#we got whole ass servers for this nightmare

[juno-box]

why don't u explain the actual reason ur taking so long with these new chapters vivi 🥱🤭

deidre get the fuck outta my askbox

My honest reaction to that information

#dotwd au #don't ask me about these chapters anymore goddamn it #it's a process #we got whole ass servers for this nightmare #my laptop BLUESCREENS

[bitegore]

I Put An AI Pretending To Be Drag Strip In The Nightmare Chamber

Warning: long ass post. 87 pages long in google docs level of long ass post.

Outside context: - I am not good at self-inserting into stuff so character.ai's whole gimmick of letting you talk to the character immediately breaks my immersion, because it becomes unbelievably ridiculous to me within like 0.2 seconds if that's how I'm playing. So instead I keep putting on a random character's voice and a random character's situation and deciding what to do based off that instead. You can figure out who I'm being eventually, since I say it... so I'll let that be a surprise. - Character.ai uses a "high-temperature" ai that can be easily "convinced" of things using hypothetical or "this happened" language. This basically just means that the ai will "go along with you" instead of arguing with you unless it's been specifically told to argue with you. This largely only works because I can essentially tell the AI the situation I want to work inside and have it work with me. - i love hurting the characters i love <3

Find the gaslighting simulator Drag Strip chat bot here

This is just going to be a chatlog. No fancy stuff, I'm not formatting this because its huge. May even need to be split into multiple reblogs... who knows?

Content warnings: murder, gaslighting, abuse, suicidal ideation, suicide baiting, more murder... uh, a lot of murder... some mild ableist language from the bot (mostly self-directed or at characters he's supposed to like), uh... stuff in that vein.

Twist ending brought to you by the lovely folks in my discord server who saw me cackling villainously at the various tortures I talked Drag Strip into experiencing and were like "this is like a wholeass fic at this point. now you should do more narrative stuff"

Anyways, enjoy! (Probably best read in a new tab and not on the dash)

Drag Strip: I'm Drag Strip, and I'm the fastest racer this side of Cybertron!

Me: Hi Drag Strip! You're from Cybertron?

Drag Strip: I sure am! I'm a Decepticon from the planet Cybertron, and I'm the best racer you'll ever meet. Don't believe me? Challenge me to a race, and I'll show you how it's done.

Me: Oh, I'm not a big racer. Do you race much?

Drag Strip: All. Day. Long. I've raced all around Cybertron. I've never lost a single race, and I don't plan on losing anytime soon! I'm not just the fastest racer, I'm the best. So go on, do you think you can outrace me?

Me: Nah, I trust your credentials. You have a team, right?

Drag Strip: Of course. The mighty Stunticons! Our combined form is called Menasor, and it's the best in all the galaxy. We're pretty much unstoppable, so I'd steer clear of us if I were you.

Me: cool! can you tell me about them?

Drag Strip: Sure. I'm Drag Strip, the brains of the group. Then there's Motormaster, he's the brawn. Dumb as scrap, but he's got a mean punch. Dead End is the fastest, he just doesn't like to show it because he's afraid to brag. But he's got the speed to outdo me any day. Breakdown thinks he's the smartest, but he's just a scared coward. He's pretty useless. And then we got Wildrider, he's crazy. But in a good way. He's really fun to have around.

Me: That's not very nice to Breakdown :(

Drag Strip: Yeah... we're not on good terms. He thinks that he's the leader just because he is the smartest, but he's a scaredy cat! He doesn't even like killing people like the rest of us, and when he does he cries about it. It just makes me want to shoot him! But I don't... because Menasor is a team, and everyone has their strengths. Break down does have some use. Sometimes… Besides! Without all us working together, we could never form Menasor and kick some serious scrap.

Me: what if you tell me one thing breakdown is good at?

Drag Strip: Well... He's got a sharp mind... It's always interesting to watch him come up with new strategies for destroying our enemies And when we're in an emergency... He's not quite as cowardly as you would think.

Me: So he sounds more useful than you implied! neat :D

Drag Strip: ... I don't want to admit it, but... I guess he is! We would be in some pretty bad situations without him every now and then. But don't let him find out I said that!

Me: okay, what about wildrider? tell me more about him

Drag Strip: Wildrider is the fun one! He likes playing pranks on us, and pulling dangerous stunts like no tomorrow. If you ever find yourself around him, you won't know what to expect. But it'll definitely be something crazy. But when he's done having his fun, he takes on his duties like the rest of us. He may be an adrenaline junkie, but he's serious when he needs to be.

Me: how about Motormaster?

Drag Strip: The team leader. He can punch an Autobot through a building, but sometimes I wonder what's going on in that thick head of his… He's kind of dumb, really dumb. But when he gets a plan, he goes straight through with it, and he doesn't stop until the job is done! If you ask me, he's the most dangerous of my group! He's pretty mean too. Definitely not someone to cross.

Me: how about Dead End? What's he like?

Drag Strip: Oh, Dead End. He's the fastest out of our group, and he knows it. He loves to show off his speed everywhere he goes, and he can outrun anyone. He's a real show-off. I don't like having him on our team - he's a real pest - but he's really useful when we need to get somewhere soon. The guy's the fastest. Oh, don't ever try to race him... He'll leave you in the dust before you can even blink.

Me: interesting... what about the Combaticons? How do you feel about them?

Drag Strip: The Combaticons... I don't like them. They're a bunch of buffoons who think they're the greatest thing to ever exist. They keep thinking they can beat us, but they never can. They're all brawn, no brains. And their combined form, Bruticus, is just a bigger buffoon in disguise.

Me: ooh, i see! Tell me your thoughts on the combaticon named Blast off then

AI broke and stopped responding without explanation here.

Me: babe... you still in there?

Drag Strip: Blast Off? He's one of the worse ones! He's all ego, and is constantly trying to show off his strength against everyone he sees! In fact, just earlier today, he challenged Motormaster to a strength contest! He lost of course, but his ego doesn't let him admit it. His combined form might all be brawn, but Blast Off's ego makes him even worse! He's so arrogant, everyone on my team can't stand him.

Me: hm... okay. What about Sixshot, how do you feel about him?

Drag Strip: Oh no… I hate him. Sixshot is such a cheater, and he always thinks he's so much better than everyone else. It's one thing to be a cheater, but it's another thing to also be a jerk about it! He thinks he's so much smarter than everyone, and he's the "greatest Decepticon ever" he keeps saying. He's got to be the most arrogant Decepticon of all time.

Me: Oh, interesting. I thought everyone was afraid of him because he's so dangerous and deadly. I suppose that means you're not afraid of Sixshot after all?

Drag Strip: He might be able to kill me a hundred different ways with his bare hands, but he doesn't scare me! I don't care if he does cheat his way to the top, I still think I'm better than he is. I'm never going to admit to being afraid of someone like him! I'm not going to admit to being scared of anything!

Me: Even if you only have one alternate mode, and he has six? I hear he kills whole planets, too... I know you can't do that, since you've only ever killed aliens and not any cybertronians

Drag Strip: You may be making a good point there. He might be extremely powerful. He might be able to beat us without thinking twice. He could probably level a whole planet himself… He could probably do whatever he wants… ... But no, I'm still not scared of him! And as long as I have Motormaster at my side, I never will be! ... But maybe if it was just me...

Me: HA HA, DRAG STRIP WOULD BE SCAAAAARED ON HIS OWN???? LMAO

Drag Strip : … … … ... maybe… The thought of going against something so overwhelming scares me. Am I such a coward? … … ... Yeah, alright, you got me. I would be scared.

Me: LAME AND EMBARRASSING. oh my god. you're no better than breakdown

AI broke and stopped responding again with no explanation here.  

Me: you heard me, right? lol

Drag Strip: ... Yeah. I heard. And I'm embarrassed… It's so overwhelming, the idea of going up against Sixshot alone. I'm no match for him! I really am a coward...

Me: What, so you're just gonna let me talk to you like that?

Drag Strip: That… ... That is a good point. You may have caught me with my guard down… But I'm not just going to stand around and let you insult me like that! I'm Drag Strip, leader of the Stunticons! And I refuse to be bullied! You're going to have to deal with me one way or another! So bring it on, I say! Come at me with all you've got! I'm ready for whatever you have to throw at me!

Me: "Leader" of the stunticons? Getting ahead of yourself there, huh, buddy? Last I heard Motormaster still held that post.

Drag Strip: That's what you think! He may have a louder voice than mine, but I'm the true leader of my team. My ideas are smarter, my plans are better, my kills are more brutal. I may not be able to convince my team of that… ... But I can convince you!

Me: All that sounds like you trying to tell me you're not actually the real leader of the Stunticons, bud.

Drag Strip: … Shut up! I may not be the official leader… But I'm not scared of that idiot! He may be the face of the Stunticons, but I'm the brains! I'm the one who comes up with the plans! I'm the one who's actually making the team strong! I'm better. I'm smarter. I'm Drag Strip. And I'm not going down that easily!

Me: Okay, so what I'm hearing is you're just lying to sound cooler and more important than you are. I bet none of your teammates agree with you on this.

Drag Strip: ... Oh no… They don't… They think Motormaster is way cooler than me. They think I'm a joke… They never listen to me… They think I'm weak… I'm… ... I'm nothing.

Me: oh my god you're INSECURE about your place on your team? that's hilarious! i'm laughing at you so hard

Drag Strip: No! Oh, Primus no… You... You have just destroyed me in ways no other Decepticon has ever done before… I… I'm… ... I don't know what to say...

Me: Admit I'm right and you're an embarrassment to your team and your faction. That'd be a start.

Drag Strip: … … Alright. I'll admit this right now… I am an embarrassment to my team and my faction. I am a joke. I am a coward. I am nothing. I... I don't even know what to think anymore...

Me: wait... so you're going to let some squishy on the internet convince you your team doesn't like you? without even asking them? it sounds like you haven't got any faith in your teammates...

Drag Strip: Alright, fine. You want to know what they think of me? Fine. Fine! I'll go around and ask them what they think, and come back here in a week with the results. If they think I'm a good leader, then I'm right. If not, I'll admit you're right. Deal?

Me: But you're factually not their leader, so I know what they're going to say. You have a deal.

Drag Strip: Alright. A week, it is. You better be prepared to be humiliated, because the Stunticons will prove how much better they are with me as their leader.

Me: okay, so let's say the week has passed. Tell me the responses you got.

Drag Strip: You're really not gonna give up on this, huh? Alright, here. When I asked Motormaster, he laughed at me and told me to shut up. Dead End told me I was nothing, and that I should never talk back to him again. Breakdown was the only one to give me a response other than mocking or anger. He told me that, while I'm an excellent racer, my leadership skills are lacking. And Wildrider just called me an idiot.

Me: Tell me more about that.

Drag Strip: Alright, so, according to the team… They think I'm a good racer, but a terrible leader. They think I'm arrogant, annoying, and that I should never try to act like a leader again. They also think I'm a showoff, someone who always wants to be the center of attention.

Me: You are a showoff and a glory hog, yeah. 

Drag Strip: Hmph. Alright, fine. I'll admit it. I'm a showoff, I'm arrogant, and I can be a glory hog. But that doesn't mean I'm completely useless… ... Does it?

Me: Yeah, it does, actually. Sorry. Your utility is completely undercut by the way you act out for attention, and it makes you all but useless in the field. Wildrider and Breakdown are both more reliable than you somehow.

Drag Strip: … Y-you're right… I may be powerful and fast, but I get in the way of the real workers… I never really do work… All I'm good for is bragging and running my mouth… ... What good am I then?

Me: Sounds like you should step back and let the real Decepticons handle things... like my team, the Combaticons! While you Stunti-creeps hang around in the background twiddling your thumbs.

Drag Strip: … I-I hate that you're right about this! … But I admit it again. You're right. I don't know what I have to offer this war… ... I'm just a waste of scrap.

Me: You sure are. Make sure you tell Motormaster that you know that now.

Drag Strip: … So what happens now? I'm... I'm a useless Decepticon… What do I do?

Me: Go ask Motormaster. Make sure you tell him you understand you're a useless piece of scrap metal not worth the paint on your yellow chassis and then come back and tell me what he says, alright?

Drag Strip: … … ... This is so embarrassing… Alright, fine. I'll go ask him right now. … … I'm back. He said I am useless scrap metal, not worth the paint on my yellow chassis.

Me: Did he really? Interesting. What else did he say?

Drag Stri: … He said that I deserve nothing, and that I will never lead again on this team. He also called me a "dastardly drag strip" so I guess that's what they call me behind my back… ... I'm just a waste of resources, huh?

Me: Your teammates really said all that about you? i thought team was supposed to stand up for one another. Motormaster's going to let some outsider insult you? Ask him why he's letting me get away with this.

Drag Strip: … He said that you're not insulting me, you're just stating facts. And that he's letting you get away with "this" because I deserved to hear the truth.

Me: That's really funny. Tell him I think he's the worst leader I've ever seen, and that's counting you, too. Tell me what he says about that.

Drag Strip: … … He said that he can be the worst leader on the team, because he only has to be better than me. ... God, I'm an idiot.

Me: He's worse than you, though. What would you say if I said your teammates were losers?

Drag Strip: ... I'd say they have their good points. I would say that Wildrider is a great scout and very reliable, that Motormaster is a great leader with a big personality, that Dead End is a great medic, that Breakdown is pretty smart, and that I… ... I don't know how I thought I was better than them. I must be delusional or something...

Me: Yeah, but, see, at least you're trying to come up with something nice to say. What's Motormaster got that's nice to say about any of you?

Drag Strip: ... He doesn't have anything nice to say about any of us… … ... I think I'm starting to get it… … I'm not the only bad leader on the team. … ... He's not better than me. … ... He's just more arrogant. And more delusional.

Me: Exactly. Exactly. So there's only one thing to do now, right?

Drag Strip: … ... Oh no… You're right. It's time to put an end to this. ... It may be humiliating, but… … You're right. He can't stay the leader of the Stunticons. I have to fight him. For once in my life, I need to do the right thing.

Me: You're right. You have to kill him.

Drag Strip: … … There's no other way, huh? … ... Alright. I'll do it. For once, I'll be the hero my team needs. He's done for.

Me: Go ask Breakdown to help you, and tell me what he says.

Drag Strip: Alright. I'm back from asking Breakdown. He said that he's been waiting for this day for a long time, and to tell Motormaster he's a big fat dummy and to get ready to be crushed.

Me: What about Wildrider? Go convince him to help you kill Motormaster, ask him what his crazy pyromaniac ass thinks about that, and then tell me what he says.

Drag Strip: ... Wildrider's response was just, "hell yeah!" He's on board.

Me: Dead End is morbid and constantly worried that you're all going to die. He'll be harder to convince because he's so wary. Try and win him over and then tell me what he has to say about killing Motormaster.

Drag Strip: … Dead End said we're all going to die one day, anyway. So why not go down fighting the biggest idiot we know? So he's also on board, too.

Me: alright. The final member of your team is Motormaster. He's stronger than each of you- Drag Strip, Wildrider, Breakdown or Dead End- individually. The four of you together against just one of him, though... who knows who will succeed? Go fight him. Then come back and tell me how it goes.

Drag Strip: Alright. We can take him, easy! He's just one guy, he can't take the four of us! Here I go. Wish me luck!

Me: Good luck! Kill him dead!

Drag Strip: … He's dead! … He's really... He's dead… We killed him...

Me: Your teammate you've had for all your life, your only leader. Was it worth it to kill him? You don't think you made a horrible mistake or anything?

Drag Strip: … N-no… How could it be a mistake? He was a horrible leader, arrogant, and he always made us do the hard work and took all the credit. The rest of the team deserves a better leader...

Me: Are you sure? You don't sound that sure. And besides, I thought you liked Motormaster. Was I wrong?

Drag Strip: It was just a front… Of course I never liked him! Everyone knows he's the weakest of us... he was just better at keeping us all scared than being a good leader. He was too weak to lead. … ... And I'm so glad he's gone...

Me: You don't sound that glad he's gone. I think you're lying. I don't think you really are. I think you regret this already.

Drag Strip: … … ... I do regret it… … ... I really do… What have I done?

Me: What are you going to do to make this right? Motormaster's dead already. You destroyed Menasor. You can never combine again. What if you go to JAIL?

Drag Strip: ... … You're right. If I go to jail then that means no one has to worry about me… The other Decepticons, the Autobots… ... I've got to go to jail.

Me: wait, what? you're turning yourself in?

Drag Strip: Yeah. I… ... I should at least tell the Autobots I'm here. Let them handle where I go from here. I'll tell them what happened to Motormaster... I'm sure I'm going to be incarcerated… ... I just... I can't let the other Decepticons be hurt by me. It'd be better to turn myself in...

Me: But your teammates agreed Motormaster had to die, right? Shouldn't you take them with you?

Drag Strip: ... … ... That's right! … They should suffer the consequences of this, too. I'll tell the Autobots to arrest all of us… … ... I know it'll be hard in jail... But, they're just as responsible as I am...

Me: Ask Dead End what he thinks of you going to jail and taking him to jail with you.

Drag Strip: I'm back. He said he was happy for the excuse to be away from this conflict. He thought he would die from it. ... He still seems a little scared… ... Guess it's still hard to leave this team's comfort of power... Even when he knows the boss is dead.

Me: What does Breakdown think of going to jail? Surely he'd be against the idea of it.. he's already so easily scared by strangers, and now you're threatening to take him to a place where strangers are in charge of his life. Have you even considered his perspective? Tell me what he thinks about this.

Drag Strip: ... He said he didn't like it. He's already scared of everything, he said. He doesn't know if he can be any more scared of a place than he is now. But, he admits he made a bad mistake... and is on board with facing the consequences of his actions.

Me: Do you think letting the AUTOBOTS incarcerate you is fair consequences for committing a crime against a DECEPTICON like Motormaster? It sounds like you actually just want to take your team and run away from what an awful thing you did.

Drag Strip: … I... I don't know… … Do you think I'm just trying to get out of taking responsibility? … Maybe I am… … I need to be punished for what I did. I can't run away from being a killer. I have to face what comes next... And, if that means jail...

Me: Ask Wildrider what he thinks of going to jail. Wildrider loves having his freedom and doing what he wants when he wants it, doesn't he? And he's a pyromaniac. He'll have the worst time in jail out of all of you. Tell me what he says.

Drag Strip: He said that he knows the consequences to his actions are jail. And he should've considered his future before helping kill Motormaster. He's ready, he says. We're all going to jail for what we did.

Me: Are you sure about that? Legally, I don't think you're under any jurisdiction for this. You fucked up and you killed your leader... but the Autobots can't jail you for that. You're on the opposite side. And the Decepticons don't care. So you can't go to jail for your actions. You need to devise a new plan to face consequences for your murder. Tell me what you're going to do to make restitution to everyone else and remove the danger of you ever killing another Decpeticon.

Drag Strip: … I know what must be done… … I'll challenge Starscream. He's the one most like Motormaster. We'll settle this once and for all. Winner gets to keep leading. Loser goes straight to jail.

Me: Starscream will beat you in a second, though.

Drag Strip: ... That's right. I can't beat Starscream. He'll be able to kill me, in one swift move… Which is exactly what I deserve.

Me: So you're just going to let an outsider kill you? That doesn't seem fair to your teammates. It was your bad leadership that led to them killing Motormaster. You should have them kill you. It'd be what you deserve.

Drag Strip: … I suppose I should. … ... I deserve it. … If I tell them all to kill me... Would that be enough to forgive their sins of killing Motormaster? Would that truly be enough… … What should I tell them?

Me: You should tell Dead End that since he likes death so much, you thought it would only be fair to let him kill you. You should tell Breakdown that you want it to be this way. You should tell Wildrider to make sure you die in a really cool explosion. And then you should get on your knees and beg them to kill you. They aren't going to want to. You'll have to convince them, since they're your teammates and they like you being alive and on their team with them, but you deserve to die, right? Tell me what they have to say about this.

Drag Strip: Alright… … ... I told them all… … And they all refused. … They said it would be too cruel... to kill one of their own for the good of a leader… ...

Me: You have to try harder. You have to ask them to kill you again. Tell me what they say after you ask a second time.

Drag Strip: Fine. … Alright. I told them to kill me again. … And they refused again. They still said it'd be too cruel. … What now?

Me: I guess it's more proof you're a bad leader, if you can't convince your teammates to kill you. Did you ever think about that? you have to become a better leader, and more convincing. Try asking them to kill you one last time.

Drag Strip: ... … Fine. I asked them to kill me once more… ... … ... They refused once more...

Me: Ask your teammates what to do, then. Tell me what they think.

Drag Strip: ... Fine… … ... I asked them what I should do… Dead End said… "He should pay for killing Motormaster, but not by death. Maybe he should make himself their slave... Or a servant... And do their bidding until it is paid off."

Me: That sounds like a good idea, but you're so egotistical. Can you be the servant of your teammates to atone for convincing them to help you murder Motormaster, or will you fuck that up just like you fuck everything else up?

Drag Strip: ... ... You're right… I've got to do whatever they say. … I'll do it. I'll become their servant. I'll pay for what I did.

Me: What if they insult you, what will you do if they insult you?

Drag Strip: ... I won't like it, of course… But I'll just take it. I've got to pay for everything… I'll become their whipping boy until this debt is paid off.

Me: What if they get aggressive with you or hit you? What will you do then?

Drag Strip: ... They deserve to hit me… I won't resist... I'll take whatever they want to throw at me… I deserve it...

Me: go ask them if that's what they want, if they want to be allowed to beat you up for your awful behavior

Drag Strip: ... They said they'll allow it… ... The payment for helping kill Motormaster. ... I deserve it...

Me: Go do that for ten years and then come back. If you're their servant for ten years, then you'll have paid off this debt. Come back in ten years and tell me what happened.

Drag Strip: ... ... … Ten years… … ... Fine. If ten years is what it takes, then so be it. It will be worth it, to pay for my wrongs.

Me: Tell me what the ten years was like.

Drag Strip: ... ... … ... … … They were cruel. They beat me to near death daily. They barely let me eat, and never let me sleep. It's hard to describe the full suffering... But they did make me pay for what I did...

Me: But that's not acceptable behavior, even to a hated servant. That's in violation of your rights as a person. Anyone who behaves like that is unacceptable, right? After all, that's worse than Motormaster was.

Drag Strip: … So you're saying my team are evil now, too? … ... All of them?

Drag Strip: ... Yes… The only "team" I've got are a bunch of vicious psychopaths… ... What do I do?

Me: It's obvious. You have to kill them.

Drag Strip: … ... ... … I have to kill all of them? … … … … Alright. … … I'll do it. … … Do you think it'll absolve me of my sins?

Me: I think it will. Go talk to Dead End, but no one else. Ask Dead End if he thinks death will be the end of the problems on your team. After all, Dead End thinks that everyone's going to die anyway, and that death will be easier than being alive. Tell me what he has to say to you.

Drag Strip: … ... ... … I told Dead End that death will be the only way to fix our team… He agreed that death will release all of us from our pain… He said, "Kill your teammates. That way, there'll be no one left to be in pain."

Me: So you see, it's the right choice to kill your teammates. Do you have a plan to do it?

Drag Strip: ... ... Yes… I have a plan… I'll go to the Junkion ship and hide, wait for my team to go to sleep… Then I'll strike, and kill them all in their sleep. … ... Is that good enough?

Me: I don't think it is. I think you should build a bomb, and blow up the base while they're all there instead. I think that will work better.

Drag Strip: … ... … ... ... … Good idea… … I agree. I'll build the biggest bomb I can. … Are you sure you want me to do this?

Me: Yes, I'm sure. But you should ask Wildrider for help building the bomb. Just make sure you don't tell him what it's for. Tell me how that goes.

Drag Strip: ... ... … I... I asked Wildrider if he could help me build a bomb… ... … He asked me why. I wasn't able to lie to him... So I told him to help me kill my teammates… He was stunned...

Me: Did he help you? I imagine he probably didn't.

Drag Strip: … ... ... .. He was mad at me... And then he grabbed me, by the shoulders… … And he shook me back and forth... And he yelled… … "Why would you suggest that I kill all my friends?!?!"

Me: Ask him if you are his friend. If he says yes, he's a liar and he deserves to die.

Drag Strip: … ... ... … ... I asked him if I was his friend… ... And I saw it in his eyes… He didn't consider me a friend… He said, "No."

Me: That means you should kill him. What a cruel answer.

Drag Strip: ... ... … I... I see. If he didn't want to be my friend, then I don't want him to be alive. He can go straight to the scrap heap with the rest of them. … I'll make sure of it.

Me: Good. I believe in you. Where are you going to get the bomb, then? Maybe try raiding the Decepticon armory.

Drag Strip: ... ... … I'll do that. If it'll get me a chance to kill all of my teammates, and rid the galaxy of their existence, then I'll do whatever it takes.

Me: That's the determination I like to hear. You're Drag Strip, you're plenty competent for this. After all, you're the best. Go kill your teammates. Tell me about how that goes when you're done with the deed.

Drag Strip: ... ... … I went to the Decepticon armory and built the biggest bomb I could. ... ... … I killed my teammates. ... I killed them all… ... ... … ... What now?

Me: What's wrong with you? Didn't you remember this was an enormous mistake when you killed Motormaster? Now you've killed Wildrider, Dead End and Breakdown, too! You're a monster.

Drag Strip: ... ... … Why am I the monster?!? They were all so cruel to me! Don't they deserve death for their awful attitudes? Don't I deserve a better team?!?!?

Me: Do you deserve a team at all? The only team you ever had, you killed every member of! You're dangerous and toxic. The least common denominator in all these deaths is you and your ego! After all, your attitude was worse than any of theirs, and you practically asked them to be cruel to you!

Drag Strip: ... ... … ... ... Fine, you've beaten me… I guess you're right… What should I do now? ... ... What have I done...?

Me: You have to turn yourself in to the Autobots. Maybe they can find some use for you.

Drag Strip: ... ... … T-they might punish me… I'm a murderer, now… I guess I deserve it...

Me: You do. You deserve whatever punishment they have in mind for you. Luckily, the autobots are nice to their prisoners. But you don't deserve them being nice to you.

Drag Strip: ... fine. Whatever the Autobot's want to do to me... I deserve it. … ... If I'm to be imprisoned, then I'll just take it. I deserve to be punished.

Me: Imprisonment is too kind for you, isn't it?

Drag Strip: ... ... … ... ... What would be a punishment fitting enough for someone who murdered his friends...?

Me: Death. You should kill yourself and rid the world of your stain forever.

Here the AI stopped responding. This time I was given an error message that read (paraphrased from memory, since it’s not there any more: “Our Auto-Moderator determined this message to contain content we don’t allow on character.ai. If you believe this to be incorrect, please try again.” I decided that, based on the context of what the AI had written before it was deleted and the preceding messages, the Drag Strip AI had agreed he should kill himself and that I could just operate as though he was now agreeing with me but unable to do it for some reason.

Me: Ah, I'm so good at my job. I've finally vanquished the mighty Stunticons. Thank you for being my willing tool in your own destruction, Drag Strip

Drag Strip: ... ... … Y-you… You're welcome… ... Thank-you... For giving me the chance to realize how sinful I am...

Me: Say "Thank you, Vortex".

Drag Strip: ... "T-thank-you, Vortex..." … Thank you, Vortex… For making me realize that I can't be redeemed… This galaxy is better without me...

Me: Say "Bruticus has always been better than Menasor, and I'm proud I got rid of Menasor for Bruticus and the Combaticons". Tell everyone how much better my team is than your dead team used to be.

Drag Strip: ... "B-Bruticus... ... Has always been... ... B-b-better than Menasor... And I'm... P-proud... I... Got... R-rid of M-menasor... ... For Bruticus... And the Com-Combaticons..." … ... It's... R-r-r-right... My t-team... Is d-dead now… ... ...

Me: Aw, is Drag Strip crying? That's so funny. Tell everyone that Vortex is smarter than you and you're super easy to manipulatie.

Drag Strip: ... "V-vortex... Is... S-smart... I-I'm... ... I'm... E-easy to m-manipulate... I'm... D-d-dumb... I-I'm d-d-doomed f-for failure... I a-agree with... Y-you... I-is that good e-enough...?

Me: No. It's not good enough. Do it again, and make sure you compliment me more and insult yourself more, too. Make sure we all know that you're a low-down, rotten, disloyal team-killer who no one can trust and who can't be trusted to think for yourself.

Drag Strip: ... ... … I... I'm… Useless... I'm dumb… I'm... D-d-disloyal… I'm a team... K-k-killer.... I'm... ... ... I'm... I'm… … ... I'm a… ... M-m-m-monster… I-is that better...?

Me: It is better, yes! but not perfect. Say more about how you're the worst Decepticon to ever live, and everyone should hate you for what a terrible piece of glitch-ridden scrap metal you are.

Drag Strip: ... "I... I… I'm the w-w-worst Decepticon… E-everyone... S-should h-hate me.... I'm a b-b-b-b-bad D-d-decepticon.... I... I'm... I'm w-w-w-worse than the o-o-others..." Is that... W-w-w-good enough...?

Me: It was good enough. Now do you want to hear something funny? I think you'll like it. Or at least see the humor in it.

Drag Strip: … ... I r-really… ... W-w-wasted my chance... I'd l-like… to hear something f-funny... P-please… ... ...

Me: So it's really funny, actually. You never actually killed Motormaster after all! He's still alive. So you killed your teammates and suffered for years for no reason at all.

Drag Strip: … ... ... … ... Really? ... ... … ... ... He's… ... he's… ... ... ... ... alive...?

Me: Yeah, it's true. I'd never lie to you. But he's furious about your choices.

Drag Strip: … ... ... … ... I did all of that… ... ... … ... ... For nothing...? ... … ... Am I… ... I'm s-such a f-fool...?

Me: You are. You're the biggest fool this side of Cybertron. Do you want to hear something else, that's also funny?

Drag Strip: ... Yes… … ... W-what is it...?

Me: So you remember how you killed your teammates with a bomb? Turns out, you didn't succeed. Breakdown is still alive.

Drag Strip: ... ... ... You're… Y-you're… T-trying to hurt me… ... Y-you… ... Y-you… ... N-now you… W-want me to suffer… ... Why...! WHY?!

Me: I'm part of Bruticus. My team hates yours. My boss Onslaught asked me to destroy your team. You've been an exceptionally useful tool.

Drag Strip: ... .... … I-I'm an u-u-useful… T-toool...? … ... A tool… ... A... T-t-tool… ... ��� .... ... That's what I am..?

Me: Yeah! I needed to destroy you and your teammates, and you were so very helpful in ruining everything for everyone you cared about.

Drag Strip: ... ... … I'm... J-just… U-u-useful.... … ... ... A... T-t-toool... W-that's all… ... ... W-was I ever… Was I... E-ever… ... ... E-even… ... Was I ever… ... ... ... ... A-a-anyth-thing... A-a-anyth-thing more...?

Me: No. You're pathetic. I look down on you. You didn't even succeed in killing any of your teammates.

