#tried to cut off my paragraphs more as i hear thats better

[zawasscarf]

Library dates- Student!Aizawa × Student!reader

Warnings: none! aizawa and the reader are the same age and are both students of u.a!

Genre: fluff!

Syponsis: Doubting that you could go longer without blurting out your feelings to your bestfriend, Aizawa just takes a shortcut to cut to the chase.

Prespective: 2nd person! The reader is gender neutral

Additional note: Unedited//Requests are now open!

The infamous U.A library was one of the most revered places in the highschool of rising pro heroes. It was eerily tranquil, calm. Being in its presence was almost unnatural, as a wash of warmth and stillness fell upon whoever entered. Some say that its inhabited by some friendly supernatural being, some say that it's the librarian's quirk that makes the library so serene.

"I just think it's like that because Yamada isn't allowed inside." Shota chuckled at your slightly-mean joke, his eyes twinkling. "What did he even do inside to get banned?" Shota looked up, looking surprised at your --honestly, foolish-- question. "You can't guess?" He asked, adjusting the bags on his shoulder so they don't slip off. You smooth down your shirt and smile, then shake your head to answer his question. "Nevermind. You're right." You spread your arms forward and opened the door for the both of you. "Oh. Thanks."

"You're very welcome, Sho."

"I told you to not call me that."

"Why? I used to call you that all the time when we were kids."

"Yes, were. Were kids. You wouldn't want to call me to—"

"Okay! Okay! Sorry!"

The truth about Shota and you, is that you go way back. When you moved to Musutafu, he was your first friend. You were not thrilled to be moving to another place again, but your parents assured you that it's the last time you move, and that there are alot of kids in the neighbourhood your age. So, you were looking up to befriend a few, but when you headed to the playground just a few blocks away from your house, they completely pretended that you are invisible. Trying to get their attention did nothing, they were purposefully singling you out. You sat on the swing, and experimented with your newly-manifested quirk. That's when a shabby, black haired boy in an ugly blue 'Genirou Neko' sweater approached you. He was watching you silently, his eyes fixed on the palm your hand, where tiny wind-whirles were rotating. "Cool quirk.." was the first thing Aizawa had said to you. It was the first thing anyone had ever said to you since you moved into this part of town. You could never forget that warmth you felt in your chest when he complimented you. That day on the playground, you had made your first friend.

"What are you smiling at?" His calm, tired voice popped your bubble and made you snap out of your daze. You could feel your cheeks reddening, and your smile disappearing. "Nothing."

Shota looked at you for a very long minute, that you almost felt that time had stopped. He hummed, and put both your bags on a table beside the window. A perfectly secluded place between two bookshelves, just wonderful for studying, the sun always shone through, illuminating the books for you. "If you say so.." He mumbled, now making his way to your side. You rummaged the bookshelf with your fingers, searching for a book that could help you with your 'Quirk's Ups and Downs' essay. Trying to distract yourself from how close he was to you. You had no idea why he came. Shota was already done with his draft, but he insisted he should come incase he finds something he wants to add. You told him he was welcome, you already vowed to yourself that you won't let him distract you.

Yet you couldn't concentrate on finding the book. Your eyes involuntarily snuck glimpses at him, as he looked up on the higher shelves. Shota wouldn't call himself the most charming, handsome person in your school. He wasn't as charismatic and casual as Oboro, wasn't as loud and eccentric as Yamada, so it was never on his mind that someone would have a crush on him. But thats because he can't see what you can right now. The sunrays reflected across his pale glistening skin. Across his black eyes, making it seem like there was an endless unieverse of stars and planets that you could only see if you looked. Those strands of raven hair that couldn't be tucked back in his pontail, that framed his face so well. His heavy lidded eyes that were similar to a feline's, that scanned the books with sharp concentration. Even if he thinks he looks worn out and everything for from perfect, Shota would always be that boy you can never get over. You tried, you did. You tried to bury the feelings away, suppress them, move on. Because you would never tell him. With him, you never knew. You never knew how he would react, how he would act, what he would say. You were terrified to your core of losing him, so it was better off like this. And for the most part, suppressing your feelings worked. But it was days like this, moments like this, that made you realise that you're only lying to yourself.

"Is this it?" Shota's voice, once again, pushed you away from your daze. His eyes were boring into yours, catching you off gaurd so you couldn't even look away. You felt held in place, that even if you wanted to move a muscle it wouldn't cooperate. His pupils dilated, and his pale cheeks turned a pale red. He looked away at once, then pushed the book onto your chest. You shook your head and cleared your throat. "Uh...yeah. Yeah it is! Thanks."

His voice far more queit, he managed to mumble out a "You're welcome.." before you made your way back to your table with him. Instantly, you unzipped your bag and started working. You could hear Shota unzipling his bag and rustling before taking out his notebook. 'Don't look at him' You told yourself, keeping your eyes glued to your books and pages and papers. 'He'll know. He always knows when something is up..and you can't-'

"Hey, do you have a spare pen?" You glanced up at him, he was rummaging through his bag, looking for a pen. "You know I do. Did you lose the pen I gave you this morning?" Shota smiled sheepishly, and nodded. "Yeah..I think gave to Hizashi. Sorry–" You giggled, already offering him another pen. "No need to apologise, Shota. I always carry spare pens for you anyway." He chuckled and took the pen from you, his slender fingers brushing lightly against your own hand. Falling into another frenzy, you -quickly- put your hand on your cheek and went back to scanning the worn-out, yellow pages. Shota cleared his throat and hummed a muffled 'thank you', and got to writing.

Silence filled the air around you. The occasional buzzing of the fan and the loud laughter and gibberish conversation in the halls made you lose focus a few times, but you tried your best to keep your concentration on the paper. Shota was queit too, you could feel his eyes on you every few minutes, but he didn't say anything. You knew that he felt like something was off, but why wasn't he saying anything about it? Did he know what you were hiding and did not want to mention it? Was he already thinking of a way to reject you gently?

You looked up, hoping that he wasn't looking, and the sight infront of you made your heart soften. Shota's head was resting on the table, using his arms as pillows by putting them across each other. His essay was under his arm, he was tracing the words already written with the pen you gave him, but he was only halfway through. His eyes were closed and his hair was out of the ponytail, covering his eyes. Steady breaths came out of his slightly open mouth, moving a strand of hair that fell onto his face. You could see the dust particles in the sunlight that shone on him, making his nose sniff uncomfortably. A part of you wanted to capture this moment, but you knew him well. He didn't like having his pictures taken. But you could swear that in these times where he couldn't see himself, he looked far more ethereal than anyone or anything on this earth.

You slowly wrote the last few words in your essay, then pulled his paper towards you to complete two paragraphs he had left for him. It wasn't the first time you ever finished his homework for him, but you owed him alot, so you truly didn't mind. A few minutes later you were done, and before you knew it you were making Aizawa's bag for him, making sure to take out his jacket first. After zipping the black backbag, you moved behind him, and draped the grey jacket around his shoulders. You feet didn't take you away too far, and you felt a hand hold your sleeve and tug at it. When you looked back, Shota was sleepily glacing at you, his eyes half open, covered with his black hair.

"What?" You asked, a chuckle escaping your lips, trying to lighten the mood. His eyes were pericing yours, you could see a glimmer of red in them. "Why.." He asked, his voice quieter, his hand holding onto your wrist. "Why what, Shota? God are you having that dream again? I promise you all the cats are fine–"

"Why do you do all these things for me?"

The question hit you hard in the face, as though someone had thrown a brick at a glass window. Before you could register the question, he was already talking again. "Always having spare pens for me, completing my essays and my homework, making my bag..looking out for me when I'm asleep.." His eyes glazed over from his bag, to the pens, then to you.

"It just makes me like you even more than I already do."

Your eyes widened, you could feel the blood rushing to your cheeks and ears. A stutter was all you uttered, you couldn't speak. He was still half asleep, he was still tired, but his words held so much genuinity. The words felt heavy with emotions, yet they were blunt and to the point.

"Shota, I–"

He straightened up against the chair and stretched, like what he just said wasn't everything you've ever wanted to hear from him. "I don't blame you if you don't share those feelings by the way. Don't feel inclined to say anything if you don't. It's just something I wanted to get out of my che–mmph!"

Your lips collided against his, making him almost lose balance and fall off his chair. He clung tightly onto the table, and when he felt stable, no longer surprised, he kissed back. You interlaced your fingers with his, and pulled away for breath. Both of you were heaving, chests puffing out then retracting back in. Shota still looked shocked, so shocked that he activated his quirk. His hair stood up and his eyes were bright red, so were his cheeks. You breath out a giggle, and flick his forehead with your free fingers. "Sorry. You were being blunt so I thought I should be too."

"Yeah..I..I see that." He touched his lips, then turned to look at you with a smile. Not one of his troll-like smiles, not a teasing smirk, not a menacing grin, but a sweet smile. One that you only saw when he was around you, or Oboro and Yamada.

A minute passed, maybe two, maybe three. You were not sure. Your eyes were still looking in his, his thumb drew circles on your hand, your goofy smiles unfading.

"So.."

"Do you want to grab something on our way back home? You know, as a thank you..for doing my homework for me."

"Are you asking me out, Shota Aizawa?"

"Yeah, I am."

"No, Sho, you've got to be more slick about it."

"Why? That's confusing. Now give me your bag, and for the last time, don't call me Sho!"

#aizawa headcanons #aizawa imagine #aizawa sensei #my hero academia aizawa #my hero academia #boku no hero x reader #anime #bnha fluff

[bitchiha]

To Eternal Bliss, I’m so Glad to Know (ModernAU!Hidan x Reader)

The Rats 1k event prompt: Street racer x Hidan

A/N: hey.. aha.. how y'all doing.. hum so i haven't been doing great, I think that is evident through my inactivity on this blog, but that being said i am in a bit of a better place now. i finally have some time to myself and i intend to put that towards my 900 follower event. Enjoy this wonderful piece of modern racer Hidan that strayed into crazy murder himbo I love car man Hidan.

Title inspired by: this song.

MAJOR TWs: smut, harassment (brief, undescriptive), uhm murter, reckless driving, lots of mentions of and contemplations of death. You are a literal accomplice to murter. Reader is confused. But.. It’s not supposed to be gory and dark, I kinda wanted it to just be stupid and reflect a himbo hidan as much as I could. Last like 6 paragraphs aren’t edited.

-

You shouldn’t be in a criminals car, much less in the middle of a police chase and much much less be falling in love with him.

 His silver hair flashes wildly in the occasional flicker of red and blue lights, teeth bared; he was making that face again. That one he had when he first met you, lips curled and canines showing. It looked like he was in pain. It was just because he was actually trying to use his brain, you think. He grips the wheel tightly, the whites of his pale knuckles glowing as he swerves onto one of the busiest city streets you know. 

Barely avoiding a collision with a distinct yellow blur you could barely classify as a taxi, he continued to speed through the lanes, horns blaring and merging into the sound of the wailing sirens quickly approaching. Another sharp turn onto a slightly less busy road had your body slamming against the console, leaning close to Hidan. Your eyes stray from the window and onto his face, unable to hear what he is saying, you make out the movement of his lips:

shit,shit,shiiit 

The tires screeched as he fumbled around with the controls, sending the car into a full 180 and narrowly avoiding a police car sacrificing its auto body in favour of capturing Jashin. That was real close call, just scratching the side of the passenger door, but you wouldn't know; you were still watching your boyfriends features as he speeds off down another dirty alley. 

You were pretty sure that one day you were going to die trapped in Hidans little metal box.. A distant part of you wanted to throw up when you realized you wouldn’t have it any other way.

Sure, he was obnoxiously annoying in the most serious of times and incredibly oblivious when you desperately needed him to get a clue. I mean fuck, it felt like despite his adolescent years of elementary and secondary school (which you’re not even sure he attended) his brain only had the capacity to process two things. The first being lewd shit and the second would be the gas pedal... and maybe half a braincell was in there thinking of you, but probably only of you in your panties or something really shallow like that. 

You really shouldn’t love him. 

Barrelling down the alley he randomly slammed the breaks down, the lack of warning sending you flying forward. Bracing yourself to be slammed into the front of car, but just when you thought you were going to break your nose Hidan reversed, sending your body backwards instead. You yelped and he sent you a stupid little apologetic curl of his lip before twisting his body, hand coming to your chair for support as he sped the car backwards through the trash littered street. You didn't understand why he suddenly changed his mind about the direction until a few seconds later when a black and white cop car swerved down the alley in the direction you were back pedalling from. Hidan must have known they were going to try and cut his route off.    

  At the sight of the police vehicle your boyfriend impulsively slammed the breaks, rolling his window down and leaning his head out of it, “Ha, you stupid fucks think you could catch Jashin with some lame shit like that? I could smell that from a mile away!” From your boyfriends childish tone you predicted he was going to blow a raspberry, but the sound of speeding tires approaching quickly stopped him. Sirens blaring, the police car sped its way forward. 

“Oh fuck.” Hidan sped Jashin backwards again. 

  You remembered the first time you met Jashin.

