#SHADOWS SO PISSED HES LIKE DUDE WHAT THE FUCK YOU JUST DESTROYED THE WHOLE WORLD !!!!
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i love how in sonic prime, shadow sounded kinda like he was asking for help whenever he called out to sonic. but then when sonic shows up, shadows just like "alright finally now i can kick your fucking ass."
#sonic wake up you fucked up big time#SHADOWS SO PISSED HES LIKE DUDE WHAT THE FUCK YOU JUST DESTROYED THE WHOLE WORLD !!!!#AND HE DOESNT EVEN GET TO HAVE HIS BAT GIRLFRIEND THERE TO SUPPORT HIM 😭#AND ALL VERSIONS OF ROUGE IS ALSO JUST NOT THE ROUGE HE KNOWS. NONE OF THEM KNOW HIM !!!#IMAGINE HOW DEVASTATING THAT MUST BE FOR HIM IF/WHEN HE ENCOUNTERS ONE OF THE SHATTERSPACE ROUGES#HIS OWN PARTNER. NOT KNOWING HIM.#also it makes me so sad that shadow and rouge havent even interacted at all during prime 😭#there better be some good interactions between them later or im gonna riot#shadow the hedgehog#sonic the hedgehog#shadow#sonic#sonic prime#sth#sonic prime spoilers
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I adore the idea that sonic is a perfectly fine cocky and confident dude and everything was swell and fine and coolio until Shadow.
maybe that was the first time he really went "oh." the realization that hey, shit can really get that bad. Maybe a little traumatizing.
Before it was all just high stakes and adrenaline, and pissing off a guy that you hate, but then it suddenly became "somebody died and shit just got real". y'know?
Like he's the only one still contemplating the whole thing. Shadow's words " I think you're the ultimate lifeform", or perhaps Shadow himself. He's the guy who held the ring, he's the guy who was concerned the most for Shadow's safety and he still fucking died.
Just cause he "came back" doesn't erase what just happened.
I recently just read someone talking about the scene where Blaze and Sonic don't want to let go of each other's hand, but end up parting regardless. How that's similar to this scene here.
I think there's some merit to that. Both in super form, with no chance of ever getting to see the other again.
I understand, from Blaze's point of view, that Sonic and co. are the people who she's truley learned to open up to and depend on. Loosing that so soon is heart breaking, its like tasting heaven and then being sent back down into hard, cold, earth.
But for sonic? Is it not, throughout everything- Death, nor danger, or the big sakes of loosing worlds or destroying worlds, to giant monsters, to wars- is his greatest fear something that effects hiim and shakes him to his core- that of losing a freind?
Because at the end of the day, the world will alwasy be saved. He has no doubts about this. That through the thick and thin his freinds will always be there to have his back and to rely on. He's never alone and for that he'll always win.
But I think about these two moments. Small shots and frames in time of almost uncharacteristic nature- that for some reason they refused to let go- that he kept thinking about shadow despite everyone's ability to continue on.
Is the thing that hurts him the most-
loss?
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Batman: The Idiot Root Part 2
Following @mirrorfalls ‘s ask and Part 1, in which I continue my look at the Batman storyline called “The Idiot Root”
I feel a strange disconnect reading this storyline, in the sense that this comic is definitely hitting on some really, really good ideas, ideas that could make for a really gripping and incredibly disturbing storyline, but is passing them by too quickly for any of the ideas to sink in, which I’m starting to realize is a problem I may have with Batman comics in general.
But I’m definitely welcoming what this story has to offer. Peter Milligan really knows how to bring out the disturbing in Batman, and when paired with Norm Beyfogle it’s a winning duo.
...Huh, I guess Zeno is indian? Definitely doesn’t look like one, I just thought he was a random white dude getting too much focus. “Zeno” is not a Brazilian name, and I guess the intent was for it to be exotic on purpose? He did say he was “born here” when they arrived in the jungle, but...bruh, no
“my people”
Moving on
God, this should be harrowing and dramatic, and I feel like if this was a prose narrative you could get such delightfully unsettling descriptions of Crosby destroying the children one by one as the great horror from another world feasts on their minds and then the heads tethering him to this world explode as said horror bursts forth and talks about "dipping his tongue into all that succulent consciousness”, and I’m already sounding like I’m about to write a pulp horror story just describing it, but
but he looks so STUPID
he is just a GUY
I’m not even opposed to great horrors looking silly or ridiculous, I’m firmly in the “Mxyzptlk doesn’t need to be anything more than just a little guy in doofy clothing, and any attempts to make him “scarier” than he already is are hokey as shit” camp, but The Idiot’s not even that silly, he’s just a white guy in a straight jacket and a doofy haircut.
Like at this point I think the whole “Idiot” gimmick stopped being cute and funny and now it’s just frustrating and feels like it’s getting in the way of what could easily be a really, really great Batman horror story.
Not that it isn’t a GOOD Batman horror story or even nearing a great one, mind you, because this is still Peter Milligan with Norm Beyfogle at work, and they sell the hell out of the idea. But, again, it’s a couple steps short of being potentially the Batman horror story for the ages it could have been.
I do definitely like the “Zombies are the gateways to the real world” and the idea of a cosmic horror story where the great monster only uses the zombies as means to travel and sustenance, and the zombies themselves are just helpless victims. It’s almost like a Cosmic Vampire kind of thing.
Frankly, I would have liked it more if it was The Queen of Hearts from earlier that transformed into a cosmic vampire needing to hijack minds to survive, then you could blow up her inner struggle from before to greater proportions, as Batman tries to both save her as well as Rio from being consumed by an unholy abomination ever growing in power and bloodlust.
In fact, I’m gonna save this idea for later.
I get that De Freitas here is supposed to be a fairly typical “unsympathetic authority figure who doesn’t like the superhero and is going to be proven wrong by the story’s end”, and I’m definitely not about to start defending a cop character, especially a Brazilian cop, but I get the feeling that his constant remarks that he doesn’t trust Americans and their arrogance, and doesn’t trust American vigilantes, don’t quite make him as unsympathetic as Milligan intended. I absolutely think he’s right to be wary of Batman and to want this American superhero to stay the fuck away from Rio’s streets, which are more than enough of a handful to deal with as is without vigilantes and superheroes.
Well, I sure know who this asshole voted for in the last election.
To the story’s credit, getting torn apart by a crippling fear of birds is absolutely the kind of rushed, horror-movie finale that’s befitting The Idiot’s nature. It also means that The Penguin could kick this guy’s ass if warned beforehand of his capabilties and I absolutely want to see that happen.
Okay, I get that this is also very much an appropriate ending for a horror story, the hero finds a brief return to normalcy that’s forever tainted by an encounter with horror beyond imagination, and definitely not what I expected from a Batman comic, but...
That’s it? Batman just, left them? Didn’t drag the victims and Zeno to a Wayne Enterprises hospital to look after them, didn’t try and find a cure for their condition, didn’t stay in Rio to try and see where else the Idiot might have winded up, nothing? Didn’t even try to completely eliminate said idiot root from existence? Just, took a plane back to Gotham and brooded about it?
...Look, I don’t want to make this a pissing contest, I genuinely detest and never want to do those, but I gotta point that, in the one storyline where The Shadow encountered an ancient, all-powerful evil puppeteering the mindless husks of children to telepathically prey on mankind, the very first thing he did after temporarily putting it down was learn where it came from and travel halfway across the world to take a flamethrower to it.
And frankly I don’t see why Batman would have any reservations about doing the same thing, to a being that’s killed at least 60 people by the story’s count. But, really, he just feels bad about himself for a bit and leaves Rio (and Brazil by extension) to deal on their own with the potential return of a godlike murderous monster created by American machinations and perversions.
...Again, definitely wasn’t expecting that level of authenticity from a Batman story set in Brazil.
I guess overall I’d say I liked reading The Idiot Root, but it’s also one of those things that I keep having mixed feelings about due to the story not living up to it’s incredible potential. In regards to it’s depiction of Brazil, it’s definitely a lot better than I was expecting, considering the writer’s British and this is a Batman comic after all. I can definitely say there was some effort here (really undercut by the baffling decision to draw a supposed indian character as a white man but, hey, can’t win everything).
I can definitely say I’ll be mining some ideas out of this story for my own writings, thank you very much for introducing me to it. It’s quite fascinating, and if nothing else, if I ever get a job writing Batman, I’m definitely going to bring Mister Slim (under a more fitting name like Zé Magrão) back, definitely the most pleasing surprise from the book.
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Custom Toonami Block Week 70 Rundown
Code Geass: So Lelouch is gonna go join Nunally’s ‘let’s all hold hands and get along’ area but literally no one wants to go after Euphy murdered everyone last time. You’d think there’d be at least one dumbass like “Maybe it won’t be a massacre.” But yeah Zero’s like “Oh well I just happen to have a million people I can give to the zone if you exile me and let me go scott free” and everyone’s like “that’s a super shitty thing to do but okay” so then Zero tells Suzaku that culture is stored in the titty and all the one million people do their I am Spartacus thing and wear Zero’s costume which had to be a logistical nightmare, like Zero’s outfit already is pretty expensive with the fancy clothes and the helmet and shit and some of them are randomly customized even though that defeats the purpose like how do you do this on a terrorist budget in a few days without anyone in the government finding out. Like “we received an order for a million pounds of the thing used in Zero’s helmet on the black market” seems like it’d stand out. But yeah, the million Zeros get away, partially because of the “dogs playing basketball” rule that they’re all Zero because their culture of being Zero is stored in their titty which wouldn’t hold up in court but also because if they just kill a million people who’re just trying to leave that’d be bad for the government, not that they’re not used to genocide and being hated as Imperialists but Suzaku specifically doesn’t want that on his and Nunally’s hands while they’re trying to actually do shit for Japan for once. Feel like there’s probably a good cause for peaceful detainment and not letting them just walk out but it’s not like they’d find Lelouch or whoever the supposed second Zero was anyway even if they strip-searched everyone since he was never there and if it isn’t Lelouch the only thing that makes him Zero sight-wise is the mask.
Inuyasha: So yeah we get the conclusion of Shiori’s story for Inuyasha and I just can’t help thinking about how nice it is that she went on to help a lot of other half-demons in Yashahime because of an act of kindness that Inuyasha showed her right here, really good ripple effect shit. But yeah Shiori gets pissed that her grandpa killed her dad and Kekkaishi YEETs him and his followers out of the barrier so Inuyasha can backlash wave the lot of them. We still got fifteen minutes left though so even after Inuyasha says he’s not going to murder a little girl for a powerup that’ll get power crept in a few seasons, Shiori offers him the blood coral crystal to break to give him the powerup instead as thanks for not fucking murdering her. We can’t have the climax of the episode just be Inuyasha smacking a crystal ball though so Taigokumaru’s spirit yeets itself out of the crystal and fights with Inuyasha and attacks Shiori but her dad makes a barrier to bounce him off of so Inuyasha can kill him a second time and get the Red Tessaiga. There’s some navelgazing about how life as a half demon is rough but how Inuyasha thinks that hardship will be good for Shiori and he’s rooting for her in his own way and in Yashahime we see he’s right and all in all that’s pretty nice. Anyway next time we have the Panther Demon filler arc which is honestly probably one of my favorite filler arcs in Inuyasha so that’ll be fun.
Yu Yu Hakusho: Yusuke continues his fight with Suzaku and Suzaku splits himself into seven, which this doesn’t seem to be the Multi-Form or Shadow Clones deal where it divides his energy, each one seems as strong as the original so that’s just kind of broken. Keiko pulls a bait and switch on the zombies which neither Suzaku nor Yusuke see coming despite watching the whole thing on Spirit TV, guess Suzaku had the camera point at the door instead of on Keiko for some reason even though the point is to make Yusuke watch her die. Anyway Yusuke flashes back to Genkai telling him he’s a little bitch that always doubts himself and splits his energy across multiple plans instead of having the confidence to go for something with everything he has and make it work instead of holding back in case it doesn’t. This and remembering his mom crying over his death and all the relationships he’s formed makes him go Super Saiyan in what I can only describe as a Fully Body Shotgun which I don’t think ever comes up again. He knocks down all the Suzakus but it’s just time to start the real fight since Yusuke’s lifted his limiter again like he does in every fight.