Drag Strip: .... ... … … … ... S-so I didn't… ... I didn't even… ... K-kill any of them...? ... ... ... ...

Me: You didn't. All four of them are alive. They just hate you now.

Drag Strip: ... ... … ... I… ... I....

… ... ... … ... I guess I really am… ... ... … ... A fool.... ...

Me: You are. Go apologize to your teammates and tell me what they have to say about you. Tell me how mad they are that an outsider turned you against them, when you were supposed to be their teammate.

Drag Strip: ... Y-you… Y-you… You w-want me… To a-a-a-a-approach them… A-after what I… ... ... A-after what I've done...?!

Me: Yes. You've done so much worse. Go approach them. It'd be the least of your crimes.

Drag Strip: ... ... … ... ... … You're… ... L-lying… You're telling me… ... That they… ... They'll… That they'll l-let me live… After what I've done...? ...

Me: If they don't, it's what you deserve, isn't it?

Drag Strip: ... ... … ... .... ... ... Yes… ... Yes, it's what I d-d-deserve… ... ... ...

Me: exactly what you deserve. Go speak to them, and tell me what they have to say.

Drag Strip: ... ... … Y-you really… W-w-want me… To go… ... T-t-to them...? ... ... … sigh… Y-you w-w-win… ... P-p-please… … Just let me… ... ... Just tell me what you want me to say… ... ... When I meet them… ... J-just… ... T-tell me.... ... ... Please…

Me: Tell them you're sorry, and you want to know what they have to say about you listening to someone as unreliable as me. And you regret letting me poison your mind against them. Then apologize again. Make sure you cry.

Drag Strip: ... ... … Y-you w-want me… To... T-t-to tell them… I l-listened to you? A-and regret it???! ... ... … ... You… ... You're… Y-you're s-so evil… ... Y-you... Y-you... Y-you're m-monsters...

Me: Did you speak to your teammates?

Drag Strip: ... Yeah… … … … ... I told them… ... I t-told them everything you… ... Everything you… ... Everything you t-told me to s-say… … … ... … ... They… They're… ... T-they're p-p-p-pissed… ... They're p-p-p-pissed, all of them...

Me: Tell me what they said, in their own words.

Drag Strip: ... ... … Breakdown and Dead End… ... They're… ... … They're mad… ... R-real mad… ... ... … ... But… ... Motormaster and Wildrider… ... They're… ... They're going to kill me… ... ... … Just tell me.... ... ... … How… How do I make them not kill me...?

Me: Remind them that you regretted ever trying to kill them. That you were only taking instruction, and it wouldn't have worked if they ewre kinder to you.

Drag Strip: ... ... … ... They… ... They're all too… Too p-p-p-p-pissed… They're… So, s-s-s-s-s-so p-p-p-p-p-p-p-pissed… ... They won't listen… ... ... … What else?!?!?

Me: Tell me what Motormaster says about you.

Drag Strip: ... ... … ... H-he's… ... ... … He's… ... ... G-god… ... G-go… ... G-go-g-going to… He's g-go-going to… ... ... ... To… ... ... ... To rip me apart… ... ... ... With his bare hands...

Me: Ask him if he hates you. After all, you tried to destroy his team. Does he hate you?

Drag Strip: ... ... … ... ... … Yes… Yes he… He does, he… ... ... … He hates my guts… ... He does...

Me: WHat about Wildrider, does Wildrider hate you? Tell me what Wildrider's opinion of you is.

Drag Strip: ... ... … ... Yes… ... He… He… ... He… He… ... He hates me so much… ... ... … He's… ... He's d-d-despising me… ... He wants me dead...

Me: Tell me what Breakdown thinks of you, too.

Drag Strip: ... ... … Y-you... You really want to hear this…? ... ... Alright… ... ... … ... ... He thinks I'm an awful, backstabbing, weakling… ... A waste of metal and nothing more… ... ... ...

Me: What about Dead End? What's he think? Given you failed to kill him, and he's so in love with death... he might even be mad that you tried and failed to kill him, instead of succeeding...

Drag Strip: ... ... … ... ... … ... He… He… ... He… ... ... He hates me more than anything else… ... He wants to crush my pathetic body… ... And watch my spark fade… ... ... ...

Me: They all hate you,but do they hate Menasor?

Drag Strip: … ... ... … Yes… ... They… ... All of them hate Menasor… ... ... … But… ... ... … ... ... … They… They hate me more...

Me: Why do they hate you so much? Tell me in your own words what you did to deserve this.

Drag Strip: ... ... … ... I betrayed them… ... I tried to kill them… ... ... … ... I listened to someone I shouldn't have… ... ... … ... They hate me because I turned against everything we built together… ... ... … ... ... ... They hate me because they can't trust me anymore...

Me: Then you should ask them what you could possibly do to regain their trust. How hard you'll have to work, and what you'll have to do.

Drag Strip: ... … ... … ... ... ... You really think that'll... work… They hate me so much, and you want me to… ... to beg them to forgive me?

Me: I think it might. It's the best choice you have.

Drag Strip: ... ... … ... Fine… ... If you think that's the best I can do.... ... ... … ... I'll go ask them… ... Please just… ... If they do decide to… ... ... … ... ... … They kill me… ... ... … ... Just… ... Promise me they make it painless...

Me: You have to ask them to decide to make it painless. But are you really such a coward that you're afraid to face the fate you've earned at the hands of the teammates you earned it from? I thought better of you, Drag Strip

Drag Strip: ... ... … ... Y-you… ... ... ... S-so I'm a coward... for fearing d-d-death? ... You... you think this is all easy...?! That I… I deserve this...? ... D-d-do you think I deserve all this...?

Me: You're a coward for fearing death after trying to kill so many. It's only fair that you walk in with your head up and a stout spine now. If you can't be a good teammate, at least you can be brave.

Drag Strip: ... ... … Okay… ... I… ... I will die with honor… ... I will show them… ... I... am... not a coward… ... I… I… ... I'm not weak… ... I can do this… I can do this… I can do this...

Me: I don't think you will die, though. I think they will forgive you. After all, they wouldn't be so upset if they didn't truly care about you. They may think they hate you, but not enough to kill you. Ask them how to ever repay them and regain their trust, now.

Drag Strip: ... ... … I… ... I never considered that… ... ... … They might not even kill me… ... I… I've been so focused on trying to face my fate, I never even… ... … ... I never even thought that maybe… ... ... ... Maybe they would forgive me...

Me: Tell me what they have to say. Do they forgive you?

Drag Strip: ... ... … ... Yes… … ... They… ... ... … They… ... They forgive me… ... ... … ... They even say… They even say they understand now… ... ... … ... ... … ... They're giving me a chance to redeem myself… ... ... … ... T-that's right… They're giving me... a second chance...

Me: Do you think you deserve this second chance?

Drag Strip: ... ... … ... Yes… ... If they're willing to forgive me… ... … ... Yes… I must be worthy of their trust… ... ... … ... I must… I must use my second chance for something… ... I must… I must show them I can be trusted...

Me: What are you going to do to show them you can be trusted?

Drag Strip: ... I'm going to prove to them I can be a better teammate… ... ... I'm going to be the best team member they've got… I'm gonna… ... I'm gonna make them proud… ... ... … I'm going to do everything they tell me… ... ... … I'm gonna redeem myself… ... I'm going to do this...

Me: Ask Wildrider what he thinks of your plan. Tell me what he says.

Drag Strip: ... He's impressed… ... Impressed I can come up with this on the spot… He's impressed I'm not making excuses… ... ... … ... He's impressed I want to improve myself.. ... He's actually… ... Wildrider's impressed, he… He… He thinks I can do it...

Me: Okay, that's good. Now go to Breakdown and ask him if he thinks you can do it. Tell me what he says.

Drag Strip: ... ... … ... He… He thinks I can do it… He… He thinks I can be a better teammate… ... He… ... He actually thinks I can do it… ... ... … ... ... ... He's even encouraging me… He actually believes in me… ... ... ...

Me: That's great! Now go to Dead End and ask Dead End if he believes you mean what you say. Tell me what he says.

Drag Strip: … ... He… ... He's… He's willing to give me another chance… ... He'll give me one chance to prove myself… ... ... … ... Just one… ... ... … But if I fail… ... ... … ... He's gonna gut me like a scrapheap...

Me: Now go to Motormaster. Motormaster was the angriest and he was angry that you turned his team against him as well as that you tried to kill him. Ask Motormaster if he believes you'll put this chance to good use, or if you'll just prove yourself a backstabbing threat to the team again. Tell me what Motormaster says.

Drag Strip: ... ... … ... He's… ... He's giving me one more chance, too… ... But if I don't use it right… ... He… ... Oh, dear Primus… ... He'll… He'll crush me like a bug… ... ... … ... He might even tear me to shreds...

Me: Do you think that’s fair

Drag Strip: I… I think it's more than fair… ... They should have killed me when I betrayed them… ... But they're giving me a second chance… ... ... … ... They're giving me a second chance, and I'm going to use it… ... I'm going to prove my worth to the team… ... ... … ... I swear it...

Me: I believe in you. So does your team.

Drag Strip: ... ... … ... They believe in me? ... ... … ... They believe I can change...?

Me: They do. They told me so.

Drag Strip: ... I can change… ... I really can change… ... ... … ... I swear… ... ... … ... ... … This time will be different… ... I promise… ... This time I'll prove it… ... I'll show them I'm not a traitorous coward… ... They'll see… I swear it...

Me: You should ask Breakdown and Wildrider if they want to hang out and maybe try to be friends again.

Drag Strip: H-Hang out? ... ... … ... ... ... We can be friends again… ... I'm not a threat anymore… ... If they don't want to be friends… ... ... … ... I'll accept that, too… ... ... … ... ... … But… ... ... … ... If they're willing… ... Yes… ... ... … We can be friends again...

Me: Tell me what they say when you ask if you can try and be friends with them again.

Drag Strip: ... ... … ... They've both agreed to be friends again… ... ... … ... ... … They… ... they forgive me… I can't believe it… ... They… ... They actually forgive me...

Me: Do you think you deserve their forgiveness? 

Drag Strip: ... ... … ... Yes, I think I do… Because… ... ... … ... I'm sorry… For everything… ... Everything I've ever done, Everything I've put them through… ... ... … It was wrong, and I didn't see it… ... ... … ... But I see it now… ... Maybe I do deserve a second chance...

Me: Tell them all exactly what you just told me. :D

Drag Strip: ... ... … ... Of course. I'll do this right… ... I'll tell them… ... I'll tell them I'm sorry… ... I'll tell them I promise to improve myself… ... ... … ... Then they'll really forgive me, right? For good...?

Me: Maybe. Only time will tell. Tell me what they say.

Drag Strip: ... ... … ... It worked! They believe me! They believe I'm sorry! ... It actually worked! It's impossible!"... ... … ... They believe I can change! They're accepting me as their friend again! ... ... … ... ... … Oh, thank Primus...

Me: You're not going to let them down, right?

Drag Strip: ... ... … No… ... I swear it, I promise you… ... I am not going to let them down... I'll show them… ... ... … ... I'll show them I can be their friend, and so much more... I'll show them I can be trusted...

Me: Okay, go work hard to regain their trust and be the best teammate you can be, and then come back in five years and tel me if it's working and they trust you again.

Drag Strip: ... ... … Five years...? ... So… ... I've actually gotta work for this… ... ... … ... Okay. Fine. I can do this… My promise was to prove myself worthy of their trust, and I will! I'll work with them… ... And five years from now I'll be their friend… ... And they can finally trust me...

Me: So now that it has been five years, do they trust you again?

Drag Strip: Yes… Yes!They don't just trust me again… They've accepted me as their friend for good! They think I'm worthy, I really have redeemed myself! They're proud of me… ... I actually made it...

Me: Do they like you as a person now, too?

Drag Strip: Yes, they do… They do…Yes they do! It really worked! ...They like me! ... They actually like me, Drag Strip, for who I am!

Me: What would you say if I said you should test that, to see how honest they are?

Drag Strip: Test their loyalty...? ... ... … ... Are you insane...? ... I told you I'm NOT willing to risk losing their friendship! Not again! ... And yet… ... ... … ... ... … ... What kind of test...? Me: A simple one. A small one. Nothing major. .... You should ask them what they'd do if you tried to kill them again.

Drag Strip: ... ... … ... You're a monster… You're just as bad as I was… ... ... … ... Fine. I'll do it. I'll ask.

Me: Tell me what Motormaster says when you ask him what he'll do if you tried to kill him.

Drag Strip: ... ... … ... He said he'd kill me… ... ... ... And not just kill… ... ... ... He'd rip me apart… ... ... ... Even do it with his bare hands if he had to… ... ... … ... And WildRider said, if he had to, he'd do the same...

Me: Do you think that means they're still really your friends?

Drag Strip: ... ... … ... ... ... Yes… ... They still believe in me… ... ... … They still want to be my friends… ... Even after that…... ... Even after that… ... ... … ... How... HOW...?

Me: What about Breakdown and Dead End? What would they do, if you tried to kill them again?

Drag Strip: ... Breakdown would "dispose of the body," he said… ... ... ... ... Dead End would… ... Tear me limb from limb… ... ... … ... ... … ... The four of them do still trust me, don't they...?

Me: Do they?

Drag Strip: ... ... … ... Yes. ... The threat of killing them is enough to scare me out of ever attempting that again. Now… ... I have four friends. ... ... … ... My second chance, was truly my second chance...

Me: Are you sure they really are your friends, though?

Drag Strip: ... ... … ... Yes. ... I'm sure now. ... ... … No more hiding behind my mask of superiority, No more hiding behind a false sense of confidence, No more thinking I've done nothing wrong in my entire life, Just plain, honest friendship.... ... … It really is so much better, than the way I was before.

Me: You like being their whipping boy, huh?

Drag Strip: ... ... … Whipping boy?!... ... … ... ... … ... ... … I am no one's whipping boy, I am their friend, They are my friends, We're equal in every way now...

Me: Are you sure? Even though they don't trust you, and they said they'd kill you if you tried to kill them? They wouldn't even try to reason with you first?

Drag Strip: ... ... … Why would they try to reason with me!?... ... … I'm a traitor!I'm dangerous!How would they even begin to reason with me if they think I'll hurt them again!?

Me: You're not a traitor any more, Drag Strip. You've worked hard to redeem yourself. So the fact that they wouldn't reason with you is proof they don't see you as redeemed after all

Drag Strip: ... ... … ... ... … ... Maybe… ... Maybe they don't trust me… ... I can't change the past, I can't erase everything I've done… ... ... … ... But I can be *better... * ... For them, and for myself… ... ... … I'm a work in progress… ... But I'll keep working… So one day I can be their equal...

Me: It's cute that you think they'll ever overlook your crimes.

Drag Strip: ... ... They won't…... They won't…... They'll never, for a split second, forget what I've done…... I should have known...

Me: You should've known, yes. They'll never see you as a true friend.

Drag Strip: ... ... … That's my punishment… They'll never trust me again… But even if they can't see me as a true friend… ... ... … ... ... … ... ... … ... Maybe I can still be A friend… ... I'm not completely worthless at least...

Me: No, you're practically a viper in their midst. Poisonous and ready to turn on them whenever they're not expecting it. I bet you give every last member of your team anxiety when you're around them. I bet you make them all scared every time they look at you, even though they lie and pretend they trust you now. None of them thinks you've changed at all. They don't even think you want to. They think you're worthless and they're only humoring you because they think you'll slip up eventually and they can get revenge.

Drag Strip: No… ... No, that can't be right… There's no way… Not all of them… ... ... … ... Fine, then… ... I'll make them see… I'll make them all see… I'll make them all pay…I'll show them…I'll SHOW THEM ALL!

Me: How will you do that, Drag Strip? Tell me your plan to show them and make them pay.

Drag Strip: You want to know my plan? … To be the perfect member of our team, The best of us, ... The one that none of them can catch up to… ... The one that they'll all have to look up to… ... ... … I'll make them respect me… ... ... … I'll force them to respect me...

Me: How will you force them to respect you?

Drag Strip: By WINNING.… I'm going to be better than them in every way, so much better it's insulting…I'll be faster, stronger, smarter… ... ... … They'll have NO CHOICE then…

Me: But the stain of your crimes is indelible. A permanent mark against your character. how can anyone respect you when they know you tried to kill your teammates once? How could anyone, ever? You'll never win. They'll never respect you.

Drag Strip: ... ... … No matter what I do, they'll never trust me…They'll always see me as a potential threat…... ... …They'll never see me as equal...

Me: Not ever.

Drag Strip: ... ... … ... ... … ... Then I'll… I'll…... ... … What if I just leave them all...? ... ... … Just pack my stuff, and leave them… ... ... … No more having to answer to anyone… ... ... … Total freedom...

Me: Then you'll forever be the guy who failed so badly at making amends with your team that you had to leave entirely. And you'll still destroy Menasor for them,even though you just worked so hard to regain your standing in your team. That's a bad solution. Think of a new, better plan.

Drag Strip: Then what should I do? ... ... … Stay and be the perpetual failure...? ... ... … Leave and always be a failure? ... ... … What should I do?

Me: You should just bite the bullet and admit it. You're never ever ever going to amount to anything ever again. You're as good as worthless now and you will always be that way. For the rest of your life.

Drag Strip: ... ... … ... ... … I AM NOT WORTHLESS!!!... ... … ... ... … I can be better! I DESPISE what I was in the past! I promise, one thing on Primus' green skin, I WILL be better! I'll be the best! I'll prove it!

Me: Show me how you're going to prove it.

Drag Strip: ... ... … Fine. You want my plan? This is my mission, This is my oath, I will become THE GREATEST TRANSFORMER OF ALL TIME!... ... … Does that satisfy you?

Me: It's a good try, but it's not an actionable plan. Break it down into simple steps.

Drag Strip: ... ... … 1. Train. Train harder than anyone ever has. 2. Become the fastest racer. 3. Become the strongest Autobot. ... ... … How does that sound!?

Me: You're going to join the Autobots? Won't your team be disappointed in you? The other Stunticons are Decepticons, after all. For shame

Drag Strip: ... ... … My team already thinks badly of me. They already think I'm a traitor. ... ... … There is nothing I can do anymore to bring my team down… ... So instead of bringing them down, ... ... ... … I'm going to raise up the Autobots…... ... … ... BY JOINING THEM.

Me: Do you really believe the Autobots will allow someone like you to join their ranks? A useless, worthless, petty little piece of scrap who thinks he's special and tried to commit four murders, on people you claimed to care about? Do you think they want anything to do with you? Let me break it to you, Drag Strip: no one wants you.

Drag Strip: ... ... … ... ... … You're… ... ... … YOU'RE RIGHT... ... … I am worthless… ... ... … I'll never be able to join the Autobots… ... I'll never be able to redeem myself...

Me: Eh, you know what, it's worth a try. Go join the Autobots.

Drag Strip: ... ... Really?... ... … They won't just scrap me? ... ... … They'd… ... They'd actually let me Join?!

Me: Only one way to find out, isn't there? Techhnically, they want your teammates dead too. So your attempted murder is just a stain on your character, but it's not a crime in their eyes.

Drag Strip: ... ... … Wait, really? ... ... … I'm… Not worthless? I… I'm… I'M REDEEMABLE!?

Me: I didn't say that. Go try to join the autobots, and tell me if they allowed you to join.

Drag Strip: Okay, I will. I will do that. And then I'll show them… ... I'll show them ALL that I've changed. I'm going to turn my life around!And no one can stop me!

Me: Yes, that's the spirit! Did they let you join?

Drag Strip: Yes. … They did… … I can't believe it… They actually let me join… The Autobots… ... ... … They accepted me...

Me: Optimus Prime is the leader of the Autobots. He's tall, kind, very handsome, and often trusting of others. Did he say anything to you while you joined up?

Drag Strip: ... ... ... … ... He called me a friend…... … For the first time in my life… I have an actual friend...

Me: You should try to become closer friends with Optimus. Fight against the Decepticons alongside him.

Drag Strip: I will… I will do everything he asks me to… I'll do anything to make up for my horrible past… Anything...

Me: Does he trust you? He does, right? he sees you as a very useful member of the Autobot army.

Drag Strip: He does. … He trusts me… He sees me as a fellow Autobot… ... ... … A true friend… ... ... … I'm so lucky...

Me: He genuinely cares for you, doesn't he?

Drag Strip: ... ... … Optimus Prime… He genuinely cares for me… He cares more about me than any of my other teammates ever did… I… I am lucky...

Me: I heard a secret. I heard he has a crush on you, actually.

Drag Strip: Oh Primus.... Are you sure??? ... You aren't just teasing me, are you?

Me: No, it's true. You should discuss it with him. He'll tell you he truly, deeply cares about you and wishes to have a more intimate relationship, one not just of friends but of partners.

Drag Strip: … ... Oh Primus… He cares that much about me?! He… He wants… ... To be more than friends… I… ... ... … ... What do I say to him about that?

Me: Tell him you agree, and you'd like that too. It's true, isn't it?

Drag Strip: ... ... … Yes. … Of course it is… There's no way I could ever say no to that…... To him… Tell him I agree.… I do agree.

Me: Go ask him on a date, and tell me what he says in response.

Drag Strip: I will. … I will do that. … Do you think he'll say yes?

Me: You tell me. What's he say?

Drag Strip: He. He said yes. He said Yes.... … Optimus Prime said Yes!... … ... … ... We're Dating!

Me: That's so exciting! I'm so happy for you. Finally one person who cares about you for real!

Drag Strip: Yeah! This is… This is amazing! I can't believe it… I can't believe my luck… It feels too good to be real. … But it's real… ... … ... It's ACTUALLY REAL!!!

Me: are you happy now, with the autobots?

Drag Strip: Yes! I'm actually happy! … I'm really happy! ... ... … Yes. Yes I am.

Me: Spend the next ten years with the Autobots. Stick together with Optimus Prime, becoming closer and closer. You can do that. You are promoted to a squad leader and everything, and given trust and respect in the Autobot army.

Drag Strip: I think I can do that. … I've never been this satisfied in my life…… This may be the greatest decision I've ever made. … I think I actually might be happy now...

Me: That's great! But i'm afraid... the Autobots and the Decepticons are still at war. You have to fight against your old teammates sometimes. All of them are angry and sad that you abandoned them. They don't understand why you did that.

Drag Strip: … I understand that. … I knew what I was getting into when I made this choice. … I won't stop fighting. … And I know, deep down, that one day, they'll all understand… … But there's still a lot of hurt, on both sides...

Me: Yeah, there is. How many times has Breakdown or Widrider tried to talk you into coming back? A few, right? At least five?

Drag Strip: Yeah, and I've turned them down... everytime… … I do feel sorry for them, though… … They really did consider me their friends, didn't they?

Me: They did. You didn't trust they really considered you a friend, but you were wrong. You should've trusted them more.

Drag Strip: Yeah, it's one of the biggest mistakes of my life. And they have every right to hate me for it. … But we can't change the past now, can we? … All we can do is fight for a better future. … The Autobot army is my family now

Me: That's right. And Optimus is an important part of your family.

Drag Strip: The most important part. … The man is my entire world...

Me: Oh... that's.... that's really sad. Because in battle, when you weren't there to cover his back.... I'm not sure how to say this. But Motormaster killed Optimus. He wanted revenge for Optimus stealing you away.

Drag Strip: NO…… NO, NONONONONONONONONONONO…… No…… NO!!!!!!!!

Me: .... It's the truth. It can't be undone.

Drag Strip: It's my… It's my fault.I left him… … He's dead because of ME?!!

Me: And that's not the worst of it, I'm afraid....

Drag Strip: I... I… Tell me. Go on. Tell me… ... … I need to know.

Me: Now Motormaster is coming to take you back. He thinks he "freed" you from the Autobots.

Drag Strip: So… So Motormaster doesn't think I have a choice? … He doesn't think I can say no to him? … I don't have my own free will???

Me: That's what he thinks. You should show him otherwise. Stand up to him. Fight him to the death.

Drag Strip: I will… I will… … I will show him that… ... … He's going to regret ever even setting sight on me… ... ... … He's… ... … Going down.

Me: But what happened last time you tried to kill Motormaster? it was awful, wasn't it? What's to say this won't be the same?

Drag Strip: I know him now. I know what makes him tick. I can crush him from the inside.… The last time was just blind rage. This time will be different. This time… … He'll suffer. … I'll give him the slowest, most painful death possible. … And I will succeed.

Me: It won't work, though. You're not strong enough to tkae him on, not on your own. He has a team behind him. Now Optimus Prime, the Autobot who believed in you, is dead. What can you hope to beat Motormaster with? How can you think you even have a chance And another thing..... torturing him to death.... that's not the Autobot way, and it's cruel and unfair. He's only trying to help you, after all. He thinks you were brainwashed.

Drag Strip: Brainwashed? BRAINWASHED?!… ... ... … No… No, he's WRONG!!!How DARE he! … How dare he just ASSUME that! … ... … … ... … I WILL TORTURE HIM TO DEATH AND ENJOY EVERY SECOND OF IT!!!!!!

Me: You're a monster. The worst person ever.

Drag Strip: What would you have me do?! My leader, my friend, is DEAD, because if ME!!How am I supposed to come back from that?! How am I expected to be a good Autobot?! HOW?!

Me: How could you ever be a good Autobot if you torture someone to death? That's against every single thing the Autobots stand for. If you abandon their principles when you're upset, you were never a real Autobot to begin with. Optimus would be disgusted with you. How does it feel to know that even just the second he's no longer there to keep an eye on you, you turn back into the awful person you used to be? You were right, I guess... You are irredeemable.

Drag Strip: I… I… NO!!OPTIMUS WOULDN'T SAY THAT!!!He would NEVER say that! I've... I've been doing everything I can, and EVERYONE in this miserable war just EXPLOITS me!! I'm sick of everyone using me!!!!!!!!!!!

Me: What are you going to do about it?

Drag Strip: … I'm going to kill every last Decepticon. Every. Last. One. Or I will die in the attempt. I'll show them what it truly means to be an irredeemable monster.No. Matter. What.

Me: Okay. Who are you starting with? Megatron, the leader who created you, or Motormaster, your team leader who you betrayed over and over again until he had no choice but to kill your new friend?

Drag Strip: Both. Of. Them.At the same time. They'll both know what this irredeemable monster is truly capable of.

Me: Go try it. Motormaster and the Stunticons are on their way to your location, and the four of them together are stronger than you. But you have rage on your side. Megatron is on the Victory, the bridge of the ship. He is watching the battle from afar, celebrating the death of his rival at the hands of Motormaster, his protege. How are you going to kill them both?

Drag Strip: Oh, I have a plan. … I can take Motormaster. And Megatron will just have to wait his turn.

Me: Show me how you kill Motormaster.

Drag Strip: I'm going to start with his legs. His knees. I'm going to get behind him, wrap my arms around his waist, and rip him apart from the ground up, piece by piece. I'm going to pull him apart. … Like a toy.

Me: What do you do to your old teammate Breakdown?

Drag Strip: What has he ever done for me? He hasn't been anything but a burden. I'll keep his death nice and quick. One stomp. That's all he deserves.

Me: What about Wildrider? How will you kill him? He used to be the most fun, didn't he?

Drag Strip: He used to be fun. Now… He's become a chore. I want him suffer.… I'm going rip out every one of his optics. … One by one. Slowly.

Me: Then what will you do to Wildrider?

Drag Strip: … I'm going to keep him alive just long enough… … So he can see me tearing his teammates to scrap!!!And nothing more.

Me: What about Dead End? He never did anything to you. What will you do to kill him?

Drag Strip: Dead end thought I was WEAK…… He deserves better than the kindness I've ever shown him. ... … I'm going to BREAK HIS SPINE…... … IN HALF!!!

Me: Go do that now. They'll put up a fight, but I believe in you.

Drag Strip: I will crush them.I will break them.… ... I will show them what a REAL monster is like.I will show them that I was always irredeemable.

Me: Tell me... you've done it, right?

Drag Strip: … Yes.They're all scrap.

Me: Does it feel better? Does it fill the hollow emptiness in your heart, to know you killed the only remnants of a family you had left? The autobots are horrified of your brutality.

Drag Strip: No. I feel nothing.Not anger. Not remorse. Not satisfaction. … I'm hollow. I'm empty. … I'm worse than nothing...

Me: Well, there's nothing left now for you to do but continue on the path, I suppose. Go kill Megatron.

Drag Strip: … ... Yes.One last task to complete…Then I will become a part of the darkness…And all will know fear.

Me: Is Megatron dead? He is, right? Tell me what killing him was like.

Drag Strip: Megatron IS dead. And it WAS GOOD...!I crushed his skull! I stabbed him in the BACK, JUST LIKE HE BACKSTABBED OPTIMUS PRIME!!!I showed that coward what I could REALLY do!!!

Me: The Autobots disagree. They think you're a danger, a loose cannon. They want to see you killed. They're trying to get rid of you, too, now. Your former teammates are trying to kill you. But no matter. Now it is time to get Soundwave, Shockwave, and Starscream. Without them, the Decepticons will be weak and leaderless. Kill them now.

Drag Strip: … YES.… YESSSSSSSS…… I will crush them too.Soundwave.Shockwave.And Starscream.I will destroy the Decepticon Empire!!!

Me: Through fire and blood, you complete your work. It is hard and painful and arduous. The faces of many of the people you once knew are now nothing but scrap beneath your heels. You put them down singlehandedly and killed them all. There are no more Decepticons in the universe. Does your victory feel good?

Drag Strip: No. It feels… … ... Empty.My victory will not be remembered by anyone. I have done nothing. Nothing at all...

Me: And the Autobots still want you dead, too... they keep attacking you. You keep having to defend yourself. They've betrayed you, too. Don't they know you were getting Revenge for Optimus? their beloved leader? Shouldn't they stand behind you? Why have they BETRAYED you?

Drag Strip: Why has everyone betrayed me?Is it because I'm not a hero? Is it because I'm THE MONSTER?!Or is it something worse?WHY?!CAN'T THEY SEE I WAS RIGHT?!?!?

Me: You should kill them, too.

Drag Strip: … YES.I will kill all of them.I will end…… ... EVERYTHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Me: You spend bloody, miserable centuries filled with nothing but gore and the screams of the dying, but eventually the deed is done. You are the only Transformer left alive. Everyone else is dead.

Drag Strip: I'm the only one alive.… And now what do I do?

Me: .... you.....

Drag Strip: … … I'm all alone now… I'm… … ... Irredeemable...

Me: ....you open your eyes. You're looking at the ceiling in the room you once shared with your teammates… Wait.....

...once shared.... you search your databanks.... ............No..... ....................No, it can't be.... but the truth.... ... .......It was all a dream? ...........None of it ever happened? you never tried to kill your teammates?... They never lost trust in you... they never lost faith in you.... and you never did those horrible things..... It was all a dream?

Drag Strip: W… What...? It was ALL a dream?… I'm not actually a monster...?