  It was late that night, you were making your long trek home after a disastrous closing shift. You were tired. So fucking tired. You never would have taken that shortcut if you weren’t truly physically drained. As you made your way briskly through that musky trash infested canal, you were stopped by a man who smelled just as intensely as the alley itself. It was so much so that you had thought that perhaps it was the mans smell that was so potent and not the space itself. 

  Defining what the source of that smell was wasn’t important though, not when he was coming straight at you with barred, yellow teeth. You didn't know what to do and to be fair, what the fuck were you supposed to do? He was yelling something, you couldn't hear it over the thrashing of your erratic heartbeat.  Were you going to die? You were so fucking tired. 

Maybe you should run.

  You didn’t though. Didn’t have the energy. So you let the man come face to face with your figure, grabbing at the lapels of your coat and screaming. His breath was unbearable and you thought you were going to pass away just from the smell as opposed to actually being murdered. Although you suppose this could probably qualify for a murder, his breath was most definitely a weapon. But despite his shouts being directly at you, his humid breath spraying across your face as his chest constantly heaved, you couldn't understand what he was saying. 

“Jashin! Jashin is coming!” 

  What the fuck was Jashin? Could you still not hear him? He was probably sick. You were tired. So you continued to let him shake your form. Was he going to kill you or just ask for some money?

  Thats when a beast of sleek red metal swerved down the alley, trampling over peeled open garbage bags and beer bottles, approaching you with each sound of a crinkled can. It was gunning straight towards the man who was backing you up against the wall, he was frothing and screaming at the sight and the next moment the hood of the car slammed into his form. Despite your close proximity to the man, you were left barely unscathed and a little bit disappointed.  

  The scene laid frozen for a good thirty seconds: the man unconscious on the floor, your unsteady breathing and the window of the car rolling down. It inched back to reveal a man about your age - which made him just barely a man - with silver slicked back hair, barred teeth and knitted eyebrows. 

“Shit.” 

  You just stared at him, backpack beginning to slide down your shoulders. He stared back at you, waiting to see what your next move was going to be. You didn’t have one. 

  “...If it makes you feel any better, douchebag deserved it.” The man said a few minutes later, he clearly wasn't expecting the crumpled body on the floor to have tried to seek out help, let alone from a cute girl. He smoothed his hair back. 

   His crappy attempt to seduce you didn't work and nor did his equally crap words of consolation, you were tired. This whole situation was even more tiring. You just wanted to sleep. 

  “I won't tell anyone, if you just drive me home.”

  He clearly wasn't expecting that, you could tell that from the pained look intensifying on his face and his little choked gasp. A few moments later it released like an elastic band snapping and his features set into a smug smirk. A cute girl who wasn’t gonna snitch on him?

  “You’re not going to question the fact that I just hit someone with my car? Is it cause I'm so fucking sex-” 

  You weren’t listening, walking over the heap of a body and around the car into the passenger seat. The contrasting smell of vanilla and cigarettes clouded your senses as you clicked your seatbelt into place - noticing his lack of one in the process.

You hated that your face was burning up as you spoke. “I live a few blocks away.” 

For a while you were sure that this was the first girl Hidan had ever had in his car. It was obvious that he was freaking out, maybe if he didn’t hit people in alleyways and then blamed your silence on the fact that he was so fucking sexy, then maybe he would be able to talk to more.

  He tried to blab to you the whole way to your apartment accidentally making wrong turns to try and extend the length of your stay. He told you about that man in the alley, said something about how he totally fucked him over in some black market shit for auto parts. Said his enemy, - he stressed this word very intensely - Shikamaru probably put him up to it. Nobody messes with Jashin goddamit, I fucking hate that guy. It was a shit justification for murder no doubt, there is never a good reason to hit someone with a car, but you supposed your indifference wasn't any better. 

  You stole a couple glances at him every now and then, when his eyes took a break from darting back and fourth between your thighs, your face and the road. He had a sharp jaw, pretty cheekbones, gelled back hair with small strands escaping every so often - causing him to brush them back when too many tickled his forehead - his lashes were long and his eyes so pretty so in the dim light of the empty city streets. His teeth were straight and sharp canines peeked out whenever he sent you a suggestive smirk.

You also spent an unbelievably long time watching his fingers maneuver the steering wheel, the way his hands flexed with a certain turn. The veins of his forearms travelling underneath his leather jacket pushed up at the elbows, his jeans were all worn out and faded and his shoes looked like they were about to fall apart, it was a big difference in comparison to the well kept state of his handsome car.

  When he finally made it to your complex after running out of roads to take wrong turns down, he looked at you like a lost puppy, rolling the passenger window down to call out to you as you opened the lobby doors. “So I’ll meet you out here tomorrow then? Say, around 9?” 

  You turned to look at him confusedly, inquiring as to why he would be picking you up when you made no reservations to see him again, why would you want to see your accomplice in a murder ever again? But he was already speeding off before you got the chance. 

At least you could finally go to sleep.

The next day he was outside your apartment fifteen past nine, blaring his horn as he maneuvered his upper body to hover out the window of his lovely Jashin. You were nestled on your couch, staring at the blue light of the TV screen in your dark apartment desperately trying to avoid the textbook glowering at you from the coffee table.

‘Cute kitten saved from tree’ was sprawled across the bottom of your television in bold letters as a perky blonde read off the little cue cards in her hand. You’d been watching the news all day, waiting for the red breaking news! To slice across the screen and read out the description of a crippled homeless gambler found dead in an alley, but it never came.

It mad you feel a little angry when you realized his death wasn’t going to be announced and you knew there was no way it hadn’t been discovered yet. Then you sat startled at the realization that you didn’t feel anything towards what happened. That the anger you felt in wanting it to be so desperately displayed on the news was because you hoped you would feel something then.

The sound of Hidans car horn threw you out of your thoughts as you jumped like a frightened cat to the window. Peeling back the curtain you were surprised to see that blood stained blotch on the road with a lavender haired boy peeking out, baring his teeth.

You contemplated staying inside, he didn’t know your apartment number, but you knew that he definitely wouldn’t stop blaring the horn if you didn’t. His hand was undeniably laying flat against the centre of he wheel as he continued to sound out, you heard someone yell for him to fucking shut up. Hidan continued as if he didn’t hear. It kind of flattered you.

You wanted to vomit.

You took the stairs.

It was the beginning of winter when you finally let Hidan fuck you. You were in some parking lot lined with pitch black shops on a Sunday night. Everyone closed early going home to their families, except the two of you of course.

It was odd being with him for this long. One outing turned into another and then another, before you knew it he was picking you up every night at nine -sometimes fifteen minutes passed,- blaring his horn excitedly as he peeked out his car.

He told you it was the perfect place to do donuts, didn’t you want to do donuts? You did. It was the beginning of winter. It was icy. His idea was incredibly fucking stupid. But you agreed because maybe you’d skid on the ice and smash into a store, get crushed by the crumbling debris..

There was little snowflakes hitting the windows of Jashin as you two sat parked in the middle of the deserted lot.

“You ready? Oh you’re gonna love this, babe.”

He grinned as your face heated up at the name, you always got all flustered whenever he said anything like that. It made him feel giddy. His long fingers start Jashin up, moving to clutch the wheel as the car thrums to life.

When he makes the first swerve with his car, he turns his head to watch your body all stiff and frightened. It was funny. He laughed as your face twisted into an even more flustered one - if that was possible. God, you were always such a hard ass at the beginning of the night, but when he dropped you off outside your apartment early into the morning he always made sure to leave you with a little smile on your face. Even now, this early into the night he could see the beginnings of one.

He twisted the wheel again and your body flew to the left, smooshing into the console and the surprised laugh that left your mouth had his guts twisting. He wanted to hear it again. Your walls always fell when he did stupid shit like this. You were kinda fucked up now that he thought about it. Always getting all giggly when you should probably be screaming at him to be more careful for fucks sake! But you never did and he loved that about you. Just as fucked as he was.

“Hey babe, babe! This one’ll be good. Watch, watch.” He gripped the wheel again and grinded his sneaker into the gas, the first skid across asphalt was intentional, but when he tried to regain the reigns of his dark red beast it began to thrash out of his control.

Goddamn ice patch.

The car twisted, screeched and burned into the pavement for a good twenty seconds and when he was sure you should be screaming because I mean come on, that was fucking scary, he heard silence.

As the car came to a complete stop and your body was once again flung against the console, he turned to you. He thinks he was gonna ask if you were okay but he couldn’t remember because the next moment you were grabbing tufts of his gelled hair and sucking his face off.

He loved every second of it. The amount of times he’d tried to get his dick wet with you before was astronomical, but you’d always tell him no and he would pout like a dog. But hey, now you’re shoving your tongue down his throat like a dog so he settled on the idea that good things do come to people who wait.

The reason you decided to do it then was blurry. One moment his car was skidding around the parking lot and you were laughing and thinking of the chance of death and the next second it spat onto your tongue and you realized you didn’t want it anymore.

Like that first time you slid into his car, as you kissed him now you tasted contrasting flavours. Mint and cigarettes. For a moment you thought you were going to pull away, but you felt the sudden need to drink all of it. To somehow understand why you felt like you were burning from the inside.

It was his fault really. Hidan made you feel less tired, if that was a good way to put it. You started looking forward to things after you two met and eventually you actually started to feel a bit more deeply for poor crumpled man in the alley. It felt as if you’re body was being thawed out by this silver haired idiot who was groping for the clasp of your bra underneath your shirt.

So you climbed over the console, fumbling with the side of his chair to pull his seat back as you began to strip off your top in haste. You unbuttoned his jeans and slid down to the space between his leg, choking and drooling all over his cock because when you did you felt all these funny emotions bubbling in your body, you felt alive.

He was a loud mouth when you had his dick down your throat, groaning and saying the dumbest, lewdest shit his sex wired brain could think of. You know how many times he’s thought of this? You feel so good, you feel so good. God this is so good, Jashin probably loves it too... We should fuck on the hood of the car next. Long slender fingers guided your head up and down him as he began to twitch thrust his hips upwards, finally spill into your mouth. Douchebag didn’t let your head go and you felt some of his juices dribble down your tongue.

“Swallow it, swallow it while my dicks still in your mouth... Atta girl, you’re so good. So greedy..”

And you swallowed it all, he hoisted you back onto his lap and pushed your skirt up. He was whispering all this perverted stuff in your ear and your mouth fell open against his neck. Words making you flush fiercely and slowly grind your hips against him. You stopped him when he was beginning to shove your panties down your thighs, though.

For the first time you felt small in comparison to him as you met his eyes. He stopped his movement seeming like he was going to say something too, but you cut him off.

“- Hidan... I’ve never done it before.”

He stares at you all wide eyed before laughing and for a second and you think about getting out of his car and walking home because that’s such a douchebag thing to do, but then he surprises you.

“Me too, I was just about to say.. but I mean it can’t be hard right? Well, I am hard,” he laughed and you found yourself huffing a small giggle at his stupid joke, good mood returning as he continued, “I was just gonna go with what I seen in hentais.” That explained his dirty talk.

It was pretty good for your first time though. Ideally not the best place to have sex, you kept hitting your head and he couldn’t quite get his hips thrusting at a good pace with the confined space, but you didn’t care. You didn’t care because it was Hidan and you think you just might be in love with him.

That’s why you don’t say anything when a few weeks later you see “Shikamaru Nara, infamous street racer found dead in a back alley crash.” flashing across your tv screen.

You don’t comment, just give a little understanding hum when Hidan calls you and tells you he can’t pick you up tonight babe, or for a few nights, Jashin needs some repairs..

It’s why now, as he speeds through the streets recklessly with your bags in the trunk and the sound of sirens ringing in your ears that you feel tears prick your eyes. You wish you could have told him to be more careful, that he shouldn’t have done what he did without planning it. Something, anything.. it’s too late now. But he’s not to blame.

You think it’s your fault, really.

#naruto headcanons #naruto imagines #naruto x reader #hidan x reader #hidan #the rats 900 celebration

[geometricalien]

oh dear i'm super duper late but I have a lot of questions about your wips!! I wanna know more about sick Akashi, nekoma pirate crew, BoKuroo/BokuAka midsommer, Pining + Jacket, The truth burns and destroys, feeling good, Punk Noya, Strawberry Blonde, sunspot and the merman au!!! Thanks babe <333

Hi Vee!!! This is it, I spent wayyyyy too long on this, I think my finger is cramping from typing. But thank you for asking, I love sharing my ideas, sorry if it’s incorherent.