Fate Zero: So the clusterfuck in the middle of Saber and Lancer’s battle continues to grow as Iskandar just fucking dares everyone to come at him and five of the seven servants actually do. Gilgamesh is all like “Ugh, why do I have to do this shit, breathing sucks, I’m a king, someone breathe for me.” And tries to murder everyone with spears and shit but turns out Berserker is Darth Vader this time around and uses the force to steal his stolen weapons until Rin’s dad is all like “Dude you’re showing the whole world our fucking moveset, get the fuck out of there. Which given that Gilgamesh is an archer which are supposed to be independent and he’s a fucking snobby asshole, even with a Command Seal I’m surprised that worked. Also Waver’s racist teacher is all “hah wow, I was supposed to have Rider and the token teenager character stole it from me” and Iskandar’s like “I like this kid that’s ride or die with me even though he cries all the time way more than someone who doesn’t even step onto the battlefield you stuck up prick” and then Lancer and Berserker double-team Saber (giggity) and Lancer’s not happy about it because he was fighting Saber first and doesn’t wanna just jump her with Darth Vader but more Command Seals are thrown around until Iskander runs over Darth Vader with his fucking Lightning Chariot and that’s kind of shitty because Racist Teacher man wasted a Command Seal to have Lancer attack Saber for like five seconds before making him retreat. Bug Dude is also kinda freaked out that Berserker just kinda went for Saber meaning she must be pretty pissed at Saber about something anyway so basically everyone runs away and nothing is really accomplished, we didn’t even really need Kiritsugu’s sniper shit or Assassins’s Ninja Bullshit for this everyone’s just had enough and goes home. Also Caster is a creepy yandere simp for Saber but really who isn’t in this series.
Konosuba: So Aqua’s ready to sit in a lake for a few hours to make some money but for the first time in her live her divine booty is not enough to solve this problem. She gets traumatized by getting attacked by demon alligators and Kazuma and co. are honestly uncharacteristically worried about her and ready to try and help her. Meanwhile generic isekai protagonist has a crush on Aqua despite already having his own harem of bland girls and wants to steal Aqua back but basically the whole group is so totally anti-White Knight they can see right through his shit and turn him down. Kazuma beats him up in the most Kazuma way possible and steals his magic sword, proving that not only is he not doing anything to defeat the devil king but he’s actively sabotaging those that are. Aqua fucking decks the guy and blackmails him so she’s rich now and Kazuma’s rich from selling his OP Isekai Cheat Sword. Also the Dullahan dude is back for revenge about bombing his castle and Kazuma’s like “Wait were we still doing that? Thought we stopped, oh well everyone in this world’s problems are our fault somehow so it sounds about right.”
Sailor Moon Crystal: So this time we get Makoto’s story who’s probably my favorite thus far because her job is punching shit and making sure Usagi doesn’t die from the hundreds of things ready to hit her on a daily basis. I have sort of found a redeeming trait for Usaig in that she’s willing to reach out to anyone and everyone, like she’s not what I would call traditionally ‘nice’ but she is friendly and that ability to pull disparate people together does kind of make more sense for why she’d be the leader rather than the other girls who have useful but more specific talents. But yeah continuing with the trend of things teen girls like trying to destroy the world, haunted bridal shop that also reveals Makoto’s tragic backstory of being a more believable version of Tall Girl. Makoto transforms and beats up the Bride lady with a combination of Zenbonzakura Kageyoshi and Azula’s lightning bending, no fair that she gets two powers but I guess she is the tough one so it make sense. Now we’ve basically got the whole crew except for the one that we already know is active but hasn’t joined the group yet so we’ll see how this goes.
Durarara!!: So Mikado’s in deep shit after stealing the girl away that half the town is looking for, all because he has it hammered into his head that whenever a girl asks for his help he has to give it. There’s a bit of discussion about the nature of the Dollars that I’m sure won’t be important later but both Izaya and Celty show up outside Mikado’s school and he’s kind of in an awkward position since there’s nowhere he can really go but home and lead them to the girl. So he decides to find out about them, or at least Celty, Izaya’s just kinda along for the ride. He gets Celty’s backstory and agrees to take her to the other girl only to get jumped by Yagiri thugs and pull out some Death Note animation internet shit that has even Izaya stunned, Mikado about to actually become the main character of this anime for a bit.
#ooc#Toonami#Custom Toonami Block#Code Geass#Inuyasha#Yu Yu Hakusho#Fate Zero#Konosuba#Sailor Moon Crystal#Durarara!!
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Layman’s Guide to the Sixth House
You know, it’s been a long time (literal years) since I’ve infodumped bullshit about Morrowind to people, and I feel the itch now and maybe this’ll inspire some people to actually play the damn game. If not, at least it’ll lay the groundwork for people when I inevitably angry-write some kind of twisted eldritch House Dagoth bullshit to provide myself the content I want (after I get done with all the HLVRAI/Half-Life shit I have on my plate).
OKAY COOL.
I present: “The Sixth House for Dummies: You’re Not Actually Dummies But I Will Explain This To You Anyway”
Dateline: Year 668 of the First Era
You are an elf named Voryn Dagoth. You are a very powerful elf in charge of a very powerful political house, House Dagoth, and the best friend of the war-king of your people, some asshole named Nerevar Indoril. Your people--the Chimer--are living in the shadow of a very technologically advanced, elitist, perpetually bitchy race of elves known as the Dwemer who, for a long while, were your enemies because... well, your people just stormed onto their land after an argument with their old neighbors and said, “We live here now.”
The Dwemer and Chimer only stopped fighting because other people tried to show up on your lawn and live there. And now your king, Nerevar, is trying to make that ceasefire last because it’s kind of nice to not be always beating the shit out of each other.
But oh! There’s a problem! During some run-of-the-mill diplomatic visit with the higher-ups of the Dwemer, you discover that they’re building a goddamn, divinely inspired war machine in their basement. That... does not sound good. That actually sounds really fucking bad.
So, what do you do? You politely excuse yourself, run home at Mach II, throw open the king’s door, and yell, “Holy FUCK, you know those assholes we’ve been trying not to fight? Bitch, I think they’re going to nuke us.”
Because that is, admittedly, something a technologically advanced, elitist, perpetually bitchy race of elves would do.
So your king says, “Dude, I’m gonna go talk to them about it like a civilized adult, because me and their king are tight as fuck now that we ain’t bludgeoning each other to death. I’m sure it’s all a huge misunderstanding.”
A few hours later, though, your king comes back and says, “Okay, so. That didn’t work out how I hoped it would.”
Your name is Voryn Dagoth and you have accidentally started a war.
Dateline: Year 700 of the First Era
Okay, you are Voryn Dagoth and things were a lot worse than you expected. The Dwemer are building a literal war god out of dead god parts they found in a volcano, and now everyone is involved. Nerevar has an entire posse of people to act as advisors/generals--you; some dude named Vivec who wants to have sex with anything that moves; Nerevar’s wife, Almalexia; Sotha Sil, a mage who doesn’t know how to people very well; and this guy named Alandro Sul who nobody will remember, I promise. You are the oldest, and you do not like these other people very much, but you know what? They know what they’re doing, so we’ll let it slide.
The war has been terrible and, to be honest, considering the fact the Dwemer have goddamn robots on their side and your people are still fighting with spears, it’s impressive you’ve not been utterly destroyed. Again, these advisors seem to know what they’re doing. So much so, actually, that in a final, decisive battle, they help you and Nerevar bust straight into the citadel where they’re building this war god so you can just fight this war god yourself.
The Dwemer panic. The guy in charge of building the war god pulls out a fancy set of tools the second he sees you coming and does... some weird ritual that involves the heart of a dead god. Their entire race vanishes, bringing the war to a very anticlimactic end.
So here you are, confused, standing there with Nerevar and the Scooby-Doo Mystery Gang, holding these weird tools at arm’s length going, “What the hell are we going to do with these? The fuck is this? We should melt these down, right? This seems bad.”
Except most of the Mystery Gang (barring Alandro) is begging you not to destroy them, and Nerevar is flustered and dazed from having the ever-loving fuck knocked out of him, so he tells you, “Bro, I’m gonna go talk to god and see what she has to say about it.”
And you’re like, “... O... kay. I guess I’ll stay here.”
“Don’t let anyone touch this shit, though. Deal?”
“Yeah, cool. I won’t let anyone touch it. Go talk to god, I guess.”
And so Nerevar and the barnyard gang leave you there, alone, with these magical objects that just obliterated an entire race. And you sit there, kind of wondering how it works. So you play with them a bit--feels weird, man--but you’re still pretty thoroughly convinced these things need to be tossed in the volcano and bulldozed over. You hold this thought until the barnyard gang comes back, sans Nerevar and Alandro, covered in blood and demanding the tools.
“Where’s the boss?” you ask. Well, they tell you he’s busy or whatever and you know that’s bullshit. These motherfuckers just killed your best friend, and now they’re asking for these items that just obliterated an entire race. They don’t seem like the type of people who should have them, so you flippantly tell them that your goddamn king told you not to let anyone touch the fancy tools and if they want them so bad, they can go get Nerevar and have him come take them from you himself.
They do not like this answer.
Your name is Voryn Dagoth. Your best friend’s murderers have just killed the shit out of you and taken your impossibly dangerous tools away.
Dateline: Year 882 of the Second Era
Your name is Voryn Dagoth and you are somehow not dead. You wake up in the place you were “killed” and are incredibly pissed off by what happened. The world has changed significantly. Your people, the Chimer, are now called the Dunmer and look completely different. The guys who killed you have somehow obtained god-like powers and are worshiped as deities. Nerevar is now patronizingly considered a saint by his murderers, who also used his dead body as an undead servant and then fucking lost it somehow.
Oh, and your political house? You, your family, everyone? Have been branded “evil” and responsible for every calamity that has befallen your homeland (now named “Morrowind”, apparently, which is also different) since you’ve been out cold. They won’t even speak your name out loud. “House Dagoth” is now “The Sixth House” and “The House Unmourned” because everyone hates you. You know, for doing what you were told and not murdering your king.
Fine. Fine! Two can play at this game, can’t they? In the words of a great scholar, “I was supposed to be good, but you forced me to be bad. So I’m going to be BAD.”
You decide that you’re going to finish the war god. You’re going to take over Morrowind. Fuck, you’re going to take over the whole fucking continent. You’re going to restore order, you’re going to fuck shit up. If they’re gonna fuck with you, you’re going to fuck right back.
You plot. You scheme. When your murderers, thinking you are very dead, come back to use their fancy tools on the Heart (now with a capital H) to restore their stolen divine essence, you mug the shit out of them. You take the tools, you chase them off, you bring back your kin who were executed for just being a part of House Dagoth and you say, “Rise and shine, bitches! We’re starting a religion! Who wants to be immortal?”
And everyone raises their hands because, like, come on. Wouldn’t you?
Now you and all of your brothers and sisters are back and angry, construction on the war god resumes, and you start hardcore studying these magical tools to figure out how the fuck to use them properly. Because you are going to cram your foot so far up the asses of the people who killed you that they are going to be choking on your toenails.
Your name is Voryn Dagoth, and you are feelin’ fine as fuck.
Dateline: Year 427 of the Third Era
You are Voryn Dagoth, and things are going pretty okay. You can do a lot of weird shit with the heart of a dead god, you find, though it’s not the prettiest way to make things happen. You’ve always prized yourself on being a diplomatic and poised guy so, you know, the fact you’re having to stoop to some rough, not-very-aesthetically pleasing lows is not ideal, but it works, and that’s what counts.
Like, you can control disease. The people call it Divine Disease, and it’s got about a 50% success rate on people afflicted, with half of them becoming weird masses of tumorous growths who just drool and eat people and the other half decaying and regrowing parts until they look like weird elephant squids who are still all-there in the head but look really weird. They’re loyal and they’re good company, though, and for some reason everything the disease touches is immortal and insanely strong so. You know. It works out.