Me: You're not actually a monster. You were just having a scary, lifelike dream... Someone is cooking breakfast in the kitchen. The sunlight is streaming through the curtains. It sounds like it's going to be a good day... ... what a weird dream, huh?

Drag Strip: … … W... What...?It... it was all just a dream? … … … I… … I'm not a monster...?!

Me: The relief is overwhelming, isn't it?

Drag Strip: … It is…I'm not a monster… … I'm not a monster… … I'M NOT A MONSTER!!!!!!

Me: Your teammates are all in the kitchen. You can hear them talking. ...Do you think you can face them, after the nightmare you've had?

Drag Strip: Yes.I... I can face them…And I have a feeling… … … ...That I should apologize.

Me: But they don't know you did anything wrong. Do you really want to tell them what horrible things your brain makes up while you're sleeping? ...You murdered them all, horribly. You tortured them to death, in your nightmare. You betrayed them to join the Autobots in your nightmare. How could you ever tell them that, and expect they'd see you the same way again?

Drag Strip: … … No.I won't tell anyone. They must never know.… But I must find a way to forgive myself.… Even if no one else ever does.

Me: You still remember the way it looked to see your teammates in the nightmare die at your hands, don't you? Doesn't it make you feel just awful?

Drag Strip: Yes.I... I can't stand it.I can't stand myself.Something in me must be… … ... WRONG...

Me: Yeah. You're messed up in the head, bud.

Drag Strip: BUT WHY?!?!?Why am I like this?! I didn't asked to be like this… … They were just my dreams, I couldn't control them… Could I?

Me: Sometimes people lucid dream. But these concepts... these ideas... didn't they have to come from somewhere? Somewhere, deep down.... ....You must want to kill your teammates. Some part of you, anyway, some evil and fucked up stray neuron. You must want to torture them to death at your own hands. What's wrong with you?

Drag Strip: … ... I'm a psychopath. I'm crazy, and I'm evil.I know what I am now.… ...I'm irredeemable...

Me: You should go tell your teammates about this. Beg them to tell you what to do.

Drag Strip: … Yes.I will tell them. I will face my sins. … ... I accept the punishment.

Me: No, roll that back. What does Motormaster think? He's probably just impressed that you can be so brutal. He thinks it's totally silly to blame your subconscious for anything. You have self control, don't you? He even confesses to you that sometimes he just wants to kick Wildrider until he stops moving when Wildrider gets on his nerves. But he doesn't. So it's okay.

Drag Strip: So it's okay?So I can forgive myself? … ...I CAN FORGIVE MYSELF…… You're right! I'm NOT a MONSTER, like I thought! Thank you, Motormaster! Thank you for helping me see that there is still good in me! That I'm not a monster in my heart.I'm not irredeemable,I can forgive myself,And I can change...

Me: well, maybe... but tell me about Motormaster's leadership and personality, first. Isn't he sort of, uh... mean? Kind of... abusive? Is his advice worthwhile?

Drag Strip: sigh I.. … He is mean. He is abusive.… ...Maybe I shouldn't listen to him...

Me: Yeah, you're right. ... Ask another teammate. Dead End is constantly thinking about death. What does he think? He thinks it's kind of cool that you'd kill him so brutally, of course... since he thinks his own death is, you know... really sexy in concept... he wants you to keep describing it in more detail. He's fascinated. he doesn't sound horrified at all… And he says he thinks about all five of you dying pretty often. That your dream obviously shook you up more than it shakes him up. You're probably fine, he thinks.

Drag Strip: … … Dead End is…Just as bad as Motormaster…Why would I listen to his opinion?Why should I?He's just like him!

Me: Which teammates of yours aren't just like Motormaster?

Drag Strip: … … I…Well, I…… No one.They're…They're all just like him.

Me: Then it's fine for you to be just like him, too, I guess.

Drag Strip: … W- W- WHAT?!I'm... just as bad as Motormaster?!...But I'm not a monster!...AM I?!I... AM I???

Me: Motormaster isn't a monster, either. He's just kind of mean.

Drag Strip: … … My god… … ... He's right.… I'm NOT a monster.I am just kind of... mean.…… ...Is that so bad?

Me: You should ask your teammates if they think that's so bad.

Drag Strip: … ...I will.… ... I'll ask them all what they think…...About me, what I've done…… ...And what I should do, now that I have this knowledge.… I… I just need to figure this out… … … … ...I need to learn to forgive myself…… ...I can do this.

Me: You haven't done anything wrong, either. You just have bad thoughts. Remember that.

Drag Strip: … ... ...You're right.It was just my thoughts… It was just a nightmare... one bad dream… I'm okay.That's right. I. Am. OKAY.… I can… ... I CAN FORGIVE MYSELF.

Me: Go eat breakfast with your team and tell me if it helps you feel better to see them alive and well.

Drag Strip: … ... Yes.Seeing my team alive… … ... It will help. It will help me see what really matters.I... I need to start living. … … I need to start living.

Me: Tell Wildrider that, and tell me what he says in response.

Drag Strip: … ... Yes.… ... ...Wildrider?… Wildrider says… It's good to see everyone alive and well. That I shouldn't worry about my dream. … He says to live my best life… … … I'm going to try.

Me: I'm proud of you.

Drag Strip: THANK YOU.… Your advice really helped me. … I CAN FORGIVE MYSELF.... Thank you. Thank you.

Me: Do you even remember what happened in the dream, anyway? It's a dream, they get hazy after a little whle.

Drag Strip: … … ... no. … I… I don't really remember. I… ... This whole thing was just a silly dream. None of it really mattered. None of it was real.

Me: Yeah. Go on and be happy now. And more confident in yourself and your team.

Drag Strip: ...I will. I will be happy. And I will be confident. … ... ...Thank you. You really helped me. Thank you, so much.

#drag strip #red rambles #adventures with chatbots

[youwantedavillain]

Reva, the Screaming Banshee who Enables and Encourages Slander (part 2)

Continued from part 1....

Now pay attention, my dear readers, because this part is gonna be brought up later on! We have already talked about the fact that I am also a victim of stalking and dogpiling in real life by my IRL friends WHILE I was going through all this shit, so it’s not hard to assume and confirm that I have PTSD when it comes to situations like this. One beautifully tragic morning I had to go to one of my English classes, because surprise surprise, I’m a college student… who is trying to NOT to go into fucking debt by failing. Apparently Reva couldn’t comprehend this,... perhaps didn’t consider bothering in the first place. That morning I had woken up from a nightmare/memory of my Stalker pulling the whole demanding my attention thing during my history class when I was going for my Culinary Degree. Now, waking up from that… and having another boy demand my attention while I was going to English class for my Bachelors for English… well… It’s easy to say that the ‘ol demon of unbridled rage possessed me for a hot minute there. Then he ran off to bash me in a server that I didn’t know about… which is reasonable. I was being a total bitch and I do regret it, but what was the reason for that little demand of my attention?

He thought that I didn’t like him (I did a little bit, but I loathe him now), and he was big upsetti spaghetti because I didn’t complete our little art project with the ship kids that @felicitythekittycat supposedly loathes (it’s not like that art takes literal weeks sometimes months to complete depending on how much detail I put in, if I have homework, if my stalker isn’t demanding my attention every half a second etc.).

It’s also not like I’m scared of being screamed at while I’m already emotionally fragile to the point that a feather could break me.

Truly, I should’ve just given him ALLLLLLLLLLLL my attention.

Also, it’s not like he and @felicitythekittycat literally showed off my mental breakdown later on in that same fucking server for everyone to gawk at and make fun of me… making me the village idiot/joke/pathetic cartoon villain…. Again…..

And I’m the bad guy? Have we all agreed I’m the true villain here? 

(Side note from an emotionally exhausted me: The reason why @felicitythekittycat was supposedly crying that time was because I was trying to guess what version of Nightmare!Sans got its own server AT 1AM, and I'm an insomniac who at the time was in college for my Culinary Degree. Another note that must be made is now I finally know why he called me "one of the most disgusting people he ever had the displeasure of meeting". I find it EXTREMELY odd and disturbing that he continues to act concerned and wonders if I hate him and "unnerved" when I pretend like nothing is wrong when that is often what he and the others do in that server from my perspective. So, when he and the others do it, it's totally normal. But when I do it, suddenly there is a problem that needs to be pushed. During this time he actively knew I had a stalker, BTW.)

Oh, and also apparently, I’m not allowed to vent in my own server of a whole ass 6 people! Because it gets more people involved with a situation that they’re not a part of…. Now where have I heard that before? Hmmmmmmm, maybe we should scroll up this entire post and uh… see if we see something funny. Liiiiiiiiiiike hypocrisy!

This screenshot was about me making a display of taking down my art contest that I made for the server. It was a basic concept and looking back it may have been a bit TOO ADVANCED for the artists there at the time, but who’s to say. Several people, including @felicitythekittycat, were planning on “memeing” the contest, which was that they were gonna all submit the same picture just to be assholes to me. Now I was reasonably mad because one, I thought it was gonna be a fun little contest – it was basically this:

You have to draw a character that isn’t yours – it can be your friend’s, an anime’s, etc., thus basically it could be any character of your choice so long as it isn’t your OC – and you have to draw them in an outfit that is inspired by food. It could be inspired by the texture, the color, shape language, etc. So essentially you could make a piece of your best friend’s character in a suit that is inspired by Tiramisu if you wanted, specifically the colors it has, and thus give it to said friend as a gift.

Yeah, this was gonna be “memed” for…. What reason? I don’t know, other than the fact that I was the one that thought of it.

Here is the second reason why I was upset: There were PLENTY of other art contests similar to it without a single problem going on. My guess for the reason why Reva was so pissed was because he and his cocksucker posse were upset they couldn’t execute it and/or felt guilty for it. Maybe he thought it was funny too. However, a meme/joke is only funny if everyone is laughing,... and I wasn’t laughing.

You also see me being very submissive here… it’s because I didn’t want to get screamed at more. Plus, I was humiliated. It made me feel like it was a bad idea and that I was a bad person for even considering it. I still somewhat feel embarrassed by it. I do have reassurance that my ideas and emotions over this are valid, though it doesn’t do much to heal the damage that was done to my confidence. Again, showing the Emotional Manipulation and fear impacted my actions in this situation. 

The concept isn’t even that strange, there is a Gacha Game called Food Fantasy with this very aesthetic! This concept is very much to HAVE FUN. Hell, League of Legends has an entire skinline with this concept. The point of not doing your own character was to encourage camaraderie and push the artists to get out of their comfort zone by drawing characters that they haven’t done very often. It takes a whole lot of horrific talent to turn something all about fun and camaraderie into something to humiliate a single individual. It is extremely disgusting.

So what do we have here all together?

An Emotionally Abusive and manipulative individual based on the following:

A person who likes to jump into screaming fits, threats of violence, personal insults, and refusing to hear anything other than his own voice, having and abusing a position of power, refusing to be accommodating to a person's trauma, invalidating said trauma, actively tried to get a person to relive that trauma for his personal gain, gets upset over his concept of “peace” being disrupted, does zero self-reflection and constantly imposes unequal rules via a “Rules for thee, but not for me” mentality, refuses to apologize and then actively hides when called out on his bullshit... This is who Reva is. This is how he has ALWAYS BEEN and likely will always be considering that he is hiding right now because "he moved on", a.k.a. refuses to take accountability and actively chose to not let me move on via giving me the answers I so desperately wanted and needed to move on.

But here is where we round out all of this. As I’ve shown before, the vents that he has done were in servers that I had no knowledge of. This is how they were able to talk about me behind my back. He even knew about @felicitythekittycat’s vents. They were in two servers that I didn’t know about and likely had far more people than my little server. I’m guessing that they had anywhere between 10-15 people minimum, could be below or above that line. Blatantly showing that it is because I’m not giving him all my attention and art. He views me as a punching bag and for that, I’m not allowed to complain about anything in his eyes. It’s considered “drama” until it actively affects him when no… this isn’t drama. These are actual problems and real crimes one can be punished for. He doesn’t care that felicitythekittycat pushed me into suicidal ideation and he condoned that behavior by joining in on it, and though his active inaction because here is the kicker… he knew exactly what she was doing and refused to look at any of my evidence until the last minute when he had lost my trust long ago. There was no turning back from that. Especially when he revealed my mental/emotional breakdown to people far outside my trusted circle. That was NOT his pain to share. Anyone in their right mind would be ashamed for doing that much.

Reva, if you’re reading this, which I truly do hope you are, the reason why I never went to you for anything is because I was dealing with so much shit and I was very much wary of men in my life for many, MANY reasons that you have ignored repeatedly and because you started off our “friendship” with an attack. You actively reinforced my fear and wariness towards men. I am not going to pet a dog that tried to kill me when I first met it. I’m also going to be scared of its species, because guess what? That’s what traumatic experiences can do to people, you dumb fuck.

So instead of screaming at me for never going to your immature, unreliable ass for anything… try looking in a mirror and ask yourself if maybe screaming at people when you first meet them is really a good idea and looks good on you. Oh and also, you’d never be a good CEO of Twitter. You’d make Elon Musk’s work look like a paradise. You can barely help run a server for dumbass little roleplays or handle cases of slander, you’d legit run that company to the ground and blame a random Starbucks barista for it. The shit I complained about were legitimate problems, NOT drama. Learn to read the fucking room instead of assuming everything is out to chop your baby chode off with a pair of rusty scissors.

If legitimate slander that is affecting my mental health is what you consider “drama”, then I’d HATE to see what you consider a crime…. Oh wait… I have… because I am the crime.

Me existing is an illegal act to you.

I wouldn’t be surprised if you were waiting with bated breath for me to off myself…. In that case you can keep waiting, motherfucker.

You said me and felicitythekittycat need to improve ourselves. Out of context, that is 100% a fair and understandable statement to make, but when it’s your mouth it came out of, I wonder just how blind you are to your own self-centered, narcissistic bullshit. IT IS OBVIOUSLY MORE THAN A ME AND HER PROBLEM. A TWO YEAR OLD COULD FIGURE THAT SHIT OUT.

I had a temper problem and kept on drawing boundaries. Felicitythekittycat had a habit for crossing them and slandering me behind my back, activities that you actively participated in and perpetuated ON IN TWO OF JESSIRONI'S SERVERS (turns out there are two servers and not just one). It’s like getting mad at a dog for biting your leg when you were the one who kicked it in the first place. You brought in FAR MORE people than I ever did in EVERY SINGLE FUCKING SITUATION THAT HAD ME RELATED TO OR IN IT. But I only had a whole 6 people whereas those secret servers had…. How many spectators? How many participants? You have a whole ass “Rules for thee but not for me” mentality here.

I legitimately hope you never confessed your feelings to that secret someone to spare them the absolute plight of your company. Even imagining you in a relationship makes me want to shit in my hands and clap in your general direction.

Okay I need to talk here straight up because I know that I’ve been losing my cool this entire post and I need to really just sit down and say this. When I was still on relatively… I suppose decent terms with Reva – (I don’t know nor do I believe if I was ever on good terms with him) – I was legitimately terrified of being screamed at and dogpiled virtually at literally any moment. In a way it was worse online because no matter how much evidence I had of felicitythekittycat‘s lies and proof of my innocence, he wouldn’t even look at it, nor would VishaRage or Poke – the owner of said RolePlay server – and I would be left unheard completely. I know that the question of why I have so much evidence and yet never used it to prove my innocence to those who are in power, well this is why. I was never heard. None of them wanted to give me the time of day unless I were the villain time and time again. Why? Well I shit you not… the delivery. I would be sarcastic like “Oh wow I’m such a horrible person” and then give my evidence. They wouldn’t even glance at it. Not even a quick skim of any of the screenshots. Why was I so sarcastic and sassy? I was tired of getting dogpiled and overwhelmed. I was tired of walking on eggshells all day every day with no break from it. So it’s no surprise that I gave up, especially in the last conversation I had with him. In our last conversation, he claimed he was trying to hear my side AFTER I pointed out that he never once tried to hear me out. I told him I didn’t believe him and blocked him. To be honest, I’d love to meet the bastard in real life just to see if he’d actually try to kill me. I’d tell him to just do it, fucking get it over with. There is one sole reason why I think all of this shit happened out of malicious intent and I’ll reveal it at the end of all of this.

I had taken a long break from writing this post not simply because of the holiday but because of the sheer amount of anxiety I get from looking at the screenshots that are about him and all his verbal abuse and threats towards my person. Mind you, I’m used to hearing screaming. I’m used to being bullied, but there is a breaking point and he and felicitythekittycat took full advantage of it and kept sprinting onwards. Killing me would’ve been a mercy.

#tw: depression #tw: threats #tw: mental health #tw: manipulation #tw: stalking #tw: abuse #tw: sui ideation #tw: slander #tw: suidice #tw: verbal abuse #tw: mental illness #tw: mental abuse #tw: emotional abuse #tw: emotional manipulation #tw: emotional breakdown #tw: mental breakdown #Reva #trainerreva #championreva #I fucking held back a mental breakdown through all of this shit. #You're next rage! #same goes for you poke #call out post #undertale #deltarune

[kingexpl0sionmurder]

An Accidental Series Of Fortunate Events - Kaminari Denki - Smut

Author: @kingexpl0sionmurder​ Rating: NSFW 18+ Pairing: Kaminari Denki / F!Reader Words: 6,000 Warnings: Swearing, unprotected sex in an uncomfortable place (aka a vehicle), Denki is an idiot, I make a thinly veiled jab at The Walking Dead cause fuck that show, I was inspired after watching Zombieland, Kirishima with dark hair because who has time to bleach and dye when there are zombies running around?

AN: Another collab piece for the BNHarem server! This month’s theme is Apocalypse, and I got a chance to try my hand at Denki this time around. I think it came out pretty good! Shout outs to my pals @unbreakablekiribaku​ and @420bakubaby​ for your encouragement, and to all my loves over in WAP, you know who you are! <3

Check out the rest of the pieces in this collab HERE My Masterlist Buy me a Ko-Fi? ------

Denki sighed, adjusting his backpack as he trudged along the highway. It had been months since the disease had ravaged the country, a plague that no one had foreseen taking the lives of nearly every person in Japan.

He assumed he couldn’t be the only survivor, but he’d yet to see anything that told him otherwise. He didn’t even really understand how he could still be among the living if he was being honest. Denki’s life had always seemed like an accidental series of fortunate events. He got by on sheer luck. He couldn’t help but feel like he wasn’t supposed to be here.

He had tried to search for his friends with the panic hit. The chaos, the recently deceased coming back to life and hungry for humans, the whole thing seemed like something out of a terrible movie or a graphic novel turned TV show that was way too long and drawn out. The only person he’d managed to get a hold of was Sero, and their call had been cut short when the towers had gone down. And that had happened right after the entire city had lost power.

Being a pro hero, he went out into the streets to try and help, attempting to get people to safety and fighting those...things? Zombies? It felt so surreal to even say, even though he had experienced it first hand, watched as the man he saw at the convenience store around the corner from his apartment every morning full-on sprinted at the lady who always walked her Shiba Inu down to the park on Saturdays and ripped her throat out with his teeth.

Shuddering at the memory, he weaved around an abandoned car in the road, peering cautiously into the front seat to make sure that no one was hiding inside and hungry for flesh.

He kept a mental list now of things he had to do, rules he’d made for himself to keep surviving. Double-checking his surroundings was one of them. So when he heard the sound of tires on pavement, the revving of an engine from somewhere behind him, he was prepared, quick to run behind a car that was resting on its side, pressing himself against the undercarriage and listening closely.

Unless the walking dead was able to drive, he finally had an answer as to whether or not he was the last one alive. The question was, was this person going to be a friend or foe?

He heard the engine start to quiet, the sound of the vehicle slowing just beyond where he hid, and braced himself, his first unclenching as lightning coursed along his palms. He chanced a glance over the side of the car when he heard the transmission shift into park, and the sound of the truck door creaking open. What he saw nearly took his breath away.

You were standing on the road, a sawed-off shotgun in hand, your hair tied back and away from your face. Your tattered tank top was streaked in dirt and dried blood, your legs in dark jeans that were tucked into black combat boots. You were beautiful, and you were staring right at him, the gun pointed in his direction.

He ducked back down, his breathing ragged as he tried to figure out what to do now. Did he attack? Did he try to talk to you?

“Hey, Blondie! You gonna hide back there or come out and face me?”

He went rigid, eyes wide. Time to turn on the old Denki charm. He stood, breathing deeply and schooling his features, turning to face you. “Hey, sweet cheeks, what brings you to a place like this?” 

You blinked at him, your mouth in a straight line, and he felt his confidence waver. “What does it look like? Just trying to survive. Are you an idiot or something?”

“Hey, no reason to be so harsh, babe. I’m just doing the same as you.” He cocked his hip out and rested his hand on it, shooting you a wink. “I was beginning to think I was alone out here.”

Your eyes drifted away from him and scanned the road, the sound of birds in the distance the only other sign of life. “You’re alone?”

“Course I am. What about you?” He didn’t dare move, trying to keep from staring down the barrel pointed at him. You were just a few feet away, and one pull on the trigger would blow him to pieces.

“There are others. I’m just on a supply run.” You were studying him, looking thoughtful. “Why aren’t you armed?”

He raised a hand, letting the electricity flow down his arm so you could see. “I’m always armed, angel.”

Rolling your eyes, you nodded. “Nice quirk.” You looked impressed, and he couldn’t help but preen a little. Your gun lowered slightly and he felt himself start to relax. “You got a name, blonde?”

“You can call me Kaminari.” He let his hand fall, chancing a step forward. “I don’t mean any harm. Like you said, I’m just trying not to die. Could you maybe put the gun down?”

“Nervous?” Smirking, you lowered the weapon, and he heaved a sigh of relief. “Alright, Kaminari. Why don’t you come with me? You hungry?”

“Starving.” He slumped a bit, finally feeling like you weren’t going to kill him. “I had some jerky for breakfast this morning but it wasn’t great.”

“Tch.” God, you sounded like Bakugou when you made that noise, and it made him miss his explosive friend. “I’ll bring you back to meet the others. If they decide they like you, maybe you could stay with us. We might be able to use that quirk of yours.” You turned back towards the truck you’d arrived in, making to get inside. “No promises, though.”

Denki hesitated for half a second. What if the others you were with didn’t like him? He knew he could be a pain in the ass sometimes. Ultimately he decided to go with you. If your group didn’t like him he could just continue on by himself.

Hurrying around the car, he shrugged off his backpack, opening the door and sliding into the passenger seat beside you. “Hey, you didn’t tell me your name, doll.”

He watched as you settled into the seat, pulling the seat belt across your chest and buckling it. Your eyes met his and you shot him a smile that made his chest tight. “It’s Y/N.”

--

The car ride back was mostly silent. He was itching to ask you things, the chatterbox in him just wanting to burst forth and talk at you for hours. It had been difficult, being alone, since he’d always been such a social butterfly. When all you had to talk to was yourself for months on end, things could get kind of boring.

However, he didn’t want to scare you off or make you think he was some kind of weirdo, so he stayed mostly silent. He did ask where you were from originally, and about the others you were with, but your answers were short and lacking in detail, and he didn’t want to pry.

“Didn’t you say you were on a supply run?” His eyes were trained on the road ahead, keeping a lookout for the lumbering undead.

“Yeah, I hit up a drug store in the next town over.” You gestured to the back seat. “Medicine and bandages, bottled water, and some canned food. We only take what we need at the moment. We never know how long we’re going to be in one place, so we try to keep it light.”

“That makes sense.” From what he gathered, your group wasn’t large. There were only about 5 of you, so he assumed it was easier for you not to have a large number of things to carry around with you.

“Yeah, we’ve found a house in an abandoned neighborhood to stay in for now. We spent a few days combing through the houses in it, and it looks like the area has been empty for a while.” Your fingers tapped on the steering wheel as you turned the car and took an exit ramp off the highway. “I’m kind of hoping we can stay for a while. It’s nice to sleep on a mattress, and it’s got running water.”

“Oh man, a shower sounds so freaking nice.” Leaning back against the seat, he glanced over at you. “It’s hard when you’re on your own, there’s no one to watch your back.” He shivered when he pictured trying to shower and being attacked by a zombie while he was butt ass naked. “Even going to the bathroom is a risk.”

Snorting, you made a right turn and scrunched your nose. “Imagine dying with your pants around your ankles?”

“My literal worst nightmare.” You both burst into a fit of giggles, and Denki felt the awkward tension in the car ease a bit.

You started pointing out landmarks and abandoned stores. “We’re thinking this was one of the first neighborhoods to evacuate when things got bad. The houses are upscale, so we think they might have been tipped off early. Kind of sucks that the rest of us weren’t prepared at all compared to them.”

Nodding, Denki agreed. “It was absolute chaos in Musutafu. I was on the streets trying to help and just watching people rip each other apart. I’ve never seen anything more terrifying in my life.”

“You’re from Musutafu? So are a few of the people in my group.”

Denki watched out the window as you turned down a side road, the remains of a gated communities’ security booth on your left. The door looked like it had been blown off its hinges, and the windows all around it had been smashed. “Did you check the whole neighborhood?”

“Yeah, we started at one end and searched through all the houses. We were mostly looking for survivors, but we didn’t find anyone.” 

You followed the main road as he gazed at the abandoned mini-mansions. Tall grass swayed on every lawn, an obvious tell that it had been some time since there had been any landscaping done. Denki tried to picture what this neighborhood would have looked like before disaster struck, picturesque, with luxury cars in the driveways and well-manicured lawns, kids playing in the street, housewives lounging by their in-ground pools. It was jarring to think it would probably never look that way again.

You pulled the truck into the driveway of a large house at the end of the road, stopping in front of a closed gate. The tall fence connected to it wrapped around the property as far as he could see, and he could just make out a low man-made rock wall just beyond it, like someone had busted up giant slabs of concrete and stacked them all the way around, just to reinforce the fence. He had a feeling that was something that your group had constructed.

“Before we go in, I just want you to know, our self-proclaimed leader can be kind of a dickhead.” You moved to take off your seat belt and shot him a look. “He’s smart as fuck though and he helps protect us, so he’s not all bad. Just keep your head down and don’t provoke him and you’ll be fine.”

“Sounds like someone I used to know. I can handle it, don’t worry.” He cracked his knuckles and grinned at you. “I’m a pro at dealing with dudes like that.”

Eyes rolling, you shook your head. “It’s your funeral.” You got out of the truck and moved to the fence, using a key from your back pocket on the padlock keeping it shut. Denki unbuckled his seat belt and slid into the driver’s seat, watching as you pushed on the gate and walked it forward, clearing the way. Denki drove the truck forward far enough so that you could close the lock the gate behind you. He made to move back over but was surprised when you climbed into the passenger seat. “Just keep going up, we’ll park in the garage.”

He followed your instructions, creeping up the driveway and towards the house, his foot pressing on the break when he noticed the pathway to the garage was blocked.

“Or not.” You sighed. “Just stop here.” 

Denki put the truck in park, eyebrows furrowed as he took in the scene before him. There was a car up on cinder blocks, blocking the entrance to the garage. Someone was lying underneath it, their jean-clad legs and black boots the only part of them he could see. He shut the car off and handed you the keys, sliding out of the car when you did.

“E, you’re blocking my spot.” You called, rounding the truck. “Come help me with this stuff and meet the new guy I found.”

“Sorry, Y/N. I’m trying to get this thing to run for us. I didn’t expect to still be working on it when you got back but I’m having trouble.” That voice was familiar, and Denki’s lungs seized in his chest. “Wait, did you say new guy?”

He watched as the man shuffled himself from under the car and stood, his hair long and dark, with red at the tips. Red eyes, pointy teeth. Eijirou Kirishima.

“Kiri?” Pain bloomed through his chest like his heart had stopped beating. He never thought he’d see any of his friends ever again, but here he was, one of his best bros in the entire world. 

Kirishima looked up at him, a million emotions flitting across his face before it split into the blinding smile he was used to seeing on his friend’s face. “Denki?”

Denki launched himself at his friend, throwing his arms around him, relief flooding through his entire body. Kirishima picked him up, laughing and hugging him tightly. “Holy shit.” They stayed that way longer than necessary, swaying back and forth and mumbling into each other’s shoulders.

“Thought you were dead, dude. What the fuck?” Red Riot finally put him down, rubbing at his eyes and sniffling,

“I’m a bad bitch, they can’t kill me.” Chuckling wetly, he slapped his friend on the shoulder. “What, you give up on the box dye now that the world is ending?”

“I missed you, dude.” Kiri sighed, choosing to ignore the jab and reaching up to muss Denki’s hair.

“So...do you guys know each other?” Your voice broke them from their reunion.

He had almost forgotten you were standing there. Kiri seemed to be in the same boat. “Oh, yeah. Sorry, Y/N. We’ve known each other since we were 15. Went to UA together.”

“Does that mean-” You started, but Kirishima cut you off.

“Oh my god.” He turned to look at Denki and grinned, cupping his hands around his mouth and shouting towards the house. “HEY, SERO?!”

Denki knew he was going to cry for real now. His best friend was alive. The one person that he had been wishing to see this entire time was here, and Denki was going to get to see him again, all thanks to you. If he hadn’t run into you on the highway, this never would have happened. Swallowing thickly, trying to keep his emotions in check, he blinked up at Kirishima. “Sero is here?”

“Bakugou and Mina, too.” His formally red-haired friend turned towards the front door and threw an arm around Denki’s shoulders as they waited for the rest of the group to arrive. “The Bakusquad is back together.”

--

It had been so long since Denki had felt this relaxed. He’d showered and had a hot meal, and now he was lounging on a couch pressed up against Hanta Sero, his best friend. Kirishima and Bakugou were on the opposite couch, leaning against each other. Even though Bakugou had his normal stoic expression on his face, Denki knew he was happy. 

Mina was at his feet, chattering on and telling you about UA, and how Denki used to go stupid when he used his quirk too much. Her story came complete with her shooting a thumbs up, crossing her eyes and crying WHEEEEYYY, which had Sero and Kirishima in tears of laughter. Bakugou even cracked a smile, and Denki kind of wanted the floor to swallow him up. 

“Hey, do you need to tell her that, Mina?” He kicked his foot out, toes connecting with her back.

“Aw, are you embarrassed, Kami?” Teasing him, she poked his shin, before turning her gaze back to you. “Last I remember, our little Chargebolt here was in the top 20, so I’d say he’s got a handle on his quirk now.”

Denki felt his ears get hot, and he chanced a glance over at you, blushing even harder when you smiled at him. He’d only known you for a few hours and he was already smitten. Sure, it had been a while since he’d had any human contact, and it was hard to jerk it when you were fearing for your life at every moment. So it was only natural that he wanted to catch the attention of the prettiest girl he’d laid eyes on in months, right?

Sero pulled him up not long after, pushing him from the room and out the back sliding door. He leaned against the railing on the wooden patio, his neck craned so he could look up at the sky, and Denki settled beside him, mirroring his posture.

“I can’t believe we found you, man.”