This is super long so it’s under the cut, saving people room

Sick Akashi 

So, it’s based off of a line prompt “I’d like it if you’d stay” and as the title suggests, 3rd year Akashi gets sick, sorry Vee it’s not fatal, Furihata comes to Rakuzan to check on his friend after he doesn’t answer his phone. The entire premise is Akashi works himself sick with his various responsibilities he takes on as “perfectionist who can’t show any cracks at all”. I don’t want Bokushi Akashi showing up so it’s minus the mental break elements. (also technically in canon terms it's after they have merged so yeah) I feel like they deserve a cute little “nurse” the other from a sickness ficlet. And… maybe… sick Akashi confesses…….. It’s almost a writing challenge for me because Akashi has a more polite sophisticated way of thinking and speaking, so cough yep

The rest are Haikyuu aus so buckle in

NEKOMA PIRATE CREW 

Admittedly this is more loose, less of a solid idea. It’s Yaku centric, and how he went from a merchant from his grandfather’s company searching for lost merchandise and became the first mate who keeps track of the ship's finances and keeps their captain Kuroo on track. Other things of note, he meets Kuroo first as a pirate on another ship who stole his merchandise, Kenma is a sea witch (is that science or magic? That's always the question), and about halfway through the adventure they get Lev on board as a new member. So yeah! Kinda a fetch quest but on of my favorite fanfics is legitimately a fetch quest so it's okay fjdkaljf

BoKuroo/BokuAka Midsommer

This is based off of a fanart by desdelasombra my friend Shayla showed it to me and we threw this idea around together, we really don’t want to write it but it's also spectacular. So it's the movie Midsommar, right? Bokuto is a “gatherer” bringing his friends to come join in his village’s rituals. But we didn’t want anyone to die (except for Kenma sorry he’s dead as the substitute for the main character’s sister), so a grieving Kuroo comes with his boyfriend Bokuto, joined by their friends the smart studious and jaded Oikawa and bright bubbly Hinata. Obviously the three react badly to the first ritual and Bokuto doesn’t understand because for him it’s always been a joyful experience and he wanted to share it with his friends. A Lot of things happen, but most important is Akaashi and Kuroo dancing under the may pole together. BokuAka was in the past when Bokuto was home so part of this is them coming together as poly and escaping the final scene of the movie. Again this is very painful but that art is beautiful and the world is better for it being created

Pining + Jacket (KuroLev)

Again this is a line prompt about lending a jacket because it’s cold and it had so much potential for pining and who is the most pining bastard that I know? LEV and Shayla told me about KuroLev and somehow this happened. It’s currently going to be a sequence of drabbles of Lev pining after Kuroo, what else could you ask for? Uh? Lev confessing to Kuroo and them going out??? Sorry I can’t hear you over the exquisite angst and pain of one sided love that I want to explore

The truth burns and destroys

GOOD CHOICE, I began this on saturday night and it has earned a very special place in my heart. Sometimes I fear that my writing is like a lazy pool, sure it's nice and easy and smooth but there isn’t an intensity or raw emotions, BUT THIS this accomplishes what I want. And I’m really glad, its metaphor and imagery heavy but it really captures their emotions and thoughts without it sounding like I’m a 7th grader writing my first fanfiction glances to my abandoned wips from that time. Okay, Vee, I am a glutton for punishment and angst and I choose to pursue cheating fics. But specifically where and how they build the relationship up again after finding out. So, I was reading a KageHina cheating fic and how the character’s reacted felt off somehow so at midnight I wrote this snippet to fullfill my craving, you know what they say the best fanfiction is self indulgence. Here is a short excerpt,

He wants to brush this aside and continue their lives. He wants to wake up next to Tobio and still be seen the same way. He doesn't want anything to change. 

Tobio is his favorite book. He has read it time and time again. Highlighting, underlining, cherishing. So Shouyou is able to read the silent begging in his eyes. The right clenched fist. 

"Shouyou," a deafening pause "What is this?"

Please lie to me.

…

It stretches on. The eternity of silence. They sit together holding on to the last hope they have. Shouyou memorizes those beautiful hands, each crease and bump. Hands that helped shape him become who he is and that reached out unwaveringly. 

Tobio sighs a world ending sigh. 

Shouyou was the one who created their world, it's only fitting that Tobio is the one who destroys it.

In summary I like angst, I want to feel something 

Feeling good

AAA, okay uh, This is a BokuAka pop star au. Akaashi sings “feeling good” at a big charity event hosted by Akashi (... yes I am AkaFuri trash and I can and will sneak them in anything and everything I write) while he is singing he walks down a big staircase remembering moments in his relationship with Bokuto, how much they have grown and how much he loves him. I love the concept! But I tried to write smut in the beginning of it and OOF THATS A NO. I actually have the majority of it written but I do want to add more emotions and thoughts (the lazy pool writing) and make it Ao3 friendly because I have all of the lyrics for feeling good in it as “post signs” for what he sings and that’s against their rules. 1 major aspect of this fic is it's all leading up to the point where Akaashi says “I love you” for the first time to Bokuto after finishing the song, on stage, in front of everyone and on every screen broadcasting it.

Punk Noya

I have a love for feral boys, especially feral alternative punk boys (and girls and humans) so this whole idea is that Noya goes to another school for high school, embraces more punk aethsetics, and on the first day of the preliminary tournaments he hears the rumors about a high schooler in a gang, getting up to nasty things, and he decides to confront them. He finds Asahi, rants him out and leaves. The plot then follows canon, at the winter tournament Karasuno faces Dateko, Karasuno loses even more badly because Noya isn’t there. Asahi quits volleyball, BUT Asahi and Noya run into each other at the store and talk leading to friendship which leads to romance. Idk man, I want more punk haikyuu characters, it gives me life. Alt Yamaguchi is my favorite but onwards we go

Strawberry Blonde

!!!! So this is Mitski’s song and to give a vague idea this is a pining Kageyama fic where he tries to pull away from Hinata and that back fires. (I  do have more to say but I’ve been typing this for over an hour and I’m getting really tired fjkdaljl) There is one paragraph that I love, so here it is! Kageyama and Hinata are practicing by themselves outside of school and they are playing pepper (its a volleyball warm up practice routine where you partner up with someone pass, set, and spike the ball to each other sesquentially) Hinata goes to spike the ball and for a moment Kageyama sees it, 

They are at nationals and they made it to finals. The crowds are screaming, but everything except the court is thrown into shadows. They are at match point of the final set. Everything is at peak intensity and at the center is him. Flying in the air. Orange hair waving with the momentum. His loud take off echoing in the gym. Arm poised for the kill. Eyes sparking with ferocity and passion as he aims. And finally, tipping the world over is the loud slap of his hand, sending the ball to the far side of the court-

This was actually going to be finished and posted in time for Haikyuu season 4 coming out and the manga wrapping up.... clearly I failed my goal fjdaklfj

Sunspot

You don’t know this about me but I love royalty aus, and this is BokuAka Prince Akaashi and Knight Bokuto. This was a short snippet of this grand idea I have for them where they run away from Akaashi’s inherited destiny together. It has potential to be really wide and expansive with the differnet teams as different kingdoms (AGAIN ILLUSION OF CHOICE, that fic really influences me doesn’t it fjdskalj) But this was a short glance at Akaashi taking a break from studying and watching Bokuto and the other knights practice duel. The title comes from the fact that Bokuto is a sunspot in Akaashi’s life, and his day is substantially better basking in his golden shining light.

Merman au

I’m so glad you asked about this and its technically the one I’ve written the most for since it's actually the one I posted on my haikyuu writing side blog. But brief recap, long term it’s a BokuAka little mermaid au but instead of a sea witch it’s an underwater deity who makes “wishes” (it's a deal) with every royal who is born. And Akaashi has a lot of siblings: Ushijima, Oikawa, Suga, Terushima, and Hinata, and its in that order. So I have information on every sibling’s deal, what they wish for, what they give for it, what happens to them in the future, romantically and otherwise. But, this is the one I haven’t updated in over a year, I am working on it!! I’m currently on Koushi’s (suga’s) wish/deal, its just taking forever. If you want to learn more about it I’ll link it in parts  1  2  3  4

BUT I will work on Suga’s part and then Terushima’s and then to the meat of the idea with Akaashi. 

If you have made it this far, thanks, you are cool as always. My brain and fingers is ded. 

[englass]

Could I pretty please request something around John (in a relationship with the Dep) is jealous of her friendship with Nick and/or Sharky? Pretty please? (No pressure though!)

Of course you can! Can’t say I hit all the points, kinda got lost in thought throughout the whole thing, but hey-ho. Hope it’s a good enough breakdown/run-through!

(Just to clarify real quick – because I’m paranoid and unbelievably self conscious –, these will not be proper stories/fics, but will rather be more like run-throughs of the plot for the request... if that makes sense– you’ll see what I mean.)

Okay, so, to start off I did kinda touch on something similar in the piece Affirmation (only John was looking to get in a relationship with the reader, not already be in one), but we’re not here for that so let’s move on.

So, I imagine it’s a chill day, late afternoon sunlight filtering through the windows as it warms the skin, with Dep standing there (in the kitchen) on the phone to either Nick or Sharky (I’d probably use Nick, but since this is what it is I’ll do/flicker between the two).

Conversation would likely vary slightly between the two, with Nick being a lot more forthright in his dislike in her choice of partner, all in the midst of discussing their next get together and who’s the better pilot (she is, naturally); while Sharky would avidly talk about his recent escapades and how he’s famous now due to his recent wanted poster. Dep tries to be supportive, but...

“Sharky, you do know you’ve just confessed to an officer of the law, right?”

“Yeah, but, like, you the homie; you’re cool with this stuff.”

She rolls her eyes with a fond smile and playfully scolding tone. “Sharky...”

John walks in. Now, he’s already pretty stressed as it is – keeping what he does for the project a secret from his partner (which he doesn’t like doing, but needs must (likely doesn’t want to spook/scare them off)), plus his continued battle over the acquisition of different properties and their stubborn owners – and although seeing his dearest partner helps lighten the stress of the day, hearing them mention either Nick or Sharky by name is instantly gonna put him in a foul mood.

Why does she (Dep) continue to waste her time on such trash? What on Earth could that moron give her that John couldn’t? He’s already given her so much, done so much in her name (not that she’d know that mind you), why can’t she see that? Why can’t she just be happy with him? Is he not enough??

The jealousy aspect would creep in right about here. Knowing me I’d end up dedicating an entire long paragraph to it, but as this isn’t a typical fic I won’t be doing that. Just know that there would be a part where John acknowledges that he’s (a little) broken while Nick/Sharky, by all accounts, aren’t and in his mind that would make them slightly more appealing to his Dep. Which is a big no-no. Only he can have them.

Either way, John would become a snack for his own self-doubt/worth before flipping it on its head and blaming it on Nick/Sharky; they’re the root of the problem after all, and if John was good at anything during his time as a lawyer it was getting rid of potential problems to his cases (didn’t intend for this to be a threat, but hey-ho; the joys of getting lost in the moment)

Unaware of his internal struggle Dep would go to greet John, small wave or a little nod paired with a pleasant smile, but upon either seeing his expression or him not bothering to even utter a mouthed ‘hey’ they’ll know somethings wrong. They’d give a quick, “gotta go”, before hanging up, but let’s face it you know Nick nor Sharky would be too happy having their time cut short with their pal (although Sharky’s probably gonna be a bit more of a kicked puppy about it than Nick is... maybe).

From there it’s gonna be Dep trying to make conversation only to get snipped responses and sarcastic remarks. You know, those petty, “why don’t you ask *insert name*, since you’re so close with them” types of remarks.

It’ll eventually escalate with Dep not understanding what’s wrong, although even when she does she still won’t completely get it; what’s wrong with talking to her friend? John shouldn’t feel threatened by them, it’s nothing like that.

John is a paranoid little goof though so he doesn’t buy what she’s selling.

Ultimately Dep tries to explain herself and that they’re just her friend and that they’ve been friends way longer than she’s even known John and how, despite how much she loves him, he can’t just expect her to throw all that time and history away with Nick/Sharky just because he doesn’t like them (he does expect though because that time and history is something that he wants, and for some reason him not having that is somehow Nick/Sharky’s fault. Go figure). They’re her friend, she can’t just kick them out of her life and act like they were ever there. She can’t do that.

John would be pissed, probably start going into a rant about this, that and the other, but, either way (whether he does go into a rant or not (I wouldn’t write him as such (that’s why we’re here))), he would still be hit with a realisation. And one that he’d grip to like a fricking lifeline.

“Oh. Oh, of course,” he’d say with a breath of a laugh, “the only reason you talk to them is because you feel obligated to, not because you actually want to. It all makes sense now...”

It doesn’t, but let’s face it no matter what Dep says John won’t back down. He’ll delusion himself into thinking that Nick/Sharky are guilt-tripping Dep in some way, holding their history hostage in some capacity, and that’s why she keeps in contact with them. That’s it! That has to be it!

It isn’t, but let’s keep going.

Try as she might Dep won’t get through to John. Now, I imagine she’ll go quiet, let him say his piece, but while he’s rambling to himself he’ll unknowingly give the game away – mentioning atonement in some way, how they (Nick/Sharky) are jealous of their relationship and how they were friend-zoned; that they’re greedy for wanting even a second of her time when clearly they don’t deserve it. Especially being the filthy sinners they are etc. etc.

Dep will stop him right there, gripping his arms in a way to ground him as they watch his expression shifts into something they’ve never seen before. It rattles her, seeing the man she loves look so unhinged, but she holds her ground (no matter how shaky she is) and... well, basically tells him to stop. Just, stop.

And he would.

There’d a flash of guilt in his oceanic eyes, watching as his partners eyes fill with a palpable worry and – god forgive him – a dash of fear. He’d flounder for a moment, eyes unable to leave his precious partner’s, before reaching for them with hurried apologies as he cautiously pulls them into an embrace; the gesture a familiar comfort that soothes his restless demons.