You can also mind control people, and infiltrate dreams. It’s good for recruiting people without a plague, and it’s good for issuing orders, and it’s good for freaking people out. That last one is proving to be the most useful, because all of these idiot mortals are now pointing fingers and arresting each other whenever they have a nightmare because, “Oh my GOD, Becky! You’re a DEVIL WORSHIPER.”
So, that’s fun.
The war god is almost constructed and even though it’s taken over four-hundred years (which has given an invading Empire time to take over your home; sucks to suck, huh?), you’re getting a good foothold. Stealing your fancy tools from your murderers means they’re garbage at being gods now, and you’ve managed to expand your enterprise to all sorts of caves and strongholds where your followers butcher non-believers and dance around naked by candlelight. You have assassins in major holy cities that are tearing shit up. You got operatives selling cursed idols right outside of temples in borderline plain sight.
But, lo, there is something on the horizon and it’s vaguely familiar. It’s some scraggly motherfucker that gets dumped off of a boat in the middle of a swamp, and you can’t help but feel as though you’ve seen them before. Or, well, felt somebody like them before. It’s a vibe thing, really, since they don’t look anything like anyone you know, and you don’t really know anyone because you’ve been living in a volcano for hundreds of years.
You take a special interest in this one because of the familiarity. You send them dreams, and you send them personalized invitations to come join your cult. You send your followers to watch them sleep and, like, try to kill them because you’re not sure if this is a good familiar or a bad familiar. They never really take you up on your offer or, you know, die, though.
And the longer you watch them go on, the longer you watch them do things, the more you realize... holy shit it’s Nerevar, bro.
Sure, some superstitious tribals have been chanting about how Nerevar Indoril will come back from the dead for revenge someday (as claimed by Alandro Sul, that guy that nobody remembers), but that was so far beneath your gaze that you kind of let it slide. And now here he is, amnesiac and wearing a new face but checking all the boxes, and he’s being specifically led on a path to come meet you. You know, to kill you.
So, you disease that motherfucker. Incurable god plague, baby! Except he somehow... cures the incurable god plague and he’s still coming. Jesus Christ, he’s persistent.
And... oh no, he’s siding with Vivec, the slutty guy who fucking killed him. You’re raking your claws down your face grumbling under your breath because, you dumb sack of shit, that man murdered you. Don’t listen to him, listen to me. I’m the one in the right, bro, I’m the one who was loyal to you.
And now god herself has endorsed him and he’s walking into your citadels and stealing your stolen tools back and, dude no. Stop. We were friends, bro, what the fuck is wrong with you?
And now he has the tools and he’s coming into your actual house and you’re just sighing in exasperation and trying to explain to him that, you know, you guys are friends. You will totally still let him join your side if he stops cracking open your followers’ skulls. Except he’s still skull-cracking and he’s still coming and...
... Great, now he’s right in front of you. Fantastic.
Okay, so you want to offer him amnesty one more time, but it isn’t going to work. You’re tired, you’re pissed off, Nerevar has somehow grown to believe that you are somehow in the wrong (which you are obviously not; taking over the world with a manufactured war god and a horrific plague seems perfectly justified to you), and worst of all? He has so many questions. He’s just blathering, demanding to know why you are the way you are and it’s just like.
Bro, this is kind of your fault. You left me alone with dangerous, desirable objects while you went to go talk to god. If you’d just let me destroy them in the first place, this never would have happened. Fuck it, offer rescinded. You can’t join my club anymore, Nerevar. Now throw hands or get out of my house.
So, Nerevar throws hands.
You and the reincarnation of your former best friend and king are now having a hair-pulling, spell-slinging, bloody fucking knock-down-drag-out in the middle of a volcano in the shadow of a war god. Your cultists are idiots who keep falling into lava trying to intervene. Nerevar keeps attempting to bypass you to get to the creamy, god-heart nougat at the center of your war god because you know he knows how to undo all the magical shit it’s capable of.
Somehow. Probably because Vivec figured it out and told him.
And if he gets to the Heart and he does that ritual, then your war god is done for. So are your falsely-divine murderers. And, unfortunately, seeing as those divine powers are the only thing keeping you alive after your murder, so are you.
And he’s getting so fucking close and he’s actually got there and you’re trying to burn him alive or claw his face off or literally anything you can do as your powers weaken the longer this ritual goes on until, finally, you look up and see that your war god is collapsing. Nerevar has won. The world is going black. It’s like somebody flipped an “off” switch in your brain.
Your name is Voryn Dagoth. You accidentally started a war, did all the right things, and were murdered. You tried to enact your revenge, you thought you were restoring order, and now your best friend has come back from the dead and killed you.
The last thing you see before you hit the ground is all of your hard work literally falling on top of you. You still don’t understand how any of this was your fault.
#kogoramble#morrowind#info dump#this is VERY long#I apologize#spoilers for a game that's nearly 20 years old
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15x09: The Trap
The Road So Far:
PURGAYTORY
Now:
Sam and Eileen are trussed up at Chuck’s casino. (Sam, if you tried hard enough, you could slip those zip ties.) Chuck admits to Sam and Eileen that he’s been manipulating her this whole time to get close to Sam again. He couldn’t watch his favorite show and it was killing him (LOL, CATCH ME IN JUNE.)
Sam and Chuck are connected and it needs to stop. Chuck pulls out a scalpel. And then utters the eight scariest words of a Supernatural fan: “All good things must come to an end.”
Meanwhile, in the bunker, the bickering exes continue on their line of bullshit. Cas is expertly making Borax bullets while Dean tries to reach Sam, with no luck. Dean’s worried that there’s something wrong.
Chuck wants to cut out whatever festers in Sam that won’t allow their wounds to heal. Eileen surreptitiously calls Dean. Chucks senses it and ends the call before it really gets going. Dean knows that they’re in trouble though and wants to save them. Cas calls Dean “stupid” (will the bickering ever end?!) and tells him they have to find the blossom in purgatory to trap Chuck.
Sam notices Chuck’s hesitancy to torture him and mocks him a bit. Um, maybe now’s not the best time to bring out Sam Fucking Winchester, okay buddy? Eileen joins in the mockery (#soulmates) and in retaliation, Chuck gets Eileen to do the scalpel digging for him. He likes to watch. The scalpel digging is very squishy. A+ work sound effects.
Dean and Cas are in purgatory and there’s still very much a rift in their relationship.
Dean wants to split up but Cas makes it clear that that also is a stupid idea. Dean brings up possibly running into Benny while there in Purgatory….and I just want to sit a little and think about that was practically Dean’s first thought. He thinks of Benny, and the friendship they had. I am sad.
With a simple “C’mon”, Cas wins the argument and they start walking together. Something tracks them from the shadows.
Eileen continues to be forced into digging into Sam’s wound. Through the pain, he tells her he knows it isn’t her that’s doing it. He’s bleeding out though and things aren’t looking good. Chuck sits back and plays on his guitar. What a nice douchey touch that is.
Sam talks reason to Chuck, and while that pisses him off, he also heals Sam’s wound as much as he can. Chuck can’t understand how Sam can continue to be so defiant. He realizes that Sam still has hope --hope that Cas and Dean will save them, hope that they can still defeat God.
*Coordinated Domestic Dispute to Draw Out the Monster Alert*
Dean notices a corpse that he swears he’s seen before. Cas tell him he’s wrong. He has an excellent sense of direction. Dean gets down to look closer at the body and the leviathan makes his move. Cas hand waves him away. They interrogate the leviathan. He tells them that there’s a blossom that grows from them after they die. Dean wants to end the monster right there but he tells them it takes months for the blossoms to appear. He knows a place.
Before they get walking, Dean asks the Leviathan about Benny. BRB STILL CRYING. Benny’s famous --and he’s dead. (Cas’s concerned look to Dean as he hears the news will haunt me forever.)
Chuck decides to take Sam on a Christmas Carol adventure into the future, and shows him what life will be like if they win.
April 17, 2020
Sam and Eileen are looking up cases in the bunker. Dean’s “resting his eyes” in the corner chair. Cas shows up with beers for all. Things look pretty great. They all decide on movie night and popcorn. HUZZAH!
Well, until Sam gets a call from Jody. Claire’s dead, from a hunt gone sideways. HURMPH.
Back at the casino, Chuck tells Sam that’s just the beginning. He pulls out the time clock of doom.
In purgatory, Cas, Dean, and the other dude, are walking. Cas expresses his condolences about Benny. Their hostilities come roiling to the surface. Cas calls Dean out on not accepting his apology about Jack. Dean is pissy that Cas just walked away. The other dude, presumably, just wants one of them to shoot him with Borax.
January 6, 2021
In the burned out wasteland of the future, Sam and Dean drive. Things are going downhill fast. They’re not saving people. Cas is gone. (CaS Is GoNe) The monsters are winning.
Once at the leviathan blossom site, Cas quickly realizes it’s a trap. The leviathan tells him that Eve wants a piece of Cas for killing the alphas and taking the leviathan. Others attack Dean.
He comes to later. The place is scorched and Cas is gone.
November 3, 2021
Sam’s prepping for another hunt. Dean’s giving up. Sam wants to know what’s up. “Ever since..,” he starts. Dean jumps into why he’s giving up. They’ve lost everyone. HE had to bury Cas in a ma’lak box. Bobby and Jody (and Sam) all have death wishes. Sam wants to go out swinging, like Butch and Sundance. “We lost, brother, we lost.”
Our Sam can’t believe what he’s watching.
Chuck swans into the scene. He claims he’s “just the messenger” benevolently sharing his knowledge of the future. Sam can’t believe that Dean would ever give up, but Chuck swears he’ll tell no lie, stick a needle in his eye.
Dean stalks through the quiet woods, calling for Cas. He’s got just under a half hour left to reach the portal. In desperation, he pauses and centers himself. “Cas,” he begins to pray. “I hope you can hear me.” Dean calls Cas his best friend and apologizes for letting him go.
And then this show gently murders me because Dean looks around warily and, seeing that the coast is clear, kneels to finish his prayer. On one knee now, he cries as he unpacks the terrible anger which he’d turned against Cas. “When things go bad, it comes out and I can’t stop it. No matter how bad I want to.” (I’m with many other viewers when I point to childhood trauma and parental neglect and abuse as one source for that deep anger.)
For I am DEAD Science:
Further pushing me deep into the grave, Dean continues, “And I forgive you. OF COURSE I forgive you.” He apologizes and sends out a desperate wish that Cas will be able to hear his prayer - wherever he is. Dean wipes his eyes, sniffs, and pushes himself up with a quiet “Okay.” It’s time to move again.
Back to the future, Dean stews morosely at a table in the bunker when Sam enters with a bag slung over his shoulder. Sam’s going to take out the vamp nest - alone, if he has to. Dean shakes his head sadly, then drags himself off to go with Sam. “I guess I don’t have a choice, do I?” They head out, two broken down, hopelessly alone men.
“It can’t end like this,” Sam insists. So Chuck has him flash forward in time again using the magic watch.
It stops on December 9, 2022. End of the line!
In Purgatory, Dean has just over two minutes left before the portal closes and there’s still no sign of--- WAIT WHAT’S BEHIND THAT TREE?
“You made it,” Cas sighs in relief as he stands to greet Dean. Dean hauls Cas in for the T I G H T E S T hug. Very good content! I approve! They check in with each other. Cas reveals that he was being marched to go see Eve when he spotted a leviathan bloom. Cas dropped the monsters guarding him, and snagged the bloom which he adorably describes as “a little smooshed.” Dean validates Cas’s achievements! It is very soft! I am emotionally compromised! (I have watched this scene at least 10 times.)
Cas reveals that he heard Dean’s prayer. They exchange soulful, meaningful looks, and then head straight outta Purgatory. I look forward to your post-episode canoodling codas, everybody.
In the future, Sam and Dean barricade the door in a ratty old hotel. They’re being hunted by……….JODY AND AU BOBBY! (Jobby? Body? Ugh, both of those are terrible.) Current Sam watches in horror as his future counterpart (and brother) fang out. They’re both vampires now! Oooo. Awkward.