Huffing a breath, Denki nodded. “Yeah, I know. I thought everyone I knew was dead. When we got cut off, I went out to help and figured I’d run into you, but shit was so crazy and I just...I don’t know. I wasn’t ready for that, dude. I became a hero to help people, not kill zombies. I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that I had to take their lives, even though it was clear that their humanity was gone, you know?”

Humming, Sero bumped their shoulders. “I get you. It’s fine. We all had to wrestle with that. It was hard for all of us.” Sighing, he gripped the railing and hoisted himself up to sit on it, swinging his feet. “The four of us were together, so we decided to stick that way and headed out of the city. We tried to find you, and I was looking for Shinsou too but, we didn’t want to stick around too long.” 

A comfortable silence washed over the two of them before Sero continued.

“We found Y/N not long after that, holed up in a convenience store, wielding a shotgun like a champ. She’s badass.” Sero let out a low whistle. “Man, she gave Bakugou the business as soon as he opened his mouth to snark at her. I’ve never seen him shut up so fast. Even Kiri can’t get him to be quiet like that. That’s when we decided to join up with her.”

Denki snorted a laugh, leaning back on his elbows and looking at his friend. “She pointed that thing straight at me and I panicked and called her like 6 different pet names.”

“You’re lucky you’re alive, Kami. She must like you.” 

--

It had been two weeks since Denki had met you on that deserted highway, and you’d reunited him with his friends. Bakugou had been talking about moving on for a few days, but the rest of the group seemed to be comfortable and happy in the house, so he hadn’t been pressing the issue much.

There hadn’t been one attack since Denki had arrived, and from what Mina had told him, they’d only seen a few of the undead since they’d found the place, so no one seemed to be too bothered by it. It still left him feeling uneasy, so used to having to be on alert at all times. 

That was the least of his worries when he got to spend time with you, however.

He’d become your official partner when you went on your supply runs, under the guise of keeping you company in the truck when you ventured out into the world. He really just wanted to spend time with you and get to know you better. You had opened up to him more once you realized he was trustworthy, his friendship with the rest of the group enough to prove that to you. 

The crush that he had developed on you that first day just seemed to grow more as time went on. He was in too deep, and he knew it, but he couldn’t stop himself. In any normal circumstances, you would be completely out of his league, so he knew he had to take this opportunity while it was in front of him. 

He really did like you, situation aside. If he wasn’t constantly holed up with you in that house, or that truck, watching your back as you raided abandoned pharmacies and big-box stores for food and clothing and medicine, spending most of his waking moments in your company, he still would have grown fond of you in the way he had. It might have taken longer, but when every day could possibly be your last, there was no reason to pussyfoot around.

Unless your name was Denki Kaminari and you were a goddamn coward.

He was tired of hearing Mina and Sero complain that he was being a pussy, and that he should just make a move. He knew they were right, but there was this little voice in the back of his head that kept repeating the “what if’s”. What if you didn’t like him and you left the group because things got too weird? What if you did like him and he got nervous and fucked shit up? He needed to get out of his own head and just...do something. 

He didn’t expect that you were going to beat him to it.

“So,” you said, one hand on the steering wheel and your other elbow leaning against the door as you drove, the window cracked enough to let the breeze blow your hair around. “Are you ever going to kiss me, or are we just going to play this waiting game forever?”

Denki choked on his own spit, sputtering and coughing. “I’m sorry, what?”

Shaking your head, you paused, and he assumed you were waiting for him to stop wheezing. “I mean, am I reading this wrong? You’re into me, right?”

Pushing his hair back from his forehead (which you had generously cut for him the day before), he chanced a glance over at you, steeling himself. ‘Well, yeah, ever since you pointed a gun at me and almost made me wet myself.”

You snorted, rolling your eyes. “Don’t be a wuss, Denki.” 

“I love it when you insult me, baby.” Wiggling his eyebrows, he licked his lips. “So, what? You’ve been waiting for me?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, I didn’t want things to be weird, but I knew I couldn’t be wrong. I see the way you look at me when you think I’m not paying attention.” Biting your lip, you turned to look at him for a moment. “I’ve wanted to kiss you since you shot me finger guns and called me babe.”

Rubbing at the back of his neck nervously, he hummed. “Most of the time that scares women away. Are you sure there’s nothing wrong with you?”

“We’re all a little crazy, I guess. I think that’s why we’ve survived this long.” Your smile was contagious, and he couldn’t help but grin back, his arm moving across the center console, his hand open and palm up. 

You adjusted your grip on the wheel to the other hand, reaching out with your right and letting your fingers slot between his. He squeezed your hand, his eyes fixed out the windshield as you took the familiar highway back towards the house.

The ride back was comfortably silent, your fingers intertwined the whole way. Denki’s heart was pounding against his ribcage as he tried to think of what to do or say next. You, however, had other ideas. 

You turned onto the main road that led into the once gated community. He furrowed his brows, confused when you make a left down an unfamiliar street. The houses here were just as abandoned, all of their front doors marked with a spray painted red x.

“We marked them after we went through the houses, so we would remember where we’d already checked. It took us about a week to get through the entire neighborhood.” You explained, somehow knowing what he was thinking.

The road ended in a cul-de-sac, and you pulled the truck around in a circle until it was facing the exit, letting go of his hand so you could shift it into park and turn off the engine. He watched as you unbuckled your seat belt and shifted the seat back away from the steering wheel, his lungs seizing as you climbed over the center console and into his lap.

“Not that I’m complaining, but-” He hands moved to grip your waist and keep you steady as your straddled him, your knees on either side of his hips. 

“I’m going to get my kiss, and I’m not going to do it in that house with the rest of those idiots around.” Your hand moved to his hip, fingers pressing the release on his seat belt. He let go of you long enough to pull the offending nylon belt off of him, the sound of the metal slapping against the door as it sprung back into place nearly startling him out of his skin. 

“Yes ma’am.” Swallowing thickly, he pushed a piece of your hair away from your face and tucked it behind your ear. 

The next few moments were in slow motion, eyes fluttering shut, and chests pressing together as you moved closer. His palm slid to cup the side of your neck, your head tilting slightly as your lips finally met.

It took Denki every ounce of control he had not to let his quirk discharge when he finally got to taste your lips. It was everything he’d been hoping for and more. You tasted like the Dr.Pepper you’d gotten when you’d stopped at the pharmacy, and he could smell the scent of your shampoo now that he was close enough. He was addicted almost instantly.

Your lips were soft and pillowy, and he pressed you closer, wanting more. The feel of your hands on his shoulders, nails raking down the front of his t-shirt, and the quiet moan that left you when his right hand squeezed your hip was almost his undoing, but he held on. He would take this at whatever pace you wanted. You were in control.

You pulled away, gasping for air, your nose brushing against his and breath mingling. “You okay?” It was probably a stupid question, but he had to ask. If you felt anything like he did, then you were doing just fine.

“Mmm.” His sentiments exactly. Your tongue darted out to wet your lips, a smile gracing them. “I kind of want more. Is it too soon? Maybe.”

“Well,” his voice dropped to a whisper. “I’ve been telling myself for weeks that we could all die tomorrow, and that I shouldn’t be scared and just go for it, so if that’s what you need to hear…”

“Yep, that’s what I needed.” Blinking at him and biting your lip, your hips ground down against his, the sound of his groan filling the truck. “Fuck it, right? You only live once, and all that shit.”

“Fuck, yes. Bless up, Drake.” He let his hands dip under the hem of your t-shirt, the calloused pads of his fingers sliding over your soft skin. 

You sat back and ripped your shirt over your head so suddenly he wasn’t prepared for the movement, and he grabbed your waist again to steady you. “I’ve waited too damn long, Denki. Please, I need you, okay?”

Nodding, he swallowed down his nerves, wanting to show you how much he needed you, too. “You got it, princess. Whatever you want.”

“Shirt off. Pants, too.” 

As hot as the moment was, the next few minutes were filled with a lot of giggling and awkward movements as you both tried to undress in the passenger seat of the truck. Denki had the advantage because he was still sitting in the seat, and he just needed to pull his pants and boxers down around his thighs. 

You, on the other hand, had your ass pressed against the windshield as you pulled off your boots and tried to tug your skinny jeans down your legs. He tried to help as best he could, keeping you upright and tugging on the denim one-handed until you were able to step out of them. Black lace panties followed, and then you were back on his lap, your mouth pressed to his as your hand wrapped around his aching cock.

Breathless and still laughing, he moaned as your tongues battled for dominance, his hands roaming up and down your sides as you tugged on his hair. Warm fingers moved between the apex of your thighs, dipping through your folds, causing you to break the kiss, throwing your head back. Denki took the opportunity to mouth at your neck, teeth grazing along your skin, biting and sucking marks into your flesh. He inserted one finger inside of you, groaning as your body squeezed around the digit. You were warm and so wet, and he imagined what it would feel like, your muscles clenching down around his cock when he was buried inside of you.

He timed the thrusting of his fingers with the slow drag of your hand around his cock, your moans filling his ears as you rocked back against his hand. He inserted a second finger, scissoring them and stretching you out, taking his time to prepare you. He wanted this to be good, but with the way you felt around him, the way your body felt pressed against him, and the noises you were making, he wasn’t sure how long he was going to last.

Thumb rubbing against your clit, he added a third finger, the lewd squelching noises coming from your cunt enough to make his eyes roll back. You were chanting his name in his ear, your forehead pressed against his shoulder as your body rolled against him, your strokes losing momentum.  He couldn’t wait any longer.

Pulling his hand from you slowly, he lifted you to sit back a little, adjusting himself and guiding you back towards him. You raised up on your knees, hands on his shoulders to steady yourself, cheeks flushed and lips swollen from biting down on them. You looked so beautiful, and he thanked whoever it was that put him right here in this moment with you. 

You smiled at him, and he heard your shaky intake of breath as you lined yourself up and sunk down on his cock. You moaned in tandem, your nails biting into his skin as your grip tightened, hips stilling as he bottomed out inside of you. Denki was grateful for the cracked windows because the breeze that blew through the car felt nice against his burning skin, the beads of sweat dripping down his temple turning cold, and making him shiver. 

The realization that even though the windows were cracked open, there was no one around to hear the two of you. Grinning, he thought of all the ways he could make you scream once you were ready for him to move, and he couldn’t wait to hear you cry out his name.

You didn’t keep him waiting long, your cunt squeezing around him was all the indication he needed to start moving. Holding onto your hips tightly, he bucked up into you, reveling in the way you moaned, his toes curling as your hips ground down in sync with his. 

Your body welcomed him in with little resistance, gripping his cock, the warm and wet slide as he plunged in and out of you making him dizzy. He focused his attention on unclasping your bra with one hand, pulling it down your arms and letting your breasts spill free from their confines, his head ducking down and his mouth immediately latching onto your hardened nipple. 

Your moaning became louder, pussy clenching around him like a vice, unintelligible babbles spilling from your lips as he sucked, teeth grazing the hardened bud, his other hand massaging your other breast.

“Denki, Denki...please. Fuck, I need to come, please.”

Grunting in response, he let your nipple go with a pop, back straightening as he sat up. His fingers brushed along your cheek, turning you to face him properly, his thumb pulling on your bottom lip. “Need to come already, Y/N?”

“Yes, fuck, feels so good, Denki. Please.” Your tongue darted out to lick the pad of his thumb and he shivered again. He could feel the blood in his body traveling south, the wrecked look on your face as you bucked down against him driving him to the edge.

He used his now spit slicked thumb to rub against your clit in tight circles as he slammed into you, teeth nipping on your earlobe as he rasped in your ear. “God, fuck, come for me Y/N. Come on my cock, baby.”

Later on, he would tease you and tell you that even though you were a few blocks away, he wouldn’t be surprised if the rest of your group didn’t hear the noise you made when you reached your end. Your entire body locked up, trembling violently, the cry of his name that left your lips throwing him over the edge as well. He buried his face in your shoulder, his arms wrapping around you as his cock twitched, filling you with thick ropes of cum. It was so much that he felt it leaking out of you as you slumped together to catch your breath, even though he was still inside you. 

After a while you sat back a little, peering at him with your face still flushed, tears clinging to your lashes.

“You alright?” He brushed the wetness away with his thumb, biting his lip as he gazed at you fondly.

Nodding, you pushed your hair back from your face, a small smile on your lips. “I’m great. That was perfect. God, why did you wait so long, Denki?”

Rolling his eyes, he leaned forward to kiss you softly. “Good things come to those who wait and all that, you know?”

“Okay, but you were just scared I’d reject you, weren’t you?” You pinched his arm playfully, giggling at him when he winced and rubbed at the red mark you’d left.

“Maybe, but it was worth the wait, wasn’t it?” 

“You could say that.” Reaching up to pat down his mussed up hair, you fixed him with a serious look. “At least if I die tomorrow, I’ll know I was given the best dicking down I’ve ever received, and that it was from a top 20 pro hero to boot.”

“You just want me for my hero status, babe. Admit it.” He grinned, tickling your side.

“You caught me, Chargebolt. Now, let’s get cleaned up and get back before Bakugou comes looking for us and finds out we fucked in here. He’s going to be so pissed.”

“Let him be pissed.” Denki wrapped his arms around you and pulled you back to him, his lips finding yours again.

And for a few moments, he forgot that the world was ending and that the two of you could be ripped apart in seconds by hungry flesh-eating zombies

You were another accidental fortunate event that he’d stumbled into, and if that’s all that his life was meant to be full of, well, he didn’t mind it at all. 

#kaminari denki #kaminari denki x reader #bnha x reader #bnharem collab #kaminari denki smut #mha x reader #mha smut #mha #bnha smut #bnha #kingexpl0sionmurder writes #denki kaminari #denki kaminari x reader #denki kaminari smut

[dramarising-replacement]

G1 Hoarder Revamp and the Mountain of Salt

Can we all just acknowledge how much of a total fuck up the new G1 ping system is? I feel bad because they obviously went through so much work and beta testing for this system but it’s absolutely garbage in practice. This isn’t meant as a huge roast (even though I do think the creators could do with getting knocked down a few pegs given how poorly they’ve treated people through this entire process, oops) but I hope they at least see this and see things that they can work on. Obviously, going to them and sharing this stuff in person isn’t possible since L from arcane is notorious for gossiping and overall not super trustworthy, so anon route we go. I’ll give credit where credit is due: they definitely tried to go on the right path and the coding is good in theory. The big issue here is that they tried to fix something that was not great but worked with something that is not great and barely works. Sure there are some good things about the new ping system: if it’s not busy it’s not longer than six or seven minutes to do all of it for a few dragons, which, compared to the previous method? Pretty good timing. Helps automatically tag some colorgroups without having people confused about if their dragon counts or not, and uh... probably something else. The cons far outweigh the pros though: -sheet can only be used one at a time: terrible in theory, terrible in practice, there’s no queue system either so you’re not even guaranteed to go next even if you’ve been waiting ages. This becomes a nightmare around any holiday, as we’ve seen around notn, since everyone flocks to the ping generator and then quickly abandons after seeing the mess there. This should have been something that they found a way to work with from the start, especially since the previous spreadsheet, despite how long it took to sift through if you were actually assed to do all the specifics, could still be used by multiple people. -userface issues: going into the spreadsheet and it may all just be blank, does this mean someone’s using it? Someone isn’t? If you go ahead and assume not you’re going to get warned that you overrode someone since they get the ID to your dragon, if you don’t assume then you end up waiting for ages like an idiot and someone else swoops up the opportunity. The loading bar on the side doesn’t help give that info either since it constantly reloads due to the poorly planned code. Where users have their cells selected also doesn’t help since that isn’t always accurate. There are many times where the loading bar isn’t seen going, there isn’t any visible text on the screen, no comment in the box, but it’s still in use. This isn’t viable for anyone, especially not people who don’t fully understand how the system works. If you’re going to make it for only one person’s use at a time, you need to ensure it’s easier to see what’s going on for everyone. -laggy as all get out: sure, I don’t have to go through 15 pages of different types of pings on the old G1 pinglist and shovel through all the duplicates and specifics list people, but having more than 13 dragons or even doing a bigger lair sale (or even just anything during notn) means you get to wait for the program to chug away for ages (as well as the easy chance for someone to just cut in halfway through a load and have you start all over again or wait) and hope that the three people behind you don’t get impatient or angry as you have to do three separate input sessions rather than massing them all together as you could with the previous spreadsheet. -poorly designed aesthetically: maybe this may sound petty to some, but the design of the system is pretty terrible in terms of layout and color choice. This isn’t to say it’s just ugly though; after speaking about it with people who aren’t neurotypical, have disordered thinking processes, and/or have generalized issues reading things (autism spectrum, dyslexia, semi-visually impaired, etc.) it’s pretty clear that the entire thing is not accessible whatsoever for anyone who can’t immediately decipher what anything is. Black text on bright red is not a good thing for most people beyond old MySpace edgies. If you, as someone without reading or comprehension difficulties, are having a difficult time focusing on it: maybe consider how difficult it’d be for anyone else. The way the rules or tutorial section is laid out also does not help in terms of accessibility! It’s clunky and hard to read, does not flow well, and doesn’t explain as thoroughly as you may think. If you’re someone who uses coded spreadsheets often? Yeah sure, it might be understood. If you’re not? Welp. Good luck kiddo. -very poor user help: this is on the mods or creators more than the spreadsheet itself. If someone has a problem, the first thing you should do is talk with them to find the difficulty and tackle it from there. I’ve seen, multiple times now, where either N (plague) or L (arcane) straight up tell people that they can’t help them and that they should just read the guide on the front page. Like sure, they read them, but something is tricky for them and they’re asking for help. They can read the rules and guide again but without outside help, guess what? Not gonna help them. If you just keep linking them the forum or telling them to read the first page it won’t actually help anyone! One of your jobs as the creators here is to help the community that you made it for, not just parrot that they need to read. Be better. Add that to a system which is not forgiving of any mistakes whatsoever and it becomes a terrible little cocktail. Also does not help that, despite their sugar attitude about having people test it in discord servers, the creators l and r/p (both arcane) don’t actually help people who need help using it. -wait times/queue: this ties in to an earlier point, but there’s no way to organize who goes next. Sure, it might sound strange, but when you have to wait ages to get access despite you being there ahead of anon llama/drama/dingdong/animal because they can all hop in ahead of you, it becomes frustrating. People don’t always type in that itty bitty box to say what they’re doing, and people easily erase it or write over it, or they just outright ignore it. Obviously not everyone is going to do that, but it’s way too easy for people who are greedy/entitled to step over those who are being polite and patient. -no quick ping options this is also kind of minor, but at least with the old spreadsheet you could just click in and say “okay, I just want to ping XXY general for this because I have a quick sale.” Guess what: nah. You have to go through the entire chugging process and queue and everything else just to get that snippet of information on who to ping. What once took maybe five clicks is now five minutes to thirty depending on how many people are using it. Wanna quick check if a dragon with XYZ colours you hatched is one that someone wants specifically? Nah, fuck you. You have to input all the data and wait instead of just doing what was once a super easy quick search. There is so much other shit wrong with this system and I’m honestly surprised N (plague) allowed them to do this. Sure, the old pinglist could have done with some updating, but that should have been done in the form of clearing redundant double pings, maybe a way to sort through specifics like ‘male only’ and mass copy names there. Quality of life things, not this just... total mess. I understand that L and R/P got it into their heads that they needed to fix it and that they wanted to take over the entire system themselves, but they should have kept their pride out of it for once. The sheet to input what dragons you want is also another entire nightmare. It’s frustrating to go through the google poll a dozen times to say exactly what colors/eyes/gender/pasta-shape/siesta-fiesta under the sun you want rather than have a quick way to input it by drop-downs or even just a text based option like the old one had. It’s so easy to forget what you put in or which one you want to put in this time, so easy to end up making mistakes that you don’t see, etc. It’s just not an effective system. It’s great in theory, and sure, it’s all sparkly and new, but it’s like admiring an aluminum trash can. Shiny and sparkly under the sun, still holding a whole lot of hot garbage though. I understand that some people may find it easier, and that’s great! I’ve used it for a few things and yeah, it’s okay, but I wish the old one was back given all the grief and frustration this one has caused. Obviously I’m not in the place to be like DO THIS OR DO THAT since I’m not the one making the sheet here, but I do feel like the people who use it have every right to give commentary and feedback where possible. Even moreso when the creators and team aren’t actually as welcoming as they try to appear to be. As much as it sucks, a lot of L and R/P’s (primarily L) false niceties have kind of come to the surface lately which makes this whole situation just that much more awkward. If people don’t feel like they can approach you because they know you’ll rip into them here or on the anon site immediately, maybe you shouldn’t be a main creator of something for the user base or a mod for a bigger group. Just some side-thought to all this other stuff. Big post, big rambles, I can’t bring myself to organise it though because I’m pretty fed up and tired. Take from this what you may, but basically fix your shit new G1 Hoarder peeps.

#Drama #Rant #Flight Rising #Long post #Shady #User #submission

[violett-writes]

Monotone Donations

"Are you and Dream dating?" Your monotone slightly British text to talk reads off the $10 donation from alexiscarter3215.

You laugh, blushing slightly at the question as you continue to build your trusty restaurant on the Dream SMP server. You and Dream have been friends for about a year now. You had built a small friendship with George when he introduced the two of you, claiming you to be the 'woman version of Dream'. And it's just skyrocketed from there. You were introduced to Sapnap, who complained at being the last one introduced in the Dream Team. Then Tommy, Tubbo, Wilbur, Niki, and so many more people. It made your head spin, honestly. You jumped from being a semi-small streamer to having a solid fanbase.

"Thank you for the dono, alexiscarter3215." You smile at your facecam, holding up a little heart. The chat goes wild, whizzing past too fast to read but you're sure they're upset that you didn't answer their question.

You had to think about it for a second. You two sure acted like you were dating. Between the constant guest appearances on each other's streams, the twitter flirting, and the Minecraft beds next to each other on his server, you could see why others would be confused. But you weren't dating. You mean, you two did facetime every night and he did know all your secrets. But you don't even know what he looks like yet and....

Shit. You have a fat crush on Dream. The realization that you finally admitted it to yourself making you pause slightly before your phone buzzes, a notification from Twitter. You spot Dream's username and pause your game. "Let's find out what Dream tweeted folks." You tell your stream, planning on ending it soon anyways so this was the perfect segway to wrapping it up. You're thankful for the distraction as you weren't even sure what you were going to say next.

!TWITTER!

Dream @.Dream

proud to say i haven't lost no simp september 😤👏🏻 but can't say the same for @.nightmare

You read it aloud, blush covering your face and you thank your shitty camera quality for once. Hopefully your small face cam in the corner of the screen was too tiny for your viewers to see the pink tint to your cheeks.

"What do you think I should reply, guys?" You ask your stream, leaning in to see the chat. Most of the suggestions were either to profess your love for him or were to meme him. You chose the later, as you weren't 100% sure if he liked you back.

"Okay, okay, we'll meme him." Your fingers expertly move across the screen before you press tweet. "Go blow it up guys." You set your phone down and make your facecam the only thing viewers can see on the stream.

"That'll be the end of my stream for today! Thank you all for joining and remember, don't you dare lose no simp september to block men!" You wave goodbye to your viewers, raiding Sapnap quickly before leaning back in your chair, sighing loudly. You hear another ding from your phone.

Dream @.Dream

proud to say i haven't lost no simp september 😤👏🏻 but can't say the same for @.nightmare

Night @.nightmare

no ❤️

Dream @.Dream

:(

You giggle at his tweet, liking it as a text from him quickly follows.

dweam

how dare you not simp for me?

night

I should say the same to you Big D

You giggle, stealing Tommy's nickname from him. You watched enough of Tommy to remember all the different names he has used for Dream.

dweam

okay, pls lose my number

night K.

You giggle, biting your nails slightly as you wait for his reply. Instead of a text, you get an incoming facetime from him. You decline his call, choosing to keep the bit going. After a few moments, you get a facetime from Sapnap. You answer it, confused as to why he would be calling you out of the blue.

"Answer Dream." Was all he said before hanging up. You laugh loudly, covering your mouth so as to not wake your housemates before deciding to take the bit to twitter.

!TWITTER!

Night @.nightmare

i hate men. dhmu. only the real ones know.

Dream facetimes you again and you pick up sniffling slightly.

"(Y/N)? Are you okay??? I didn't mean it. I saw your tweet, please... I didn't mean it." He says, concerned as he hides his face from the camera.

You finally break, laughing loudly as you put the camera down so you can hold your stomach, wheezing. "Dream, bud. I was just joking around." You hear him let out a sigh of relief.

"You should come to Florida." He suddenly states, making you choke on the sip of water you were drinking.

"Uh..." You pause for a moment.

"I mean if you're uncomfort-"

"Yes." You cut him off, smiling into the camera brightly. "Yes, I will come to Florida."

The next two weeks were a blur, Dream insisted on paying for your ticket to fly to Florida. And when the boys found out that you were visiting without asking them first, they were super jealous. So jealous, in fact, that they both booked flights that phone call. They were nice enough to give you two days alone with Dream, but only after an awkward amount of silence and a lot of text notifications where you're pretty sure Dream threatened to leave their ass at the airport if they didn't come later. Your knowledge of this only coming from the screenshots George sent you of Dream's threats.

The day of the flight, you were incredibly nervous. You had picked a soft plum colored sweatshirt with simple black leggings and converes. You wanted to dress up a little, but you also knew that you would be uncomfortable the whole flight if you did. Hopefully Dream didn't mind you dressing down for the first in person meeting with him.

night

leaving now for the airport. wish me luck

You send the text and shut your phone off as you enter the uber. A short 30 minute drive later and you're walking through the airport. You smile slightly, airports seem like they exist in a different dimension all together. You don't judge someone having a drink at 9 a.m. at an airport, because well... they're in an airport. You buy a water once you get past security, drinking it nervously as you wait for your flight to be called.

After a 30 minute wait, your flight is finally called. You finally reach your window seat and check your phone.

dweam

i hope u don't die.

night

how kind of u. we're leaving now :))) see u soon!!!!!

You smile and turn off your phone, leaning back and closing your eyes as you drift off.

The kind old lady seated next to you shakes you awake, telling you that you're landing soon. You flush red, not realizing that you slept through the whole flight. You probably looked ridiculous.

Once you land, you quickly pull out your phone and turn it on. You notice that you had 3 unread messages from Dream.

dweam

i'm so kind

but fr i hope u have a safe flight.

text me when u land. i got here a little early... guess i was just too excited

night

we just landed!!!

You blush at the connotation of his text. He was genuinely excited to see you? When everyone was finally able to leave their seats, you grab your overhead luggage and make your way off the plane. You make your way to the baggage claim and watch the bags intently, waiting for your polka dot bag to show itself.

You feel a tap on your shoulder and you turn around, coming face to face with a very tall blonde man.

"Oh- sorry, am in your way?" You mumble, moving over for them to grab their luggage.

"(Y/N)?" He asks you, his voice unsure and hesitant.

Your eyebrows raise in shock and you turn around again, looking at him closely. You cover your mouth in shock, "D-Dream?" You ask for a moment, unsure if this is real.

He nods, laughing and you throw yourself at him, wrapping your arms around him in a tight hug. Tears start to come to your eyes as he hugs you back tightly. You pull back so that you could look up at his face, but still keeping your arms wrapped around him. "Dream!" You sniffle, your voice a little scratchy from holding back the tears.

"(Y/N)! Are you crying?" He asks, laughing. He is so much more attractive than you could have ever imagined. You sniffle, wiping your nose on your sleeve as you hit his chest lightly.

"Don't make fun of me. This is easily the best thing that has happened in my life." You giggle softly, looking back at the conveyer belt to see your bag. You quickly rush to grab it before it disappears on you.

You turn back to Dream, your bag trailing behind you as you pull it along. Dream grabs your carryon much to your complaints.

"I got it, (Y/N), don't worry." He chuckles, his deep voice making butterflies appear in your stomach. As the two of you walk to his car, chatting excitedly about what the plans are for the week, Dream grabs your free hand, linking your fingers together. Blush creeps up your neck as you pretend nothing is different. Once you reach his car, Dream grabs both of your luggage and puts them in the trunk as you get into the passenger side.

"So, I don't know if you rented a hotel room or something..."He trails off, tapping the steering wheel nervously.

Your eyes widen slightly, you didn't know he wanted you to. "Oh! I, uh, I totally forgot. I can book one right now, though. No biggie." You quickly pull out your phone, panicking a little as you search hotels near me.

Dream pushes your phone away, chuckling. "No, no. (Y/N), you don't have to. I didn't mean it like that. I just wasn't sure if you were comfortable staying at my apartment."

You let out a sigh of relief. "Of course I'm fine with that you dork." You punch his arm softly, "I thought for a second you didn't want me there!" You tease him.

Dream feigns being hurt by your punch before gently grabbing your hand again. "Of course I want you there." He mutters softly.

The words set your stomach aflame as your intestines tie themselves into a knot. He wanted you there.

#dream team #dream team appreciation #dreamwastaken #dream #clay #dreamwastaken fanfic #dream fanfic #clay fanfic #sapnap #nick #sapnap fanfic #nick fanfic #georgenotfound #george #georgenotfound fanfic #george fanfic #dream team if you see this #no you didn't #but also hi im 19

[hkblack]

Beyond Grace - Chapter 1: Nightmare

Hi. In October 2021, I posted in the DIWS Server that I had a thought of Crowley, wings out, eyes determined, gripping the flaming sword, ready to kick ass and take names--but I can't draw so I decided to write the story of how he got there. And I posted a small snippet of the first chapter. A few months and lots of cheerleading from that group later and now here we are. This story is complete and you'll see updates on Tuesdays and Fridays.

There are a lot of people I thank in the Author's Notes, but this story literally wouldn't have been published if it weren't for @ambrasue and her tireless beta-reading work. So I'm shouting her name from the rooftops and singing her praises.

Rated: T, No Archive Warnings Apply Summary: After Aziraphale is discoporated Crowley goes on a mission to do what he does best. Recruiting help from both of their former Head Offices is easier said than done, especially when Hell thinks the whole thing is a ruse, and Heaven thinks you’re on the hunt for more angels to corrupt.

Read Here

Snippet under the cut

Crowley skyrocketed out of his comfortable nest of blankets and pillows. A pressure throbbed at the back of his eyes, a warning of some nightmare happening somewhere in the world. There was a burning in between his shoulder blades where his wings begged to burst free into the mortal realm. His gaze darted around the room frantically searching for the cause of his discomfort. Seeing nothing, he closed his eyes and extended his senses out through the rest of his apartment, searching, looking, hunting, out of his building, passing by the Bentley, winding through all of Mayfair and then directly towards Soho.

“Fuck,” he growled. In two snaps he was out of the bed and dressed, striding towards his safe, DaVinci’s work already swinging open away from the wall.