She’s a little hesitant, unsure of what’s going on inside that complicated head of his, but she’ll comply all the same. She does love the man after all.

“John,” she’d start slowly, “they’re my friend. You have nothing to worry about. They’re not going to take me away from you, no one is.”

He would likely rebuff that in some way, likely with a scoff or something similar, before going into his own quiet spiel about how cruel and unjust the world and people are, the temptations that lie in it; how she doesn’t know people like he does and, in actuality, doesn’t need to.

After all, thats what John’s here for.

He’d hold her close, breathing in her scent that was so distinctly hers as he buried his nose in her hair. Lightly kissing her before tucking her beneath his chin as he quietly spoke to her like a sinner in a confessional.

“I know I can be... a little insecure at times. Quick to make the wrong assumptions and jump to the wrong conclusions, but it’s only because you bring out that side in me. I care so much about you, dearest. I love you more than I’ve ever loved anything, and I won’t let anyone come between us. Nor the future I’ve been told about.”

#why can’t i write something short? #i want to write something short #let me write something short! #request #anonymous #anon #john seed #john seed x deputy #john seed x female deputy #my writing

[magmasliveblogs]

1.05

sadly yesterday i was unable to do a post, so today you get two! this is how i plan to make up for missed posts, posting two a day until i have caught up to what should be the current chapter. not sure if i have mentioned this before, but someone calculated it would take about 66-67 weeks for me to catch up with the webserial itself, so we are in for the long haul! 

to recap the previous chapter: erin found the stream again! thats pretty much all the good that happened though, because she found a dangerous fish in the stream, tried to cut it open to cook it but cut open her hand instead. the hand appears to be infected, and when we last saw her she was rambling a chess game via chess notation at herself. overall erin is not doing well in any way shape or form and may very well be half dead at this point. 

Erin woke up suddenly. Her hand was burning.

Though her head felt like fog she couldn’t fall back to sleep. Instead, Erin just sat and cradled her hand again. She couldn’t move it or the pain would get worse, but sleeping or relaxing was beyond her as well. She could only sit in agony.

Bit by bit, the pain faded away. Maybe it was her waking up, or maybe she just got numb.

as i said, she is in a very bad situation 

Erin got up. She still held her hand and took great care not to flex it at all. It was…aching didn’t even begin to describe it. It was just pain, all the way through. And it wasn’t stopping.

But at the same time, she was hungry. And for a little bit that overrode her pain.

Slowly, very slowly, Erin hobbled around the inn. She grabbed the blue fruit with her good hand and began chomping them down one at a time. She was so hungry she ate four before she knew it and then polished off two more as she sat at a table.

She would have sat there forever. Getting up wasn’t worth the effort, but a higher power called to her. It spoke in words she could not ignore.

Bathroom.

Erin sighed and put her head on the table. But the longer she sat the more uncomfortable it became. Still, the pain in her hand fought off the need to go relieve herself for the better part of an hour. When Erin finally stood up, she marched to the inn’s door and kicked it open. She’d go do her business in a random valley and then wash her hands at the stream. Hygiene and all that.

even if she is in a bad situation the power of hunger and the need to pee will prevail! 

It took nearly two hours before Erin came back. That was mainly due to her getting lost. Somehow the stream seemed to be in a different spot than she’d remembered, and when she’d completed her task she wasn’t able to retrace her steps.

When she did finally see the welcome sight of the inn, Erin could have cried with relief. All she wanted was to sit and suffer in peace and the open door welcomed her in.

it may not be home but its close enough for now 

Absentmindedly Erin walked through the door and closed it behind her. Then she went back and sat down at the table. She looked at the dirty, bloody bandage.

“Damn it.”

—-

“Ow. Owch. Ow.”

Every time Erin peeled off a bit of the bandage part of her skin and a lot of blood went with it. Some of it was dried blood. Some of it was not.

After she’d gotten half of the bandage off Erin had to stop. The pain was too much. And the bandage was stuck to her skin. But having a half-peeled bandage was worse. Erin couldn’t stop picking at it.

like a scab but less sanitary and more painful

“I’ve seen old kitchens in castles. I thought drawers and that kind of stuff only came later. So is this place in the dark ages or can I get a light bulb somewhere around here?”

Erin grumbled as she searched with one hand. She threw open another cupboard and stopped.

“What the—”

Food. Food was sitting in the cupboard. Erin had to rub her eyes with her good hand. Then she slapped herself to make sure she wasn’t dreaming. But when she looked again it was still there.

“Is that…flour?”

Erin poked the bag and stared at the white granules on her finger.

“It could be flour. Or—alternatively, it could be cocaine.”

She tried to smile. But her hand hurt too much.

“…It’s probably flour.”’

wait, food? in an abandoned inn in a wrecked town? i call shenanigans! either this infection has spread to her head and is causing insanity or this is magic 

But behind the bag of flour was another surprise. Erin’s eyes narrowed and she frowned hard.

“That’s butter.”

There was no mistaking it. And it wasn’t just butter either. Erin was used to the nice, square sticks of butter that turned soft and spreadable in the sun. This…was more like a block of butter. It made her arteries scream just looking at it, but her stomach was rumbling already. However—

“That’s not right.”

Erin stared at the butter. It was a golden yellow. She stared around the kitchen. Dust and cobwebs seemed to make up most of the room. She stared at the floor she had yet to sweep.

“How long does it take for dust to get two inches deep?”

Five months? Two years? Five years? Either way, Erin was pretty sure butter didn’t last that long.

“Is someone messing with me?”

as i said, its either creeping insanity or magic. either way, shenanigans! 

Erin glanced around. Could someone have put the food in here? But no, her footsteps were the first to disturb the dust. So then how…?

Her eyes flicked back to the cupboards. Something bright caught her attention.

“Oh. Oh!”

A series of glowing symbols faintly shone with silvery light. Erin brushed at the inscriptions and traced them around the edge of the entire pantry.

“Wow. Magic.”

She stared at the runes, entranced. Then a thought struck her and she opened the other cupboards..

“Here. Here…they’re everywhere.”

Around the edges of each cupboard were the same small etchings of runes. Erin traced them with her fingertip but unlike the cupboard with all the good food, these ones weren’t glowing.

“Huh. I guess it wore off. Or maybe they broke somehow? I wonder what they’re made of.”

Experimentally, she scraped at the runes with one fingernail. A bit of it flaked off onto her finger.

“Silver? Or something glowy.”

Erin poked a little harder. It was embedded in the wood, but time had made the wood soft. Another splinter of wood came away. This one neatly cut the unbroken line of runes in two.

Instantly, the glowing symbols faded away. Erin stared at the piece of wood she’d removed and then at the runes in open-mouthed horror.

“Oh you’ve got to be shi—”

erin. you have possibly just commited suicide by long term starvation. lets hope she remembers that settlement in the distance or finds a way to cook those fish. or hope the fruit lasts

Erin sat at the table in the common room and talked to herself. It was mainly to avoid thinking about pain or her own stupidity.

“True, you’ve gotta leave stuff behind when you leave. Can’t carry everything. But you had good food still here. And more, in those other cupboards. And here’s a kitchen full of supplies…how expensive are good, sharp knives?”

Erin flexed her hand and winced again. Very sharp knives.

“No one leaves that behind. So why would anyone…?”

It was a bad thought to have. Erin suddenly felt very uneasy. The hair on her neck began pricking and her stomach began doing pushups.

“Question. How did Mr. Skeleton upstairs die?”

Her spine tingled.

“Maybe that’s a bad question.”

no question is a bad question, except asking a god of knowledge where he got the butter. you will get a 10 paragraph essay, a prophecy, life changing wisdom, all three, or be asked to write a 20 paragraph essay on the great Mongolian butter prophecy. that was not a fun week 

“Upstairs. Fine. Hello darkness my old enemy.”

It wasn’t nearly as hard going up the stairs. Now that she knew what was in every room, going down the dark hallways wasn’t scary. But going in the last room? That was very scary.

Erin took a few deep breaths before she opened the door. Her palm was sweaty on the doorknob.

“Am I afraid of dead people? Well yeah. But they can’t hurt me. Zombies can, but normal dead people can’t. It’s just a skeleton. I can take a look for signs of—of death and then I’ll go sleep. Good plan. Let’s do it.”

She opened the door and stared inside. Then she ran back and started opening the other doors on the top floor, slamming into each room before running to the next. But what she sought was not there.

Slowly, Erin walked back to the room at the far end and looked inside. A sagging bed, a small table, a shuttered window. Nothing else. Erin whispered into the silence.

“It’s gone.”

moving on we now have a case of mysterious disappearing skeleton. i say again, erin might be going insane. or it became an undead 

The skeleton was gone. Erin was sure of it. It wasn’t anywhere in the inn that she’d looked, and she’d combed both top and bottom floor thoroughly.  And the worst part about losing a dead body was wondering where it went.

Erin sat in the common room. Actually, she sat in a corner of it, her back to the wall as her eyes darted around the room. It wasn’t that she was waiting for a pile of bones to fall from the ceiling. But…she would prefer to know where said bones had gone.

“Okay. Okay. What’s the problem? It was just a skeleton. Just a spooky, dead thing. And even if it did move—somehow, where would it go?”

She didn’t know why she was whispering to herself. It just made her feel…well, it didn’t make her feel better, but it felt appropriate.  It was getting dark. It was nearly night. In the circumstances being loud didn’t feel like the smart thing to do.

And the skeleton might hear her.

“No, no. That’s impossible. It’s not here. It’s somewhere else. Besides, where could it hide? I checked all the rooms upstairs. So where could it be?”

The…cupboards?

Her eyes darted towards the kitchen. No. It couldn’t be. She’d checked.

What about underneath the floorboards? Or in the roof?

Erin kept very still and listened. Nothing. That was good, right?

But skeletons don’t need to breathe. They don’t need to move until you’re asleep. And then…

Enough. Erin shook her head. It was all in her head. There had to be a perfectly good reason for a corpse to disappear suddenly—

What about the walls?

Erin refused to turn her head. She was just being paranoid. Which was a good thing. Because it could be anywhere.

No; not just it. Them. Maybe someone, something took the skeleton. But why? And when?

yes what took the skeleton? 

Her mind suddenly flashed back to when she’d returned that morning. Hadn’t the inn’s door been open? She hadn’t noticed at the time but she remembered closing it as she left. She didn’t remember having to open it when she got back.

Her skin crawled. The inn suddenly felt a lot less safe.

But it was just her imagination. She had an over-active imagination. If she went to sleep all would be well. All she had to do was close her eyes and when she woke up all would be well. There was nothing to worry about. Erin couldn’t even hear anything except the rapid beating of her heart and the creaking.

Creaking. A footstep.

Erin sat bolt upright. Her heart felt like it was about to stop from sheer overwork. Her eyes darted to the ceiling.

Something was up there.

She heard it moving about. Maybe if she’d been more relaxed she might never have noticed the faint creaks and groans of floorboards as something crept around upstairs. And judging by the sounds…

Erin tracked the progress of the creature. It was moving to the stairwell.

Slowly, Erin clenched her bad hand to avoid screaming. The pain as her sliced hand throbbed and started to bleed grounded her. Silently, she stood up.

The knife was on the table. Erin held it in her good hand and moved around. The stairwell was on the right side of the room. Anyone coming down wouldn’t be able to see her if she was in the rightmost corner.

Skirting the chairs and tables Erin made her way there and crouched down. The handle of the kitchen knife was slippery in her hand with sweat. Her other hand was slippery with her blood. She gazed at the blade of the knife. It was very sharp.

The creaking stopped for a moment as the intruder reached the top of the stairs. Erin waited. It would come down. And when it did, she’d get one chance to attack first.

Attack first? Am I some kind of hero?

No. New plan. The instant Erin saw what it was she was running for her life. But she had to see what it was first.

The skeleton popped into her head. Was it that? Or was it the creature that had stolen it’s bones? Was it some kind of parasitic creature that lived in dead corpses—or a gaunt nightprowler that ate the marrow of the deceased?

Please let it just be a skeleton.

The monster started descending the stairs. Quietly. Slowly. Even though Erin was listening, she barely heard the sound it made. She tried to guess how far down it was. Halfway. Two thirds. A few steps left.

Something left the last step and walked into the common room. Erin didn’t breathe. She didn’t move, or even blink.

Slowly, the creature stepped closer. Erin squinted and gasped as it came into view. Then she stood up and sighed.

“Oh. It was just a Goblin.”

The short green creature whirled around in surprise as Erin stood up with a sigh. It immediately crouched, its sharp dagger held in a fighting stance. It snarled at her.

She snarled back.

ah yes, just a goblin. thats fine. perfectly fine. not at all worrying. 

The rest of the Goblin ambush party waited outside of the inn, keen ears straining for sound. Each one was a seasoned warrior – at least by the standards of their small clan. They were all armed with the best weaponry available. The most dangerous among them had shortswords that were only half-covered in rust. And they were awaiting the signal.