There’s a fierce fight. Dean chews Jody’s throat clean outta her body, hissing like an angry cat the whole time. It would be awful if there weren’t so many funny memes of hissy Jensen floating around right now.
Sam wakes from Chuck’s vision which was A LOT. Chuck apologizes for the terrible ending. (All these ending narratives in this season are the result of 15 years of exhausted writers room shit talking, right?) Chuck reveals a couple of things. 1) He “powered down” Eileen in a closet while he’s talking to Sam which is just….GROSS. And 2) The heroic and free ending which Sam aspires towards is actually awful. Is dying as monsters really worth locking up Chuck?
Safely back in the bunker, Cas and Dean prepare the spell with the leviathan bloom. Dean pauses, questioning Cas’s choice to take on the Mark trapping Chuck. Cas insists that Dean can’t take on the Mark again, and that the only choice is for Cas to take on that burden. Dean agrees, remarkably not insisting on damaging himself this time, and the spell is completed. It all gets sucked up into a sphere. Since Cas will contain the Mark, Dean or Sam will have to destroy it (thus sealing Cas’s fate along with Chuck’s).
In the casino, Sam shouts at Chuck. “We will beat you. I will make it better!” Chuck sneers at Sam, and accuses him of playing fast and loose with the laws of nature and magic. There’s a whole lot the Winchesters can’t know about the universe, Chuck insists. Only he - God - can grasp it all. As one, the Supernatural audience collectively fake-coughs, “Billie!”
Chuck prompts Sam to reflect further on the visions. Was the worst thing truly the way the Winchesters died, and all their friends were decimated? Or was there something even WORSE which befell the world after Chuck got trapped? In horror, Sam realizes that monsters were taking over the world. Chuck affirms this conclusion. Without him in it, the world descends into evil. (Somewhere, on a wholesome farm, Garth is asking, “Hey, who are you calling evil?”)
While we’re all trying to unpack this latest revelation, Dean and Cas break into the casino. They free Sam from his chair. Eileen, still puppeted by Chuck, comes in swinging but Cas tackles her away.
Dean punches Chuck. Chuck punches Dean. While they’re exchanging blows, Cas rolls the bespelled ball over to Sam to smash and trap Chuck when….
Sam falls to his knees. He can’t do it. He can’t trap Chuck knowing what he knows about the future. The ball rolls out of his fingers.
Suddenly, light flashes in Chuck’s shoulder. The Equalizer wound in both of them is healed at last! All it took is for Sam to...lose hope. FROWNY FACE! Chuck crushes the sphere and destroys the spell. That’s two anti-God weapons down and how many to go in the next ten episodes?
Dean confronts Chuck and he is 800% bluster at this point, cosmos bless him. He insists that Chuck won’t kill their motley band. Chuck wants his ending too much for that. After all, the “drafts” Sam saw in his visions--
Chuck interrupts that thought. All the “visions” Sam had were Chuck’s memories of other, actual worlds where Sam and Dean made those awful choices and destroyed each other. That move, in Chuck’s mind, is inevitable. “Just like you, they didn’t think they’d do it, either.”
Dean growls. “No. Not THIS Sam and not THIS Dean. So you go back to Earth II and play with your other toys. Because you will never get what you want.”
“We’ll see,” Chuck says, rather ominously, and poofs out.
Back at the bunker, Sam and Eileen bid farewell. Eileen’s been puppeted back to life and romance...and she’s not sure what’s real. (Where have I heard THAT before?) She needs to head off on her own for a bit.
Sam kisses her so sweetly. “Now that was real.” She caresses his face lovingly before walking out. (I firmly believe we’ll see her again - next time on her own terms!)
A shaken Sam makes his way to the kitchen where Dean and Cas are decompressing.
Sam brings up the botched Chuck trap, and tells them he believes Chuck showed him the true future. Dean accepts Sam’s choice, and his calm acceptance is a balm to my fucking soul. What’s next? “We find another way,” Dean says.
Cut to Jack in the Empty. He’s taking in the non-sights when Billie appears. “It’s time,” she says, and Boris and I throw a giant party!!!
I Don’t Know Why I Get So Quotey:
I hate missing my favorite show!
Come on, Eileen
Stop being so stupid!
Chuck, you dick
“Okay let’s split up.” “WHAT?!”
You still think you’re the hero of this story. You still think you can win
The Dean who raised me, he’d never give up no matter how bad things got
I should’ve stopped you. You’re my best friend but I just let you go, ‘cause it was easier than admitting I was wrong
Sorry, kid. It’s a crappy ending. You and your brother deserve better.
We know about your galaxy brain idea. How you think this story is gonna go
Want to read more? Check out our Recap Archive!
#spn recap#spn 15x09#the trap#dean winchester#castiel#cas#sam winchester#eileen leahy#chuck shurley#jack kline#billie#bobby singer#jody mills#supernatural season 15
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Destroying the Planet to Save It Chapter 1: Impure Thoughts
There’s a new threat to the world, and The Avengers join the new S.H.I.E.L.D. to find and fight it. Captain America, Bucky Barnes, Tony Stark, Sam Wilson, Natasha Romanoff, Clint Barton, Bruce Banner, Agent Phil Coulson, Sharon Carter, some OCs. Canon? What canon? After Civil War, but before any of the travesties of Infinity War or Endgame. Action, hopefully humor, smut, language your mama would slap clean out your mouth, fluff. IDK, I just watch the story develop as my fingers write it. I get surprised a lot.
_______________________________
“Seriously? This is what we’re doing now?” Sam Wilson growled. “We’ve saved the world how many times? And tonight they got us workin’ as what, bouncers? Security guards?”
Bucky Barnes looked around the massive hotel ballroom with a shrug. “Well, it is the President.”
“He got his own damned guards! Why are they not handlin’ their shit? Ain’t that what the taxpayers are paying them for?” Sam was hissing in Bucky’s ear, and in the ears of the rest of the Avengers team scattered throughout the huge, crowded room wearing comm devices that looked like those used by the Secret Service, but were fortunately not patched into their frequency.
Steve Rogers knew some of those Secret Service guys, and they were not only tough as hell but damn proud of what they did. Sam would be wise not to piss them off.
“That’s enough, Falcon,” he muttered from where he stood in a narrow hallway outside the ballroom, watching the President roll his eyes as his staff tried to prepare him for a speech he could give in his sleep. He’d already seen the guy stare down a woman who tried to get him to let her powder his nose. Steve thought he might kinda like this President. Not like the last douchebag.
In the ballroom, standing in front of the dais looking out at the crowd and trying not to attract attention, Bucky smirked at Sam. “I don’t know. It’s not so bad. It’s probably just terrorists. Won’t that be a nice break from, like, mad scientists and aliens and shit? Besides, c’mon. You know you’re havin’ impure thoughts about me in this tux.”
Sam gave him a quick sneer. “Dude, you need a new mirror.”
“Barnes,” Clint Barton’s voice came over the comms. “President Lattimore is fifteen seconds out from the East entrance.”
“Copy,” Bucky murmured. Now it was Sam’s turn to smirk.
“Fuck you,” Bucky growled at Sam as he began to walk – if big, sleek cats looking for trouble can be said to just “walk” - across to the large expanse of doors on the East side of the ballroom. All were locked except for the center doors, allowing the security teams to control access to the room and monitor the entrances of dignitaries. Bucky had drawn the short straw and been assigned to the former President from Alabama, a guy so grandiose with a manner so smarmy yet chill-inducing that Bucky could only hope he didn’t slip and call him Palpatine to his face.
There was a Secret Service agent in front of each of the eight doors on this side of the room. Bucky knew that there were also agents on the other side of each door. The center door was the only one with more than one guard, and Bucky knew that Natasha Romanoff was on the other side. She’d been assigned the very delicate task of making sure each and every person who went through that door – security guard, celebrity, Senator, foreign dignitary, or former American President – got searched, and searched well. Although Natasha didn’t agree, Bucky was pretty sure she’d drawn the really short straw.
At the door through which former President Lattimore would be entering, Bucky knew he’d be met by his counterpart, the Secret Service agent assigned to shadow former President Lattimore while he was in the ballroom. He looked at the series of tuxedoed men with serious expressions and fairly obvious earpieces standing stiffly at the door, wondering which one that would turn out to be.
As he took his place to one side of the door, he exchanged nods with the senior agent who’d been working with the Avengers to plan security for this event. The senior agent then turned his glance to a woman Bucky hadn’t even noticed, and the two greeted each other quietly. A ghost of a smile played across her lips as she took her place across from Bucky.
He tried his damnedest to have no expression on his face. This was his Secret Service counterpart? She looked tiny to him. She wasn’t – she was at least five-foot-six and was in no way a waif – but he’d been expecting someone… bigger. In his heart of hearts, he knew he’d been expecting a burly man, but he tried not to acknowledge that thought to himself, lest it show on his face. The last thing he wanted was another lecture from Natasha about his dinosaur tendencies.
“Joss Emerson,” she said in a voice that was surprisingly low and smooth.
“Bucky Barnes.”
She almost laughed. “Yeah. I know.”
OK, so there were actually lunchboxes with his face on them, but no matter how insanely well-known the Avengers had become, Bucky could never imagine just assuming that people knew who he was. He didn’t have time to feel awkward, though, because at that moment, a spotlight shone on the door and someone on the dais announced into the microphone that former President Lattimore was arriving. The door opened and the man ponced into the room to the recorded strains of some campaign song or another, Bucky didn’t know, all modern music sounded the same to him. Lattimore flashed his unnaturally white, uncle-who-hugs-too-long simper, waving as enthusiastically as if the scattered applause was a standing ovation. Bucky thought he seemed a little disappointed in its volume, and he was undeniably unhappy when the spotlight turned off seconds after he entered.
Fortunately for his ego, Lattimore was immediately greeted by a number of people who seemed thrilled to be seen with him. Already Bucky was fighting the urge to place himself between his objective and the group of fawning, salivating morons draping themselves over him as one of the many photographers wandering the ballroom captured the moment. He glanced over at Agent Emerson, who didn’t seem even a little bothered. She clearly knew who these people were. Her eyes were everywhere else. Bucky sighed. It was gonna be a long night.
*****
None of the Avengers wanted to be here. Only a few even believed there was a credible threat. The problem was, those who did believe there was a credible threat – Steve, Bruce Banner, and Tony Stark – outweighed the rest of the team. They’d been among the ones called to Washington, D.C. to a very secret meeting with the President and several members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Phil Coulson, Director of the new S.H.I.E.L.D. had been there, as well, and they’d all been convinced by what they’d seen.
Something was going on. Strange energy signatures had been detected in various places around the Earth, and in each of those places, cataclysmic events had occurred. The events seemed to be natural phenomena – earthquakes, hurricanes, massive wildfires – but it was far too much of a coincidence.
And then there was this guy Arias. Jarman Arias, mouthy Colombian dickweed with enough money to make even Tony Stark raise an eyebrow. Coulson and S.H.I.E.L.D. had found what could be interpreted as his fingerprints on several of the incidents. Faint and plausibly deniable, but there.
After that meeting, when S.H.I.E.L.D. had agreed to investigate the incidents and Steve had agreed that the Avengers would take this assignment, the Avengers team had been working with the Secret Service to prepare for this night. It was a great opportunity for S.H.I.E.L.D. to observe Arias, but that wasn’t the Avengers’ mission. Their mission was to make sure that having Arias in the same room with the President, the former President, and a whole lot of other powerful notables didn’t turn out to be a Very. Bad. Idea.
*****
Sam was assigned to Arias, who arrived a few minutes after President Lattimore. He, too, had a counterpart, but she wasn’t Secret Service, she was S.H.I.E.L.D. He’d met her before, and admired her sleek, Latina looks, but something about the way she seemed to look right through him had made him hesitant to make a move. Tonight seemed like a good opportunity, and he liked what he was seeing so far.
Arias had his own security team, known to be very lethal and not overly concerned about legality or collateral damage. He didn’t want or need more security, and he definitely objected to having people he didn’t know close to him. But Anita Herrera was good.
