were part of two separate worlds. I think it's one of those common things where a single guy doesn't like the idea that a women either has children – with some other man no less, but also that these kids taint the woman's sense of loyalty to him in someway, or devalue her as a person. It's incredibly unfair, but all too common. I've heard a lot of men talk down about women who are single and have children.

So, my mother packed up her life and we all moved out of the Nye's place and to Danny's small home. It was very small. Most of our stuff got put back into storage, and in some respects, it always felt more like indoor camping to me. Our food was always separate, and our sleeping areas always on the living room floor. Danny was absurdly proud of himself. He had a fairly nice computer compared to the one I was used to at home. At home at my father's we still had a Windows 98. And he had bought some kind of program for downloading music. He spent a ton of money on this program and it wasn't very good. In fact, I just didn't really grasp the concept of what an mp3 even was at the time, so I sort of silently dismissed it when he first told me about what he had. Danny was very much a man who cared about owning things. He had been a spoiled child, and had grown up to be very much a spoiled man. He had a strong obsession for owning things – even when he didn't need them. He was very proud of owning a 50,000$ pick up, and a high end expensive motorcycle. He would buy new game consoles just to own them. He never once used most of them. On his refrigerator he had pictures posted of Catherine Zeta Jones, he would often make rude remarks about how my mother was ugly compared to Catherine Zeta Jones. He would watch American Choppers all day, or some really bad short lived Comedy Central stuff.

So when I showed disinterest in downloading music from his music downloading program, or ungrateful that HE was allowing me to use his computer at all, he got kid of insulted. My mother and him made this big deal about how rude it was for me to dismiss his music downloading program, and so I had to apologize and get interested for their sake. Danny was one of those people who always needed his inflated ego stroked. Which turned out being a big thing for me, and something I spent much of my time doing at Danny's. This was how I eventually found a considerable number of bands that I had never heard of before, Screaming Trees, Blondie, Gary Numan, Pixies, The Kinks, Bjork, and quite a few others, though I will say that the search engine wasn't very good on this program and also there were quite a few things I tried to like, that were actually quite terrible and there was a lot of music I should have thought to look up and didn't. I also ended up downloading some GG Allin, and Charles Manson. Mostly, I did this because of the fascination I had with things that were so far into the messed up that I was curious about what they sounded like. GG Allin started off making childish punk music, and eventually started to express himself with more filth and vile disgusting behavior, forget lyrics later on in his short lived career. At the time, I wasn't fully aware of all his behavior – I didn't happen to know that he raped women and young girls constantly, or that he fowled himself on stage or anything like that. For reasons of his clear psychopathic tendencies, and because his music doesn't resonate with me, I have long cast aside his music, or his contribution as a whole, and he deserves to be forgotten rather than revered. I like weird things, but I will never go so far as to condone that kind of destructive mentality for the sake of itself.

As for Charles Manson. I probably wouldn't have had so much against his music in all honesty – as I like weird tiny folk music (I really enjoy the song Nothing, by the Fugs) if he wasn't who he was. I didn't mind his songs honestly, though I didn't think they had what it took to really be in the same level as most of the acts during the 60's. I don't feel badly for being honest on this regard, as many people have been quick to discredit his strange short lived musical career on account of the murders later on – Neil Young also thought he was very interesting musically when they met in the mid to late 60's. Ultimately though, Charles Manson's musical career – though it will never truly take off in any way I am sure now, should probably be forgotten as well. I am as guilty as anyone for focusing on serial killers and dictators and their deeds and legacy. I really am. I do feel like I am quite emotionally stable about it, as I am never for a single second glorifying what happened. I have a pretty level head when I read or look up documentaries and so forth. I look back at my own youth, and I think given the proper circumstances, I could have been one of those girls that lived with Charles Manson – had I been found at the age of thirteen. Zack, though by no means was he ever Charles Manson, was someone I mindlessly worshiped in much the same sort of way. But we should all try to not give these kinds of sick people that kind of thing attention. It gives into what they like, and it encourages the rare types of people who are on the brink to follow in the footsteps of these monsters.