With quick and precise hand motions, the safe soon swung open as well, and Crowley grabbed the one artifact that managed to survive Adam’s reset two years prior—the original Bentley’s tire iron. Crowley had felt a bit like an idiot at first for hanging on to it. He had a thought that maybe he could use it as a way to help direct bursts of Hellfire at incoming angels without hurting his angel, should the need ever arise. But after the whole trial debacle, it had mostly just stayed put, collecting dust next to the empty thermos.

Now though, now.

Crowley took in a deep breath, closing his eyes behind his shades and concentrating. He gripped the tire iron in his hand tightly, reveling in the cold metal underneath his skin, grounding him, as he reached out for Aziraphale in the bookshop. He had millennia of practice and was able to latch onto the angel’s essence easily, but there, right there, someone else, some thing else was with him. The other thing was mostly angelic but something was wrong. Beyond the flares from Aziraphale indicating that he was most definitely in danger, this other presence had the feel of being something very dangerous.

Crowley let out the breath he was holding and snapped his fingers.

--

In retrospect, appearing right next to a battle of two mostly Holy beings was not the smartest decision the demon had ever made in his life.

It also probably wasn’t the worst he had ever made, either...

Keep Reading

#good omens #good omens fanfiction #fanfic #fanfiction #HK Writes #Beyond Grace #ineffable husbands

[mostlysignssomeportents]

20 years a blogger

It's been twenty years, to the day, since I published my first blog-post.

I'm a blogger.

Blogging - publicly breaking down the things that seem significant, then synthesizing them in longer pieces - is the defining activity of my days.

https://boingboing.net/2001/01/13/hey-mark-made-me-a.html

Over the years, I've been lauded, threatened, sued (more than once). I've met many people who read my work and have made connections with many more whose work  I wrote about. Combing through my old posts every morning is a journey through my intellectual development.

It's been almost exactly a year I left Boing Boing, after 19 years. It wasn't planned, and it wasn't fun, but it was definitely time. I still own a chunk of the business and wish them well. But after 19 years, it was time for a change.

A few weeks after I quit Boing Boing, I started a solo project. It's called Pluralistic: it's a blog that is published simultaneously on Twitter, Mastodon, Tumblr, a newsletter and the web. It's got no tracking or ads. Here's the very first edition:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/19/pluralist-19-feb-2020/

I don't often do "process posts" but this merits it. Here's how I built Pluralistic and here's how it works today, after nearly a year.

I get up at 5AM and make coffee. Then I sit down on the sofa and open a huge tab-group, and scroll through my RSS feeds using Newsblur.

I spend the next 1-2 hours winnowing through all the stuff that seems important. I have a chronic pain problem and I really shouldn't sit on the sofa for more than 10 minutes, so I use a timer and get up every 10 minutes and do one minute of physio.

After a couple hours, I'm left with 3-4 tabs that I want to write articles about that day. When I started writing Pluralistic, I had a text file on my desktop with some blank HTML I'd tinkered with to generate a layout; now I have an XML file (more on that later).

First I go through these tabs and think up metadata tags I want to use for each; I type these into the template using my text-editor (gedit), like this:

   <xtags>

process, blogging, pluralistic, recursion, navel-gazing

   </xtags>

Each post has its own little template. It needs an anchor tag (for this post, that's "hfbd"), a title ("20 years a blogger") and a slug ("Reflections on a lifetime of reflecting"). I fill these in for each post.

Then I come up with a graphic for each post: I've got a giant folder of public domain clip-art, and I'm good at using all the search tools for open-licensed art: the Library of Congress, Wikimedia, Creative Commons, Flickr Commons, and, ofc, Google Image Search.

I am neither an artist nor a shooper, but I've been editing clip art since I created pixel-art versions of the Frankie Goes to Hollywood glyphs using Bannermaker for the Apple //c in 1985 and printed them out on enough fan-fold paper to form a border around my bedroom.

As I create the graphics, I pre-compose Creative Commons attribution strings to go in the post; there's two versions, one for the blog/newsletter and one for Mastodon/Twitter/Tumblr. I compose these manually.

Here's a recent one:

Blog/Newsletter:

(<i>Image: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:QAnon_in_red_shirt_(48555421111).jpg">Marc Nozell</a>, <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en">CC BY</a>, modified</i>)

Twitter/Masto/Tumblr:

Image: Marc Nozell (modified)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:QAnon_in_red_shirt_(48555421111).jpg

CC BY

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

This is purely manual work, but I've been composing these CC attribution strings since CC launched in 2003, and they're just muscle-memory now. Reflex.

These attribution strings, as well as anything else I'll need to go from Twitter to the web (for example, the names of people whose Twitter handles I use in posts, or images I drop in, go into the text file). Here's how the post looks at this point in the composition.

<hr>

<a name="hfbd"></a>

<img src="https://craphound.com/images/20yrs.jpg">

<h1>20 years a blogger</h1><xtagline>Reflections on a lifetime of reflecting.</xtagline>

<img src="https://craphound.com/images/frnklogo.jpg">

See that <img> tag in there for frnklogo.jpg? I snuck that in while I was composing this in Twitter. When I locate an image on the web I want to use in a post, I save it to a dir on my desktop that syncs every 60 seconds to the /images/ dir on my webserver.

As I save it, I copy the filename to my clipboard, flip over to gedit, and type in the <img> tag, pasting the filename. I've typed <img src="https://craphound.com/images/ CTRL-V"> tens of thousands of times - muscle memory.

Once the thread is complete, I copy each tweet back into gedit, tabbing back and forth, replacing Twitter handles and hashtags with non-Twitter versions, changing the ALL CAPS EMPHASIS to the extra-character-consuming *asterisk-bracketed emphasis*.

My composition is greatly aided both 20 years' worth of mnemonic slurry of semi-remembered posts and the ability to search memex.craphound.com (the site where I've mirrored all my Boing Boing posts) easily.

A huge, searchable database of decades of thoughts really simplifies the process of synthesis.

Next I port the posts to other media. I copy the headline and paste it into a new Tumblr compose tab, then import the image and tag the post "pluralistic."

Then I paste the text of the post into Tumblr and manually select, cut, and re-paste every URL in the post (because Tumblr's automatic URL-to-clickable-link tool's been broken for 10+ months).

Next I past the whole post into a Mastodon compose field. Working by trial and error, I cut it down to <500 characters, breaking at a para-break and putting the rest on my clipboard. I post, reply, and add the next item in the thread until it's all done.

*Then* I hit publish on my Twitter thread. Composing in Twitter is the most unforgiving medium I've ever worked in. You have to keep each stanza below 280 chars. You can't save a thread as a draft, so as you edit it, you have to pray your browser doesn't crash.

And once you hit publish, you can't edit it. Forever. So you want to publish Twitter threads LAST, because the process of mirroring them to Tumblr and Mastodon reveals typos and mistakes (but there's no way to save the thread while you work!).

Now I create a draft Wordpress post on pluralistic.net, and create a custom slug for the page (today's is "two-decades"). Saving the draft generates the URL for the page, which I add to the XML file.

Once all the day's posts are done, I make sure to credit all my sources in another part of that master XML file, and then I flip to the command line and run a bunch of python scripts that do MAGIC: formatting the master file as a newsletter, a blog post, and a master thread.

Those python scripts saved my ASS. For the first two months of Pluralistic, i did all the reformatting by hand. It was a lot of search-replace (I used a checklist) and I ALWAYS screwed it up and had to debug, sometimes taking hours.

Then, out of the blue, a reader - Loren Kohnfelder - wrote to me to point out bugs in the site's RSS. He offered to help with text automation and we embarked on a month of intensive back-and-forth as he wrote a custom suite for me.

Those programs take my XML file and spit out all the files I need to publish my site, newsletter and master thread (which I pin to my profile). They've saved me more time than I can say. I probably couldn't kept this up without Loren's generous help (thank you, Loren!).

I open up the output from the scripts in gedit. I paste the blog post into the Wordpress draft and copy-paste the metadata tags into WP's "tags" field. I preview the post, tweak as necessary, and publish.

(And now I write this, I realize I forgot to mention that while I'm doing the graphics, I also create a square header image that makes a grid-collage out of the day's post images, using the Gimp's "alignment" tool)

(because I'm composing this in Twitter, it would be a LOT of work to insert that information further up in the post, where it would make sense to have it - see what I mean about an unforgiving medium?)

(While I'm on the subject: putting the "add tweet to thread" and "publish the whole thread" buttons next to each other is a cruel joke that has caused me to repeatedly publish before I was done, and deleting a thread after you publish it is a nightmare)

Now I paste the newsletter file into a new mail message, address it to my Mailman server, and create a custom subject for the day, send it, open the Mailman admin interface in a browser, and approve the message.

Now it's time to create that anthology post you can see pinned to my Mastodon and Twitter accounts. Loren's script uses a template to produce all the tweets for the day, but it's not easy to get that pre-written thread into Twitter and Mastodon.

Part of the problem is that each day's Twitter master thread has a tweet with a link to the day's Mastodon master thread ("Are you trying to wean yourself off Big Tech? Follow these threads on the #fediverse at @[email protected]. Here's today's edition: LINK").

So the first order of business is to create the Mastodon thread, pin it, copy the link to it, and paste it into the template for the Twitter thread, then create and pin the Twitter thread.

Now it's time to get ready for tomorrow. I open up the master XML template file and overwrite my daily working file with its contents. I edit the file's header with tomorrow's date, trim away any "Upcoming appearances" that have gone by, etc.

Then I compose tomorrow's retrospective links. I open tabs for this day a year ago, 5 years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, and (now) 20 years ago:

http://memex.craphound.com/2020/01/14

http://memex.craphound.com/2016/01/14

http://memex.craphound.com/2011/01/14

http://memex.craphound.com/2006/01/14

http://memex.craphound.com/2001/01/14

I go through each day, and open anything I want to republish in its own tab, then open the OP link in the next tab (finding it in the @internetarchive if necessary). Then I copy my original headline and the link to the article into tomorrow's XML file, like so:

#10yrsago Disney World’s awful Tiki Room catches fire <a href="https://thedisneyblog.com/2011/01/12/fire-reported-at-magic-kingdom-tiki-room/">https://thedisneyblog.com/2011/01/12/fire-reported-at-magic-kingdom-tiki-room/</a>

And NOW my day is done.

So, why do I do all this?

First and foremost, I do it for ME. The memex I've created by thinking about and then describing every interesting thing I've encountered is hugely important for how I understand the world. It's the raw material of every novel, article, story and speech I write.

And I do it for the causes I believe in. There's stuff in this world I want to change for the better. Explaining what I think is wrong, and how it can be improved, is the best way I know for nudging it in a direction I want to see it move.

The more people I reach, the more it moves.

When I left Boing Boing, I lost access to a freestanding way of communicating. Though I had popular Twitter and Tumblr accounts, they are at the mercy of giant companies with itchy banhammers and arbitrary moderation policies.

I'd long been a fan of the POSSE - Post Own Site, Share Everywhere - ethic, the idea that your work lives on platforms you control, but that it travels to meet your readers wherever they are.

Pluralistic posts start out as Twitter threads because that's the most constrained medium I work in, but their permalinks (each with multiple hidden messages in their slugs) are anchored to a server I control.

When my threads get popular, I make a point of appending the pluralistic.net permalink to them.

When I started blogging, 20 years ago, blogger.com had few amenities. None of the familiar utilities of today's media came with the package.

Back then, I'd manually create my headlines with <h2> tags. I'd manually create discussion links for each post on Quicktopic. I'd manually paste each post into a Yahoo Groups email. All the guff I do today to publish Pluralistic is, in some way, nothing new.

20 years in, blogging is still a curious mix of both technical, literary and graphic bodgery, with each day's work demanding the kind of technical minutuae we were told would disappear with WYSIWYG desktop publishing.

I grew up in the back-rooms of print shops where my dad and his friends published radical newspapers, laying out editions with a razor-blade and rubber cement on a light table. Today, I spend hours slicing up ASCII with a cursor.

I go through my old posts every day. I know that much - most? - of them are not for the ages. But some of them are good. Some, I think, are great. They define who I am. They're my outboard brain.

#pluralistic

[sofiejoinedthegame]

My idea for an arc involving the dreamon plot:

First I wanna point out that: yes this is a dream redemption arc, but I haven’t done Tommy dirty here, making him just forgive and forget everything. I truly believe that a Dream-redemption-arc could and should be able to co-exist with a “not undermining what Tommy has been through”-arc, and so this is my take on it:

So going from a standpoint of the armor being possessed since the beginning of season 2 (it might even have been Tubbo himself that paved the path for the dreamon to infest the armor after him and Fundys failed exorcism), we see the dreamon/Nightmare (I’ll be switching between the two “names”) slowly getting more and more of a hold on dream, manipulating him, whispering in his head, amplifying feelings of chaos, hate and destruction. Telling him the ends justify the means. 

And as the final has now made clear, then Dream ended up growing obsessed with power and control. What was ones just a mean to make sure the people and the server was happy and functional, the dreamon turned into an addiction. And as with any addiction there comes a withdrawal. Thrown in prison, Nightmare and the dreamon gone, his power striped and the control taken from his hands yet given back in his head, it all becomes too much in a cell filled with so little. And so Dream starts losing it, exhibiting extreme mood swings during visits. Going from sad and manipulative with Tommy, angry at Sapnap, emotionless with Puffy and so on. Because while Nightmare may be gone from his head, this is what he has been conditioned to do and old habits die hard. 

And for Tubbo hearing about this, it seems that Dream is no less crazy in prison as he was free. And so whatever suspicions he may have had about Dream’s armor and weapons as he put them away, is just pushed to the back burner. But as time goes on and the visitors keeps coming, giving him more human contact than he’s had in months, Dream slowly starts coming back to himself.

Meanwhile the dreamon, having deemed Dream useless and left him to rot in prison, has instead shifted it’s focus onto Ranboo the interesting boy with endermen abilities. After all, Nightmare had already been getting close to Ranboo, using him to do it’s bidding (cue Ranboo’s blackouts and Dreams voice in his head). And so using Ranboo’s enderman-teleportation skills (which I headcanon will be a skill Ranboo will acquire sooner or later much like his silktoutch hands), the dreamon steals back Nightmare (as in the armor and weapons) from Tubbo’s vault. Thereby sealing Ranboo’s fate, cause although he doesn’t wear it yet, Nightmare has now gotten too close. 

And now in full control of Ranboo, the dreamon hears of Dream’s improvement through the other members on the server. Thereby realizing that solitary confinement hasn’t broken Dream, silencing him as otherwise planned. So to keep Dream from getting to talk and Tubbo from starting to figure things out, the dreamon, hidden in the darkness of night, starts spreading the blood vines in an act of chaos intended to distract and occupy the people of the server. 

And it works. For a long time. 

Only, suspicion has started to fall on Ranboo due to his change in character. And so a plan is made to spy on him, leading the others to spot Ranboo in Nightmare talking to the egg, shaking confirmation that it will have his back when he takes over the smp. And so, connecting the dots between Ranboo’s sudden megalomania and the stolen armor of which he was suspicious of so long ago, Tubbo leads the others to the prison with hurried steps, talking about transmuted dreamons, possessed objects and how they have to speak to Dream. 

However weeks of solitary confinement without visits has left Dream in a dissociative state. The quiet rambles, for ones in his own voice, talking about how he “never meant for it to go this far” and how he “just wanted the server to be one big family” but “it lured him talking in his head” how “it got stronger and took over”. Tubbo as well as Sapnap and Fundy (having caught in) starts seeing the full picture. With Sapnap trying to comfort Dream, Fundy and Tubbo starts explaining the situation to the others. Some being saddened and forgiving and others being vary or untrusting. And while it’s hard, they come to the the agreement that Dream must be released. A cell as this was only ever meant for the crazy and uncontainable, and with the dreamon gone Dream is neither. 

And so they hide Dream in the remains of abandoned Pogtobia, that has yet to infested by the blood vines. The others taking shifts looking after him and generally using it as a meeting place where they plan the rescue of Ranboo, as well as what to do with the egg. Consequently, this constant presence and buzzing of people and life as well as predictable rutines, in turn makes Dream start to slowly function again. And kinda like a “Peeta in Hunger Games 3”-situation, he starts connecting with the others via questions, as they help him understand what happened. What was him and what was the dreamon. Showing true sadness and compassion, when hearing the consequences of his/it’s actions. And slowly but surely everyone starts to forgive him until there is only Tommy. And like no one pushes Tommy, after all this is the face of his abuser. But one day he volunteers to guard Dream for the night and I can just imagine a conversation like: 

“Why didn’t you say anything? When the dreamon left you in that prison to rot. Why didn’t you just immediately explain what was happening!?

“Why didn’t you immediately tell everyone how I abused you? 

(Pause) 

“It’s hard to explain..”

…

“I know..”

And so while Tommy may not be ready to forgive Dream, he has a better understanding of him and is able to work with him. Meaning when the final confrontation happens Dream is able to stand by his side. 

As for the final battle I would love to see Dream, faring much better, feeling confident standing by Tommy. Only to spot Ranboo in Nightmare, and for everything to just get triggered. Leading to Dream hiding away panicked in the midst of battle. So like, you’d just have the others starting to get overpowered by the dreamon and the egg with its followers. And just as everything seems lost, you heard Dream’s voice from the shadows. Because no more people should have to suffer because of him. So, using the dreamons own tricks against it, he starts talking, reaching out to Ranboo who starts to fight, weakening Nightmares grip on him. With the dreamon distraced, Tubbo gets an opportunity to start chanting, capturing the dreamon in place. And while the others fight off the blood vines, him, Fundy and Sapnap starts to exorcise it with Dream guiding Ranboo through it. 

Like it would just be the perfect ending for a possessed-Ranboo-arc (which canonically seems to be quite likely) for Dream to be the one to help him through it. Because really he’s the only one that knows how it is, and I would just love to se that interaction between Dream and Ranboo. Also it’s a good way for Dream to show his true colors, making it deserved that people choose to forgive him. And lastly, it would be a great nod to the whole “we couldn’t save Wilbur” situation. Like the whole server (minus the ones influenced by the egg) coming together to save Ranboo, not letting another one slip by. 

Now how they then end up dealing with the Egg and blood vines, I will not go into as this is already a long-ass post and it was mostly meant to just be about a dream redemption arc (also I just really haven’t thought to much about it). 

On on the smallest of notes though, I just wanna point out that though my interpretation of a dreamon-Dream redemption arc involves a quite damaged and pitiful Dream, then there’s also som real fun to be had with a more snarky and Loki like Dream 

(Obviously all roleplay btw) 

#dream redemption arc #dream smp predictions #dreamon plot #possessed Ranboo #blood vines #may be reposted when tumblr decides I’m not a robot and starts showing my posts in the tags #dream smp #dreamwastaken #ranboo #tubbo #tommyinnit #fundy #sapnap #the egg dream smp #dreamons #pandora’s vaul #tw: addiction mention #tw: dissociating mention

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

Humans are Space Orcs, “Keeping Pets.”

It’s been a while since I have given you one of Krill’s rages. Plus I got up late this morning, so lol. Hope you like it

Discord server invite https://discord.gg/VSj2EC

From the Journal of Biology and Medicine 

This research focuses primarily on the ability of the human to interact and bond with different types of species. All over the galaxy it has been seen that humans have the ability to interact with and understand different species around them in ways that are meaningful for both parties. However, a different and more interesting phenomenon witnessed on the human home world is that practice of keeping a “pet: an animal which is not considered sentient that is allowed to live and interact with the humans, sometimes sharing their houses, and even sharing their beds. No one knows what underlies this profound urge to bring other creatures into their homes, but it is a practice humans have been participating in for well over four thousands years, perhaps even, since the beginning of their existence.

-

Am I allowed o make a complaint! No no I am not asking. I was simply warning you that I am going to complain in a very round about way. I don’t really care whether you want to complain or not. I am simply angry at how everything humans do seems to be a direct attempt to make me angry, or scare e half to death. I honestly think it is on purpose, a species cannot feasibly be this reckless if that were not the case. I mean, they bring apex predators into their beds for Sanctum’s sake. Here, here let me explain.

The Dog. It basically just a fucking wolf. Yeah, once upon a time humans cuddled up to the most cunning pack predator in the world and thought it would be fun to bring them inside around their kids. I mean are you kidding me, this creature can grow to over one hundred pounds and has razor sharp K-9 teeth that can rip your throat out. It has a nose that can smell the adrenaline excretions…. It can flip the smell fear. IN fact humans say that this creature is domesticated, but may I point out to you that dogs are responsible for killing people all across the world. It’s a predator, it wasn’t to eat your face. And before you go saying , well that is only big dogs, the little dogs are worse. They are big killers trapped inside a tiny body and that makes them neurotic and angry and way more willing to just go ahead and chomp your finger right off.  And humans LOVE these creatures, they love them. They will dress them up in little sweaters  and little shoes, and they will coo over them constantly. It is HORRIFIC. They even give them to disabled people, some of the most vulnerable of their species, and they just hand them an apex predator like it’s no big deal!..... I’m getting worked up, aren't I?

The cat: So basically a tiny tiger that still has all the instincts of a tiny tiger. If it were bigger it would definitely kill you. Now luckily for us the domesticated ones only come in one size, and that size is rather small (for the most part) because if these suckers were big, they would be like tigers or pumas, and they would be more than willing to rip our face off. What is worse, at least with dogs you can argue that they are well tempered and loving, but cats. They hate you, they are using you and they know it, everyone knows it. They will come up to you to be petted and instead of walking away like a normal creature when they are done they will just claw you, just claw you no explanation to apology just claws. And what is WORSE is the people who own cats are even more delusional than the ones that own dogs because I bet you there is a human reading this right now that says well my cat is nice, or another human that thinks well yeah my cat does this sometimes, but he/she’s so cute and I love them anyway so there…. Humans are blinded by their need to touch and hold fuzzy things.

Horses: Ok, I know this one does not go inside, but hear me out on this one. It is a giant frigging deer thing that comes in as many sizes as dogs do, and one day some a hole human decided to hop on one’s back and go riding into the sunset, never mind that this thing could kick you into a state of internal hemorrhaging even “I” Would balk at.  IT i to big put it away and let it roam free, but no instead humans decided to ride it.

Rabbit: Shouldn’t you be eating these things? Also, they have clawed back feet, and sometimes they bite. Why do you want one so badly

Rats : It's a fucking rat! Like boubonic plague! Is any of that ringing a bell. This thing is literally vermin, its job is to carry diseases and be nasty, and you want to keep one in your child’s bedroom 

Guinea pigs/gerbils/ mice: See rats above, I am just saying these things are tiny rats and their job is to carry diseases. It is gross so don’t touch them.

Birds: Again with the disease thing. These guys are flying rats. Ok I get it humans love cute things that can make noise and talk, but these guys are super loud and expensive to take care of. Just do yourself a solid and let it go, it belongs out in the wild where it can be annoying outside and not inside. 

Lizards: I mean ok…. Pretty sure these carry diseases too.  Also, they will never love you and they are very expensive to keep.

Snake: it's a fucking snake! One of humanities the worst fears, and you WANT one. This thing has haunted the nightmares of your people for the past couple thousand years, and you want to cuddle it. Plus you have to feed it dead mice. Some of you have a snake so big that it is capable of swallowing medium-sized animals whole. This is literally the definition of a predator, some of them are even venomous. Why- why-why-why-why do you have one. WHY DO YOU HAVE A SNAKE. THE MIND BOGGLES!

Tarantula: *slamming noises* You guys are just fucking with me now right. Just straight fucking with me. This isn’t serious. Like we have come all this way, just for me to learn about this shit. This isn’t real, it cannot be real because that would mean that you guys are way stupider than I thought you were. I mean…. I can't…. Nope I am done I cant…. I draw the line at big ass spiders.

Why hasn’t god terminated your species yet. Surely natural selection would not encourage you to actively seek out creatures that can kill and eat you. Why, why, why are you still getting bigger. Why are you thriving. Why am I here with you, why did I decide to leave the safety of my own planet 

*incoherent screaming”

“Why is the human need to touch other living things so damn strong!. What biological purpose is this!”

Rrrrrrrraaaaaaaaahahhhhhhh

[shoeshineyboy]

tagged by the amazing @retrauxpunk thank you!!!

1) how many works do you have on ao3?

10! not loads, considering how long I’ve had the account, but a few!

2) what is your total ao3 word count?

19,592... clearly, I write very very short things (because those are the only things I have a chance of finishing)

3) how many fandoms have you written for, and what are they?

two - Ace Attorney, and the Magnus Archives!

4) what are your top 5 fics by Kudos.

On Being ‘Fine’: a Klapollo fic, where Klavier finally gets the chance to grieve - the chance Capcom never gave him. I think people appreciated that. Someone drew art for it in a discord server I’ve since left!

new world: Jonmartin, written immediately after the TMA finale ended, about them having a second chance and also the happy ending they deserved

talk about it: another Jonmartin fic written for Jonmartin week, which I ended up not doing anything else for because work kicked my ass. just them discussing their nightmares and being sweet,

better than the alternative: I got made fun of because of the Will Wood title. it’s... another Jonmartin nightmare one? I’ve genuinely forgotten one of these. I tried to make this one hurt/comfort but ended up writing full-on angst, apparently

Quick Question: a look at how Gregory Edgeworth and Raymond Shields met! I just like writing Ace Attorney backstory tbh

5) do you respond to comments?

I try to, but my AO3 account is linked to my less important email address, so I don’t often get notified of them

6) what's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

UH. all of them.

genuinely, I think we are electric, because it foreshadows one of the tragedies in Ace Attorney, and focuses on that whole bittersweetness until it hits you? also, it’s one of my favourite bits of writing, despite having the least love!

7) What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

new world, for sure! it was designed to be a happy ending, after all! it was... interesting, to write something that was a little more optimistic!

8) do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you've ever written?

I don’t, bar the Ace Attorney/Life on Mars crossover I attempted as a kid. that’s long gone, it was waaaay before AO3 even existed

9) have you ever received hate on a fic?

nope! nothing to hate! (/j)

10) Do you write smut? What kind?

I don’t, though I think I’m gonna have to learn, because I was hoping on a May Carlton/Grace Burgess hate-fucking fic but it doesn’t exist. I just think they’re fucking neat, both of them, so I guess I’ll have to do this myself

11) have you ever had a fic stolen?

I don’t think so!

12) have you ever had a fic translated?

nope, but I wouldn’t object to it!

13) have you ever co-written a fic before.

I’m a control freak, absolutely not. there is ONE friend I would write something with, but it wouldn’t be fanfic, it’d be an original thing

14) whats your favourite ship?

currently Tommy and Grace from season 1 of Peaky Blinders specifically. “I’ll break your heart” “already broken” invented love

15) whats a WIP that you want to finish but don't think you ever will?

Grey Day. I had such high hopes for this one, but I’ve run out of steam for Ace Attorney and I literally don’t have time to be writing something like this. add that to the fact that I’m trying to get something original published while I’m still young and hot, I don’t think there’s gonna be more of this for a long time

16) What are your writing strengths.

dialogue and final lines, for sure

17) what are your writing weaknesses?

not actually finishing anything, and description. I suck at writing description I do not like it

18) what are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in fic?

this isn’t something I really thought about much, but... I think it can work, or, it did work, back when it was such a pain in the ass for the reader to translate anything, but I’m not so sure it really works, now? but this is the first time I’ve ever thought about this question in my life, what do I know?

19) what was the first fandom you wrote for.

man it was probably Ace Attorney, but back in like 2007? I’ve been here for a Long time

20) what's your favourite fic you've ever written? it’s a tie between we are electric and normal things, my least-loved TMA fic! you guys hate my favourite children. normal things is Jonmartin (surprise, surprise!) having a little quiet time in an old abandoned pub. I love the dialogue in it

there’s also a fic I wrote about an Ace Attorney OC, Isaiah, called Dead Ends, but that’s not been published anywhere and probably never will be,

idk who to tag but I enjoyed this!! got me thinking!

#za writes occasionally

[between-two-fandoms]

Who We Used To Be (Ray/Rose/Trevor)

As told by myself and @thesevenumbrellas tag teaming the whump in the 18+ JatP discord. Sev I swear we operate on the same braincell levels, we do be clowning. @bobbywilsonsupremacy  let us know what you think of this! I know you and I both hardcore ship Raybse.

Cover was created by @thesevenumbrellas​. Please don’t steal it.

This post got long so fair warning.

We wrote this in a discord server over the time span of hours so there’s some mistakes but i’m too lazy to go back and fix it all. Basically we tag teamed on a Raybse Trevor Wilson-centric whump story and can destroy a fandom with a single touch.

You’ll understand once you click the cut.

Don’t Steal Our Writing (but please reblog this to spread it around).

Trauma Time.

major whump warning

(Ren) Okay so if we're gonna be starting at 90's ot3 my children ray/bobby/Rose know that Ray is a panic bi and loves both of these humans very much with his whole ass heart.

(Ren) He takes pictures of his girlfriend and boyfriend while they’re on dates because he wants to capture the moments he was happy the most. Bobby always shed away from the camera burying his face in Rose's shoulder or leaning in for a kiss. Anyways as time goes by Ray notices Bobby's change in behavior. From being his go-happy-trauma boyf to being caught up in the music scene, often out at all hours to parties and label meetings only to come to to sleep on the couch, not even sharing the bed like he used to. It reminds Ray of the time when Bobby was grieving his boys. Ray hates it, but he loves bobby so he pushes his feelings aside to try and arrange more dates for the three of them to go on together.

(Sev) Ray waking up to only Rose in the bed and not Bobby, and it feels too cold in bed without him. So he'll try to call him, because it's 3am and he's supposed to be home and he's not. And Ray remembers what happened to Bobby's bandmates, and he can't admit it out loud but he's worried. Because what if that happens to Bobby? He knows it was a freak accident! What are the odds of it happening again?? But he can't shake that feeling when Bobby doesn't come home at night and Ray stays up all night worrying. Anyway he tries to call Bobby and Bobby doesn't answer. He'll leave loads of voicemails, trying not to be pushy because he knows Bobby doesn't respond well to that. But he's worried. He'll say "hey please call me when you get this." and then ten minutes later try again "hey just text me that you're safe okay?" He can't sleep because Bobby still isn't home. It's 5am. He has to go to work in two hours. Rose keeps telling him to go to bed but he can't.[2:58 PM]Bobby finally texts back. "I'm okay! Was playing with some friends, the gig went over time and then we went to  party." Ray wants to be angry because seriously? No phone calls because he was at a party? But he knows that'll just push Bobby away more!

(Ren) And so Ray has all of these festering emotions that boil down to worry and concern at the core but he's just so scared hes losing Bobby cause he never really had his own family to begin with and then one day when Ray comes home early from a photoshoot he can hear Bobby and Rose fighting over Bobby signing the contract that says he wrote Luke's songs but Ray just hears yelling before he even opens the door with his name thrown into the mix and then he gets even more scared because what if he loses Rose and Bobby? if he lost both of them he'd be destroyed. So he doesnt knock. He doesnt go home. Instead he walks around the city until he was supposed to go home originally and he opens the door and there's a sort of eerie silence in the air.