“Señor Arias, no one’s questioning your security team,” she assured him in musical Spanish. She actually didn’t have a Colombian accent – she was Cuban – but anyone listening to her right now would swear she was born and raised in Bogotá. “But the President has asked that we take special care of you. This event is important to him, so important that he’s actually asked The Avengers to provide security for his most important guests, although we’re keeping that quiet. You won’t mind being seen to be guarded by the Falcon himself, will you?”
Sam wanted to punch the guy in the throat merely for getting to be the target of Herrera’s smile. Damn. She was something.
And Arias, like many a man before him, made his ego-driven decision with the other head. “Of course, Agent Herrera. When you put it that way.”
Sam tried his best to give Agent Herrera a very professional, not at all aroused, nod of the head. It mostly worked. But when she gave him a taste of that smile, Sam suddenly got very interested in the logistics of getting Arias into the ballroom and where he would be seated, because there was only so much room in the slacks of his expertly-tailored tuxedo.
*****
At that moment, Bucky was listening to former President Lattimore (whom he knew for a fact had been called Voldemort by his Secret Service detail behind his back) making inappropriate comments to Agent Emerson.
“It’s so nice to see you again, Joss, and you’re looking just as lovely as ever. I’ll never know where you hide firearms under those dresses.” Bucky flicked a glance at Lattimore just in time to see the lecherous gleam in his eye as he gave Emerson a very thorough once-over.
Her voice was professional as she responded, “Not your problem, Sir. As long as I know where they are.”
In fact, Bucky did know where Emerson hid at least one firearm under her dress, and he’d counted three knives so far. Five, if you counted the heels on her shoes, which he’d bet his new SOG tac knife were not standard issue. Bucky knew fuck-all about women’s dresses, but he knew what he liked. Her black dress had long sleeves (two knives) and fitted the upper part of her body very nicely (third knife between her breasts, but it wasn’t like he’d been looking). Bucky really appreciated the way the soft material clung to her, even as he appreciated that it was stretchy enough to let her move however she needed to. The skirt had a slit up to there, which would allow her to run even though the dress was long enough to touch the floor. It didn’t flash the entire length of her right leg quite often enough for his taste, but did give him a pretty good idea where he’d find her gun. And the dress had cutouts on either side of her waist, which gave him a tantalizing view of a body built for more than looks. The cutouts also gave him a clue where he might find a few more weapons. You know, if he went looking.
“I don’t know how a girl like you decides to be a Secret Service agent, but I suppose I shouldn’t question my good fortune.” Lattimore leaned toward Emerson, who was only looking at him every few seconds, scanning the room the rest of the time. His voice got even oilier as he murmured, “You know, my offer still stands. I still have a little pull around here.” His self-deprecating laugh didn’t fool Bucky for a second.
“Thank you, Sir. I’ll let you know if I change my mind.”
“The First Lady isn’t the jealous type, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“No, Sir. Mrs. Lattimore is a lovely woman.”
“So are you, Joss. I’d love to have you on my personal detail.”
Was that a little bit of drool Bucky caught on the edge of Lattimore’s lips? What a tool. Bucky may have been born in 1917, but even he knew that modern women didn’t have to put up with this shit. He wondered why Emerson did. Especially when, the more Bucky studied her without meaning to, it was obvious she was a pro at what she did. Her wary, tensed body language didn’t change – she was coiled and ready for trouble, if it came – even as this ancient, slimy dillrod talked to her like she was just another sycophant and not a highly-trained professional there to protect his randy old goat ass.
An overdressed couple approached the former President then and engaged him in a round of overheated reciprocal compliments. Bucky stopped listening to the mutual masturbation and took a sideways step toward Agent Emerson, all the while keeping his eyes and his full awareness on everything happening in the room.
“Why do I feel like I should apologize for that asshole?” He muttered out the side of his mouth, his voice pitched so only she could hear.
“Don’t worry about it,” she muttered back.
“He always like that?”
“Pretty much. He made that gun comment every day for four years.”
“Huh. Not very observant, then.”
“Not his job.” Then, from the corner of his eye, Bucky saw her give a little delayed shake. “Wait. What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothin’.”
“Uh-huh. You realize if you tell me you know where my guns are, that’s just the other side of the same coin.”
Bucky hadn’t realized that, but he did now. Bucky Barnes hadn’t blushed since 1943, and he didn’t at that moment, but he was embarrassed. Which meant he immediately started to talk too much. “No. My admiration is purely professional. I – Wait, guns? As in, more than one?”
She didn’t answer, just smirked. For a while, they stood behind and to either side of the former President, just observing.
He tried. He really did. But Bucky couldn’t help himself. “How many?”
He caught the little twist of her lips at that. “Kind of a personal question, isn’t it?”
“I’ll tell if you do.”
“You don’t have to tell me how many guns you’re packing, Barnes. Five. And at least four knives, although it’s probably more.”
“You’re right. Five guns. Seven knives. Your turn.”
She huffed a tiny sigh, but he could tell it was for show. “On me? Two guns. A few others around the room.”
Bucky couldn’t hide his smile. He liked girls. He really liked guns. And he really, really liked girls with guns.
“And knives?”
“Five on me. Lots more stashed.”
Through Bucky’s earpiece, he heard Clint Barton’s voice again. “OK, if Barnes can keep it in his pants long enough, the President’s arriving in five. They’re gonna seat everyone.”
Bucky had actually forgotten that every word he said was being broadcast to the rest of his team. Oops. Still, it was nowhere close to the first time one of them had said something on the comms that the rest of the team didn’t need to hear. It wasn’t even uncommon for one of them to be overheard flirting. And Sam once got… well, Bucky needed to focus.
He saw in the slight flinch Agent Emerson gave that she was getting the same message in her earpiece. She stepped up to President Lattimore and quietly interrupted his gladhanding to let him know it was time to be seated.
As they followed him to his table, Bucky and Agent Emerson found themselves walking next to one another.
“I thought I was gonna hate this assignment,” Bucky whispered to her. “But I’m kinda digging the whole James Bond thing.”
“Yeah, you’re so not James Bond.”
“I’m literally wearing a tuxedo!”
“Call me when you’re British,” she mumbled and stepped to the other side of Lattimore as he seated himself at his prominently-situated table. When he was settled, with Emerson seated next to him on his right, Bucky stood behind them until everyone else was seated, then stalked to stand at the side of the room, relieved that the uncontrolled, social part of the event was over.
*****
Now it was Steve’s turn. He and Tony Stark were both simply too well-known to even try to blend in with the Secret Service. So, in his role as one of the President’s honored guests, he was wearing a suit that cost as much as the apartment building he’d grown up in, feeling much more naked than he did in his extremely form-fitting Captain America suit. He knew exactly where his shield was, but it wasn’t on his back or his arm, and without it he felt woefully unarmed even though he was, in fact, carrying several weapons. He fidgeted through the last half-minute before he and the rest of the President’s entourage would make their way to the East doors of the ballroom where the President would make his entrance.
Tony was already seated at the President’s table with Pepper. Sharon Carter, as Steve’s date, was on his other side. Tony was in his element. In fact, he’d already made a billion-dollar handshake deal with one of the Joint Chiefs before he’d finished his first drink. But his cool was deceptive. He used his always-manic energy to camouflage a wired vigilance that missed nothing. Sharon, too, was all eyes and ears and taut alertness.
The lights dimmed. “Ruffles and Flourishes” started to pour out from the sound system and Tony knew that Clint was, at that moment, climbing through the ceiling to his well-stocked sniper’s nest over the dais, hidden by what looked like any other set of stage curtains but were, in fact, made of a fabric as bulletproof as fabric could be and manufactured by Stark Industries.
The spotlight shone on the door, which opened just as the sound system began to play “Hail To The Chief.” Not one of the Avengers was looking at the President as he entered with the First Lady, waving and smiling to the clapping crowd. They were watching everyone else look at the President.
“Fuck’s sake, Steve,” Sam’s voice came over the comms. “Smile. You’re supposed to be having a good time. You look like your underwear’s too tight.”
The quiet chuckles of the rest of the team filtered through their earpieces, while Steve’s expression became even more sour and his face flushed a bright shade of crimson that wasn’t entirely washed out by the spotlight that followed the President to his table.
Once he sat down next to Sharon, Steve couldn’t help but feel beneath the tablecloth to make sure his shield was right where it was supposed to be, secured to the underside of the table in a quick-release frame.
“You all right?” Sharon asked quietly.
“I hate this,” Steve hissed through a fake smile that looked more like he was trying to hold in a fart.
Once the President was seated, a comedian walked out onto the dais and began a monologue filled with references to current culture that, apparently, everyone but Steve and Bucky found hilarious. They could all hear muffled laughs through the comms. Tony’s laughter was the most prevalent, because he was basically watching two shows. He found Steve’s obvious unfamiliarity with them funnier than the references themselves.
“Eyes on the ball, Ironman,” Steve grunted at one point, not enjoying this moment any more than he was enjoying the rest of the night. Tony just laughed louder.
*****
The President never got to make his speech. Bruce Banner, monitoring a Times Square worth of screens and flashing readouts in a much smaller conference room on the same floor as the ballroom, saw the spike immediately. It was the same strange energy signature that they’d been seeing around the world, which had preceded a “natural” disaster each time.
“Alert, alert, alert,” Bruce’s strangely emotionless voice came through their comms. “I got a spike. Repeat, I’m seeing a spike. Get ‘em out.”
The comedian actually made one more joke before he noticed the quiet but fiercely determined way the cadre of athletic individuals dressed in black who had been lining the walls began to make their way to those they were assigned to protect.
Steve pulled his shield from its holder and held the President between it and himself as he, Tony, and a fleet of Secret Service agents carried him out on a wave of dark clothing and suddenly visible firepower.
Bucky had President Lattimore out of his chair before Agent Emerson had even finished freeing her MP5 from the underside of the table. Sandwiched between Emerson in front and Bucky in back, and surrounded by members of his usual Secret Service detail, Lattimore squawked and whined the whole way to the East Entrance.
Sam wasn’t as surprised as he might have been to find that Arias refused to leave the ballroom.
“I am not a politician, and I am not a coward. I’ll stay right here and finish this excellent brandy,” Arias purred.
“Sir, for your own safety, I really must insist-“
“Sit down, Mr. Wilson. Whatever’s going on, I can assure you we are not its targets.”
“Yeah, well, if it’s a bomb, that’s gonna be surprisingly non-comforting,” Sam growled. “I mean it. Get up now. I’m not asking.”
Jarman Arias was not used to being spoken to in any tone that wasn’t at least impressed, and usually closer to awe tinged with fear. He was definitely not used to Sam’s Master Sergeant Wilson voice. Like everyone else, his first instinct was to obey.
The Secret Service may have been exchanging confused and chaotic chatter, but there was no chatter at all on the Avengers’ comms. They all knew where they needed to go.
Steve wasn’t very comfortable with the idea of the team of decoys who met them in the hotel’s kitchens and made a noisy show of hustling some random dude out of the hotel and into the President’s limousine. But he let it go as he led the real President down a cluttered hallway with a tiled floor to a stairway that led to a delivery entrance. Natasha and Clint met them at the bottom of the stairs wearing beige coveralls bearing the logo of a large commercial food distributor on the back. They silently handed coveralls to the President and each of the team, and the entire group quickly zipped them on. When they were done, half of them – including the President - also slipped baseball hats on and they sauntered out the door across a ten-foot expanse of concrete into the back of a large panel truck.
Inside the truck, they met Bucky and his team with the former President, who was red-faced but had stopped complaining as Agent Emerson sweet-talked him. Steve could tell with a glance that Bucky hated the guy even more now than he had when he’d learned that’s who he was assigned to protect. He grinned at Bucky and got an annoyed eyeroll in response.
Clint pulled the rolling door closed on the panel truck and dim red lighting illuminated the cargo area as they all grabbed on to handholds along the walls.
“AK is secure,” Steve said as the truck began to move. “Leaving the hotel now.”
“Roger, Cap. See you in a few.” Phil Coulson sounded as though he was sitting in a lounge chair with a Mai Tai rather than directing a major op from a couple hundred miles away.