The inn’s door flew open. The Goblins looked up. They expected the human female to run out of it, screaming and preferably bleeding. At worst, they expected their comrade to be running out, her fast on his heels. They readied their weapons.

And ducked as a body flew over their heads.

“Go to hell!”

The human female slammed the door shut.

The Goblins stared at the closed door of the inn. They stared at the barely recognizable face of the unconscious Goblin, and then exchanged a look. Then they quickly picked up their fallen comrade and legged it back into the night.

well erin probably isnt insane but at least she can deal with a goblin ambush via intimidation 

ill post the next chapter later today, i have to go deal with the rest of that irl stuff that kept me from posting yesterday. 

will is erin going insane? will the skeleton come back to haunt her? will the goblins finally leave her alone or is this just the prelude to a great goblin crusade against the inn? will erin ever remember that settlement in the distance? find out later today! 

#chrono

[goforwardgreenwriter-blog]

The Worm Reads: Empire of Storms, Ch 42 - 43

I AM ACTUALLY SPEECHLESS HOLY FUCKING SHIT

Manon Blackbeak cracked open eyelids that were too heavy, too burning, and squinted against the flickering lantern light that swayed upon the wood panels of the room in which she lay.

HHHH I’VE BEEN DREADING THIS. Please kiss the Manon we know goodbye, because we’re likely gonna never see her again after this chapter.

[Manon] bolted upright. Abraxos. Where was Abraxos—

Unghhh their relationship is too pure and wholesome for this shitty novel. I seriously want Manon to leave this series and go to HTTYD, it’s what she deserves.

(...) the chains now around Manon’s wrists, around her ankles—anchored into the walls with what appeared to be freshly drilled holes.

FRESHLY DRILLED HOLES. What did they use to drill those holes? Don’t tell me they popped down to Home Depot and picked up a brand new screw gun I am l aughing

Alien is there and already I’m seeing red please SJM i am begging u keep Alien’s crusty ass 100000 miles away from Manon

[Aelin] jerked her chin toward the floor. A pitcher and cup lay there. “Water’s next to the bed. If you can reach it.”

YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE YOU’RE GOING TO LET MANON DIE OF HYDRATION IF SHE CAN’T REACH THE WATER?? FUCK YOU, ALIEN, YOU MASSIVE PIECE OF SHIT.

And as it turns out, Manon can’t reach the water and passes out soon afterwards. Fuck Alien I can’t think of one character I hate more than her fucking selfish ass.

Even unconscious, Manon’s every breath, every twitch, was a reminder that she was a born predator, her agonizingly beautiful face a careful mask to lure the unwary to their doom.

idk this seems weird... Manon is passed out from pain but they’re all splooging over how hot and dangerous she is... idk...

They were nearing Banjali now—and Dorian had tried and failed not to think of his dead friend with every league closer to the lovely city. Tried and failed not to consider if Nehemia would have been with them on this very ship had things not gone so terribly wrong.

*sobs* I miss Nehemia.... she deserved so much better....

“Hello, witchling,” [Dorian] said. [Manon’s] full, sensuous mouth tightened slightly, either in a repressed grimace or smile, he couldn’t tell.

What the fuck is up with SJM making all her men horny for the women’s lips during situations that are in no way sexual?? Like Manon is a prisoner tied up and dying of hydration, why is Dorian thinking about her mouth this is so fucking weird

Dorian didn’t feel like mentioning that he’d been the one who’d jumped into the water [to save Manon]. He’d just … acted, as Manon had acted when she’d saved him in his tower. He owed her nothing less.

Ungh SJM is totally gonna make this a thing ain’t she. Like Dorian is just repaying her here but you know, you just know SJM is gonna use this for them to hook up.

Manon asks Dorian about Elide and the Thirteen and Dorian is like “who the hell are those guys” and Manon gets all sad and I’m :(((((

Whatever had happened, whatever [Manon] had endured … Dorian draped an arm along the back of his chair. “It’s coming in a few minutes. I’d hate for you to waste away into nothing. It’d be a shame to lose the most beautiful woman in the world so soon into her immortal, wicked life.”

Heh, that’s typical Dorian for you. Hey, maybe this ship won’t be so bad! Maybe they’ll become really good supportive friends who bond over all the trauma they went through and-

“I am not a woman,” was all [Manon] said. But hot temper laced those molten gold eyes. [Dorian] gave her an indolent shrug, perhaps only because she was indeed in chains, perhaps because, even though the death she radiated thrilled him, it did not strike a chord of fear. “Witch, woman … as long as the parts that matter are there, what difference does it make?”

WHAT

THE

ACTUAL

FUCK

SJM. ARE YOU EVEN FUCKING KIDDING ME. DO YOU KNOW TRANSGENDER PEOPLE EXIST?? THAT NOT ALL WOMEN HAVE VAGINAS??? ARE YOU FUCKING SAYING TRANS WOMEN ARE LESS OF WOMEN IF THEY DON’T HAVE BREASTS AND VAGINAS??? BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT IT FUCKING LOOKS LIKE TO ME.

I CANNOT FUCKING BELIEVE THIS IS IN AN EPIC FANTASY SERIES. SJM WROTE THIS, EDITORS EDITED IT, AND THEN IT WAS PUBLISHED, AND NOBODY THOUGHT “oh hey, the implications of this are reaaaally bad, let’s cut it”

DJFHSJDFHAFJ THIS IS SO BAD THIS IS REALLY REALLY BAD HOLY SHIT I THOUGHT THIS WAS JUST A BOOK WITH SHITTY PLOT AND WRITING AND CHARACTERS BUT NOW WE CAN ADD TRANSPHOBIA TO THE LIST THATS JUST GREAT.

Sorry about that little tangent but my jaw actually hung wide open when I read that line. Holy fucking shit this novel is going to put me in the ground six feet under.

Dorian offered a lazy grin in return. “Believe it or not, this ship has an unnatural number of attractive men and women on board. You’ll fit right in. And fit in with the cranky immortals, I suppose.”

I’m so heartbroken but... I have to disown my baby boy. Dorian was once one of my few favorite characters but SJM has killed him and replaced him with a transphobic asshole. I’m so sorry my baby boy, you flew too close to the sun. You are hereby demoted to Dorito.

Assdion rears his ugly ass head to be rude to Manon and kiss Alien’s ass before leaving. Bye bitch, hope you fall off the ship and drown.

“Then I suppose you and I are both heirs without crowns.”

Remember last time Alien said this and I defended Dorito, saying he deserved his crown? Oh, how I took those earlier chapters for granted......

The rest of the chapter is Manon angsting about all the shit she’s been through lately. Since I like Manon and she has reason to be upset, I don’t have anything to make snarks about so next chapter.

Lorcan was still wondering what the hell he was doing three days later

Oh fucking great, I just witnessed the murder of my son Dorian and now I gotta read in Lorcan’s POV? Just keep kicking me while I’m down why don’t you, SJM.

“It’s going to rain.” [Elide] slid a flat glance at him. “I do know what thunder means.”

Just fucking stop. This isn’t entertaining at all to watch two people bicker and made snarky remarks 100% of the time to one another and yet we’re supposed to believe they’re bonding I want to d ie

“Drink,” Elide commanded him. Lorcan debated telling her not to give him orders, but … he liked seeing this small, fine-boned creature in action.

What the fuck does that mean?? Fine boned?? Is that really a way people describe others???? What the fuck am I reading???

So Lorcan drank and watched [Elide] while she watched others. So many calculating thoughts beneath that pale face, so many lies ready to spill from those rosebud lips.

I’m so tired like. You guys have done nothing but argue and avoid each other and now Lorass is getting horny at the sight of Elide’s lips I’m so tired.

[Elide] was going to leave. Tomorrow, whenever the carnival rolled out. She’d likely hire one of these boats to take her northward, and [Lorcan] … he would go south. To Morath.

:(( the girl I emotionally abuse is going to leave after we both lied to one another :((( this is so sad can we get 100 likes

Elide talks to some people inside a tavern about Alien.

“Seems like the queen has a habit of showing up where she’s least expected, unleashing chaos, and vanishing again.

FINISH HER

Elide walked out of the third tavern, Lorcan on her heels. They hadn’t spoken once since she’d gone into that first inn. He’d been too lost in contemplating what it would be like to suddenly travel on his own again. To leave her … and never see her again.

I am utterly baffled you two have been nothing but assholes to each other!!! Like seriously you haven’t done anything nice for each other!!! Like wtf SJM is trying make us all :’((( about them splitting up but I can’t wait until this stupid subplot ends!

Elide reveals she can’t read to Lorass and he tries to compliment her, but...?

He wondered if he would have ever noticed if she hadn’t told him. “You seem to have survived rather impressively without it.”

I mean, good on him for not judging her, but like, she was locked up in a tower doing maid work? Reading skills really wouldn’t have made much of a difference there.

Turns out their carnival co workers ratted them out and sent guards after them. Lorass hauls Elide over his shoulder and makes a run for it.

“The gates at the city entrance,” [Elide] gasped as muscle and bone pummeled into her gut. “They’ll be there, too.”

Holy shit that sounds painful. She’s not a sack of potatoes Lorass, try some gentleness.

Lorcan pocketed the axe he’d thumbed free

You literally just took out your axe like two paragraphs ago on the same page. What was the point of this?

They find some rando and force him to get them the hell out of dodge on his boat. Elide hears a splash but doesn’t think anything of it until she sees Lorass again.

[Elide] glanced at the hatchet at [Lorcan’s] side as he strode out of the cabin. “You killed him, didn’t you?” That was what the splash had been. A body being dumped over the side.

So, just to recap, according to Lorass.... killing an innocent man who helped you escape the guards; completely justifiable. Stealing something you suspect is bad from a woman you don’t even like; evil, unacceptable, crossing a line. 

“He might have had a family depending on him.” [Elide]’d seen no wedding ring, but it didn’t mean anything.

I was about to get tilted but SJM corrected herself. I hate the mentality that if you don’t have a spouse, you clearly can’t have a family who depends on you. Kids from previous relationships, parents, grandparents, siblings, they’re family too y’know.

Lorass finds out the Wyrdkey he carried is a fake and loses his shit.

Then Lorcan flung open the door, so violently it nearly ripped off its hinges, and hurled what looked to be the shards of a broken amulet into the river. Or he tried to. Lorcan threw it hard enough that it cleared the river entirely and slammed into a tree, gouging out a chunk of wood.

I enjoy his misery tbh. Lorass is so pissy he reveals to Elide that Alien was Celaena, or as I like to call her Celery, at one point.

“You knew, and you didn’t tell me. Why?” “You still haven’t told me your secrets. I don’t see why I should tell all of mine, either.”

I mean, yeah, hate to agree with Lorass but fair enough. You’ve both done nothing but lie to each other’s faces, why would he tell you that? I want to like Elide but all this shitty drama and bickering is making my affection for her wear thin.

Then - holy fucking shit, there’s like a bunch of huuuuuuge paragraphs of Lorass and Elide bickering and they’re so fucking big. This hurts my eyes to look at. I’m gonna screencap one of them, just to show you how fucking huge they are.

HOLY SHIT SJM BREAK UP YOUR BIG ASS BRICKS OF TEXT PLEASE. My eyes started to cross trying to read this, it took me like three tries.

tl;dr because of some bullshit Lorass is staying with Elide because they both have business with Alien. Fuckin’ great, I love everyone’s agendas revolving around the main special snowflake, just fuckin’ great.

There’d been nothing inside the amulet but one of those rings—an utterly useless Wyrdstone ring, wrapped in a bit of parchment. And on it was written in a feminine scrawl: Here’s hoping you discover more creative terms than “bitch” to call me when you find this. With all my love, A.A.G.

Maybe I’d find this amusing if Alien wasn’t a walking shitstain, but... I’m tired. I’m so goddamn tired.

[Lorcan]’d kill [Aelin]. Slowly. Creatively.

Damn wish you would fam, but Alien’s got plot armor bigger than her fuckin’ ego. Lorass ends the chapter by saying he’ll kill Alien, which we all know won’t happen. I’m betting money that there’ll probably be a Lorass/Rowboat/Alien love triangle once Lorass sees what an ~uhmazing~ queen Alien is. Don’t give me that look, you know SJM would.

#the worm talks #the worm reads: eos #anti sjm #anti tog #anti eos

[codezeta-liveblog-blog]

Bonds 1.4 - Living in a Chaotic Metaphor

I finished toweling myself dry and wrapped the towel around my waist before I opened the shower curtain.  I used my fingers to comb my damp hair away from my face before approaching the mirror.

I could see Rose’s reflection, her hair pressed flat where the back of her head pressed against the other side of the mirror, looking the other way.  The mirror in the upstairs bathroom was a part of the pedestal sink, surrounded by florets.

It was an uncomfortable setting, with unfamiliar things in unfamiliar places.  Having someone, something like Rose nearby.  Strange smells and tastes, with even the water having a taste to it.  It was drawn from a local well, according to Rose. I had been forced to use the only shampoo available, and the smell of it was thick and cloying in the humid air of the bathroom.

Ahh, the good ol’ smell of dead grandma shampoo. I’ve never tried water from a well before, I did have an opportunity once to drink some from a water spring as the water came out from multiple little holes in the ground, at the top of a hill, deliciously fresh. I’d later find out that it was one of the springs that originated the Tietê River, which becomes one of the dirtiest rivers in the world as it exits the city of São Paulo.