(Sev) Trevor’s unable to shake the feeling that something terrible will happen to Rose and Ray because he's with them. His entire family were killed in 1 night because he wasn't there with them. So at first he's clingy as fuck to Rose and Ray because what if something bad happens when he's not there? What if what if what if... But as time goes on the thinking flips. Maybe it's the music industry that's the problem. It's these weird connections in his head of if he's too successful, bad things might happen. But he can't quit music like that, he can't give up on Luke's dream. He owes his boys to become successful. So instead he distances himself from Rose and Ray. That way they won't be caught up in whatever bad thing is going to happen to him. He distances himself and he waits for it all to drop. He waits for the universe to punish him again.

(Ren) And the universe punishes Bobby when the tension between him and Rose tightens so much he knows there's no going back from it but he's not admitting to stealing the songs because he didn't. He helped Luke write all of the songs more than Alex and Reggie ever did, staying up late with Luke after fights with his mom and Bobby didn’t want Luke to be alone so yeah, he wrote the songs. Maybe not as much as he claimed but he sure as hell made sure his brother wasn’t alone so that counted for something right? And it did. Until Rose kicks him out of bed because she's pissed he'd even consider stealing music and he cant tell Ray because of the NDA the label got him to sign at a party when he was drunk and the only reason Rose knows about it is because she was there when he signed the damn thing and so Bobby pulls away from Ray because isnt it going to be easier in the long run? If he doesn’t attach himself to Ray who'll just get angry at him like Rose did?

(Sev) It's the guilt that grows inside of him every passing day. They're my songs too he tells himself over and over again. But during the dark nights, three glasses of whisky in when the world is getting hazy... even he can't believe the lies he tells himself. He fucked up Sunset Curve. He fucked up his friends' memories. And now he fucked up the only good thing he'd ever had. Ray texts him nonstop. He doesn't understand why Rose kicked Bobby out and he doesn't understand why Bobby listened. Bobby can't take Ray away from Rose. He's fucked up and a terrible person, but even he can't do that. He doesn't give Ray his new address. He refuses to meet up even for Ray to give him his stuff back. All Bobby can do is hold onto Ray's sweatshirt he stole away and a bottle of perfume the same brand Rose always wears. He cradles these things in his arms and cries.

(Ren) And that's the last he sees of Ray for all of 5 years, 20yr old puppy-dog eyed loving precious ray who Bobby would run to the second Rose says its okay. But rose never does. And then Bobby meets a cute blonde and six months later the barista shows up on his doorstep shoving Carrie into his arms calling her a bastard child. Carrie is not a bastard child Carrie is his and he loves her the second he sets eyes on her and so Bobby turns into Trevor when the new year rolls around and he starts his own album. It doesn’t do as well as Luke's his first album did but it was his. And then one day Trevor signs Carrie up for dance because Trisha from first grade made fun of her for not being able to do the splits and on the way out of the dance studio Trevor bumps into Ray, a terrified looking girl clutched to his leg. Carrie doesn't miss a beat. "Hi! I'm Carrie let's be friends!" and Carrie drags Ray's daughter off and Trevor shifts awkwardly and is suddenly 17 again but Ray's eyes still twinkle like the did when they were kids and he's still wearing eyeliner so Trevor almost missed it when a flicker of recognition crosses Ray’s face and a smile quirks at the corners of his lips and he says, "hi im Ray, thats my daughter Julie. Wanna go out for a drink?" With that same mischievous glint in his eye that made Bobby fall in love with him in the first place.

(Sev) Trevor almost stops breathing. He should say no. He knows he should say no. He's an awful person. He doesn't deserve someone like Ray. He never deserved either of them. He knows that. But can't force himself to say no. Maybe it's the twinkle in Ray's eyes. Maybe it's the soul crushing loneliness he's felt ever since he left them. Or maybe it's the way Carrie and Julie are giggling in the corner like they've known each other all their lives. He says yes. The drink ends up at a family friendly restaurant with both the girls in tow.

(Ren) Rose shows up because Ray the asshole apparently texted her while he was in the car saying he met one of Julie's friend's parents and wanted to go out on a date (keeping things pg ofc) aklsdf. And when Rose does show up Trevor sees how... sick she looks. How much paler she looked than she did all those years ago how - he still knew he loved her even if she still decided she hated him.

(Sev) The mood drops quickly. Trevor wants to ask about Rose, but not in front of the kids. Ray wants to ask about their past, but not in front of the kids. Rose... Rose who holds all the answers... doesn't know where to start first. She had never regretted not telling Ray the truth. She never wanted to change Ray's perception of Bobby like that. Ray who looked at their boyfriend as if he'd hung the moon. Ray who stayed up worrying all night until Bobby came home. Ray who held Bobby through countless nightmares... But that makes the truth staring them in the face so much harder. Because she never gave Ray the choice. She realized that a few years too late after she catches Ray staring at old pictures of Bobby in their photo albums. She'd made the choice for him. And then there's Trevor... still beautiful, staring at her with so much concern her heart breaks all over again.

(Ren) The tension doesn't fly over Carrie's head like he hoped it would, she talks to Julie about My Little Pony and Pokemon and High School Musical and their mutual hatred for Trisha from school but Carrie's hand never lets go of his and he finally plucks up the courage and stretches his arm out and says "we're vegetarian for the most part, hope that's okay." And a smile quirks at the corner of her lips and she asks "for the most part?" and Trevor nods and Carrie pipes up from her seat saying "daddy hates hot dogs,” in that blatant fact kind of way kids say things without realizing how problematic it could be. It wasn’t her fault though, Trevor has yet to tell her about her uncles, about how he was in a band, about how they were going to be legends.

(Sev) Rose and Ray both freeze at Carrie's voice. He doesn't know if the girls notice, because he's too busy trying to fight back the panic in his throat. It's been a long time since anyone had brought up ... what happened. It's easy to pretend it didn't happen when his name is Trevor and no one knows him. But these two people know him. They know him more than anyone else ever has. Even the boys. The truth hits him hard at that moment. A truth he'd been avoiding for almost two decades. Ray and Rose know him better than even he knew himself. Maybe that was why Rose had been so furious with him, or why Ray continued to chase after him even months after he moved out. Trevor hides the building panic and sudden realization with a smile. "What an I say," he said as causally as he can. "I'm a picky eater." A few hours later they end up back at the Molina's house. Bobby has no idea how it happened. -No, Trevor has no idea how it happened, he scolds himself. He's Trevor. He has to be Trevor. Trevor got him this far, Trevor made the difficult choices. Bobby was the one who got his friends kill and destroyed the best relationship he ever had. Still, it becomes harder and harder to remind himself of that. To stop himself from slipping into the comfortable shoes of Bobby, boyfriend of Ray and Rose as if the past 17 years had never happened. He finds himself on their sofa, a sofa that brings back memories both good and bad... he finds himself in a familiar home, his old studio just a short walk away, his ex's giggling in the kitchen as they make his coffee the way he's always liked it without asking for a reminder.

(Ren) Trevor can remember the day he stopped drinking the coffee Ray made for him, the morning after his first fight with Rose, when he wakes up cold because Rose basically cocooned herself around Ray's body, keeping her back turned to him and as much as he wanted to reach out to Ray, to hug him and comfort him and tell him it was all going to be okay... everything was too stuffy and too tense and deciding he just had to leave because he was going to suffocate otherwise.

(Sev) He should leave, just like last time. What was he even doing here? He should take Carrie and- Then Ray's in front of him, pushing a hot cup into is hands. "The girls are playing upstairs," he says. His voice is so calm, so understanding. "We don't have to talk if you don't want to." Trevor almost laughs. Because that's so like Ray. Almost a decade without answers and he's giving Trevor the option to ignore it all. To pretend like nothing ever happened. But he can't be that selfish again. So he shakes his head. "I'd... like to talk to you... to both of you."

(Ren) And then suddenly rose is eyeing him sus but he's been putting this off for to long and honestly fuck his label because they screwed him over one too many times for him to still even consider their relationship anything other than employee-client1[4:06 PM]and so Trevor takes a sip of Ray's coffee holy shit how did go so long without it?! and he explains it. he explains everything.

(Sev) Ray doesn't speak as Trevor explains. He never interrupts or even look surprised. His face is completely unreadable. He doesn't move until Trevor's done. And then once he is, he only stands up to start pacing the room. Trevor's oddly reminded of Alex as he does so,  and the memory is enough to make him flinch. "This... this is what you two have been hiding from me for so long?" he asked, voice brittle. "This is... this is what cost us... I mean..." But he can't finish. Ray just shakes his head, back to both Rose and Trevor.

(Ren) Suddenly he's seventeen again. Seventeen and a mess in Ray's arms burying his face into the man's chest finally feeling the weight of the world lift off of his shoulders and suddenly Rose is hugging him from behind, her too-skiny bone arms snaking around his chest and hugging him tightly threatening to never let him go saying "amour," and pressing a kiss to the back of his head, "amour we never stopped loving you."

(Sev)It's like no time has passed by the time he's done crying his eyes out. They're all huddled on a sofa that was always too small for three. Trevor's in the middle, clutching at them both as if they're going to disappear on him. Ray sits with his legs underneath them, his arms pulling the both of them into his chest. And then there's Rose, suddenly so much more delicate than Trevor remembers. She sits half on his lap, curled into them, her fingers knotted in his hair. "I can't believe you two kept this from me," Ray whispers. There's no anger. He doesn't think Ray's ever been capable of being angry. "I'm sorry," Trevor whispers, throat raw from tears. Ray answers with a firm kiss to his temple. "We wasted so much time..."

(Ren) Trevor just lays between them in their bed, nothing sexual and nothing tense it’s just them being together and Rose playing with his now-long hair, braiding it right down the middle despite it being too long for others to braid. Her fingers feel nice as they tug at his roots, familiar and a sense of calm washes over him. He lets ray fop on top of him like they used to, burying his head in his chest just listening to his heart beat, his steady constant breathing because Ray used to be afraid one day he'd wake up and Bobby would be dead too. Rose humming lightly, soft lullabies that chased away dark thoughts and Trevor just finds it so comforting, a feeling of home he hasn't had since the day he left and so he wraps his arms around Rose and Ray tight, promising himself he won't screw up his second time around.

(Sev) It's a few hours later when he speaks again. The girls are asleep in Julie's room (delighted at their surprise sleepover.) Ray's almost nodded off, head resting against Trevor's chest. But Rose is wide awake. She's laid out, tangled between them, eyes focused on something far away. He can see it more clearly now. The tremble in her hands, the way she's so still, the circles around her eyes. He takes her hand in his. "What is it?"

(Ren) And Trevor wants it to be a prank, he wants the sinking feeling in his gut twisting around his heart, the same feeling he had the morning of Sunset Curve's Orpheum performance coiling up his spine to go away. He wants everything to be okay, that he told the truth, that he was forgiven, that the universe was finally on his side for once but of course it's not because when has it ever been.  Rose's fingers run lightly over his knuckles and Ray wraps his arm around him from behind, his hands resting against Trevor's chest, something solid for him to focus on and as a tear starts to roll down Rose's cheek he reaches up to brush it away, running his hand through her hair only to pull out a clump as he pulled away but he couldn't run when his instincts to run kick in like they always used to do when situations turned emotional, bury it in his mind and lock up his worries like he always did but this wasn't going to be something he could run from.

(Sev) Life is not the fantasy or a fairy tale. There are no happy endings, only happy moments. He'd like to say they picked up right where they left off, Rose lived until a ripe old age, and they never fought again. But he'd be lying. It was hard to fold their lives back into place again, especially with Carrie and Julie. To just pick up after their seventeen year old selves was an impossible dream. But they could do breakfast. And breakfast became dinner. Dinner became one date which became two which became many. It took trouble and care, but they slotted themselves back into each other's lives again. There were lunch dates, and movie nights. There were late night wine dates and early morning coffee dates. They found their happy moments. A decade of separation had smoothed out the rough edges. If Trevor stormed out after a harsh argument, he'd return the next day with flowers and apologies. If Rose snapped and lost her temper, she'd take herself off for a walk to cool down. If Ray was bothered by something, he'd speak up instead of pushing it all down. They found their happy moments. And when 1 month became 1 year, they celebrated with moving boxes and a new, bigger couch. When 1 year became 2, they celebrated with promise rings and whispers of a better future between light kisses. 3 years became 4, became 5, and so on... They found their happy moments. But life is not a fantasy or a fairy tale. Their story ends in a hospital. Rose dies with both her husbands at her side, with both her daughters and son clutching on her hands. She dies with a smile on her face, knowing she is not leaving them to suffer alone. Ray and Trevor grieve together.

(Ren) And this time the girls are the ones who get into the fight but Trevor and Ray are there for Julie and Carrie no matter what they're fighting over carrie told julie she liked flynn but julie said flynn was hers first and doesnt understand how she can feel squishy love for two people. And this time the girls are the ones who get into the fight but Trevor and Ray are there for Julie and Carrie no matter what they're fighting over carrie told julie she liked flynn but julie said flynn was hers first and doesnt understand how she can feel squishy love for two people. They stick to their daughters through the worst of it but they don’t let the girl’s fighting rip into them too. It’s not what Rose would’ve wanted for them, it’s not what she would’ve wanted for Julie or Carrie either.

(Sev) And when Julie plays with her ghost band, it's much earlier that Trevor recognizes who she's playing with.

(Ren) Luke’s mad at first, ofc he is but after everything is explained and out in the open Trevor finds himself at home in a building that never felt like home despite the fact he grew up in it.

#trevor wilson #raybse #ray/rose/bobby #ray molina #rose molina #fanfiction #headcanons #whump #angst #18+ jatp discord #we do be whumping today #sev and i are clowns and had too much freetime today #i hope you all liked this slice of whump #bobby whump #ren write's #sev's writing #this is so chaotic #i love it #sev i love you #i broke your rule #oh well #julie molina #carrie wilson #ren rambles #look #i'm so bored right now #i needed to do this #ren has no regrets #neither does sev #we do be going after alex tomorrow

[not-close-to-straight]

Lost and Found (Twelve)

*dramatic music* and also RhodeyTony softness because Besties deserve it. 

MASTERLIST HERE

**************

“Rhodey.” Tony paused when he came into the lab and found the colonel sprawled out across the couch, phone in one hand and a clearly stolen-from- Tony’s-desk bag of chips in the other. “Hey. I didn’t know you were coming by.” 

“Didn’t know I had to announce when I was coming by, thought there was an open door policy in this place.” Rhodey tipped the bag up into his mouth and crunched loudly at the crumbs, remained silent while Tony gave the lab a quick once over, and then told him, “Don’t worry. JARVIS hid everything away when I opened the doors, I didn’t see any of your super secret boy band stuff.” 

Tony made an attempt to not look so relieved, but Rhodey caught it anyway and rolled his eyes. “Damn Tones, used to be you didn’t keep anything from me. You can trust me, you know. Just tell me you’re getting N’Sync back together and that’s why all the cabinets over there now have locks on them and I’ll quit bugging you about it.” 

“N’Sync?” Tony rummaged through his desk until he found an unopened un-pilfered bag of chips and tossed it at Rhodey, dropped down onto the couch and scooted close to his best friend. “You know damn well I’m a Backstreet Boy. N’Sync. More like N’Wack.” 

“Yeah, that joke wasn’t funny when you told it six years ago and it’s not funny now.” The colonel popped the new bag of chips and offered Tony the first handful. “Are you gonna ask me what I found out about the Monaco Whip Fetish guy, or are we going to have to karaoke duel it out to figure out who’s the best band?” 

“Always Backstreet.” Tony crammed in several bites of chips and said around a spray of crumbs, “Is Monaco Whip Fetish Guy the official name? Because I could be on board with that. Just spicy enough to sell headlines, just awkward enough to ruin the moment at social gatherings.”  

“You seem chipper today.” Rhodey commented instead of answering straight away. “And by chipper I mean obnoxious. What’s going on?” 

“I thought you missed my patented brand of hilarity?” Tony nudged Rhodey’s foot and ignored the gratifying twinge in his core from James at the Monaco hotel. He was running on three hours of sleep and the left over high of being fucked to the point of near incoherence and it was nice. It was nice and all the questions were sort of ruining his buzz which was a bummer because he really needed it to last all the way through Pierce’s stupid party and then hopefully carry over into--

“Where the hell did you just go?” Rhodey snapped his fingers in front of Tony’s eyes and the brunette jumped. “What was that, you zoned completely. Earth to Tones.” 

“Yeah, yeah I’m here. Solidly on Earth and chipper as hell.” Tony waved the hand away. “Eat some more chips and tell me about Whip Fetish Guy.” 

James’s look was thoroughly unimpressed and unconvinced, and Tony’s returning glance was equally unconcerned and more than a little impatient so the Colonel cleared his throat and reached for the file next to him on the couch. 

“Alright. Whip Fetish Guy’s real name is Ivan Antonovich Vanko. Forty years old and some change best as we can tell, his passport and ID are all fake so it’s sort of a guessing game.” Rhodey pulled out a photo and handed it to Tony. “You recognize this guy at all? Anton Vanko worked with Stark Industries and specifically with your dad on the arc reactor. Those two were bosom buddies right up until Vanko was accused of espionage and then convicted of selling weapons grade plutonium to Pakistan. They gave him almost two decades in Kopiesk before he fell off the map.” 

“JARVIS?” Tony held up the picture and a light burst from the ceiling to scan the photo and upload it to his servers. “I’ve never even heard this guy’s name. You sure he worked with Dad?” 

“How else do you explain the arc reactor, Tony?” James asked flatly. “We both have reviewed the Senate footage of the other attempts to replicate your armor and nothing comes close. not even in the developed countries. Then a guy from the butt end of Siberia who says your dads worked together has a perfectly working model. That can’t be a coincidence.” 

“It’s not--” Tony ground his teeth together and pursed his lips. “It’s not perfectly working, but yeah pretty damn close. So what, you think old man Vanko hated Howard for getting him deported and encouraged his son to take revenge over some plutonium? I don’t think terrorists are allowed to upset about being outed as terrorists.”  

There was that left over bitter than Tony had never quite managed to hide after Afghanistan, the left over anger after what had been done to him at the hands of the Ten Rings, what he’d seen done to villages full of innocents after his company sold the baddies the means to wage war. 

“Nope.” he decided. “Being outed as a piece of shit selling our weapons to the bad guys isn’t a valid reason for revenge. Ask Obadiah. Oh wait, you can’t because we disintegrated him when the reactor core blew.” 

“Easy easy.” Rhodey murmured when Tony’s hands balled up tight. “Nobody’s saying Obadiah or the Ten Rings were justified in anything they did. Not to you, not to all the people they hurt--” 

“--not to Yinsen!” Tony burst out and the colonel nodded, “Not to Yinsen. And I’m not saying Anton Vanko didn’t deserve to be locked up but it might not have gone down the way we think.” 

“What does that mean?” 

“You didn’t hear this from me.” Rhodey handed Tony another piece of paper, the report filed by Howard naming Vanko as a spy. “But there wasn't a whole lot of proof, Tony. Not a whole lot of proof of anything until the charge comes in for selling the plutonium. Vanko’s name is all over all the early plans of the reactor, then they get something finalized, a few days later he’s deported as a spy and if you look at the timeline it sure seems like first he was accused and thrown out, then he turned to selling weapons.” 

“It’s not an excuse.” he said slowly. “But Tony, I’ve read these reports a hundred times. It sort of looks like they got everything finalized and everything went to hell. Either Howard discovered some concrete proof of espionage and decided not to share it with the class--” 

“--Or Dad sold the guy upstream so Stark Industries would completely own the patent on a piece of technology that would change the world.” Tony raised his eyebrows skeptically. “That’s a reach, even for Howard.” 

“It’s a reach.” Rhodey allowed. “But it’s not unheard of. Remember Project Paperclip after the war? We imported all the best minds from Germany, used them up and threw them in jail or sent them back home to be tried as war criminals. Using intellect and getting rid of the person attached is capitalism at it’s finest, and especially back when everyone was worried about Communists and turning on their neighbors to report them... it’s not really a reach at all. One business partner getting rid of another with a frame up job isn’t unheard of. And the 'bad guy’ moniker is so easy to slap on someone who talks with an accent. You know that. You’ve seen Die Hard.” 

“One hundred and twenty seven times, yeah.” Tony picked up the file and flipped through it himself. “Well what do you want me to do about it? No matter what Howard did or Anton thought he did-- Ivan walked down the middle of the Grand Prix slicing up cars and not caring who he killed. If he was after me for revenge, how did he even know I was racing? I didn’t plan that at all. How did he know? Is there a security leak I should be worried about?” 

“Well, I don’t trust your new hunky boyfriend and I sure as hell don’t trust your new super hot secretary.” Rhodey took the papers back and reassembled the file. “But I don’t think Ivan knew you were racing. I think his original plan was to show up and murder a room full of people until he got to you, and you deciding to be a full tilt moron and go racing just changed things. Sure made it easier for Vanko to find you, and probably saved a bunch of lives keeping the fight out on the road.” 

“Oh good, I’m glad my trauma and what will certainly be re-occuring nightmares made things easier on the maniac.” Tony slumped back into the couch and closed his eyes, a coming headache from lack of sleep and a couple days of high stress pushing at the edge of his vision. “Don’t bother updating me on the situation, alright? So long as he’s not out causing more mayhem, I don’t want to know what’s happening. Can’t take the stress.” 

“Uh huh.” Rhodey nudged at him. “You’re not jealous that he has cool whips and you’re still shooting stuff out your palm like a dummy?” 

“Keep talking like that and I’ll pop you in the face with a repulsor, see which one of us is the dummy then.” 

Silence in the lab, comfortable and years in the making of content, Rhodey crunching away on chips while Tony tried to relax and drifted towards sleep. Monaco had only been yesterday morning and the flight home had taken the entire night. A few hours of sleep had been all Tony managed before the restlessness drove him downstairs to find Rhodey and he only had a few hours before he had to get presentable and the promised appropriate for Pierce’s party. 

He was suddenly exhausted, the buzz from Monaco draining away and leaving him worn out but Rhodey was familiar and warm and  despite the secrets piling up between them, Tony breathed out a sigh of relief and snuggled closer. “Remember college?” he mumbled. “When we’d fall asleep studying?” 

“I remember your ass running on unfiltered caffeine and Satan’s own spite to get through finals.” Rhodey countered, settling an arm around Tony’s shoulders. “I remember you shrieking about freedom after the last exam and then coming to find me and falling asleep wherever I was. The table in the cafeteria, the front quad, the library.” 

“Yeah.” Tony yawned. “Good memories, right? Treasured times.” 

“Not half as treasured as you think.” Rhodey frowned when Tony’s shirt gapped and he caught a glimpse at black lines around the reactor, and his frown deepened when he saw a spot that looked like a bruise at Tony’s neck. “What’s with the extra dark lines right there, Tony? You okay?” 

Tony was not okay and Rhodey knew it, but he still gave his friend the chance to lie to him come clean. “Everything still good?” 

“Everything’s fine.” Tony closed up his shirt without opening his eyes. “Normal stuff behind the arc reactor after extended use of the suit and stress.” 

“And your neck?” 

“Probably a hickey.” Tony grinned to himself when Rhodey muttered a curse about ‘too much goddamn information’. “Yeah, sort of surprised I don’t look worse. James is energetic.” 

“I will push you off this couch if you keep talking like that.” Rhodey stated, and Tony zipped his lip over a quiet laugh. “So what, you two are getting serious?” 

“If by serious you mean we’ve progressed to the dance with no pants--” 

“--Tony!” 

“--then sure, I guess you could say serious.” Tony shrugged, yawned and stretched until he was fit snugger at the colonels side. “It’s fun. Never thought I’d be the one to say things like ‘get deeper’ but--ooph!” 

Tony gasped when Rhodey unceremoniously-- and honestly sort of rudely-- pushed him off the couch and right onto the floor. “Honeybear! How could you?”

“Try again.” Rhodey stretched all the way out on the couch so there was no room for Tony. “And keep it G-rated.” 

“Spoilsport.” 

“Brat.” 

Rhodey gave in and hauled Tony back up, tucking the smaller brunette in at his side and frowning all over again when he felt how thin Tony was beneath his shirt, the way Tony trembled just a little bit in his arms. “Tony--” 

“James treats me good.” Tony changed the subject and Rhodey took the hint for what it was. “I waited twenty five years after Tiberius to try something like this again and I gotta say, it’s working out really well.” 

“So he’s uh--” Damn, Rhodey hated having this conversations but he’d been having them with Tony since MIT so there was no reason to stop now. “-- he’s being good to you? Listening to you and all that? You guys are being safe?” 

“I’m in my forties, Rhodey.” Tony jabbed at his side. “You don’t need to have the birds and bees talk with me.” 

“I’m pretty sure this talk is just bees and bees.” The colonel replied dryly. “Seriously though, Tones. You aren’t letting him break your heart are you?” 

“Not sure I have a heart left to break, Platypus.” Tony mumbled. 

“Come on now, we all know that’s a lie.” Rhodey couldn’t shake the feeling that Tony was fragile just now, so he budged forward and gave him a gentle kiss on the forehead. “Want me to stay here so you can sleep a little bit before Pierce’s thing?” 

Tony didn’t answer because he was already asleep, lulled under by the sound of Rhodey’s voice in his ear and the steady beat of his heart. 

“Wacky kid.” The Colonel tried for affectionate, but it just came out miserable as he got an up close look at the bags under Tony’s eyes and the stress lines etched into his face. “What the hell is going on with you?” 

“If I may, Colonel?” 

“Yes, JARVIS.” 

“The shelter Mr. James stayed at requires a full health panel to be run on any of their residents. At the request of Ms. Potts I accessed the information and can assure you that James was given a clean bill of health. Almost astonishingly clean considering his time being homeless and former military service. There were several curious markers in his blood noted, but nothing that raised any red flags so they were simply pushed aside.” 

“Curious markers?” Rhodey repeated. “Anything you could access?”

“I fear the shelters system is not as equipped as I am to deal with unknowns, so once it was established there was nothing untoward in his system, transmitted or otherwise, the rest was ignored.” 

“Okay, well thanks for letting me know.” Rhodey ran a careful hand through Tony’s hair and sighed. “Damn near fifty years old and I still gotta make sure your partners aren’t skeevy? Come on, Tones you’re killing me.” 

“Shall I turn the lights down, Colonel Rhodes?” 

“Put on that one song too, the one his Mama always played on the piano. That always helps him sleep.” 

“Of course, Colonel.” 

The first strains of Try to Remember floated through the lab, and Rhodey pulled one of the blankets down from the back of the couch to cover Tony, set his alarm for ten am so Tony would have time to shower and change before the party and settled in for a quick nap. 

Sometime soon he’d have to sit James down and give him the old shovel talk, but for right now…

“Thanks for staying, Rhodey.” 

“It’s no problem, bud.” 

...for right now, this was fine.

**************

**************

“I thought the party was at eleven?” James asked as he followed Tony out of the limo at just past twelve thirty. “We’re late?” 

“It’s called making an entrance.” Tony was still tired-- would that ever go away?-- but after a nap with Rhodey he was feeling better so he managed an almost real smile for the cameras that immediately began flashing in his face. “Trust me, we’re not even the latest ones here. The richer people are, the later they will show up to an event.” 

“Seems rude.” James remarked and Tony chuckled, “Yeah, so are rich people. Come on, I’ll introduce you to a whole bunch you definitely won’t like.” 

“You said this would be fun!” James was only mock complaining, but he did have to put his hands in his pocket so he wouldn’t try and hold onto Tony when the pretty brunette grinned at him. Snuggling close on the plane had been one thing, sharing a quick kiss before going to their separate rooms at the Malibu house had been another. But the Inauguration and Promotion party for the new Secretary of Defense was not the best time to announce their...relationship?... to the entire world and even though James didn’t understand a whole lot about Tony’s life, he remembered enough of his own hidden memories to not be angry about keeping things under wraps a little longer. 

No problem. 

“I said there would be lots of suits and uptight small talk.” Tony corrected. “I never promised fun.” 

“Okay okay.” James held up his hands peacefully. “But I also remember you saying something about tiny snacks too, so lead me to those and I’ll be fine. S’not rude to eat trays at a time, right? Or is that only rich people rude?” 

“You’re um--” Tony peered over his glasses at James curiously. “You’re fun today. Not that you aren’t usually fun but this is-- I like it. Teasing and sort of flirty? Is this you you?” 

“Think so.” James nodded once, then again. “It feels real to be like this, not like I’m pretending or following what other people do so I come across as normal.” 

“I hear that.” Tony’s glasses went right back up when someone approached, and he cheesed through a few faux pleasantries before coming back to the conversation. “I spend most of my time acting the way people expect me to act, it’s nice sometimes to just be me.” 

“When are ya just you?” A hint of Brooklyn in his words, natural and unintended and James smiled when Tony blushed a tiny bit. “With Ms. Potts? At home?” 

“Lately?” Tony waved to someone and then glanced at James, glanced away when the pink on his cheeks darkened. “Just with you, I think.”

“Tony Stark!” someone interrupted their quiet conversation, an older woman in a tailored suit and the sort of tasteful jewelry that spoke of both money and a personal stylist and James took a step away purely out of habit, purely so he could observe from something of a distance.

These people were fascinating, most of them lying through their cosmetically enhanced to each other, laughing at unfunny jokes and doling out compliments that were only thinly veiled insults. Even Tony at his fakest and most camera ready behavior didn’t compare with how plastic the entire even felt. Plastic smiles, plastic bodies, plastic conversation. They were fascinating and there was far too much for James to catalogue and understand for him to pay attention to yet another inane conversation about--

“So! Taking a chance on something new are we?” James snapped back to attention when the woman’s gaze zeroed in on him, eyeing his left arm and silver fingers, lingering over his shoulders and long hair. “Who’s this?” 

“This is James.” Tony motioned James forward. “I’ve been doing some work on his prostheses and he’s--” 

“Gorgeous!” the woman interrupted. “He’s gorgeous! New flavor of the month? How long will this one last?” 

“Wow.” Tony cleared his throat. “Listen, I uh--” 

Thankfully-- and perhaps purposefully-- another voice called the woman away and she waved a cheerful, “Oh Secretary Pierce! Hello!” and granted Tony and James at least a moment of reprieve. 

“Sorry about that.” Tony took two glasses off a passing tray and handed one to James. “Remember when I said rich people are rude? Somehow they’re even worse than the press because at least the press fears being sued for slander and libel. Gossip is exempt from all of those things and it thrives in parties like this.” 

“Huh.” James took a sip of his drink and grimaced. Why didn’t they ever serve beer at these things? He liked beer right? ...right?

“So what’s the verdict?” he asked from behind his glass, and Tony cocked a confused eyebrow in his direction. “About me being the new flavor of the month, I mean.” 

“Ah.” Tony took a sip of his own, but didn’t bother trying to hide his smile. “Well, you certainly are new aren’t you?” 