*****
Jarman Arias recovered fairly quickly from the Master Sergeant Wilson treatment, and was fairly put out by being rushed to his limo. Sam didn’t give a fuck. He was moving, and that was all that mattered.
Unlike the rest of the team, Sam and Agent Herrera didn’t know where they were going. Part of their mission was to see how Arias would react if, in fact, the mysterious energy was detected around this event. If it turned out that Arias was linked to the energy and the events that seemed to follow, his reactions could be very telling. Still, Sam had a role to play. If he was just another bodyguard – a vastly overqualified bodyguard who was way too fucking pretty to be someone’s flunky, he thought to himself – he would have tried to get his principal out of the area of danger. So that’s what he had to do.
But Arias wasn’t happy about it. In fact, if Sam had to guess, he’d say that what he was seeing was fear. But it wasn’t from whatever the threat at the massive hotel had been. Arias had been perfectly happy to chill in the ballroom while the rest of the crowd screamed and yelled, tipping over chairs and smashing glassware in their hurry to get out once the dignitaries started being evacuated.
“Just where do you suggest we go?” Arias growled in his accented English as his limo squealed away from the curb.
“I don’t care, man, just away from here.”
“Why? What is the threat?”
“I don’t know,” Sam admitted, having difficulty trying to straighten his tux, squeezed as he was between two of Arias’s goons in the backward-facing seat across from Arias, Herrera and two more goons. “I get the signal to fuck off, I fuck off. And since I’m responsible for your safety, you fuck off with me.”
“Fine.” Arias picked up a phone receiver that was set in the rear window console behind him. “Alejandro, Site B, please. Quickly,” he said in Spanish, then hung up the phone.
Agent Herrera blinked. In English for Sam’s benefit, she asked, “What’s Site B?”
Suddenly, Sam’s face went slack and he uttered a soft, drawn out, “Fuck me.”
Agent Herrera must have been getting the same message in her earpiece from the Secret Service that Sam had just received from Natasha.
“How is that even possible?” Sam shrieked.
“Don’t ask me,” Natasha’s voice came to his ear. “I’m just telling you what Clint’s telling me he sees. The biggest motherfucking tornado he’s ever heard of. And Clint’s from Iowa.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hey, you guys, please let me know you’ve been by if you read this. I have kind of an optimistic plan for this story and it helps me feel inspired if I know someone besides me is reading it! :)
#Captain America#The Avengers#Bucky Barnes#Sam Wilson#Clint Barton#Tony Stark#Natasha Romanoff#Bruce Banner#Agent Phil Coulson#Sharon Carter
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What about Razia's Shadow pisses you off? Disclaimer: idk what that is yet
God, here I fucking go again.
Razia’s Shadow is a concept al8um 8y some 8and that I don’t think exists anymore that’s supposed to 8e a musical. The two male leads are played 8y the lead singer of whoever the fuck those guys were, and the other parts are played 8y singers from a 8unch of other 8ands in the same genre, including Casey Crescenzo and 8redon Urie.
It has a two act plot, with the first act centering around an angel, Ahrima, who is in love with some chick that doesn’t matter and feels underappreci8ed or whatever. He gets talked into destroying his creations 8y a spider over the course of a villain song, which fucks up a huge portion of the planet. As punishment, he’s 8anished to staying in his fucked up half forever while every8ody else moves elsewhere. However, an oracle comes over and tells him that one day two people will fall in love and fix it or whatever, so it’s fine.
That piece of consol8ion gets passed down as some sort of prophecy, and then we move into the second act. The Fucked Up Half is now a kingdom, The Dark, which is ruled 8y two 8rothers, the younger Adakais and the elder Pallis. Adakais h8s his jo8 and 8eing overshadowed 8y his cooler 8rother, which in his mind means he has to 8e the chosen one. He tells this to his 8rother, and Pallis says “If you run off and marry some chick I will fucking find you and I will fucking sta8 you with my sword, I swear to fucking god, don’t fucking test me dude.”
So o8viously he does it anyways. He elopes with this princess chick from the Not Fucked Up Zone who matters slightly more than the last one, 8ut she starts getting sick 8ecause Adakais is tainted 8y the Fucked Up Zone’s Fucked Up-ness or whatever. He chooses not to tell her what’s happening, and takes her to an incredi8ly skeevy 8ut legendary doctor. In another villain song with more spiders he tells them that he can cure her, 8ut as payment he wants to keep her as his servant forever. The chick o8viously says she won’t, 8ut Adakais, without considering any other options or implying that he has a plan, says she has to.
Then Pallis 8usts in, and says “WHAT THE FUCK DID I TELL YOU, DUM8ASS,” 8ut decides to tell the chick that her new hus8and was lying 8efore he gets to sta88ing. Adakais says he meant to tell her, really, and this shouldn’t change their love, 8ut Pallis interrupts him with a wife sta88ing attempt. Adakais takes the hit, this is surprising somehow, the fucking end.
So 8asically all that pisses me off a8out it is just that Adakais is a massive idiot and a jackass. Like he 8ases his entire life path on this prophecy he’s 8een told 8ecause he’s 8ored, and wraps up a princess in it, 8ut decides to just not tell her anything a8out that even when she’s literally made sick 8y 8eing around him. And then even though he’s 8ased his entire life path on this story a8out an angel getting manipul8ed 8y a spider to ruin everything, he’s like “You have to sacrifice yourself to the spider doctor who definitely means well! It’s the only way!” and then fucking dies 8efore we even see how that pans out. Good jo8, idiot.
Plus it’s 8een a while since I’ve listened to it the whole way through, 8ut I don’t think that anything even externally confirmed that he actually was the chosen one? Like the plot went as the prophecy said, 8ut mostly 8ecause Adakais explicitly tried to follow it and 8ecause Pallis decided to work on reuniting the world’s zones to make it up to his sad 8etrayed princess wife or something.
It might’ve just all 8een cosmic coincidence 8ecause Adakais h8ed his jo8.
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Aftermath: A Sonic Forces AU Fanfiction - Chapter 2
Six Months After the War
(Reposting because of a colossal grammatical error I made in the chapter heading)
Sonic was sitting in his living room, feeling incredibly melancholy. Ever since the meltdown, Sonic had experienced repeated sudden mood swings, restless sleep, and has been more physically fatigued. He knew he had to remain calm, but he also knew from experience that was an onerous task.
It wasn’t long before the azure rodent heard a knock on the door.
“Come in,” Sonic invited the unknown guest without so much as looking over his shoulder.
The guest let themselves in; it was Knuckles. The red echidna wordlessly set a coffee mug on the table adjacent to Sonic’s couch before he sat himself down on a couch opposite of Sonic.
“Where are the others?” Sonic asked.
With a moment’s hesitation, Knuckles answered, “They’re running a bit late, but they should be here soon.”
He took a sip of his own drink and slowly put it back down before sloped his shoulders and gazed at the limestone floor beneath his feet. Sonic noticed that Knuckles was enervated; his once brilliant dark orchid eyes had dulled to an uninteresting plum, he was far more pale, and the white streak across his chest had begun to turn grey.
“Whatcha thinkin’ about, Knux? Someone lay a finger on the Master Emerald?” Sonic jested.
Knuckles suppressed a laugh at the unexpected inquiry. Even in his dire mood, Sonic still had some esprit. That was always something Knuckles could count on, aside from his inordinate amount of hubris.
“We wanted to check in and touch base to see how you’re handling things,” Knuckles told Sonic, brushing aside the hedgehog’s previous question.
“Don’t worry about me, dude,” Sonic quickly riposted, the words coming out harsher than he meant them to be. He hesitated for a moment, feeling bad about how that last sentence came out of his mouth.
With a sigh, Sonic apologized and stated, “It’s just…I’m doing alright. There’s really no need to think about me. I’ll be fine. I think it’s more important that you focus on yourself.”
Knuckles saw right through his falsification. Sonic was smirking, but his legs were trembling as he subtly and impatiently tapped his foot and his pointy ears, once standing on his head as sturdy as oak trees, had now sagged.
“You look bad, man,” the echidna insisted. “You’re anything but fine.”
The accusation vexed Sonic. His forehead corrugated and his eyes narrowed, nearly hissing at the prototherian as he clenched his teeth together.
“I know how you feel,” Knuckles continued slowly. “I’m dealing with the same type of feelings. No need to be bashful about it.”
Sonic felt slightly reassured, but quickly began to wallow in his own thoughts again. ‘I shouldn’t be relying on others for comfort,’ Sonic angrily thought to himself. ‘You know who does that? Cowardly pieces of shit.’
The hedgehog repeated these words under his breath. As he repeated it a fourth time, Knuckles heard it. He began to speak, but Sonic steadily raised his voice and the echidna kept quiet. Eventually, his mumbling turned into yelling. It was at this point Knuckles tried to intervene.
“Sonic, is everything alright?” he asked, truly beginning to worry.
“It’s the same thing with me every day! I have no right to calm down!” Sonic retaliated.
Knuckles tried to say something else—anything else—but Sonic’s rampage was so fierce he couldn’t roll the words off his tongue. He was pissed. At last, Sonic practically went postal.
“What kind of maniac am I?!” Sonic roared, twice slamming his fists onto the table. He immediately looked up and realized that, in his episode of blind rage, he forgot that he had company. The rodent instantly felt shame for his actions and denounced himself harshly. He picked up his coffee mug, drank the rest of the coffee inside, and then furiously hurled the mug at the back wall, splintering it.
All the while, the auburn-quilled monotreme sat motionless trying to process what had just happened. It was then that he heard a knock at the door. It was the others, he had figured.
“Give us just a moment!” Knuckles bellowed. He quickly maneuvered over to the couch Sonic was sitting on, trying to console him.
“It’s okay,” the echidna whispered softly. “You’re okay. It’s all right.”
After a few seconds, Sonic, still slightly ticked, let out a long drawn-out sigh as he rubbed his eyes.
“Alright, you can come in now,” Knuckles yelled to the door.
Tails, Amy, Shadow, and Silver filed into the house. Judging by the looks on their faces, Knuckles thought, they had probably heard the commotion. Sonic turned towards the others and lowered his eyelids in chagrin.
“…I’m… uh… I’m s-sorry…” he managed to stammer.
“For what?” susurrated Amy and Tails simultaneously.
Sonic’s ears drooped and he, without answering the question, lowered his head as he clenched his hands together and rested his forearms on his thighs. In a despondent manner, he stared down at his bright red sneakers.
Silver walked over to the couch where Sonic was sitting, sat himself down next to the blue blur, and put a hand on his shoulder in an attempt to reassure him. Shadow walked over to the couch and stood behind the two, standing akimbo and looking down upon the limestone floor.
“I’ve failed you,” insinuated Sonic.
“Failed? Sonic, what on Earth are you talking about?” exclaimed Amy.
“I’ve lost all motivation to do anything, no matter how much I want to do it. I’ve been missing out on sleep thanks to…”
Sonic faltered as he felt his throat constrict again. He didn’t want to outright say he was experiencing night terrors. ‘What will they think of me if I say that?’ he thought.
“…outlying factors, if you will.” asserted Sonic.
“Sonic, we kn—” Silver began, but was interrupted.
“Fine, I’ll get to the point.” Sonic took a deep breath, trying not to tear up.
“I phrased the answer to the first question wrongly. What I meant to say was that I’m a failure.”
The others were appalled. They had a thousand words swirling in their heads, but neither could choke out a single one.
“Twenty-seven years, guys. Twenty-seven fucking years. That’s how long I’ve been fighting to keep this world safe, but it never stays that way. Every time I defeat Eggman, I should’ve been beating him to death. But, no, I just have to keep him alive for the sheer thrill of stopping him. Now it’s beginning to all catch up with me. Why didn’t I rid him once and for all when I had numerous chances to do so? I’m a fool, guys.”
Sonic began tearing up and he felt a lump growing in his throat. The silence persisted. Nobody knew what to say.