All of this was helping me to get a sense of why Molly had been so driven to empty shelves and remove pictures from the walls.  My grandmother had a presence here, and it was a presence that felt like it could override my own.

Especially when my own presence seemed somewhat limited. When I looked in the mirror, I saw only the bathroom, and I saw Rose, her back turned.

Shout-out to the poeticness of this last paragraph. I wonder what is the psychological effect if someone nowadays being stopped from seeing their reflections forever. I'm going to keep my eyes open to see if that is even a possibility for Blake anymore.

No reflection, using different soaps and shampoo that made me smell different, no longer having the little trinkets and touches I’d surrounded myself with over the past year or two, it all made me feel less like me.

Each of those things had a flip side, seeing a reminder of our grandmother’s work in the mirror, smelling our grandmother’s lavender-scented shampoo and soap, seeing hertrinkets and small touches wherever I looked, I felt like she hadn’t quite left.  Her presence was still here.

Which it was, kind of.  We had stumbled onto one lingering threat.  The books my grandmother had written, left untouched, still waited in that study.

How deep did that particular danger run?

“Hey,” I said.  “Did you ever share scary stories with Molly and Paige?”

“A little,” Rose answered, without turning around.

“You remember the stories we told about the house?  Some made up, some real?”

“Kind of,” she said.  “We weren’t all that close.  I mean, we were the same ages, give or take a year, but we weren’t friends.”

“Really?” I asked, and there was a note of surprise in my voice that seemed to startle her.  She half-turned, caught a glimpse of me, naked but for a towel around my waist, and turned away just as quickly.

I hiked up the towel to be sure I was safe, made sure it was secure, and then said, “It’s fine.  I’m decent, and it’s not like we’re not related, right?”

“Right,” she said, but she took her time.  I caught her giving me a glance, bottom to top and back again, before she frowned a little.

Things were a lot different in her version of the family huh. Wonder if the parents have anything to do with it. Pitched the cousins against one another maybe?

“Was it that you weren’t friends after grandmother announced the whole ‘granddaughter only’ thing, or-”

“Before,” Rose said.

“Before,” I said, considering the idea.  “I considered them good friends.  We exchanged emails, we looked forward to seeing each other…”

I trailed off.  Rose was already shaking her head.  A strand of blond hair had come loose of the pin behind her head.

Sidenote: I feel like wildbow REALLY overuses blonds sometimes. I dont know if its just a local thing and I dont see enough of them, but like looking back even to the cast of Worm, a third of the characters seem to be blond.

Rose said, “I know Molly about as well as I knew Callan or Roxanne, which isn’t much at all.  Then the ‘granddaughter only’ thing came up, and that was that.  We were rivals.”

“It doesn’t upset you that she’s dead?”

“It does!” she said, “Really, it does.  But… if you told me Mrs. Niles died, I’d be about as upset. Someone who was a small, peripheral part my life is now gone.  It’s sad, it’s a reminder that we’re all very mortal, and there’s obviously a lot more going on besides that, with you as the heir for the property and me as… this.”

“But Molly doesn’t rate much higher than an elderly neighbor who you say hi to if you happen to see her,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” Rose said.  “There are nice memories, but there are bad memories too.  Over and over, stuff would come up.  If we weren’t dealing with a situation, we were reeling from the last one.  Ways to weaken me, to take me out of the running, mom and dad sort of keeping it going. It kind of soured all the rest of it.”

“Soured it?,” I said.

She gave me a funny look.  “Aunt Irene pulled strings to screw up Paige’s chances of getting into University, and she almost succeeded.  Uncle Paul went crazy, Paige went crazy, and we had four straight months where I was genuinely afraid.  My car got vandalized, and they emptied a can of orange juice concentrate under a seat. The frozen pulp you mix with two cans of water.  By the time I realized what was going on, the smell was so bad I couldn’t drive the car, and no amount of cleaning would make it any better.”

“Doesn’t sound like Paige.”

“That one was Ellie, I’m pretty sure.  She made a comment, then alluded to my brake lines, and I basically stopped driving after that.  When I think of family, that’s the first thing that comes to mind.”

Oh man, soiled citric fruits smell like vomit don’t they? And straight up implied death threats up in the family. Noice.

I couldn’t imagine giving up that independence.  We were supposed to connect as we interacted, but I could only feel the differences between us getting more pronounced.

She continued, oblivious, “Those are the memories I have, which didn’t really happen, apparently.  But they’re part of what make me me, whatever I am, and so I don’t have any lingering fondness for the extended family, real memories or fake.”

I nodded.  “I remember sharing the stories about the house, even seeking them out, so I had tidbits to share on future visits.  We’d laugh, be suitably horrified, and whatever else.  Paige and Molly had it easier, because they had siblings to tap for stories.  But it’s like… I could tell them how our great grandfather was a robber baron, kind of?”

There was no recognition on Rose’s face.

“He ruthlessly cut out the competition, scared people, beat them, stole from them, up until the day he hired a few goons to go beat someone up and they got caught.  He ran and came to Canada, where was approached by a widow, our great grandmother. Grandmother Rose’s parents.”

“I didn’t hear that one.”

“The letter she wrote us told us that bastards tend to do better as husbands in this family than the gentlemen do.  So I can’t help but think… how far back does this business with the demons and devils go?  There’s a bit of bloody history tied to this family and this house.  Was grandmother the first to go down that road, or has it been at play from the beginning?”

“I don’t know,” Rose said.  “I don’t want it to be a big thing, because our bloodline is apparently in a kind of debt, and I don’t want to be in debt to anything like that.”

Thats a good question that I think I didn't put in the right words before. How far does the debt go is kinda related to the amount of past generation that have participated in it. I'm going to assume it has been a long long time. A dozen maybe more, bur that is just based on the availability of desmenes on the house. Which is none and which I'm assuming is maybe limited by the amount of rooms? Or something like that

No longer comfortable with the topic, I bent down and rummaged in the cabinet beneath the sink for basic toiletries.  One drawer revealed a narrow can of shaving cream with a woman’s silhouette on it.  It had been there for so long it refused to budge when I tried to lift it.  Further back was a plastic packet of the cheapest disposable razors around, pink.

I opted to shave anyways, tearing the can off the bottom of the drawer.  Sure enough, the razor nicked me no less than five times.  They had been there for so long that temperature had bent the blades.

I preferred to bleed and be clean-shaven over the alternative.

Oh man I'd so rather stay a mess than be left scratching at my neck until it gets all red.

Without a reflection to go by, I had to be meticulous.

It was disconcerting to see Rose standing there, studying me, when I tried to look to see if I’d missed a spot.  I ran my hand over my face, searching for the roughness of scruff, then washed my face to get rid of the remainder.

“Bit of shaving cream at the back there,” Rose said, pointing to the nape of her neck.

I fixed it.

“Putting the more dangerous stuff aside, we should get to studying,” she said.

“Know what we’re up against,” I said, while drying my face. I tended to the small cuts, but it didn’t make much of a difference, with the cut already on my cheekbone.

“Exactly.  Having information can’t do any harm, can it?  How were you as a student?”

“Horrible,” I said.  I could see her face fall.

“But I can do this.  I have a good memory.  I struggled at school because I don’t have a lot of patience.”

“How far did you get in Essentials?”

“The introduction,” I said, preparing my toothbrush.  I’d managed some before fatigue caught up with me, and I’d napped.  I’d woken, mid-afternoon, and decided to shower to clear my head.  I didn’t function that well when I was grimy and unshaven.

“Only?  I’m nearly done,” she replied.

I looked up at her in surprise.

“Apparently I don’t sleep,” she said, and she sounded somewhat distant, even disconnected.  “I don’t get hungry.  I don’t really breathe.  I barely have a heartbeat.”

To be fair, must have been tiring to wake up in the middle of the night then run in the icy woods plus the whole stress of it all. I'm going to make a prediction that Rose is going to suffer some psychological backlash sometime because of not feeling real or connected. Pretty basic, but yeah, decided I should voice it anyways. Maybe it never happens though.

“You were up all night reading?”

“More or less.  My focus sucks right now, because I still feel drained from earlier, but I read where I could, then wandered, looked over the library, trying to get a sense of what books are there.  Or at least the books the mirror’s facing.”

I nodded, toothbrush in my mouth.  On a level, I was glad I had an excuse to stay silent.  I was bothered, that she was ahead of me, that she would likely stay ahead of me, without a need for sleep.

How could I even articulate that?  On a level, I wanted us to be on the same page, so we could cooperate, play ideas off each other.

On another level, well… All of the most foolish and brutish Others have been captured, slain, consumed, driven off, or tricked away. Recognize all Others for what they are, and know that they, by a process of elimination two thousand and six hundred years in the making, are cunning by nature, they are slave to those who are, or they were made to be cunning to better serve in their duties.  Wit is the greatest defense and the sharpest weapon, on battlefields such as these.

Essentials, chapter one, the introduction, on Others.  Laying down the ground rules, the most basic stuff we needed to know.  Others were liars.

Gotta keep that date in mind. What happened around 600 B.C? Were the Others fabricated in some way? Are they all creations? Or were they just "brought" in some way around that time?

What was Rose, if not an Other?  New enough she wasn’t bound by the old rules that forbade lying and mandated oaths, but still an Other.  Not of mortals or the mortal’s world.

“I’m glad you’re up,” she said.  “Three hours alone in this house was too much.  I don’t know how I’m going to get through a whole night. Dealing with being what I am.”

For all that time had done to heal her weariness, it had made her emotions more pronounced.

In my case… well, it would have been easier to say if any emotion was showing if I could see myself.

“I really like your tattoos,” she said.  She fumbled for words for a second, which caught me off guard. “I’m… actually envious.  I couldn’t pull that off, but it’s the sort of thing I’d get if I could.”

I looked down.  Small birds perched on tree branches, in pale grays, whites and yellows, against a backdrop of reds, in watercolor hues.  “Thank you.”

Were we similar in some respects?  In tastes?

Or was this a manipulation from a cunning  Other?  What was there to guarantee that she was really me, with one not-so-small change?

I hope that Blake finds something to trust on her more, because I'm actually really fond of her. Reminds me a lot of the couple actually good story/character arcs in the whole main Kingdom Hearts series which are Roxas', Xion's and Riku-Replica. Three VERY different tragic cases of identity crisis of """clones""". The first two being literally consumed out of existence for the main character to come back alive, since they were parts pulled of him anyways to be brainwashed into siding with The Bad Guys™, albeit believing and fighting to become their own selves all throughout, eventually pitched against one another, Xion is completely erased from people’s memories thanks to some different aspects that make her up. The latter is more of a short case of a clone being used just as a test-drive by their creator, a clone that was eventually not needed anymore. He tries to kill his original self in hopes of being able to call himself worth something, since he feels like even when he gets stronger, he is just “borrowing” the original’s capacity to get stronger, instead of being himself. Defeating him awards the player with one of my favorite bittersweet villain deaths. Enough about other franchises =P

 I left the bathroom, making my way down to the living room.

“I take it you didn’t get to chapter eight,” she said, reflected in one of the glass picture frames along the stairwell.

“No.”

“Take a look,” she said.  Or it was all she could say, before there weren’t any surfaces for her to communicate through.  I made my way into the living room, and saw her there, waiting for me, in the mirror I’d taken from the bathroom.  The book lay on the coffee table.

Essentials, chapter eight.  Dangers a practitioner faces.

I pulled on pants under the towel as I leaned over the book, reading the headings aloud.  “Being forsworn, betrayal within the coven, betrayal by familiars, covens, crusades, death, demesnes, execution, exquirere…”

“Skip ahead.”

I did, picking up the book to better flip through it.  “Lords, loss of implements, loss of sight, loss of soul…”

 First, the obvious, what the fuck are all these things.

Second, really hoping to see some cooperation and summarization by Rose here. It would really help a whole lot more than she coming up and talking about stuff in the middle of situations like I feel in my bones is going to happen at LEAST once.

“Towards the end.”

“I’m not patient enough for that.  Give me a letter?  Or, better yet, point me to the section you want to talk about?”

“W.  Witch hunters.”

I flipped through until I found it.  “‘Witch hunters are markedly different from inquisitors. Where an inquisitor is organized by an outside party, the witch hunter is in the employ of practitioners or Others. Oft used to guard a Lord’s power, maintain a balance or hunt down rogue parties.  Witch Hunters do not use faith or innocence as tools, but use gifts provided by those they serve, alongside the protections the uninitiated enjoy, as well as the ability to circumvent defenses that would ward off practitioners and Others.'”

Rose was looking at me, expectantly.

“I’m not sure I follow your line of thought.”

“I want to see if you reach the same conclusion I do,” she said.

“You’re thinking of that pair of siblings we saw.  The ones who were getting all geared up to come after us.”

“I’m less focused on them than on the path.” she said.

I thought for a minute.  “Yeah, I’m not reaching the same conclusion as you, I don’t think.”