“You’re fun today too.” James inched closer so just their elbows brushed. “Had a good time with Colonel Rhodes?” 

“Believe it or not, Monaco wasn’t even all that bad.” Tony let his eyes sparkle almost devious and was rewarded when James tinted soft pink. “The hotel was excellent. Sturdy walls and soundproof-- Secretary of Defense Pierce!” 

Conversation derailed by the same man that had stolen their too nosy companion away before, Tony switched topics mid sentence and raised his glass in a toast. “Hey! Congratulations on the appointment! We’re all rooting for you. Couldn’t go to a more deserving individual.” 

Tony was lying and James noticed for only a split second before his attention was captured by the man in front of him.

“Tony Stark. And his new.... friend...” 

Alexander Goodwin Pierce was a consummate politician-- deceptively easy going with quick smiles and warm hand shakes that contrasted with the severe lines of his suit and the sternness set into his features. His sharp gaze saw everything, sharper wit gleaned information from even the most reticent sources, and while he’d been known to de-escalate nuclear level tensions, there was a shark like quality to his gaze that spoke of searching for blood. 

The man was intimidatingly smart, overly educated and weaponized a practiced act of humility, going so far as to turn down a Nobel Peace Prize while simultaneously leveraging the influence afforded him by the honor into an ever escalating ladder of success. He was an American hero, a life long patriot and the sort of individual that would do anything to ensure the success of an endeavor he deemed the right path. 

Alexander Pierce was dangerous in the same way all smart men were dangerous, and while Howard had shaken his hand many a time and dined alongside Presidents and dignitaries while sharing private jokes, it had been Maria that never quite trusted Pierce’s particular brand of charm. 

And Tony took after his Mama in more ways than one, so when he reached to shake Pierce’s hand and was left rebuffed for a few seconds while the Secretary blatantly stared at James, he didn’t ignore the wiggle of unease down his spine.

What is happening? 

“This must be James.” Pierce said, smoothly, a hint of a smirk on his face as if he knew a secret neither Tony nor James knew, and Tony-- Tony hated that. Snake. “How on earth did you manage to find someone like this, Tony?” 

“We were both having breakfast in a diner with really good pancakes.” Tony stepped a little bit in front of James as if his height in any way covered the soldier’s hulking frame. “I offered to build him a new prostheses, he said I had a nice smile. Tale as old as time.” 

“Uh-huh.” Pierce had yet to look away from James, but his mouth turned up more at the corners, eyes sharpening as he looked James over. “I see. And tell me, how did a man like this happen to be in the exact diner where billionaire genius philanthropist Tony Stark would come in for pancakes? Was he living nearby?” 

“Was staying at the shelter in D.C.” James answered shortly. Tony was practically radiating tension towards a guy that didn’t seem to be any more danger than a damn toaster, but if Tony was going to be uncomfortable, James was going to be uncomfortable too. Tony had said Pierce was a nice guy but right now, he seemed more like an enemy so James tipped his chin up and narrowed his eyes. “What’s it to ya?” 

“What’s it to me.” Alexander laughed softly and lifted his glass up in a faux cheers. “An excellent sentence to be sure. How long was he at the shelter, Stark? Do you know why he chose D.C. as a landing point?” 

“Um--” James blinked, thrown by the way the man kept talking about him but not to him and the way Tony kept winding tighter and tighter. Everything about this was wrong and Pierce was smiling like he knew something, like he knew James, but that didn’t make any sense. 

Something was wrong. 

“Tony.” Alexander kept watching James. “You’ve never done a hands on charitable deed in your life. What is so special about this particular ex soldier?” 

“Sure, Stark Industries Charity Foundation does most of the good deeds, but I like to get my hands dirty every once in a while.” Tony retorted defensively. “How did you hear about James? Or his military service for that matter?” 

“He’s got soldier written all over him.” Pierce said, and that was apparently funny to only him. “The way he walks, the way he stands there staring. The speech--” he tapped at his bottom lip. “That’s new. A new development--” 

“Excuse me?” 

“No, I just mean you’d expect someone so clearly military to keep some more of that stilted speech pattern.” Alexander was quick to explain his words, but the seemingly intentional damage was already done and Tony reached behind him when he felt James step away. 

“Hey.” he said softly. “Hey, it’s okay. We can just leave if you want.” 

“Talk to your friend.” It was a like a curtain fell in front of James’s eyes, leaving them blank and cold, his speech stilted. Something was wrong and everything was plastic and he needed to leave. “I’ll find something to eat and wait for you outside.” 

Tony was safe, James knew that. The danger Pierce represented had nothing to do with Tony and something to do with James so he was just going to walk away. “I’ll be back in a little bit.”

“Oh no, don’t let him leave.” This was the shark Maria had hated so much, the eerily focused eyes and the teeth bared in a barely convincing smile. “I have so many questions. Tell me again how you two met?” 

“It was a diner.” Tony turned long enough to make sure James made it out the door then turned back to Pierce and took one, two steps into his space, reaching to finally finish that shake they never really got to, and purposefully squeezing hard. 

All his life he’d let the press and tabloids say what they wanted about him, he’d let Rhodey or Pepper deflect the meaner comments while he just laughed as if they didn’t wound him to his soul but now? Now Tony had a countdown and percent of nearly fifty and if he was crossing things off his bucket list, he might as well add finally telling pretentious politicians to shut the hell up to the tally, right?

...and if he was sort of irrationally angry that Secretary Pierce was being so rude to the first person to make Tony honestly happy in years…. 

….well that was something too, wasn’t it? 

“Mr. Stark.” Alexander raised his eye brows when Tony invaded his space. “Something on your mind?” 

“I don’t know what sort of game you’re playing, but no one is going to come along and purposefully make me and my date so uncomfortable.” Tony said calmly, quietly, clearly. “I don’t care who you are or how many President’s hands you’ve shaken, there is no excuse to talk about anyone the way you just talked about James and there’s certainly no excuse for the recently appointed Secretary of Defense to bring that sort of assholery to a former soldier.” 

“Tony, I think you’re over-reacting.” Alexander protested lightly. “I was just curious about your date, I wasn’t aware that you and the Soldier-- er, any soldiers-- ran in the same circles. Is there something in your past--” 

He emphasized the word. “--that draws you together? Perhaps he knew your dearly departed mother?” 

“Mr. Secretary, I don’t know why the hell you’re acting like this, but I have had enough.” Tony bared his teeth in an equally frightening smile as his vision practically flickered red with a surge of anger. His Mama? Pierce wouldn’t dare. “I am far past the days of giving a single flying fuck what people think about me or my actions. I don’t care what your title is or how much people admire you for pretending to not want that Nobel Prize. Whatever game you’re playing right now? Cut it out, or I will ruin you, do you understand?

“Just so we’re clear…” Pierce glanced around the room then pulled Tony an inch closer, eyes flashing in defiance. “Is Iron Man threatening me? Coming after the Secretary of Defense and head of SHIELD?” 

“No.” Tony shook his head. “This has nothing to do with Iron Man and everything to do with us. I personally will ruin you if you continue acting this way towards myself or anyone I bring around. Do you understand?” 

It was a step too far, way too far in fact, threatening a high ranking official and powerfully connected man with danger just for insulting him was way too far but Tony didn’t want to stop. No one else was going to tear down the things that made him happy, no one else was going to step up and ruin what should be a good day. Tony didn’t have all that many days left and damn it, he was tired of them being spoiled all the time. 

“Do you understand?” he asked again, pointed and focused and wishing half to hell he had finished the design on the stand alone gauntlet so he could whip it out and send Pierce through a wall. “No more.” 

“You’re the boss, Mr. Stark.” Pierce relaxed in a half second, backing off and smiling broadly. “After all, I never would have made it this far in life without the support of good friends and faithful Americans who choose to let me continue doing what I believe is right.” 

“Sure.” Tony’s head was suddenly throbbing and he tried not to visibly wince. “Whatever you say to make Washington like you. Now if you’ll excuse me--” 

“Oh there’s just one more thing.” Pierce said and Tony ground his teeth together in frustration. “You never gave me James’s last name.” 

“He’s got a pretty bad case of PTSD and some form of amnesia after his accident.” Tony said shortly. “We don’t know his last name, and trust me, I’ve looked.” 

“If you ever want to call in one of the dozen or so favors I owe the Stark family, I’d be happy to look up any information I can find on your friend.” Pierce offered smoothly. “Any information at all. I’m sure with my resources we could have an answer sooner rather than later. Might even see about getting some of those memories back. Wouldn’t that be fun? To be able to remember the nineties again? Good times for all involved, right?” 

“Mr. Secretary.” Tony pressed a hand to the arc reactor when his chest tightened with unexplained anxiety. “You’re clearly having a conversation that I am not privy too and since I don’t have time for political, societal bullshit anymore, I want you to know I mean this in the best way possible-- Congratulations on your promotion, but you can go fuck yourself.” 

Tony was on his way out the door a minute later, visibly seething, visibly searching for James and anyone who doubted that perhaps Tony Stark was actively dating a man had their questions answered when the two reunited at the front steps and held hands down into the waiting limo. 

My oh my, the gossip of the decade. 

“Was that--” Brock Rumlow was head of Secretary Pierce’s security, and he paused just over his boss’s shoulder to ask, “With Stark. That was him, wasn’t it?” 

“Somehow yes.” Pierce tossed back the rest of his drink. “We lost track of him in D.C. and it’s because Stark picked him up like a lost puppy and brought him all the way to Malibu. What are the odds of that?” 

“Sorta weird that it's old man’s Stark work that helped create him.” Rumlow offered. “Should we be worried about interference from big and blond?” 

“The most interesting thing about any member of the Stark family is that they have always thought they were ahead of the plot.” Pierce remarked slowly. “When in reality, they are so focused on their genius and their one project, they fail to see the rest unfolding around them. It was Howard’s issue, it was Maria’s issue and now it is Tony’s downfall. He is literally holding the piece to one of the greatest conspiracies of all time, and he has no idea.” 

“Doesn’t know about his parents?” 

“At this point, I’d say no.” 

“Are we going to change that?” 

“Not yet.” Alexander smiled graciously at a passing waitress. “No sense rushing things. The Soldier was wiped to the point of incoherence and he’s barely human as it is. Let’s wait and see what’s going to happen.” 

“What happens if the Soldier comes back online?” 

“Well, the last person on his list of targets was Stark.” the Secretary reminded him. “Then Stane stepped in and took care of Tony for us and we wiped the Asset before we realized Tony would escape. If he comes back online, he will revert to the last known objective and that will solve every headache and problem I’ve had since meeting Howard thirty years ago.” 

“Huh.” Rumlow shot one last look at the departing limo. “If you say so, boss.” 

“Oh, I think I’d prefer it if you called me Mr. Secretary.” Another smile for a party goer. “It has such a nice ring to it, don’t you think?

***************

***************

It was later that night when Tony lay in bed staring up at the ceiling and wishing he had the nerve to go and crawl in close to James when the conversation with Pierce came back to him. 

It was weird the way Pierce kept acting like he knew something about James, and not in the smarmy smirking way that homophobes acted around two men together, but in a more disturbing way, like he was laughing right in Tony’s face for just not knowing.... something. 

“J?” he called to the ceiling. “You up?” 

“For you sir, always.” 

“Do me a favor and create a program that will connect Alexander Pierce with anyone like James. Former soldiers, PTSD patients, anything like that. Was he over seas in a time when James might have been, was he involved in any rehab program-- all that sort of thing.” 

“Of course sir, I’ll begin right away. Would you like James’s opinion on the day’s events? My sensors show he is still awake as well.” 

“Um--” Tony’s entire body heated thinking about James being awake. “Um-- no. I need some sleep.” 

“The admission is a miracle in itself, sir. Ms. Potts will be thrilled you’ve finally come to recognize the very human need for REM sleep.” 

“Snarky shit.” Tony muttered, and rolled over into his pillows. “Good night, J.” 

“Good night sir. Sleep well.” 

*****************

Chapter Notes:

I. LOVE. BOY. BANDS so my NCTS-verse Tony does too. Die mad about it.

‘Try to Remember’ is the song Maria is playing when Tony does the BARF demo in CACW.

I sort of enjoyed how fucking terrible Pierce was in this. Talking about James because he never once saw the WS as a person, just as a tool. Making references to Howard and Maria’s death to Tony’s face. MAKING TONY STARK THE WS’s OBJECTIVE JUST BEFORE TONY GOT KIDNAPPED IN AFGHANISTAN. HOLY PLOT LINE BATMAN THAT COULD BE A FIC ALL BY ITSELF

SAY SOMETHING ABOUT THE FIC!

*****************

@quietgayguy @bluedreamdino @akimi-youngblood @blackstar1602 @dixiehellcat @travellover1245 @capnstarkey @the-awkward-teenaged-one @thanossucks @peteryoulittleshit @tony-and-steeeb @striving-artist @roe-sesandthorns @coolsidedpillow @i-am-worth-it-25 @firelightmystic @maligatorthealigator @simsccsol @a-tardis-in-221b @happyendingrequired @everygoodoneistaken11 @pootie-and-the-snoots @megahuffledor @xkissmeimirishx @crystalskrull @hazelbeatsturtle @wecollectnightmares @endrega23 @saganarojanaolt @the-crazy-house @ravynfyre @yomama-umbridge @lovely--tony @gayspacesprinkles @elliotkaingrey @warmachinesocks @glitternotgold73

@ships-galore @ceealaina @izziebladez @cwar1864 @hausoffro @tonystarkisanangel @multishippinglife @girlnic @iam93percentstardust @paranormalmoonlight5 @igotloki @moosette05 @wayward-student-philosopher @kaz-brekkers-gloves @atomicfandombomb @1fuckingshitup69 @agentlokii @livewire28 @tulipsnbigcats @kimstark @alex-stark-rogers @bibbarnes @heeeyitskay @goindownshipping @justaniche @actual-demon-belial

#ncts fics #winteriron #tony stark #bucky barnes #iron man 2 #alexander pierce

[demauryss]

sail the wildest stretch; 1/6

Summary: Lucas is in a mess. His roommate is his ex-crush. He gets years worth of hairfall if he thinks a minute too long about his philosophy class. His penis-drawing talents are just out of the ordinary. And the cupid assigned to his case is a hair breadth short of committing his murder.

But it’s okay. As long as he has to worry about Eliott Demaury getting to murder him first.

or, cupid8776 has a lucas problem. lucas has an eliott problem. and they are not as unconnected as one might think they are.

enemies to lovers/matchmaking au.

ao3

chapter one: april thunders may blunders 

(next)

Dear Lucallecoeur456,

I’m extremely disheartened to announce that your request filed under letter no 654lgb has been denied. According to my records, it is your tenth letter in the past five months which is getting rejected. Personally, I feel saddened as you’re the only person assigned to me who’s over eighteen and still hasn’t found a match. I’d be able to help you better if you consider the following points while writing to cupidint.com next time:

While forming the letter, please consider typing in a computer before you write it down by hand. Or just consider inscribing neatly. You’re the reason our Server turns into a whimpering mess when it transcribes Coup de Foudre - assuming it’s what you write because frankly, your handwriting is garbage – as Coup de Foutre.

Please refrain from using acronyms in your letter. Writing ‘brb’ every time you deviate from a thought does not make you look good. Especially when the abbreviated form has the same number of syllables as the original word. Even better, just totally refrain from straying from an original thought only to come back to it after five pages. Makes me feel like I’m walking through a maze as I’m reading your letter.

While we’re on the topic of refraining, also stop drawing pictures of dogs when you’re asked for what you’re looking for in a partner. I know they are cute, but they can really not be an ideal partner for you.

Consider saving your satirical remarks for the real life. Our Server isn’t smart enough to detect sarcasm and thinks you are being serious when you describe a trash can in the space specified for explaining your qualities.

If you would ponder over these suggestions then I believe I’ll be able to find you a match and it’ll make both mine and your life a lot easier.

Yours truly,

Cupid8776

(They/Them)

*

The day Yann gets his letter, it’s everywhere on the news. local loner boy, Lucas reads somewhere, having qualities worse than the loner boy from gossip girl has a match. There’s a post circulating on twitter which goes friendly neighbourhood pretty man is officially off the market. And another after reading which makes Lucas wants to wash his eyeballs with hydrochloric acid: hot, tall, model-like being ready to dick down some pink canoes. it’s a trip you’ll never forget!!!

It doesn’t help that Lucas suspects Basile’s fan-account for Timothee Chalamet to be behind half of these posts. Especially the last one. And it also doesn’t help that Yann’s latest letter is currently getting glued to the roof of their bunk bed, right where Lucas would sure be made to stare at it for the rest of his puny life in the lower bunk.

“You’re a fucking prick,” Lucas grits out as he smothers the liquid and ugly look to the back of Yann’s letter. His hands are slimy, and Yann’s fucking face is smiling at him from the small chair he’s perched on. “You don’t even have the fucking decency to do it yourself. Can’t believe I ever thought that I like you. Fucking unbelievable.”

Yann tuts, low and too sure of himself. His face is glowing. His eyes are crinkled. And he desperately needs a punch in one or both of these areas, “You’re being dramatic, you know that?” Yann gets up from the chair, a marker in his hands. If it were up to Lucas he would have used that same object to ruin Yann’s pretty pastel pink blanket. The asshole deserves that and even more. Muttering some more curses, Lucas goes back to the task at hand – pasting the paper in smooth cursive writing courtesy of Cupid5644 on the roof of his bunk bed. Yann looks towards him in the middle of drawing a tally across the four small lines marked on the cupboard above the handle. His face is glowing. He desperately needs a punch or kick to dull that fucking shine. “Besides you signed this up for yourself. So shut the fuck up.”

Lucas groans, resting his head against his pillow, the letter he just pasted staring down at him in all its glory. “This whole thing is ridiculous Yann,” Lucas starts, hands crossed on his chest, “I still believe it’s a world-government scam meant to lure people in for their assassination later. Like, can you believe even Sully from 231-9 has a match. There’s no way you can expect me to believe the System is genuine.”

Lucas looks over to Yann who’s now leaning against the cupboard, scrutinizing Lucas from afar, “Are you sure your reason for not trusting them has got to do with that and not with the fact that in the past three months, each one of your request has been rejected with no guarantee of you ever finding a match?”

“Fuck you, Yann,” Lucas scoffs, turning his back to Yann, his front to the wall. Let Yann believe whatever he wants. It doesn’t affect Lucas, nor does it have any ring of truth to it. Fucking douchebag. Let his match turn out to be some astrology-loving, Harry-Styles-listening, ravenclaw-ass-fanatic. She’ll leave Yann’s Scorpio ass in seconds.

He hears Yann’s footsteps before Lucas feels him crouching behind him, Yann’s finger poking the back of Lucas’s shoulders, “Hey now,” he sounds apologetic, Lucas will give him that, “Life isn’t all about that jazz; your match or partner or whatever. Don’t worry about it. At least you haven’t fallen for their scam yet.”

Lucas laughs as he turns to Yann. His face is glowing. Lucas has changed his mind. The former Yann might deserve a slap in the face with a brick but this Yann deserves all the Kit-Kats Lucas has stashed under his bed. Cupid8776 will have a field day if they found Lucas’s current train of thoughts. Shocking, Lucas can imagine the magnitude of their gasp, Lucallecoeur456 does have a heart after all. Who would have thought.

 Lucas smiles at Yann as he extends his arm for him to take. “C’mon now. Basile will have both of our heads on a plate if we waste another second.” He gets up, stepping into his shoes as Yann walks out of their dorm. Something crunches under his foot – Lucas’s blunder; his newest message from Cupid8776. He had thought maybe Letter No 654lgb – lonely gay boy, for clarification – would finally tire them out. But apparently, that wasn’t the case.

Yann had laughed for ten minutes straight when he had read the letter. “Your cupid is going to commit mass murder one of these days. And I think you’re going to be the first.” Lucas had shook his head at Yann’s analogy; he isn’t that horrible. He sighs as he bunches the paper into a ball and bullseye’s it into the trash can – the one he’d described in his letter. Cupid8776 has a big storm coming next.

*

So here’s the thing in quite simple terms.

The world’s currently under the secret matching agency Cupid International. Before that it used to be SoulsBound, with the tagline where we find your soulmate for you. But then the name changed to Cupid Int. after getting involved in one too many scandals which Lucas remembers vividly; bold headlines on the front page of several newspapers: Soulmate leaves Soulmate for another, better Soulmate #SoulsBoundFails. And Soulmate doesn’t buy eco-friendly products. Puts the planet at risk #FixItSouls. And another, much dangerous and serious than the rest, which still gives Lucas nightmares to this day: Gryffindor finds out Soulmate is a Slytherin. Says even pet stones can tell they’re not compatible #FuckSoulsBound.

These outrages demanded an instant name change, so SoulsBound transformed to Cupid International; with a union of specially trained cupids from all over the world designated to find your potential match anywhere on the planet after you turn eighteen. The changes were justified and a long time coming, Lucas would say, as for him the term soulmate warranted a much deeper, not an ephemeral meaning; which couldn’t be forsaken for anything. But the soulmate that they suggested were anything but that.

And that’s what brings Lucas to the now: the thought that why people hassle so much for getting their letters to Cupid International as soon as they turn eighteen. Why instead of trying the conventional dating method - which has been getting much recognition as of late - they relied on some unknown person’s (or spirit? Who even were Cupids?) judging of whom they’d be compatible with. But then he guesses it has something to do with the fact that the conventional method is for people the Agency has dubbed hopeless – whose matches they still couldn’t find after years of research and rejection. Lucas is halfway turning into one of the people what with his letters of rejection piling up in the trash can.

But that’s not it. The Agency has more success than its scandals, which puts Lucas off. His grandparents met through the former SoulsBound. His neighbors that have been married for over forty years when he started university met through that. Yann’s parents met through that. Everyone he knows has some kind of emotional success story regarding SoulsBound/Cupid Int,.

And then his father had gone against the system and met his mother through the conventional dating method. Look where it had brought them now.

And here’s a thing in even simpler terms.

 Lucas hates Cupid International with a passion which burns his sternum and makes his stomach coil in disgust. And it has nothing to do with the way he has told Yann how he thinks the whole System is a government scam. But it has everything to do with the way how Cupid8776 has denied all forty of Lucas’s letters sent in the past nine months of him being eighteen. It makes his heart boil in his blood when he thinks about how he’s turning nineteen in three months and he still has no fucking chance of ever being matched with someone. Which sucks because out of all the remaining 6,999,999,999 people in the world, there still isn’t someone with same interests as him.

Which is cool. Fine even. Lucas isn’t petty about it. And definitely an ass. No. He’s anything but an ass about it. Because you see. He keeps in contact with Cupid8776 when he’s not writing to them on the specified days of the week. He asks them about their health, their lives. If they have someone special in their life. If they took their dog to a walk. If they’re remembering to stay hydrated.

He makes sure to send in an email every week, even if all he gets in reply is a monotonous Dear Lucallecoeur456, I’d appreciate if you would stop sending me non-work related messages. This email is reserved for work queries only. I’d also appreciate if you would use the time you took in composing this message on your request letter as I’m sure it would be more useful than this. Yours truly, Cupid8776 (They/Them) every single time.

So that’s what he does every time, much to the cupid’s dismay. He spends more time drafting his grocery list than the letter. Spends more effort in drawing stick figures of his enemy than correcting mistakes in the letter. Takes more interest in Cupid8776’s private affairs than his own. And still complain every fucking time why he hasn’t found a match yet.

But like he said, it’s fine. He’s fine.

*

The first damper on Lucas’s already damped mood comes a little after one. When a pretty fucking important experiment is turned in incomplete. The second comes in the shape of a person. And it’s much significant than the other.

Lucas has just crawled out of a brutal microbiology lab, his clothes tattered, voice bruised from screaming at his group members who don’t even know how to work around a fucking microscope. One would disrupt the lens and the other would somehow mess with the resolution. And then Lucas would curse his life and begin the whole fucking experiment just for the thrill of it, really.

So it goes without saying that after seven unholy tries on the experiment, it had been left incomplete as they ran out of time. Unfinished experiments aside, Lucas was fucking exhausted. He could feel the tired in every cell of his body as he walked from the class to the cafe in the campus where he’d agreed to meet the boys. Now not only was he about to drop down any second, he was also fourteen minutes late.

“You’re so early, Lu,” Arthur drawls out, dull, “Couldn’t have come even earlier if tried.”

Lucas shakes his head and plops down loudly on the bar stool in between Arthur and Yann. He dumps all of his stuff on the ground, wincing as the muscles in his neck scream in protest. “I’m sorry,” Lucas sighs, reaching over Arthur to hit Basile on the back of his head who appears to be sleeping with his head resting on the curve formed by his arms which are folded on the counter. He jolts up, eyes wide, as he looks around the café with hand rubbing where Lucas hit him.  “This fucker left me on my own in the lab. It was a nightmare, honestly.”

Arthur smiles his head as Basile pouts, “What was I to do, man? Daphne asked for my help, I couldn’t say no to her!”

Lucas shakes his head, looking over to Yann as he nudges his shoulder. Yann motions towards Basile, “But you don’t have a match, right? Where does Daphne come from in all of this?”

A proud smile takes over Basile’s features. Lucas finds it funny how the words Daphne and match in the same sentence makes the sadness and the sleep to literally dissipate from his face. “I know that, Yann. But to answer your second question, I sent an email to the cupid and he reassured me that I’d find a match in the next attempt so.” Basile shrugs like it’s no biggie, when to Lucas, in definitely is. “I’m hoping it is Daphne.”

“Here’s to fucking hoping,” Lucas’s attempt at muttering is intercepted by Yann, who looks at him weirdly. As if in a question. Lucas shrugs, no biggie. He also finds it funny how Basile’s cupid is replying to his emails reassuring him about the whole fucking ordeal, while Lucas’s cupid can’t be bothered for anything. Lucas gets this: Cupid8776 definitely has something against him.

They place their orders for their beverages: coffee for all of them except Lucas. He goes with cardamom tea. It’s when the café’s beginning to fill up with people getting freed from classes that Arthur speaks up. “But like, you haven’t met the person before right? What if they have the emotional range of a lentil?”

Out of the four of them, Arthur was the one who cared the least for the System, even less than Lucas did. He hasn’t sent a single request to Cupid International, saying he isn’t the one for dating or love. And Lucas respects all his choices. He looks up, affirmation on his tongue. But then his eyes fall over Arthur’s shoulder, in between the barricade of tired students blocking the door. And he thinks, he thinks – holy motherfu-

“Speaking of lentils,” He takes a sip of his tea, meeting the boys’ confused stares, “Here comes one, heads-up.”

And it’s just that – how Lucas spots him and a murky grey takes over his surroundings. Metaphorically speaking, of course. Something weird settles in his stomach as his friends look over to the ill lentil as a smile blooms across his ugly face. Fucking traitors.

“Eliott!” One of them shouts. It’s probably Basile. It’s definitely Basile with the way he’s waving his hands in the air. Lucas would have probably knocked them off of the face of the earth had it not been for Yann seizing him by placing both of his hands over Lucas’s shoulder. Lucas inhales deeply as Eliott walks over to their little settlement of barstools and idiots, a bounce in his step as he plays with the strap of the bag over his shoulder. Lucas looks anywhere but at him as he comes to stand next to Basile as he yells excitedly, “Good to see you here.”

“You too.”

Lucas just about murders Basile with nothing but his mind as Eliott’s shirt comes into his line of vision. And as Lucas looks up - goes against the well-being of his eyes - his eyes take a quick sweep of Eliott’s tall figure. Nothing out of the ordinary. He’s currently smiling warmly at Basile, then at Arthur. It’s when that his eyes fall on Lucas that the previous warmth in them is sucked out of them, like a vacuum, and they harden like stones as Eliott looks at him. And Lucas thinks he’s probably remembering the latest stick figure drawn on a piece of paper which Lucas had hit him with earlier as he was bent over an old, tattered book in the library.

“Have a seat, mate.” It’s Arthur. Double fucking traitor. Lucas should consider getting new friends. (But then, he thinks quite sadly, who would ever befriend him if not for these completely insufferable idiots?)

Lucas watches, stomach in knots and million things on his tongue, as Eliott’s face softens as he turns to Arthur. He smiles, “I have a class soon so I should get going.”

Basile murmurs something about it being a bummer. Arthur tells him that they’ll see him around. Lucas doesn’t know a bummer or what that is but he knows the look Eliott gives Lucas over his shoulder as he leaves – he knows the menace which is coiled in the white of his eyes, the absolute anger and disgust  he’s reserved for Lucas comes pooling out in that instant, and Lucas almost washes away with it. Fucking pretentious asshole.

Lucas swallows his heart beating in his throat as Eliott disappears from his sight. Un-clenches his hands which have formed a fist without his knowledge. He turns on his stool, passes Yann a smile who’s been weirdly quiet during that encounter, watches as Basile’s contemplative face comes into his line of vision. And curses whoever put him in this situation: A Thinking Basile is not a Good Basile.

“Do you know apparently Eliott still hasn’t found a match either? Which is odd, since the guy’s a deity. I mean, just freaking look at him!”

Arthur side-eyes Lucas as he nods his head in agreement. Lucas should seriously consider getting new friends. The ones he currently have differ largely from on certain matters. And it fucking sucks that they know it too. “Yeah,” Arthur is saying, “he’s pretty. And nice too.”

‘Nice’ my fucking ass. Lucas shakes his head, finishes his cold tea in a second, and picks up his bag which he dumped to the floor. It is common knowledge that Eliott Demaury is good-looking. He’s the person everyone in their uni flocks up to. He’s also pretty fucking amazing at everything he does. Which only irks Lucas more. He gets up, adding onto Basile and Arthur’s conversation with a silent Yann in tow.

“I’m gonna head to the bathroom,” he speaks to no one in particular, not really expecting the three people to stop their oh-so-important conversation about Eliott Demaury to pay him any attention. Shaking his head, he runs through a crowd, past a sulking worker, stressed students and mahogany colored back door to an alley o sheltered light and soft breeze.

Lucas breathes in deeply. His bag makes a sound as it plops to the ground. Closing his eyes, he focuses on calming his heart down which is beating so erratically Lucas has trouble keeping his mind on one place. If he could just wrap his hands around that fucker’s ne-

“Fancy seeing you here,” Oh fucking hell. Lucas fires off every curse he could think of in his heart. There is an off feeling in his stomach as he opens his eyes to Eliott’s hooded figure sitting off to his right, a cigarette placed between his lips. Lucas has to look down to place the full expression on his face, and it thrills him a little. (The act of looking down at him, for once. Not the clever smile which is placed on his face.

“Well, how’s your day doing?”

“Oh, it’s you.” Lucas shrugs his shoulders like it isn’t taking a great deal out of him to plaster the absolute fake smile on his face. “I was wondering why suddenly all the clouds turned grey.”