Continuing his rant, Sonic vented. “It’s my own dumb decisions that gets everybody else into trouble. Not putting the fake Chaos Emerald into the Eclipse Cannon before going to save Amy so we could have avoided the entire thing with the giant lizard. Being careless in my super state and getting captured because of it, subsequently tearing the planet into pieces. Nearly losing my closest friend because of my dimwitted ways back on the Lost Hex.”
Everybody was intently listening now. Even Shadow, who had been relatively indifferent up to this point, was now bewildered by the words coming out of the blue hedgehog’s mouth; him, of all people.
“I don’t deserve any of you as friends. I don’t deserve your respect. I don’t deserve anything from you guys. The majority of you all have nearly been killed because of my actions. I am completely selfish.”
Sonic had been rambling for a while, but the others still knew better than to speak up now. Tails sat on the couch next to Sonic and Silver. Amy sat on the opposite couch next to Knuckles. Shadow remained standing behind Sonic’s couch. Sonic knew this and, thanks to his experiences while incarcerated aboard the Death Egg, interpreted this as a threatening move. As Shadow saw Sonic arch his back, however, he stepped out from behind the couch and sat next to Amy and Knuckles.
Sonic continued his emotional tirade for another five minutes before he finally fell silent.
“Why can’t things just go back to normal, like they’ve always been?” Sonic sadly pondered.
The room was now silent enough that you could hear a fly’s wings flap. Everybody was aghast while reflecting on what the cobalt hedgehog had just told them.
Finally, Shadow piped up. “Did you need advice or did you just need to vent?”
“Both,” Sonic whimpered.
There was yet another brief period of silence.
“Sonic…” Knuckles admitted. “If I’m being honest, I can’t truly understand how you’re feeling, but I want to help.”
“…I know exactly how he feels,” Shadow acknowledged. “After the whole incident with the Black Arms, I swore to myself that I’d put the past behind me. But… it still haunts me to this day. No matter how hard I try, I can never seem to elude it.”
Silver echoed the ebony hedgehog’s statements, emphasizing how his constant duty of keeping his future bright was near-impossible to do, with or without massive stress.
“But what’s important to know, Sonic, is that as we’ve done so much for you, you’ve done so much for us. If the world’s not destroyed, then that must mean you’ve succeeded in your efforts.”
“Sonic… you matter to us.” Tails emphasized. “We’re here for you. That’s what friends are for. I know it probably doesn’t help much, but we just wanted you to know that.”
“It’s okay to feel this way,” Amy added. “You make such a great impact on our lives that it would be stupid of us to abandon you now. We know how much your—”
Amy stopped. She didn’t want to mention Sonic’s 6-month hostage crisis to him, fearing he may become paranoid and panic. Clearing her throat, she resumed.
“We know what’s been happening over the past year. You aren’t weak for having feelings you have no control over. We care.”
Those two words pierced Sonic’s heart like an arrow.
‘We care.’
The blue blur wiped away a tear welling in the corner of his eye.
“I don’t know what to say…” Sonic breathed. “…Thank you. You all are too kind.”
Tails embraced Sonic in a brief hug before the blue hedgehog turned back towards Knuckles.
“What were you all coming here for anyway?” he contemplated.
“It’s been a while since we’ve actually seen each other,” Knuckles proclaimed, “so we all thought maybe we’d head on over here and catch up.”
Sonic simpered. “I suppose we’ve already done all that over the past five minutes.”
He guffawed at his own answer and everybody else, save for Shadow, did so too.
[Prelude] [Previous Chapter] [Next Chapter]
#sth#Sonic the Hedgehog#Miles Tails Prower#Amy Rose#Shadow the Hedgehog#Silver the Hedgehog#Sonic Forces#Sonic the Hedgehog AU#Sonic Forces AU#Aftermath: A Sonic Forces AU Fanfiction#Sonic Fanfiction#Fanfiction#PTSD TW#Depression TW#Knuckles the Echidna#Repost
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i’ve been here the whole time singing you a song
This one-shot was made for @notveryglittery , whose birthday is today, so Happy Birthday!
Tbh I planned the basic outline and wasn't even going to introduce quite a few characters but I did and I went with it - I hope yall like it :)
As this is my first time writing Royality, any constructive criticism is accepted!
lowkey want to plan something else for this now but also don't want to set another target just yet as im a bit busy and dont wanna overload myself :/ yikes oh well
Dani, Happy Birthday! Enjoy this Royality!
AO3
Word count:
Roman had noticed a few things lately. One at the forefront of his mind was that Patton Heart was really fucking adorable.
Of course, nobody could know of this. If anyone of his friends found out he would be screwed.
Yes, his whole friend group were gay (or ace, or bi, or pan or nonbinary) disasters, but they were also incredibly good wing-people, with a high rate of getting two people dating -- and Roman didn’t want to ruin the naturalness of their friendship.
And worse he couldn’t let anyone know that The Emperor had a crush. And by extension, that meant that he couldn’t allow his crime-fighting partner (and asshat of an older brother) to find out; Virgil’s tongue was always looser when donned with the costume of Poison Shadow. And the city would be in an uproar of the thought of The Emperor liking someone romantically- and if it ever got out who it was, it would put Patton in serious danger.
But Roman couldn’t help but notice the little smiles Patton gets when talking about some of the animals in the shelter he volunteered at, or the ways his eyes light up when he gushed about the heroes of the city.
The way his open gaze instilled a feeling of trust.
And dear lord it was not helping the gay mess that was Roman Kingston.
“Alright, shithead, what’s up with you?”
“I tell you and I’m doomed you insolent sloth.” The owner of the monotonous voice shot a glance at the prying sibling.
“Right. That’s really fucking useful to know.” Dripping sarcasm; the asshat was not only prying but also getting annoyed now! Yay!
“Oh, piss off. Let me be a disaster in peace.”
The elder stood, shaking his head, before walking to the other edge of the rooftop they were perched on.
“Hurry up! Today is a sparring day.” Virgil, seeing Roman making no attempt to move, pushed forward with his mind, pushing the darkest shadows up until they were able to slap Roman across the face. “Come on, idiot. The night isn’t gonna last forever!”
Grumbling, the man in his late teens stood from his position on the edge of the rooftop, reluctantly turning at the end of the roof, with sarcastic jazz hands at his sides.
And just like that, they were sparring. Virgil completely flattened The Emperor in 3 separate rounds before some sense seemed to be knocked into the dramatic hero’s head. The furious flashes of light and dark clashed throughout the area, silent except the heavy breathing of the men, and the jibes thrown between the space between them.
It was another while before they were tired, as their sparring took place at least twice a week- they needed to stay in shape even over their sports and workouts.
Roman sat on the edge of the rooftop next to his brother, slowly regaining his breath.
When the villain attacked, it was not appreciated by the two teens. They were tired and generally unwilling to have to use their already exhausted powers. Their fighting was lacklustre and they took any moment they could to stop and perch off railings or on rooftops.
Flashes of light across the night were brief but would warp the situation, allowing shadows, viscous as ink moved away in slow patterns, stalking the villain until finding it’s perfect time to strike, pushing the villain backwards, dragging them forwards then dropping them off the edge of the building.
Yet the villain didn’t waver in power. At a mere flick of fingers, the Emperor fell backwards, barely left any time to make a platform for him to stagger onto.
How were they going to get this person then?
“What does your immoral soul bother us with, foul villain?”
“Oh, nothing really. I was just bored, so I decided to mess around with these powers I earnt the other day.”
The pale blue light of the moon offset by the warmer glow from the Emperor's hand gave enough light to see fangs flash under the mask that covered the upper half of their face.
“Why set about destroying the city, fuckwad? Why not just, I don’t know, sleep, like a normal person?”
“Ew, no, sleep? That drains me more. Plus, don’t we all need to have a little bit of chaos in our lives?”
Roman could feel the eyes rolling in his elder’s head.
“What the fuck about us two says put together, dipshit? We’re fucking disasters!”
“My fair partner has a valid point. We are fucking disasters ,” Roman eyed the inky lattice forming under the villain's feet for a second before he continued. “We’re both messes of human beings in general- have you seen his room, it's an atrocity - and my room has far too much stuff that I am far too attached to get rid of. Then there's the point that we’re both doing this along with studying for school which in itself drains your energy and the final point is, well,”—the smirk thrown his way by Poison Shadow was all he needed—”We really aren’t all that dumb.”
Poison Shadow ripped his fist upwards, the shadowed lattice folding and bending around the villain, as the Emperor reached out and began to set the still fluid shadows. The cage kept the villain in, and finally, the villain showed some kind of emotion; fear radiated from their composure; arms wrapped around their torso, fist fiddling with their cloak edge, shoulders up to their ears.
Roman pitied the now much smaller opponent. Ego and expectations of power high in their mind with newfound strength ruled their minds. The Emperor turned away, patting Poison Shadow on the back as went after he silently checked his brother was okay with dealing with him.
As he crossed the bridged gap between buildings, he heard his brother’s cry, and then he felt himself flying backwards over buildings, body limp as a rag doll as his brain tried to comprehend which was up or down or the sky or ground. Once he finally stopped moving, he found himself winded and bruised and somehow not broken- though he felt it- on a balcony. With a very familiar curious face peering down at him.
Patton. Fucking. Heart.
It was his luck, wasn’t it? He’d get thrown about like an unused toy to be left in his worst state on the balcony of one of his favourite people in the world.
“Oh my goodness, are you all right? Is anything broken? Do you need some water, food, comfort?” The stream of babble poured from Patton, his pale blue eyes wide with worry, both searching his body to analyse for damage and keeping eye contact to calm the disorientated hero.
Thank goodness these powers strengthen my bones and skin.
“Uhm… I think… I’ll be,” The Emperor was interrupted by a fit of coughing, which he dealt with but rolling onto his front and slowly making his way to his knees. “Actually, could I, uh, have a glass of water.”
Patton nodded earnestly, and even through the lingering dizziness pounding in his mind, Roman could make out the curls of Patton’s hair reflecting the cool blue of the moon. The smaller figure retreated into the building, just as Roman felt a buzz in his pocket.
Pulling out the smartphone, he huffed at the once again smashed screen to read the text he received.
Very Early Womb-mate - 11:35
-- sorry dude didnt see that coming
-- dick had us fooled into thinkin he was subdued
--you went flying tho, it was kinda hilarious
-- i got it handled, he’s trapped until police arrive
Me - 11:38
--oh ok
Very Early Womb-mate - 11:39
-- u ok? Or do i need to pick u up
Me - 11:40
-- nah it’s cool i landed on a classmates balcony, just a bit dizzy
Very Early Womb-mate - 11:40
-- cool, dickwad, dont reveal anything
Me - 11:40
-- bold of you to assume i would
-- k byeeee xxx :)))))
Very Early Womb-mate - 11:41
-- :/
Patton returned, carrying the glass.
“I’m so sorry it took me so long to get back, my parents were wondering what happened and I figured you didn't want to be crowded so I just made up a lie and then they got me to do a quick job and uh— here.”
Roman took the drink, downing as much of it as he could, before stopping to try and stand.
“Tough villain, huh?”
“Yeah, I guess. I was knocked back ‘cos I was caught off guard. I thought Poison had got them - he was inside a huge cage, you see - so when he lashed out again after being subdued it surprised us.”
Roman looked over the city wistfully. The sky was clear and the air was fresh, with little to no breeze. Roman took this time to notice that Patton was wearing only his pyjamas and a zip hoodie thrown over the top.
“Do you need to help Poison Shadow then? It looked like you were thrown far.”
“Nah, Patton, he sent a few texts to say he handled it.”
Patton nodded in understanding, before cocking his head sideways.
“Wait, you know me?”
Shit.
Roman ran through his words and cursed at his loose mouth.
“Uh, oh yeah,” Roman coughed out, scratching at his neck, unconsciously picking at the skin. “You, uh, go to the same school as me. We’re in the same year, actually.”
You’re oversharing! The voice of his brother rang out in his head.
“Wait, really?”
God, Roman absolutely adored the way Patton’s eyes lit up, the tiny specks of green almost glowing in the natural light around them. Anything else and Roman might actually die on the spot. He just thanked his younger-little-dramatic-shit self and wanted to hide his and Virge’s faces from the world - at least Patton wouldn't be able to see his glowing red face.