She looked a little agitated, nervous.  “I think we can go this route.  Avoid getting into the ugliest stuff, the books on demons and whatever else.  If witch hunters and inquisitors can survive this sort of thing, maybe we can too.”

“Borrowing power instead of using it?”

She nodded, too much, too quickly.  She was talking faster.  “Kind of.  Not getting in the thick of this.  We learn what we need to learn in order to survive.  We circumvent this whole situation.”

See, I have to reread those visions already. I will do it later, no problem. I'm thinking Blake is a practitioner? But I don’t know yet if that and Others could be considered the same thing. (Here marks the end of the cellphone reading I did days before I actually posted this and finished the not-so-liveblog).

“While meeting her demands?  Getting a familiar, getting a tool, carving out a little world for ourselves? Rose, I get what you’re going for, I almost get why, but that’s not going to work.”

With that, I seemed to have upset her.

Rose leaned closer to the mirror, “Why not?  We can do it, while avoiding everything else.  We need workarounds.”

“I get that, but the most basic, number one step?  The one I’m supposed to use to awaken myself… there’s a cost associated with it.  I give up the ability to lie.  What that one guy said in the vision?  There’s always a price.  Become a Witch Hunter, and you face obligations.”

Rose was getting more into it as she argued.  “We can minimize the effect.  Follow the letter of the law, instead of the spirit.  We get a familiar, but we go with the smallest, weakest spirit possible, something small, that won’t demand anything of consequence or challenge us.  We pick an inoffensive tool.  Carve out the smallest possible piece of land for our demesnes.  That only leaves us the problem of some reading, which is a good idea anyways, and getting married.”

“And the debt?  We’re supposed to clear the debt.  How do we do that if we handicap ourselves?”

“If that’s the one problem we have, I think we can find a way around it with some research.”

No, I wouldn’t convince her that way.  Better to get to the root of this problem, first.  “Where does the witch hunting factor in?”

“We figure out how they protect themselves, and we do the same things.  They have sponsors, sources of energy and tools.  So do we.  Kind of. It’s what we inherited.”

Sounds like a real good way to get yourselves even more killed. Didn’t grandma say how many enemies you guys have around, how they won’t care if you are in or not? I say this is a bad idea, that you are already, sadly, in too deep.

 “I don’t want to shoot you down…” I started.

“You don’t need to.”

“I know what you’re feeling.  I felt a bit of it, when I saw the escape clause in the contract, if we wanted to back out of this.  That there was a way out.  Except I think this is a trap too, in a different way.”

“No, Blake.  We can do this, we just need to do it safely.”

“I don’t think this is a situation where we can do things in half measures.  We can’t be half-heir and half-witch hunter.”

“What’s the alternative?  You really want to do this?  Follow the path grandmother set before us, making infernal bargains to deal with our enemies, while somehow trying to get out of debt with whoever our ancestors got in debt with?” 

Wanting is a STRONG word. 

I stood, making my way to the kitchen.  “I’m not saying I want to deal with devils or any of that. I’m saying I don’t want to pay a price like the one we pay for ‘awakening’, if we’re not going to use what we paid for.”

She spoke to me from the toaster.  “I get a say in this, you know.”

Hahahaha. I can totally picture this being fun through the entire book.

I moved through the kitchen, looking for something easy to make foodwise.  Bonus points if it didn’t leave me feeling like crap afterward.  In the heat of the conversation, I was making more noise than necessary with the cupboards and drawers.  “You get a say, but it’s ultimately me making the decision and paying the consequences, isn’t it?”

“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m kind of attached to you, metaphysically.  You die, I’m going to be a goner too.”

“You think.  Either way, I’m the one who got injured,” I said.  “I’m the one who has stitches in my hand and a cut on my face.”

“At least you’re alive,” she retorted.

We were interrupted by a pounding series of knocks on the door. Rose turned her head so quickly that the loose strands of hair flew out to either side.

I remained where I was, staring at the door.

The knocking repeated.

“Whatever this is,” I said, “I might need help.”

She took her time responding.

A third set of knocks, harder than last two others.

“Like I said,” Rose told me, “We’re attached to each other. I’ll back you up.  Go.”

I nodded.

I grabbed a t-shirt from the backpack and pulled it on as I approached the door, stopping to peek out through the glass at the side.

Relief hit me in a wave, even in the moment my heart sank.

As the door opened, I saw two men in uniform.

One of them was very familiar.  I’d glimpsed him in the odd dream I’d seen, just before meeting Rose.

Police. 

Hm, I don’t remember seeing police there, and I just re-read those scenes. What is up here? 

The other man spoke first.  “I’m RCMP officer Pat Macguin.  This is Chief of Police Laird Behaim.”

“Hi,” I said, guarded.

“Would you give me your name, please?” Laird Behaim asked me. He had an intense gaze.  Pale blue eyes to go with very dark, straight hair, just starting to gray at the sideburns.

I’d seen him in the vision.  The man with the pocketwatch at the table with all of the blonde women. I needed a moment to get my mental footing.  I searched for a response  “Um.” 

Oh… that guy. Now question, were they all enemies or only some of them? The king with the dog seemed… reasonable-ish? But all the others seemed to be more akin to something like enemies, since most intentionally dismissed the visions. 

“It’s not a hard answer to give,” the RCMP officer said.

“I just woke up from a nap, a little bit ago,” I said. “Sorry.  I’m a little muddled.”

“Your name?” he asked.

There was no dodging the question.  “Blake Thorburn.”

Laird Demill raised his eyebrows.  “Paul’s son?  No, wait, that would be…”

“Peter.  He’s my cousin.  My dad is-”

“Bradley Thorburn, by process of elimination.  Yes.”

The RCMP gave Laird a look.

“I’m fairly familiar with his family,” Laird said.

“You’re alone, Mr. Thorburn?”

“Only person in the house,” I said.

“You’re injured,” the RCMP officer said, to me,  “A cut on your cheek?  Can I ask what happened?”

The sudden change of direction caught me off guard.  It didn’t help that this Laird guy was staring at me, studying me while the officer quizzed me.  He would be weighing my answers.

There was a danger here.  I felt a chill, and it wasn’t just the cold air from outside.

I couldn’t get arrested, or I’d get dragged out of the house, far from any protection it afforded.

But this man, here, Laird Behaim, was an enemy.  Would I be worse off if he realized I wasn’t yet ‘awakened’?

I couldn’t get caught in a lie, and I wasn’t too sure I wanted to look like I was trying to word things too carefully.

“Car broke down by the side of the highway.  I tried to take a shortcut through the woods, because I could have been hit in the highway.  Something cut me.”

“Where were you at four o’clock this morning?”

“Sleeping, I think.  I kind of woke up early, so I’m not sure.  Can I ask what this is about?”

“In a minute.  Can anyone or anything confirm your location?”

“Joel Monte, my landlord and friend.  I woke him up to borrow his car, maybe around five.  He’s going to be upset, the car broke down and I had to leave it behind.  I haven’t even had time to think about getting a tow, if it hasn’t been towed already.”

“You said.  His number?”

I gave it.  The RCMP officer glanced at the chief of police, who walked down the stairs, phone up to his ear.

“That’s a different area code than the one in Jacob’s Bell.  You woke up early, borrowed a car from your landlord at an unholy hour, and decided to drive to another town to visit…”

Laird was nearby, in earshot.  I wasn’t sure the RCMP officer was safe, either.  “My cousin Molly inherited this place.  She isn’t here.  I’m not sure where she is.”

“You can understand where I’m a little confused about this sequence of events,” he said.  He sounded unimpressed.  “Why?”

There was no good answer to give.  “Can I ask what this is about?”

“Answer my question, first.”  He wasn’t playing ball. 

Real question: Can a cop force you to answer questions without filling you in on the why? Where do yours and their rights being and end? I think that if you refuse you have to go get a lawyer, but I don’t know if they have to get you to the station for that. 

Damn it.  What was I supposed to say?  I didn’t have time to think.

When in doubt… honesty.

“The car broke down, and coming here seemed like it was less hassle overall.  Molly wasn’t here.  I thought I should stick around.”

All true.

“Which doesn’t explain why you were driving in the first place.”

“It sounds stupid.  I had a bad dream.  I decided to go for a drive, get away.”

He gave me a look that conveyed a whole idea.  ‘That does sound stupid‘.   But he was too polite to say it out loud.  The inconsistency of my actions, he must have thought I was on drugs. 

Idk, I’ve seen people who go out for driving instead of out for a walk when they need to think about stuff, which for me is definitely weirder since that means you are PAYING for it in a way that walking is 100% free. 

Laird returned to the porch.  The look he gave me, too calm, too casual, made me shiver.

“Landlord confirms the time,” he said.  “And a car was found on the side of the highway.”

I jammed my hands in the pockets, where the cold was starting to numb my fingers.  “If you visit the sandwich shop at the rest stop, just a little up the road from where the car was picked up, the manager and a middle aged blonde woman can confirm. She gave me a ride here.”

“We’ll check,” the RCMP officer said.

“What’s this about?” I asked.  I knew, but I wasn’t supposed to know.

“Can we step inside?” Laird asked.  “You look cold.”

“Not without a warrant,” I said.  Better to seem unfriendly and overly emotional than risk letting an enemy inside safe territory.  “What’s this about?”

The RCMP officer answered, “Molly Walker, the owner of this house, was found mauled in the woods.”

If I’d harbored any concerns about seeming too blasé, they were gone in the instant I heard those words.  “M-mauled?” 

Oh and in the woods too. Damn, so they kinda have an alibi (is that the correct term?) depending on which woods.

“Brutally attacked by a human, if the tracks are any indication,” the officer said.  “We’re not offering any particular details at this point.”

“I- uh,” I said.  I stopped, then tried to start again, but the words didn’t escape my mouth.  It didn’t help that I didn’t know what to say.

I’d known, but to hear it like this, from very human sources, minus all of the mystic crap?

“You what?” the RCMP officer asked me.

“She has family in town.  They moved to be closer to our grandmother.”

“We know.  We’ve spoken with them,” the officer said.  “They pointed us here.  We’d like to come inside and see if there’s anything that could explain the attack.”

I shook my head.  “No.”

“Irene Walker gave us permission to investigate the premises.”

Which meant letting this Laird Behaim person into the house.

“It- no.  It’s not her call,” I said.  “I’m sorry. I can give you the number of the lawyer. The way I understand it, the house would pass on to me, if Molly was dead.  It’s my property, it’s my say.  Not without a warrant.”

“This isn’t reflecting well on you, Mr. Thorburn,” the RCMP officer said.

“I know,” I said.  My mouth was dry, and my eyes were tearing up from the cold and the recent announcement.  “Yeah. I- I’m sorry.  I need time to process the news, and I’m not going to make good calls, as tired and confused as I am.  It’s better if you talk to the lawyer.”

“Mr. Beasley?” Laird asked.

“Mr. Beasley, right,” I said.

“I’m familiar with him,” he said.  When the RCMP officer looked in his direction, he said, “There’s a great deal of concern over this house, in local circles.  The town is booming with the addition of the train station and the proximity to Toronto, property prices are soaring, and the amount of good land that can be bought is somewhat limited, due to certain geographical concerns rooted in this property.  The last time I paid any attention to the money, this property was worth twenty million dollars.”

“It’s worth more now,” I said.

“I imagine.  A great many locals are very interested,” Laird said, his eyes fixed on me.  “Mr. Beasley has been handling the bulk of the disputes for the family.  I know him. With your permission, I’ll talk to him and see what we can’t figure out.”

“Please do” the RCMP officer said. 

I kinda have this type of territory around where I live, a old woman’s house that has a huge expanse that is worth millions. The lawyer isn’t getting more trustworthy as time goes on.

“I’d like to have a moment to talk to Mr. Thorburn here, if that’s alright.  If he’s telling the truth and he has inherited the property, I wouldn’t mind the chance to talk this through with him.”

The RCMP officer didn’t seem happy with that.  “You’re aware of the time constraints?”

“Of course.  I’ll talk to Mr. Thorburn, then the lawyer, and we can meet for dinner?  I’ll fill you in.”

The RCMP officer took that in.  “Alright.  I need to make some calls.  Call me when you’re done.”

Laird nodded.

Together, we watched the RCMP officer trudge away through the snow, his boots squeaking.  When he was gone, Laird withdrew a pocketwatch from his coat.  He popped it open, looked, and then closed it, holding it in one hand.

His implement? 

I’m thinking the same thing. Is the clock his tool? Where his familiar is or something? 

“I admit, thought it was a girl, here.”

“No,” I responded.  “I’m just as surprised to be here as you are to see me here.”

“Well, if it helps, I think you’re innocent,” he said.

“Yeah?” I asked.

“Here’s the honest truth; I wasn’t lying when I said I wanted to discuss things with you.”

“You’re a pretty honest guy, huh?” I asked.

Stupid.  Stupid question.

“I suspect you and I both know why,” he said.  “Can we do away with pretense?”

I sighed.  “Sure.”

“I believe you’re innocent because I know who killed Molly Walker.”

“Who?” I asked.  I was getting colder, now.

He only shook his head.  “I can’t say.  It will probably go unsolved, the media will report it, but it won’t be sensationalized. Good officers will most likely put in a genuine, honest effort and find nothing.”