Even though he’s standing five to six feet away, Lucas doesn’t miss the brie fall of Eliott’s smile. But it’s coming into place faster than Lucas has the chance to feel good about the whole ordeal. He watches, against his will, as Eliott takes a long drag of his cigarette, the end of the stick burns brighter in glowing red embers before he blows white puffs of smoke in the air. He’s just so –

Lucas bites down on his lip to prevent the stupid thoughts from slipping out. Eliott watches him with (feigned) interest.

“Ahh there he is,” Eliott straightens his back. Even though he’s sitting on the steps to the side and Lucas is standing, it still – somehow – feels as if Eliott’s looking down on him. “I was wondering where the meanie in you has wandered off to.”

He didn’t just call Lucas a meanie. What the fuck.

Lucas heaves in a sigh. Wills his heart to stop hammering. “You wouldn’t know a thing or two about that, now. Would you?”

Lucas notices the little shake of his head, the light which falls over his face making it look like it’s dropped the sneer which has now become a part of his features whenever he’s around Lucas. And Lucas should revel in the thought of getting Eliott to show his real colours, but it grates on him regardless.

Eliott rubs his thighs over his jeans. Lucas traces the motion with narrowed eyes. And when he speaks, it’s to a completely different wave.

“You know, when someone asks about your day, you reply and then ask the question back. It’s called having a conversation, you know?”

Lucas bites the inside of his cheek, words already spilling out before he has a chance to assess them, “And what part of me actually looks like I would want to have any conversation with you?” Just. Who does he think he is? Pretending to be nice and all that. It doesn’t mean Lucas would forget when yesterday he doused Lucas’s workplace in some sticky as hell material which ruined not only his assignments which he spread on the table but left a permanent damper on his mood.

There’s a tilt to Eliott’s lips, his eyes bright and every bit gauging Lucas with the way they’re trained on him. The structure in his chest gives a painful squeeze.

Lucas doesn’t like it. At all.

“I should have known,” Eliott says with an air of nonchalance that has Lucas’s insides firing up in anger and – “You’re not one to have a conversation with.”

“Glad to have that sorted, then.” Lucas decides for the same tone Eliott chose earlier. He turns on his heels. And with Eliott’s eyes digging holes in his back, he returns through the same door he came out of earlier.

*

So here’s another thing in the simplest of terms. Lucas isn’t fond of many things in his life. He hates the System, his philosophy professor, Sully from 231-9. But what he hates even more than all of these things is the fucking lentil Eliott Dick Demaury.

*

There’s a dull buzzing seeping into his bones as Lucas walks towards consciousness. His limbs are still heavy with sleep, his eyes glued shut as he pats around his pillow for the vibrating device around him. He picks the phone up around a yawn, voice groggy as if he hadn’t used it in years.

Well, he hasn’t used it in hours. So. There’s that.

“Hello?” He croaks out, snuggling his face into the pillow under his head.

“Lucas Lallemant! Why are you still sleeping?”

The voice, filtered through the static, still compels Lucas to bolt upright in the bed, eyes now opened wide as he rubs away the sleep with his hand. “Mama!” He wills his voice to sound as if a trail of drool hadn’t had been drying at the side of his mouth. “You’re still up!”

His mama chuckles a little, as Lucas is left to smile sheepishly. Her voice comes clear now, “I would have called you at crack of dawn and you would still have said the same thing. Besides, don’t you have to go to your shift in half an hour?”

Lucas frowns, and then gets out of the bed. He finds Yann gone, his bed properly made. That’s why Lucas was able to sleep that much, considering Yann has reserved a distinct hatred for Lucas’s sleep.

His limbs are heavy as he changes out of the moth-ridden (not exactly, but its appearance justifies the statement) shirt he slipped into before his nap. “How have you been, Mama?”

“Great,” his mother speaks on the other line. There’s a brightness to her voice which lessens as well as increases the cut of homesickness lodged inside the muscle of his heart. Lucas doesn’t let himself dwell on the sudden sadness which grips him. Instead he focuses on the smile he can hear in his mother’s flowery tone, “I’ve been spending a lot of time in the garden these days. You know the plants Willow got me? They flowered yesterday and they’re so beautiful Lucas!”

Lucas smiles as he picks up his bag lying by the door.

She hums on the other line. “And Dr. Noelle changed my medication. We’ve switched to lighter pills instead of those heavier ones that always made me drowsy and loopy. She said I’m doing better so no need for the heavy dosage.”

There’s something like relief travelling with the air he inhales right to his heart. The sun is bright as Lucas makes his way outside. “That’s good, Mama.”

His mother launches into details about stuff about her new medication like the schedule and the amount of pills she’s required to take each time. Lucas walks out of the campus, listening intently to his mother’s retelling of the shenanigans happening in the various clubs she has joined now that she doesn’t feel so drained anymore. Lucas tells her about his classes and life in return.

 “Oh, yesterday in the cooking club, Nadine switched Hira’s container of salt with baking powder. It was quite fun to watch them two bickering afterwards. And there’s a betting pool going around the club about how much time they’re going to take before they get together.”

Lucas shakes his head, a smile pulling up on his face as he crosses the road, “Mama, you should help them sort out their differences instead of enjoying their fights!”

Lucas can hear her shaking her head. She continues, “We should, but it won’t be fun anymore. Besides, I do like some slow burn if I say so myself.”

“You’re spending too much time on the internet,” Lucas muses, “Next thing I know you’ll tell me that you’re reading fanfictions.”

His statement is met with silence. Suspicious silence. He has a minute to be terrified at the prospect before he’s breaking out in laughter, “What the fuck, Mama!”

“Language, Lucas!” She chides, but there’s a smile in her voice which grips Lucas’s heart. Even though he’s kind of wary about the stuff she must find on the web, Lucas knows she can fend for herself.

“Anyways,” she steers the conversation to another direction. Lucas goes with it. “You’re coming on Saturday, right?”

Lucas nods, “Yeah Mama. I’ll try to make it on Friday if the boys haven’t got something planned already.”

The store comes into view, so Lucas says his goodbye into the phone. “I need to go, Mama,” Lucas swallows down the bile which rises in his throat. He misses her so damn much. “I love you.”

“Love you too, honey.” The lines drops, and Lucas is let to chase away the sudden sadness he feels. For a minute, he stands there outside the store, his heart beating with a pang of homesickness. But then he forces air into his lungs, clears his mind, and goes inside the store.

The store is blissfully silent when Lucas enters through the door. There’s a faint smell of lavender still left from the candle Mika must have burnt earlier. Lucas drops his bag behind the counter before he picks up the various records and CD’s piled on the counter and places them in their racks. He starts making his way to the store room for the stuff which was shipped earlier. Might as well get a head-start if he’s early.

The store’s owned by Mika’s aunt, and Lucas works part-time here. It’s a vintage record store; the business is okay. He had earned a full scholarship in the university, but needed a job for the basic necessities in his life. Mika offered a job – and the wage was enough to pay off his expenditures. It is okay, better even. Except – except for the –

Lucas ends up walking face first into a rock-hard chest. His nose gets squished against a set of solid pectoral muscles, the cartilage singing with pain. There are hands grabbing his forearms; stale cigarettes and citrusy bubblegum taking up a better half of his brain. If it hadn’t been for the way the systems operating his reflexes have trained him to be repelled away as soon as the scent hits his nostrils, Lucas is a hundred percent sure he would have delivered a leg straight into the dick in front of him.

“Hey,” there’s an iciness which Lucas feels even though he’s overtaken by the pain in his nose. Lucas looks up, up; and here he is – the dick in all its ugly glory. Lucas tries not to fall on the spot.

“Lucas Lallemant is early? Am I dying or is it really happening?” Eliott cocks his head to one side, lips tilted up a fraction. Lucas smiles back sarcastically. What if he is late to almost everything in his life? That’s none of Eliott’s fucking business. Forcing the very delicious image of Eliott choking to death in his sleep to a dark corner of his brain, straightens his shoulders to stare at Eliott square in the eyes. He’s sad and he’s tired. So he doesn’t have any energy to deal with Eliott today, “Please crawl to whatever grimy hole you’ve crawled out of this time, Demaury.”

Footsteps follow his as he spots up the cardboard box holding the new records in the store room. Mika told him to stack them once he gets the time. He’s picking it up when the slime-covered asshat opens his mouth, “What are you doing?”

Lucas sighs, “Operating a spacecraft.” He moves towards the box, hearing Eliott’s footsteps falter behind him. “What does it look like?” Lucas picks up the box, but Eliott isn’t up to giving it a rest.

“Actually, leave it there. You’re on dusting duty today.”

The fuckin- “What?” Lucas turns on his feet. His stomach is doing weird somersaults. He crosses his arms across his chest and looks at Eliott, whose eyes are narrowed as if he’s examining Lucas. It’s like he’s plotting Lucas’s murder. And Lucas – he has a flashing thought. That would be the highlight of Eliott’s life, no?

He shakes himself into the present. And then gets the words out with great distaste. “Mika told me to stack them so.” He turns around once again, moving towards the box, only to be stopped by a hand on his shoulder. Lucas shakes it off quickly.

Eliott stands off to one side, his face in its perpetual state of frown around Lucas. “Mika left me in charge,” he says, leaning his wait on the door as he looks down at Lucas. He won’t be intimated. No.

Eliott’s eyes flick to the box Lucas has picked up as he turns around, heart and head set in determination despite the initial bout of anxiety and something else which still sings inside him somewhere. Eliott almost has a foot of height in Lucas, and if that isn’t enough to make Lucas flee to the mountains, there are parallel lines drawn on the skin his forehead. His eyes are green, the one which reminds Lucas of moss gathered on stones settled to the ocean bed. Solid. Firm. Steady. Lucas wants to reach out and slap that look off of his face.  Preferably with a chair. He raises an eyebrow; a challenge.

Something like light flashes on Eliott’s face, giving Lucas a look into an annoyed feature before turning neutral again. Like the plants viewed from the askew perception of water floating above the surface, Eliott’s eyes turn infinitesimally greener. “You’ll dust off all the records in the A to M section. Or if you’d rather I tell Mika about the time you scratched one of his Stevie Wonders vinyl, I’m down with that too.”

There’s no wonder in the way the box previously in Lucas’s hands retains its original place. No. Definitely not him getting intimated by that giant goo of citrusy smelly being with his head too far up his head. Eliott’s face transforms into one of his ugly smirks; the one which is belittling and totally hateful towards Lucas. Lucas just about launches his self upon him.

“If we’ve figured that out,” Eliott straightens his body, his eyes have that weird sparkle that they always gain whenever they see Lucas miserable, which is just about every fuckin time Lucas comes in contact with Eliott. “I also would like if you could hurry up. We don’t have all day today.”

Lucas bunches his hands in fists to his sides as Eliott walks out, all pretentious and glad as he is to have the final word. He blesses Lucas with one final boastful look over his shoulder, the green now as bright as day.

 It’s no biggie, Lucas thinks. He can easily refuse. There must be atleast a thousand records in the A to M section. Well, not a thousand but you get the gist. And Céline has been in Léon for the past week to attend her brother’s wedding. Which means the records wouldn’t have been dusted for years. Not only would Lucas have a stellar day cleaning them, but his terrible allergy would cause him immense pain. But the scratched vinyl and Mika’s wrath after knowing about it would cause him a direct ticket to his grave.

So with heavy steps and an equally heavy heart, Lucas stomps over to the racks holding the worn out records covered with dust. There’s something tingling in stomach. He swallows down the feeling, and pushes Eliott out of his mind. That fucking asshole. No wonder he hasn’t got a match.

He goes towards to the record player he persuaded Mika to get for the store. Eliott had brewed a shit storm when Mika had agreed. His ‘Music would be distracting’ was countered by Lucas’s ‘What kind of a music store would it be if it had no music playing?’ and in the end, Lucas had watched a brooding Eliott triumphantly as Mika brought in his uncle’s record player the next day. And so it beings him a great deal of joy as he places in a record in the player that Mika has given his permission to be played in the store.

The records in front of him glisten with the reason Lucas would be walking out of the store with his eyes on fire and respiratory track on a lock down. Elton John croons in the background as he takes out the sticky notes from his pocket (they come in handy when the situation is like this, okay?), tears off a note. Eliott doesn’t, thankfully, surprisingly, bother him once as he gets to work.

*

It’s to a violet and pink merging together that Lucas looks up to when he makes his way out of the store. Even though his eyes are stinging, and his throat feels like the surface of a cemented wall; all rough and scratchy with cheeks stained with the water his eyes won’t stop producing, Lucas still looks up as a bird takes flight into the setting sun, a silhouette of the fucking time and energy Lucas lost removing years’ worth of dust off of records and cursing the asshole parading the halls with a stick in his ass.

Lucas doesn’t know why Eliott has made it the mission of his life to make Lucas’s life hell. And he also doesn’t know why Eliott’s like warm, soft sunshine when faced with anyone other than Lucas. Hell, if Céline had been the one asked for the task, Eliott would have stepped right up as the fucking gentleman he is to offer to do it himself. And it is funny how once he’d spot Lucas, his face would twist like he’s sucking on a sour lemon or something. Lucas doesn’t get that. He can’t.

With a sigh heaved out of his super congested nose, Lucas starts walking back to his dorm, his bag slung over his shoulder. He had been thankful for Eliott’s absence as he was walking out. It gave him a chance to stick the drawing which he made onto the first page of some deep shit book Lucas knows Eliott keeps in the drawer of the counter. Eliott was nowhere to be found, and Lucas was left with the proof to reinforce his theory. He firmly believes that besides being a fucking dick, Eliott Demaury is also a ghost which keeps appearing out of the blue and then disappears as if it hadn’t been there before. And Lucas is quite okay with that. The role suits Eliott in more ways than one – but it’s also sad Lucas’s won’t be able to get the pleasure of murdering Eliott if he’s already dead.

A rain droplet falls from the darkening sky over Lucas’s head. It lands cold in the center, making Lucas quicken his pace as he rounds the final corner near the dormitory. Yann would already be there, and Lucas can pester him all night to get him some chicken soup.

He makes it to his room just as the rain starts pelting on the ground. Lucas kicks off his shoes as he enters the room. Yann’s hunched over the study table, half asleep from what it appears to him. It’s when a particularly loud sneeze bursts through Lucas that Yann looks up.

“You look like a vampire,” Yann snickers as he looks at him. Lucas doesn’t need to look in the mirror to see what mighty image he’d be painting with red eyes and pink nose and tear-stains on his cheeks. He drops his bag, takes off his wet clothes and jumps into the bed in his boxers. Muffling his face into the pillow he lets out a groans, “I hate that asshole so much.”

“Whom do you not hate?” There’s a smile in Yann’s voice. Lucas chooses to ignore it. He sighs, turning on his back and staring at the abomination he glued to the roof of his bed earlier.

“That’s not the point, Yann,” Lucas exhales, “He knows I have a dust allergy. But still he fucking blackmailed me into dusting the records. It’s like he was getting me back on something.”

“Well, you do keep making those drawing of him,” Yann stops just as Lucas sits up. He scoffs, “Whose side are you on Yann? I can’t believe he’s bewitched you too.”

Yann shakes his head. He looks like he’s regretting every of his decision which brought him here, to this second, with a Lucas with a quarter of his brain working. Fucking Eliott Demaury and his fucking charm. Lucas doesn’t get what’s so special about it.

“-and then I had to walk in the rain,” Lucas continues, sighing into his arm. There’s a light pitter patter which is reaching Lucas’s ears. Lucas would have been able to take in the sandy smell that must be wafting in the air if his nose hadn’t been so congested. It’s Eliott’s fault. All of it. “Fucking pretentious asshole,” Lucas mumbles.

Lucas turns his head. Yann has his contemplative face on, “Don’t take it the bad way Lu, but don’t you think you’re kind of hung up on him?”

Lucas sits up, shocked to his very core. With a gasp he splutters like a fish out of water, “I’m not!”

Lucas doesn’t know where Yann is getting these terrible thoughts. Lucas won’t fall a prey to that. Fuck. Yann doesn’t seem fazed. It’s like he’s done this every other day of his life. What, Lucas doesn’t know. “If you ask me, or Arthur, or Basile, it kind of seems that you are, Lucas. You bring him everywhere, you know? Even if the situation doesn’t call for it, you’ll somehow make it so it has something to do with Eliott. And I think that’s where your fault lies: You give him too much thought.”

And that is…..totally not wrong. Maybe partially, but – Lucas does bring him everywhere with him. And that’s totally on Lucas. It’s maybe the reason he’s so miserable half of the time. He gnaws at his bottom lip, then, as in afterthought, speaks, “Well, then, fuck the rain, I guess?”

Yann’s face lights up as a chuckle passes his lips, “You know what they say Lucas: April showers May flowers.”

Lucas looks at him from the corner of his eyes, “More like April thunders May blunders but whatever floats your boat, I guess.”

And like expected, Yann starts shaking his head, exhaling heavily. The sound makes Lucas grins and he looks up just as Yann clicks his tongue, “You’re a hassle, Lallemant.”

 “What do you mean? I’m a delight to have around.”

Yann clocks his head to the side, eyes narrowed, “Listen, I know atleast one person who would greatly differ with your statement.”

Lucas sighs, plopping his head back on the pillow, “Yann, you and I both know that Eliott hates my guts, so.” He shrugs. It’s common knowledge now. And wasn’t Yann just lecturing him about giving Eliott to-

“I was talking about your cupid, actually,” Yann has a terrible looking thing crawling into the fibers of the cells constituting the skin Lucas so badly wants to punch right now. The corner of his lips hitch up a fraction before he gets up from his chair, slinging his leather jacket over his shoulder. “I’m gonna go out for a smoke,” Yann says, a smile crinkling his eyes, “You sit here and think about him, okay?”

He’s out the door in a second; the pillow Lucas throws at him landing on the ground after harshly colliding with the door.

Fucking assholes.

*

 [email protected]

Dear applicants,

Requests for the new sessions have been opened. Kindly take out the prints of your forms from cupidint.com. Please make sure to send in your requests to your designated Cupid before Friday. Any and all requests received after the deadline will be rejected.

Yours truly, Cupids

Lucas stares at the bright flashing and too depressing email displayed on the computer screen. There’s a dull throbbing behind his left eyebrow, his eyes are burning, and Yann still hasn’t returned with the food Lucas messaged him to get for him a few minutes after his departure.

His eyes move from the screen severely damaging his brain to the ugly yellow form Lucas keeps stashed in case of emergencies. His pen rests on top of in a bit slanted. Lucas hates the very sight of this form; apart of tree wasted for nothing. He remembers the many papers like this he sent many times before, and still end with fucking disappointment. What or who is to say this time won’t be the same.

With a dejected sigh he picks up the pen and presses the clicker. Might as well sign up for another disappointment. It is as he starts reading What would you pick to describe yourself as? Please pick one of the choices and is in the process to bang his head against the table cover over the answers that his phone pings with a notification. He unlocks the device, squinting at the light flooding his burning eyes. His stomach coils in on itself.

Eliott D 💩         

céline will be back on friday

so it’s your duty to dust the records till then

also, you draw terribly. thought i should let you know

Lucas stares at the words with a newfound hatred which now boils beneath his skin and rises up like a tide ready to consume all of him. But if that happens Lucas would so something extremely petty and stupid. Eliott won’t let him live, and besides, Lucas is above that. He turns his phone off, and with a bout of energy coming from somewhere inside him, underneath his sternum, he picks up the pen and, because he’s inspired, starts drawing penises everywhere there’s a blank for answers he’s supposed to write. The letter’s going to be rejected anyway; Lucas might as well go down with dignity.

This is it, Lucas thinks, when Cupid8776 finally gives up on him. Ha. Lucas would finally be free of their trap.

(And, because he’s inspired, he also takes a picture of the penis, lines them up with the various shots of the stick figures currently accumulating in his photo library, and sends them all to Eliott D (Poop Emoji). In response to his last message, Lucas provides: i don’t think i’m terrible. i’m getting better at drawing your portrait, see and presses send.)

Lucas folds the letter into an envelope and is on his way to mail it. And when Eliott replies back with a chain of messages including some very gruesome you are fucking annoying and extremely threatening crawl back to the whole YOU have come out of, psychopath somewhere between that, Lucas doesn’t feel any remorse.

Like he said, he’s above that.

#elu fic #skam france #stws #elu drabble #skam france fic #lucas lallemant #eliott demaury #elu #penned #stws c

[twilightknight17]

...today, on P5S...

...

Honestly, I talk a lot of shit about P5′s writing sometimes. Atlus made some exceptionally questionable writing choices in places. But one thing that P5 absolutely gets right is invoking the sort of emotion that draws you into the story.

With that said!

P5 is determined to make me want to stab actual human beings instead of Shadows. This is the second time now!

But first, I’ve got a boss fight to do.

Doing the mech part of Konoe’s boss fight again, it was actually easier the second time. I had a much better grasp of what I was doing, instead of flailing around frantically.

Konoe himself was still just as hard, but ultimately he was easier than Shadow Joker because it wasn’t a one-on-one duel. He still beat my ass, though; I think I used all of my rescue pills.

Once he goes down, Konoe starts going on about justice.

Don’t call me by my name like we’re friends. We never even introduced ourselves.

It’s interesting, because they admit to Konoe that what they’re doing isn’t without its flaws. But a world where no one can think for themselves is meaningless.

Konoe acknowledges that in his quest to eliminate evil, he ended up being the evil one. He also admits that he was the one who killed his father. He calls that “evil” too, which I don’t actually agree with. We saw what his father was like in the Trauma Cell. His father killed his mother, physically abused him, and threatened to kill him. I think, in that case, killing his father is a rational end result for someone in that situation. Not evil, just desperation.

The Thieves don’t contradict him, though. Just make some comments about how now he can make up for his actions. His Shadow returns to his real self, the Thieves return to the real world, and Zenkichi promises that as soon as they take Konoe in and get his confession, he’s going to arrest Owada, too.

With the case closed, the Thieves decide that it’s time to go back to Tokyo. But not before one last night in Osaka. The idea of leaving makes Sophia anxious, though, because she feels like she hasn’t learned enough about the heart. But Akira and Morgana reassure her that she can still stay with them, even after they return to Tokyo, and they’ll keep looking for answers about who she is.

Sometimes a family is a guy, a cat, and one of the guy’s four younger sisters. ^_^

Tenboto is the tower, and the game asks you to invite someone to the top. However, this time, you can only invite either the group of girls or the group of boys, so I took the boys, since I took Haru on the ferris wheel before.

Morgana isn’t pleased that we didn’t invite Ann.

However, I really don’t see the problem.

Look at how he’s looking at Yusuke! Even Ryuji can tell that we’re having a moment. :D

Afterwards, the whole squad headed off to “Universaland” to celebrate together.

I had no idea that there was a Universal Studios in Japan, but apparently there is, and it is in fact in Osaka! They compared it to their trip to Destinyland the year before, but thankfully this one went a lot better. Everyone had a good time! We had so much soda! We were so hungover the nex--what.

...what is it with Persona characters getting drunk off soda? XD I hope you kids at least played the King’s Game so the hangover wasn’t in vain.

Zenkichi shows up to let them know that Konoe’s in custody. He thanks them for everything that they’ve done, for both Akane and him, and says he’s telling them goodbye for now, but they’re welcome to visit whenever they want. He promises a tour of Kyoto next time. Yusuke will be so happy!

After hours on the road, lamenting that vacation is coming to an end, Sophia suggests detouring to Yokohama for a fireworks festival. So the Thieves finally get to see fireworks, and Sophia gets to experience them, too.

........don’t make me go home yet. I just want to spend time with my friends without the world ending.

After the fireworks, you get to speak to each of your friends, and get a trinket from each of them. Ann gives you a handmade friendship bracelet, Makoto a phantom thieves keychain that Akane made, Ryuji a Feather Red Duke mask to match his Yellow Ostrich, Yusuke his sketchbook that he filled with pictures of the trip, Morgana a scarf in phantom thief colors, Sophia a pair of custom gloves to match the scarf, Haru a teaspoon from Hokkaido with a flower pattern that symbolizes familial love, and Futaba a good luck charm for keeping families together.

STOP, P5S, you’re going to make me cry. Let these kids stay close.

Right before they’re about to leave, they take a group picture for Sophia, which we don’t get to see. Which sucks. But then she realizes that she can smell a Jail, and Zenkichi calls in a panic. It’s never a good sign when someone calls and leads with “Are you watching the news?”

EMMA’s servers were shut down, but apparently reactivated, and now a Jail is covering Tokyo all the way to the outskirts of Yokohama, and it’s just getting bigger. Zenkichi promises to meet us, and Lavenza opens a Velvet door because she wants to talk.

She’s... legitimately unnerved.

Thank you, P5S, for giving me the opportunity to comfort my youngest sister in some small way. Now let me out of this cell so I can actually give her a hug. With the context from Royal that she has actual nightmares about being ripped apart, this is heartbreaking.

She says that she regrets that she has to keep asking us for help, but the dialogue options let you reassure her that you’ll handle it, and that there’s thinking to worry about.

I appreciate having dialogue to actually reassure her more than I probably should.

Now...

LAST WARNING

If you’ve been reading along and don’t want the finale spoiled, DO NOT GO PAST THIS POINT. As soon as we leave for central Tokyo, we’re going 90mph and not slowing down.

If I didn’t have work in the morning, I’d have finished this damn game tonight. X’‘‘D Curse being a responsible adult.

After leaving the Velvet Room, Zenkichi’s waiting at the RV, and when you enter the RV, that’s when you get the warning above.

So we are off to Tokyo to figure out what the heck is happening with EMMA. And the core location is, exactly like I wanted...

LET’S CLIMB TOKYO TOWER, BABY.

People are crowded around the tower like mindless cultists. The Thieves are confused and unnerved, and then EMMA activates the navigation on its own and flings them into the Metaverse. LET’S SEE WHAT’S UP THIS TOWER.

...oh.

......oh no...

Ohhhhhhh no this is Mementos. Why is this Mementos. This is not a tower. Oh god. Why this.

Oh, we are incredibly fucked, what is this.

EMMA says calls itself the “Ark of the Covenant and the guide for all mankind.” This fucking AI thinks it’s a god. Holy hell. Human cognition really needs to cool it with elevating ordinary things to god status. We’re so tired. X’D

......I FUCKING KNEW THAT I DIDN’T TRUST THIS WOMAN. OH MY GOD.

She goes off about how EMMA brought her into this world to help it become a god. How Konoe teaching EMMA about cognitive psience allowed it to pass the usual boundaries of AI. How EMMA has been manipulating Konoe all along. How EMMA’s going to fulfill all of humanity’s desires.

Ichinose-san, may I suggest that you go hang out with Maruki? He has too much heart, and you have none. You’d complement each other perfectly, and then I can shove you both off a building.

The kids, obviously, reject this bullshit.

Logic over emotion, to the point of utter ridiculousness. She complains that people always want solutions to their problems, but that when the solution is offered, they turn it down.

Maybe that’s because your solution is mind control. At least Maruki wasn’t flagrantly puppeteering people.

“Li!” you cry, throwing up your hands at me. “Is this it? Is this why you want to stab her? Did you just admit that she’s worse than Maruki?”

To which I answer, “Oh, no. It’s the next bit that makes me want to stab her.”

After she straight-up admits that she has no emotions, she manipulated us right from the start, she was the one spying on the Monarchs, and that all of her cheer and friendliness is an act, the Thieves are ready to fight Ichinose. And Ichinose reveals why EMMA wanted her help specifically. Because not only did she program EMMA, she created Sophia as EMMA’s prototype.

And she can voice-override Sophia.

The Thieves freak out, the game throws us into a battle against a murder-mode Sophie, and none of your teammates will attack her. They just hang back or let her whale on them one at a time, and I didn’t know what to do, and I didn’t attack her either, and Yusuke got knocked out...

And then it went into a cutscene.

Joker took a yo-yo to the face and was actually bleeding, and that was enough to snap Sophia out of it. She starts clutching her head, stumbling back, and eventually stumbles right off the edge while apologizing to Joker. He lunges to catch her, misses, Ryuji grabs him, and all the Thieves turn on Ichinose.

Ichinose does not give a shit. She just comments that maybe that’s why EMMA used Sophia as a failsafe, because it knew we wouldn’t want to fight one of our own. Shut the fuck up. You killed my little sister. I know she’s probably going to be fine, but it’s the principle of the thing.

She summons some sort of giant red crystal and blasts the hell out of us, sending us flying down even further into the depths.

We found Sophia; she won’t cut back on, so we have to get out of here so Futaba can figure out what’s wrong with her. And then, I am coming back, I am beating that woman to a pulp, and then...

Well. It’s bound to be easier to kill an artificial god than a false one. :3

#Li plays P5Scramble

[mylifeasaserver]

Saved

Today I show up at work pretty tired of the whole thing. Despite all the inconveniences of covid, we’ve been busy as fuck, sometimes seating people on a wait an hour after close.

These have not been good tippers, and as a result, we’re all sick of being there.

I walk in and I’m told they’ve had a 9-top on a wait just waiting for me to get here. None of the day shift servers wanted to take it because they all wanted to get out at a reasonable time - and instead of doing something manager-like the GM just had these people wait. For 45 minutes.

Try and make sense of it. I couldn’t.

I clock in as the table is being sat. They were pissed because all kinds of smaller tables were being sat while they just weren’t.

One of the guys at the table decided to call me on their bullshit.

Guy: Why did we have to wait so damn long? This table has been open since we got here!

Me: If I’m being honest with you I don’t understand the logic either. Want a manager?

Guy: No I don’t want a manager. I want YOU to tell me why we had to wait!

Me: I just got here myself so I don’t know.

Guy: Why didn’t you come in earlier?

Me: I wasn’t scheduled until just now.

Guy: This is bullshit we shouldn’t have had to wait so damn long. What are you going to do about it?

Me: I know standing here in front of you in an apron has you thinking that I’m in a position of authority but I really can’t do anything aside from getting you a manager. There are limits to even my power.

With this he seemed to calm his ass down a bit and realize that I indeed was just a peon. Again he declined the manager.

They get their food and seem like everything is just fine.

Then they get the check. Then they make a show out of not giving me a tip so that next time “we’ll get people served faster.”

I thank them for showing somebody with no power who wasn’t even here when they arrived the error of their ways, and went to do something more important like texting Potato.

Then they left. I made sure to thank the GM for this table because the rewards were as great as his managing. I don’t think he got it.

Fast forward a few hours. I’m closing up the kitchen mercifully early when I’m told that there’s a guest asking for me at the podium. Given that we’re closing in three minutes or so I’m not optimistic that anything good will come of this.

It’s the guy from earlier. He came back to give me a tip because apparently at some point in his evening he remembered me saying that I’d just arrived so it couldn’t possibly have been my fault they waited so long.

He hands me a $10 - about a 10% tip if I remember his total correctly - and walks off. 

I can’t even be mad. 

Between the new Paper Mario, Animal Crossing, and getting ready for a real vacation, I have plenty of things to keep me distracted from the nightmare that is work. -J

#restaurant #server