Syd Barrett was also someone I started listening to a lot. And it was funny, because about three days after I had become really obsessed with his solo music, he died.

I ended up going to my first real concert that summer, quite late, about a week before I started at my new school. I know that I had gone and seen Metallica and Godsmack, but that in a sense had been a concert very easy to take myself out of, even when I was into that kind of music. It was an enormous stadium, and I hadn't really ever felt apart of that music. And I had seen a few live concerts, but I found that most of that wasn't all that much fun. More effort, understandably on the bands part, was to make families feel good on their few days off, something to take the kids to, like a BBQ. Most local bands didn't want to challenge or disturb their audience, else they would probably lose all their gigs. So I didn't feel all that involved with live music. But CKY was in Spokane, WA – just a two and a half hour drive up north. This was Sarah's favorite band, not mine – but I was eager to see them as well. I had listened to their albums a hundred times by that time, and it had forged a place in my conscious as being something I really got into. It wasn't something I would naturally have been into, as it was a bit heavy for me. CKY was a very melodic band however, and they were very far from having the same cliché sound as other bands. It was a bit like mixing a metal band with something melodic and ethereal like My Bloody Valentine. We were both quite eager to go. It felt like it might actually be one of the most important things that had ever happened to us. Sarah in particular was so obsessed with CKY that it was hard to imagine they were real people who existed.

So, Sarah convinced her mother and her grandma Tutu to take us to Spokane. It was to be a sort of shopping trip for the older two. When Sarah and I showed up a few hours early at the venue, it was almost too much, and I was a little frightened of actually seeing any of band members in person. What if I had to say hi?!. Their tour bus was right there. We both lingered fearfully around it. Then, the guitar player of the band, Chad I. Ginsberg came out, and he was incredibly friendly. I used to have this enormous crush on him, as he looked mildly like Kurt Cobain, if Kurt Cobain had black hair and a black beard, and walked around like a friendly little biker. Chad was so incredibly friendly that he almost seemed more eager to meet his fans than his fans were to meet him. He specifically liked Sarah and I. I guess it was because the other few people who were there were kind of difficult to talk to. I remember this one guy just kept saying 'Your CHAD! YOUR CHAD!' over and over.

Sarah did most of the talking I don't think I ever said anything to him. I think he may have asked us what we wanted to hear, and I think I recalled an obscure song on a rare album that most people hadn't heard, and he laughed and said 'we'll see'. Sarah brought a camera, and she ended up getting a picture taken with him. I was incredibly shy, and felt I needed to get away to process just meeting someone I was a fan of and the shock of it, but Sarah pushed me to take a picture with Chad as well. Someday I will post these pictures, as Sarah has them, and I do not.

I also noticed too that the band members didn't actually seem to like each other very much. You imagine sometimes that a group of traveling musicians are friends, but often times it's far more professional and distant, or very often, they used to like each other, but now they can't stand each other but are locked into this band. The singer was kind of a jerk. He walked around nearly constantly in a state of criticizing everything. He looked at his fans with a sort of arrogance. Which did not really bother me too much, since I had just met Chad, who I was in a daze at that moment and thought I might have been in love with. And honestly, CKY at heart was always Sarah's thing. Darren's opinions didn't really mean much to me.

We got into the front of the pit. I had never been in the very front of a standing concert and I was a little bit in shock at how close it was. The crowd was mostly all guys. The two opening acts were kind of a bore, just typical metal music. But I did admire that the bassist of the second opening act was this really lovely woman. When she walked out on stage, the entire crowd sneered at her. It was pretty pathetic. The entire time she played, they called out to her to show her tits, or women didn't belong on stage. It was incredibly disheartening. I made a point to smile up at her. Privately I didn't enjoy their band at all in any way, but I wanted her to know that she was at least doing this for someone. I realized pretty quickly that while I didn't hate CKY for it as a whole, I did and still do have a sort of distaste for the average CKY avid fan. The singer Darren was really negative and he put that out a lot on the internet, and the entire scene for some reason had a gravitational pull for sexist fucks who wanted to be just like him. When CKY came on stage, there were suddenly guys everywhere, and the pit was packed. You could feel these creeps using their proximity to Sarah and I to cope a feel, some of them having boners poking us in the back. I don't know what it is like to be a guy, but seriously, why? It was pretty disturbing actually, but there wasn't much you could do about it.