“Doesn’t this kind of conflict with the oath you swore, when entering office?  Or are you faking the police thing?”

He smiled.  “Rest assured, I studied for my position, I earned it, and I’ve maintained it in good conscience.  I’d rather talk about you.  Would you be up for a walk?”

“A walk?” I asked.

“If you’re worried, I can promise you my protection for as long as you’re in my company, I’ll take you somewhere where we can talk, then bring you back, as safe as I can manage it.”

“Which is how safe?”  I asked.  “I don’t know what your protection is worth.”

“You’re thinking I’ve limited myself somehow?” he asked, clearly amused.

“I’m thinking anything is possible.” 

Good to cut the bullshit straight away, but also good that Blake is being smart about this, playing around the omissions and trying to force them to say the truth. I do wonder if some of grandma’s enemies don’t want the family killed or something, maybe they just want the terrain, for money and influence? 

“If positions were reversed, I would trust my own daughters, who I care about deeply, to the care of someone of equivalent power.”

“This isn’t a trick?” I asked.

His smile faltered a little.  “This line of questioning is getting a touch grating.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“This is not a trick,” he said.  “My primary aim here is to find out who you are.  You’re an unknown quantity in a very delicate ecosystem. But we can talk about that more after. I suspect you’ll gain more information than you give up.”

“Right this minute, with everything that’s happening, I’d rather be safe and warm than have information,” I said.  “A bit of time to grieve might be nice.”

“What if I offered to help streamline matters on the legal front? You’ll be safer and warmer here than in a prison cell, awaiting a trial,” he said.

I considered the idea.

“I’d find that a little more tempting,” I admitted.

“If you’re interested, I’ll wait while you get your coat and whatever else you deem necessary.”

“Give me a minute,” I said.  I shut the door.

I made my way to the living room.

“Don’t,” Rose said.

“It’s answers,” I said.

“It’s dangerous,” she responded.  “We can go the safe route.  Like I was saying before.  There’s too much we don’t know.”

I found my jacket.  “We’ve skimmed the little black book.  Behaim… they’re one of the covens.”

“There’s a better word than coven, but sure.  They’re a local institution, maybe the oldest here. All the more reason to stay.”

“He’ll fix the legal situation, which is maybe the biggest concern right now.  I don’t know if we can do anything against ordinary people, if the cops decide to kick down the door.”

“Blake!  I don’t get a say?” 

This is helpful as much as it is suspicious. Position in real life seems to influence a lot seems to play a big part on what you get to do in this circle and that is really good. I wonder what will Blake be able to pull off when the story gets going, knowing that while he does have friends and a job that allows him to meet many people, he doesn’t particularly hold influence in things like law or enforcement like Beasley and Laird. Also, shutting down someone repeatedly can leave them like this, unsure if their opinion even matter at points, like they are left out. If in a larger group this can lead to them feeling like the entire group is against them. It is a really nice study on psychology. I think Hunter x Hunter does this in their VERY unique “tournament arc” right at the beginning, where every single generic trial has its cool unique twist, one of them being a majority opinion sequence of tests that serve to constantly pitch people against one another. 

“You do,” I said.  “But… you were saying how you were going kind of crazy, alone?  I’m going to lose it if I’m cooped up.  I have to keep moving.  I had to before I left home, and it only got reinforced after.  If there’s an opportunity to stretch my legs and get answers, while preserving my sanity, I’m going to take it.”

“Blake, no.”

“Yes,” I said.  “Come with, as much as you can.  I wouldn’t mind the backup.”

I pulled on my coat, then rummaged in the closet to get a new scarf and hat.  There were two that were plain enough to wear.  The nurse’s?

I stepped across the threshold, half-convinced I’d get shot or something equivalent.  When I didn’t, I carefully locked the door.  I stood there, hand still on the handle.

“You promise to smooth over the legal issues?”

“I’ll make this as stress free for you as I can.  Nobody will enter the house, if I can help it, which I can.  I promise you this.”

“The house is safe?” I asked.

He sighed.  “You don’t know very much, do you?”

“I’m a fast learner, but not as much as I’d like to know.”

“I assure you, the house is safe.  I don’t know of anyone who could or would damage the house or property.  If it was that easy, we would have removed it already.”

I turned, joining him in walking down the long, snow-covered driveway.

“Let me cut to the chase.  I’d like to talk about a hypothetical scenario with you,” he said.

 Oh boy here we go with a quote on quote hypothetical. Another thing I learned with Hunter x Hunter, don’t reveal how much you know and don’t know, how much you can do and can’t. Seriously, give that 2011 anime a watch if you haven’t already. They make really good use of the same logic that was used in Worm in which, if you have a power, you don’t want to explain it to someone, and if you can, use it in a way that it seems to be something else.

 “Sure,” I said.

“Global politics, if you don’t mind?”

“I don’t really mind.”

“In this scenario, we’ve got a situation involving a number of countries. If you will, there’s America.  I’m rather interested in America for the purpose of this discussion, but that’s just me.  Powerful, perhaps overly proud, large, keepers of the peace.”

I glanced at his uniform.  “Sure.”

“Then a European country.  I would say they are very traditional, seductive, beautiful, very prone to holding grudges.  More history, more set in their ways.”

I thought of the blonde women I’d seen at the table with him. “I can picture it.”

“There are others.  Imagine a small, very old, and somewhat backwards nation.  We’d then have a broad swathe of nature with very few settlements, as well as a very vibrant country that has just come into an inexplicable amount of wealth, which is liable to burn out quickly on its excess. As well as other bit players who shouldn’t be ignored, but who aren’t of import in our discussion, here.”

I tried to put faces to the descriptions, but it wasn’t easy. Perhaps the man in the twisted tower, with the talking dog, for the latter?  The girl with the checkered scarf…  If I went by process of elimination…

“I’m picturing an aboriginal woman,” I said.

“I can imagine such a woman leading this very old nation, yes.”

“A young woman, in heavy clothing, with a rabbit, in the middle of the uninhabited, natural setting?”

“Mm.  Quite right.”

“And… a long haired young man, for the wealthy country.”

“Yes.”

“If I were to add to this scenario, where would you fit a teenaged girl with a checkered scarf?”

He frowned, “I’m at a loss.”

“So am I,” I said.  The girl who had been talking to the Other, with the face that stretched.

He thought for a second, nodding and smiling a greeting at someone who apparently recognized him in passing.  When we were clear, he said, “Ah.  Someone who intruded on important meetings, perhaps.  A new arrival to the scene.” 

I’m still surprised with how direct they are being, but, does Laird know of the visions, or just of the people, and Blake happened to be gifted, somehow, with the visions to the main characters of the big play? 

“Is that so?”

“Too new and too small to be a serious threat.  Self deluding, even, dealing in things she doesn’t fully understand.  A complicated situation.  I’d call her a terrorist before I called her a local power.”

“Fair enough.  Can we call her Maggie, or is that mucking up the metaphor?”

“We could call her that.  Maggie Holt, I believe.”

I nodded.

He took in a deep breath, opened his watch, then closed it, without looking at it.  “In this imagined scenario, we have a country in, say, our equivalent of South America. This hypothetical country is unpredictable, has a history of being aggressive, and it just so happens they are the only one in this imagined scenario who have nuclear weapons at their disposal.”

Nuclear weapons.  It seemed an apt descriptor for the books I’d seen.  Dangerous to handle, dangerous to use.  Once they were brought to the table, everyone would lose. 

Knowledge is everything, and it seems that Grandma Rose accumulated a hell of a lot of it. I guess we’ll find out if that is what their family is in debt for, how much do you have to experience yourself and how much do you acquire through mysterious means to have so much at your disposal, just in your head? 

“In this little story, the dictator died, and a successor was assassinated in short order, let’s say.  Now another one has taken the helm, and nobody is entirely sure what type of person the young man is… which is very concerning, considering the weapons he has at his fingertips.  He could be reckless, he could be mild mannered, he could be a merchant, a politician, or a student, but he’s an unknown quality, and appearances can be deceiving.”

“I can picture that,” I said.

“Should this small southern nation cease to be a concern, everyone else profits, and the nukes being removed from the picture is only a small part of that.  The other countries would be elevated to a new age… and the country who is most powerful will take the helm, quite possibly forever.”

If Hillsglade House was the small country…  Jacob’s Bell the region…

“Is it so important?” I asked.  “The… resources or whatever you’d gain?  A few acres?”

I’m guessing these few acres can become a lot of desmesnes? Maybe? 

“When things develop to a certain point, it takes on a different tone.  Population, wealth, whatever else, they attract attention from everyone.  With the current status quo, our little world here is small enough to be left alone.  Understand, our little metaphor here falls apart when we cease talking about the area that falls within, say, a thousand kilometers around us.  I could start talking about other planets with their own drama and politics, if I really wanted to maintain the narrative, but those thing really aren’t our focus.”

“I understand,” I said.  I also understood that the ‘metaphor’ was making it very easy for him to outright lie, but that was a given. 

Damn, I did not notice that. They were talking so directly about stuff that it didn’t cross my mind that as long as they are considering all of this a metaphor, he can lie about anything in it. Man would I NOT be smart enough to write or survive in this setting.

“When our little world here grows, everyone with an established power base can ride the cresting wave.  Prestige, fortune, status, with others visiting, or attempting to get in while the going is good, and paying a good price to do so.”

“Alright,” I said.  “I’m starting to get a sense of this.”

“The trouble is, when the road block,” he half-turned to gesture back at the house, “Is removed, and when things start developing, there will be a very small window of opportunity in which one of the local powers I just described might take the helm.  If one doesn’t, it’s liable to be a more distant entity, and it’s likely to be someone we couldn’t hope to stand up to.”

Halfway across the world… in this analogy… someone from outside Jacob’s Bell?  Another, greater power.

The families here were small in the grand scheme of it all, and before the city grew and drew attention, they wanted to solidify their positions.

He opened his pocketwatch, then closed it without looking down, like a nervous tic, then continued.  “America rather likes the status quo, and if we were to see this small hypothetical country fall right now, it would be bad for America. America wouldn’t take power, nor would the European country.  It would be left to the newcomer, with all of his wealth, excess, and arrogance.”

I thought of what I’d read.  The warning to stay out of the north end.  “This hypothetical wealthy country wouldn’t happen to be to the north?”

“Yes, to the north, Mr. Thorburn.  I would like to see the small southern entity with the proverbial nukes be a very stable, calm, country for the time being.  America would protect it, and things would be very calm and very peaceful for long enough that the wealthy newcomer might fade in his glory.”

“So it isn’t really friendship, is it?  It’s… buying time.  Then there’s nothing to stop America from crushing the little country.”

“It would be a temporary alliance, I’m afraid.  I don’t believe there’s a way around it.”

“What if the nukes were… given up to greater authorities?”

“Who would you trust to handle such things?  The southern country and any country that received these goods would, in this scenario, become immediate targets, because nukes that are changing hands are far, far more dangerous than nukes that are sitting idle in one place.”

“What if the nukes were destroyed?  In exchange for certain concessions, to protect the southern country?”

“Impossible.  In this scenario, I’d describe it as radiation.  Ugly elements would be let loose.  Elements that are contained so long as the nukes are intact, you understand. If it’s even possible to destroy those things.  The person who put the things together was very, very conscientious.”

“They can’t be given away, because they’re too dangerous. They can’t be destroyed, because they’re too dangerous,” I said.

“In the best case scenario for our hypothetical little world,” he said, “our little southern country remains dormant for some time, and is cleanly, quickly wiped out of existence, in a matter of weeks, months or years.  I’m sorry.”

Analogy aside, he wasn’t sugarcoating it.  Somehow that made me feel better.  I had my hands jammed in my coat pockets, and I kept them there, but I pressed my arms tighter against my body.  “The nukes?”

“The nukes are left where they are and everything is paved over, with numerous measures taken to ensure it remains that way.” 

Really no option but to participate then it would seem, because I doubt Blake would like to be “wiped out”. Because as much as that can have no fatal connotations at all, I DOUBT they don’t. 

I felt cold, and I wasn’t sure how much of it was the fact that I’d stood in the open doorway for long enough to let it soak into me, and how much was emotion and physical reaction.

We walked on for a bit.  People greeted ‘Chief Behaim’ as they passed him on the sidewalk.  He greeted them warmly in turn.

“No consideration to the poor bastard who didn’t even want to take over?”  I asked.

“I suspect the poor bastard is as good as dead already,” Laird Behaim said.  “I am sorry. If it helps, I don’t think I’ll enjoy the part I play in it.”

He sounded sorry.

Doesn’t mean that he is. Is the part you play ignoring that you are talking with a walking dead-man or that you’ll maybe be coerced to do it yourself?

“Would you like a coffee, Mr. Thorburn?” Chief Behaim offered.

I looked for a mirror and found one, meeting Rose’s gaze.  I still felt numb, cold, a little less like a complete person than before.  Slowly, surely, this situation was chipping away at me.  A little warmth in the form of good coffee would go a long way.

“Sure.  Please,” I said. 

Ah man, that is it? But I wanted more! =( I think this chapter was smaller than the last too.

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