Chad ended up just looking at Sarah and I the whole time. We were both euphorically excited about it. I guess that was just something he does. He picks one or two people and just pretends to be playing to them exclusively. I think he also ended up playing the song that I suggested. Darren didn't like it, but Chad had him do it anyway. It was very clear on stage that the two of them hated one another. It was pretty silly looking back, but we really thought we were quite special. The fact that there were hundreds of people there, but both Sarah and I had been singled out made the two of us feel like we had something about us that other people didn't have and that people like Chad might be able to see that. Really, it was probably more circumstantial in the moment. Getting attention from famous people is no measure of anything really. After the concert Sarah and I were in a daze for quite some times. And it propelled us even further to starting a band, hopefully sooner rather than later.

My sixteenth birthday was upon me, and it was a year that I didn't end up getting much – at least anything concrete. My father gave me one hundred dollars, which I spent on school clothes. I decided I was never going to wear jeans again. I felt like jeans were very unimaginative, and they always seemed to rip. I switched all my pants to colored corduroy only – the tighter around my leg area, the better. I tried to have kind of a soft grunge look about me, long before I think soft grunge was ever a realized thing, though I didn't end up exemplifying that fashion all too well, as I didn't have the guts to wear a dress still, and I didn't have enough money to buy anything I actually wanted.

By this time, about a week before we were to start school, Sarah had been given the car to drive all we wanted. So about a week before school we drove around constantly just for the sake of doing so. Sarah almost got into a car accident one night. She wasn't driving terribly. Sarah was always a very responsible driver, but she had gone when she wasn't supposed to. It was probably the only time that I ever saw her make a driving error. I was in a ridiculous mood, and started singing Christmas songs, so Sarah quickly got a stereo to play so that I didn't resort to that anymore.

At around this same time, Sarah's mom decided to buy this old rundown building downtown on Main street and turn it into an antique – second hand shop. She didn't have very much money, but she was now in her fifties and it was becoming hard to live on manual labor. She liked antiques and had collected a lot of stuff that she kept packed in the spare rooms of their house. She barely had any money to buy the place, but she made do and took the loan out and made it happen. The building had been a popular gas station back in the fifties, but had been long neglected. The back part of the building was used as a car shop. It was right near where Sarah's stepdad had his shop, and Carol wanted to fix it up and sell antiques down there. Their hope was based on the fact that there were many rich older types who liked to drive out to these small towns during the weekend to go bargain hunting at the small local antique shops. And aside from that, Jim (Sarah's stepdad) would fix cars in the back part of it. So quite often, Carol would be found in the shop rather than anywhere else, though I think she also was fixing rich people's homes in the hills on occasion, as the money was too good to resist.

I was still playing guitar everyday, but I felt very stuck and disappointed. I didn't feel like I was truly getting any better after a time. I continued to practice what I had learned, but I needed something new. I needed some guidance or help, but when I asked people what I should be doing next, they just sort of shrugged. I felt like I needed some more technical understanding of music – something bigger to play off of. I needed some things to practice that would make playing better in general, and at the very least, less repetitive and more fun. I needed help playing in rhythm. I could play all the chords, but that was mainly all I could do. I might have also been struggling because I was a left handed person playing right handed guitar, and I my hands were the same size they had been when I was twelve and possibly younger. Most great guitarists have large hands. I have very small hands, and my reach was understandably limited. None the less, I really intended on finding a way to learn this instrument. I just lacked some guidance – guidance I wasn't going to get. My father didn't know how to play much better than I did – though he had a way of concealing that for the most part – and knew a few more tricks than me. So when I asked him, he would get kind of annoyed because he himself didn't know either. But rather than tell me that, he instead tried to make me feel small. And he wasn't about to let me know any more than what I did know. The idea that I would surpass him at guitar made him insecure.

So, one day I talked to him about it. I was hoping for some kind of support, even if it was just empty words of encouragement. I would get this panicked horrible feeling that I would never learn to play, and there would go my future. I know I was pegged as a loser by the teachers who knew me and such, but I've always been someone who has planned ahead, at least to an extent. The idea that the future would be vague and without purpose, that adulthood would be monotonous empty tasks done on repeat with the strong sense that life was being drained from you everyday, and you quietly and subtly forgot everything that had magic in it as a younger person. It was really too much to handle. I wanted life to be ready for me when I go to those points. And it seemed more important to me at least, that a person be in touch with themselves and who they were than it was that they have a college degree, or that I get married, have kids or even have a job. It was more important for me to be able to express myself and have a free mind. It wasn't as important as air, but it was close. And to me, learning to play guitar represented that somehow. It started off with me attempting to be cool, but it really became a symbol for me. Playing guitar was defying societal expectations, but not being so brought down by society that you couldn't dare to have goals.

So I asked my dad, and he gave me this cold weird look. He then basically told me that since I had not mastered guitar as of yet, than I never would be good at guitar. You either automatically get it or you don't. According to him, this was just something 'all guitarists knew'. It was too late for me, I was not a 'natural' – was how he explained it. He attacked what little I could play after that, commented on my poor plucking skills, my small hands. And he kind of made it out to seem that I might as well quit. I don't know why I drank the kool aid. I felt like someone had kicked me in the stomach, and I was sort of stunned. I walked up the steps to my bedroom and I just sort of fell apart. I felt shaky and weak. I guess internally, he had confirmed the negative things I had already suspected of my capabilities. I continued to play, but it was never the same after that. Every time I picked up the guitar, I would think of myself as unfit and I would stop. I swear, my fingers felt like lead when I tried to play after that. It just wasn't happening. So I sort of stopped. I would pick up the guitar often on, but I didn't let my father see me, or anyone. I felt like he had done something to me psychologically that made it hard for me to want to play around other people.

So, the first day of school was upon me and I was waiting around in the late morning for Sarah to pick me up, in her new/old car so we could drive up to Moscow to go to school. I was pretty nervous, and didn't know what to expect. As I sat outside waiting, petting a neighbor cat, this yellow pick up with a back on it stopped by my house. I had seen this guy's vehicle around town. He had a veteran sticker on the back. He stopped the pick up and got out. I was a little confused. He walked right up to me and just started commenting on my appearance. He basically told me that I had 'gotten' attractive, and would be hot, if I didn't dress like a punk. What's absurd is that other than having red hair dye, I was just wearing a regular band t shirt and mint colored corduroy pants. I was sort of confused and lost as to what this guy was saying. He was half inviting me to hang out with him, and also cutting me down for not looking attractive enough, but saying I was at the same time. It was extremely unnecessary. It was a moment I wish my father had seen, as he would have surely come out and taken care of this.

I was more defensive than I was offensive. It was one of those moments that me screaming and throwing stuff at him would have been called for. I was passive aggressive, and he eventually drove away. Eventually Sarah came and picked me up and we headed off to school.

Part 49 - http://tinyurl.com/ydbpgkqw

PART 48 - http://tinyurl.com/ydcn5uuu

PART 47 - http://tinyurl.com/y8xyogl9

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PART 34 - http://tinyurl.com/yc6y4p69

PART 33 - http://tinyurl.com/y87449dz

PART 32 - http://tinyurl.com/ycetanep

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PART 30 - http://tinyurl.com/ybht9aul

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PART 14 - http://tinyurl.com/yb4cfedq

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PART 12 - http://tinyurl.com/yc79mw94

PART 11 - http://tinyurl.com/yc9qhj84

PART 10 - http://tinyurl.com/yb734w24

PART 9 - http://tinyurl.com/yc2t6vfw

PART 8 - http://tinyurl.com/ybl37utq

PART 7 - http://tinyurl.com/ybvo283g

PART 6 - http://tinyurl.com/kbc9dwu

PART 5 - http://tinyurl.com/msnz4am

PART 4 - http://tinyurl.com/k9x8esg

PART 3 - http://tinyurl.com/mwp9atx

PART 2 - http://tinyurl.com/lbt6xq2

PART 1 - http://tinyurl.com/l8xbvg8

#text

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