“That’s so cool! I could tell you were a teen, I didn’t realise you were like, that close to me!” Patton waved his hands about excitedly, and that’s it. Roman felt like he was melting into a puddle. His friend was so cute, and he just wanted to hold Patton to his chest and treasure him and spoil him with cakes and serenades and movie nights.
Roman somehow managed to keep talking for a while, but he was going to go insane soon. He just wanted to give Patton a hug, goddamnit !
They were shook from their conversation by the door opening to reveal Declan Heart, whose eyes flew open at the visitor Patton apparently had.
“Oh my god, Logan, come out here,” he hissed out of the side of his mouth, mismatching eyes darting from the sheepish look on Patton's face to the city known hero on his house’s balcony.
When Declan’s twin cast appeared in the doorway, Patton waved, somewhat cheery, opposed to Roman’s more fidgety behaviour, his skin prickling under the gazes of the two older twins. He had only met Logan on one occasion, and he was intimidated, to say the least.
“Suprise!” Patton giggled, with jazz hands waving at his brothers, very different from the delivery Virgil would have given in this situation.
“I knew that there was a lie somewhere in your excuse earlier!” Declan’s quiet exclamation made its way into the silence, but this just made Roman more uncomfortable under the blank stare he was receiving from Logan.
"Well, I had to because otherwise, this ," — Patton waved at the group they had formed around the hero — "would happen and the last thing that needs to happen after being thrown really far and being bashed about is being crowded. Plus, this was my lucky day." Patton giggled, throwing a wink sideways to Roman, and oh no , Roman was a mess. He felt like spontaneously combusting while gripping his heart and dramatically dying on the floor where he stood.
Yet the only reaction to this was somehow a brief panic before a smile broke out and Roman was able to laugh along a bit.
"Patton, why, might I ask, did you conceal this from both me and Declan? I understand your point on crowded-ness but you also know of our fascination with the heroes and our possible future career paths."
Logan's words made Patton look down guiltily, revealing that Logan's words were true, but he fiddled with his bracelet on his wrist before looking upwards towards the elder twin.
"Because... Because I didn't want to?"
Patton then frowned, looking almost... angry. But not towards anyone- his gaze was at the floor, more as if he was angry at himself. Logan let a smile slip onto his lips, the same teasing smile once Virgil managed to wind up Roman.
"Valid reasoning. I know for a fact my excuse would be more or less the same."
Patton brightened up again, but Roman didn't have a chance to admire him again as Declan had burst out with an exclamation asking for an autograph.
This whisked away Roman's attention for a while, ending up in a selfie with the three with his magic glowing through his veins for proof of authenticity and various things being signed as well as a note Roman felt obligated to write to the Heart parents for their (unknown) hospitality.
He even got all of them to make a small piece of memorabilia for him to keep to remember them should he not be able to visit them again. Logan gave a small origami gift, Declan a yellow feather. In Patton's case, he had to think for a few seconds before his face absolutely lit up. He rushed a tiny, absolutely minuscule potted cactus, the plant itself being about the size of his thumb, to roman, with the most adorable and sincere face.
"Here! Take Ophelia - I grew her myself. That being said, it's probably best you don't have a feel of her , she's a bit prickly!"
A groan rumbled in Logan's throat at the pun, contrasting the chuckles from Roman and Dec, followed by the all too familiar buzz of Roman's phone.
Very Early Womb-mate - 12:56
-- What the FuCK you ass?? its been an hour or so what the fuck is taking you so long?????
-- mom's gonna start to freak, u need to get home as soon as u can
-- idiot
Me - 11:56
-- aksdflaksdhfkljkj what the fuck i lost track of time heck i'll get home asap
Roman shoved his cracked phone into a pocket and grinned sheepishly.
"My brother has warned me against impending doom known as my mother and her lectures if I don't return home soon. I thank you all for your lovely donations of memorabilia and allowing me to stay. However, it is nearly 1 o'clock and we have been out here an awfully long time. Farewell, fellow humans!"
Roman turned away, climbing over the railing and forming a golden step of light in front of him.
"Ah, right, that reminds me. We were sent up here to make sure you hadn't fallen asleep up here Patton. We got sidetracked though. Come on, Pat." Logan chimed.
As Roman was leaping away over steps made for him, he could faintly hear Patton respond about watering 'Candice' and 'Bobby', which he could assume were plants, before heading inside.
Roman luckily escaped with his hide when he managed to sneak in through the window just in time before his mom burst in, looking for him. He used the excuse of being on his phone as a reason for being awake - which did admittedly get his phone taken away - but at least he wouldn't have to listen to a rant.
And as he settled to sleep, he was caught up in thinking. Remembering. Adoring.
Yes, Roman was a mess, but at least tonight he could sleep easy after the beautiful image of Patton in the moonlight, playful glint in his eyes; him holding out a tiny cactus supplied with a pun; his excited face once he realised something interesting.
It wasn't much, but to Roman it was everything.
#i haven't added the italics on here#oh well#my writing#birthday gift#notveryglittery#dani deserves the world#royality#roman sanders#patton sanders#ts patton#ts roman#ts virgil#brotherly prinxiety
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rise and fall
In this world, they are human.
They have no power but their own. They are normal in every way but one: the city will not let them die.
Death knocks them unconscious to heal their wounds, making new blood and tissue to replace that which has been destroyed. Injuries knit together, and their bodies resist fatality. Paper cuts bleed and sting, but a shot through the eye ends only in flesh reappearing and bone unshattering. Mortal wounds cannot touch them for long.
Unkillable, the Fake AH Crew rules the city for more time than is natural. Some realize this; most don’t. The ones who do rarely live to tell anyone.
They all find out in their own ways.
The first time death comes rushing up to meet Geoff, he's 25 and miserable. He can't get a break, nobody is hiring, and he’s tired of being nothing more than an expendable guy with a gun for whatever gang cares to pick him up.
And then he hears the gunshots.
And - what the fuck - there’s some kid bolting out of an alleyway across the street and sprinting headlong into one of the busiest streets in this part of Los Santos.
And there’s a truck barreling toward him, laying on the horn but the kid isn’t gonna make it.
So Geoff jumps.
One moment, he's tackling the skinny kid and wrapping his body around him and the next he's bloodied and gasping for air in the middle of the street.
The kid is gone.
Geoff drags himself to his feet, wincing at the feeling of what will surely be a full-body bruise. He rolls his neck to pop some of the feeling back into it, relishing the relief of some part of his body fitting back into place.
There are people watching from the sidewalks, and maybe someone has called an ambulance, but Geoff doubts it. Nobody helps in Los Santos. Nobody cares. The truck’s gone too.
“He should be dead,” someone says out loud.
Geoff looks down at the smear of blood on the pavement; there’s far too much there for anyone to be able to walk away. And yet.
And yet.
He grins at the people watching in the street, tasting the blood on his teeth.
And he walks away.
Maybe he finds the kid later. Maybe he recognizes the fear in his eyes; maybe he realizes that he used to feel like that too.
Maybe that’s where it all starts.
***
The first time Gavin dies, he's terrified. Running across the street to escape a gunman seemed like the best thing to do. But suddenly there is a massive semi truck barreling towards him and he screams before he's knocked to the ground in a protective embrace. He can barely register the warmth of his would-be savior's arms before everything goes black.
When he wakes up, he's aching and miserable. Both of his arms are aching like they're broken and one of his legs is definitely busted, but he checks his torso for wounds and finds it miraculously intact. There's too much blood on him for there to have been no injuries, but he doesn’t feel the telltale ache of a cracked rib like he might have - like he should have.
He stumbles to his feet, ignoring the muted screams of horror from people on the sidewalks. The gunman seems to have given up the chase, probably thinking that the truck was enough to kill him. And damn, it should have been.
There’s someone else on the ground, though. It’s a guy not too much older than Gavin, or at least just young-looking, and he’s laying on the ground in a smear of blood. This must’ve been the guy that saved him. Gavin wants to thank him, maybe, because this guy must be the reason he’s still alive, but the guy can’t have survived that kind of car crash, especially if he took the full weight of a truck.
But no - he’s breathing. Bloodied, yeah, but undoubtedly still kicking.
Gavin wants to stay, he does, but he knows that news travels fast and that he’s still got someone on his tail.
He can’t stay here.
He stumbles backwards, trailing blood from his ruined shoes, staggering out of the street on a half-healed leg, and he starts running. He doesn’t look back.
Geoff finds him later, though of course it’s not that hard to do. He offers protection, security, and a chance to move to the top. It’s possible, he promises, if death can’t touch them.
Gavin accepts.
***
It’s a car crash for Jack.
Too wild, too bold, and too talented for her own good, she’s whipping down the highway at a speed that is most definitely illegal in a car that she most definitely just stole from one of San Andreas’s most corrupt politicians. She calls it activism through fun, and nobody’s disagreed with her yet, so she’s stuck to it.
Until now.
The LSPD are out in a fucking swarm today, and they manage to tail her all the way to her favorite canyon despite her best efforts. No problem, she thinks. She’s done this before; she can do this again. The LSPD are no match for her.
But it goes wrong this time, and she takes a turn just a heartbeat too late, and a car slams into her, and suddenly she’s careening-
Over the edge-
Down, down, down, and the world is spinning-
And then nothing.
Ramsey finds her on the side of the road, wiping blood from her eyes in the shattered, smoking remains of her car. He pokes his head inside the ruined window and grins widely at her.
“Seems you’ve got a unique talent,” he says, so casually, as if he were discussing the weather and not the fact that Jack should be incredibly dead.
Jack spits blood in his face.
She doesn’t know this guy; doesn’t owe him a thing. This could be a setup by the LSPD for all she knows. She won’t brave death just to get caught. She’s gone this long without repercussions, and she’s not about to stop now.
To his credit, the guy just swipes a hand across his face to get rid of the blood, and he offers it to Jack. “I can get you more than just cars,” he promises. “Planes. Helicopters. Hell, I can get you a fucking tank if that’s what it’ll take for you to join me.”
Jack frowns up at him and tosses her smoking hair out of her face. “Join you in what?” she asks, rasping past a still-healing windpipe.
The guy grins, and there’s a genuine twinkle in his eye when he says, “What do you call it? Activism through fun?”
To her surprise, Jack laughs, and she takes his hand.
***
Ryan dies too many times for anyone to count before he agrees to join Geoff.
The first time is his favorite, he thinks.
He’s tailing a guy through the streets late at night, keeping himself scarce. No mask tonight - he hasn’t been doing this long enough to need one - so he just wears a hoodie that casts deeper shadows across his cheeks. He follows the guy quietly down an alley. He’s been watching him for a while. This guy has done worse things to his family than Ryan could ever fathom.
It’s going to be so satisfying to kill him.
This one’s prepared.
The guy turns before Ryan can get to him, and he has a blade of his own, and he slips it in between Ryan’s ribs before he has a chance to flinch out of the way. Ryan is still new to this, and still inexperienced, so he chokes and staggers for a moment, eyes flying wide at the pain of a knife in his heart. Panic rises in the back of his throat, but there’s still a target, and Ryan has never failed his missions.
He grabs the guy by the shoulder and bares bloody teeth from a trembling jaw, and he buries his own knife in his chest.
The guy chokes and tries to stagger backwards, but Ryan holds onto him tightly, and they fall to the ground together, locked by blood and steel. Ryan can feel his consciousness fading to darkness, lying here on the ground in an unnamed alley.
God, but it’s worth it to see the triumph turn to fear in his victim’s eyes.
And it goes dark.
He wakes up in the same alley, and the guy beside him is cold and very, very dead. Ryan stands and places a hand to the spot where his life should be draining out of him. It’s still soaked by blood, but even that is cold and half-dried on the fabric of his shirt.
He smiles.
When Geoff finds him, he doesn’t need to be convinced of the truth of immortality; he’s lived and died too many times, chasing the adrenaline of the moment before total annihilation. It’s a little unhealthy, maybe, but the Vagabond has never exactly been a paragon of gleaming virtue.
“It took me a while to find you,” a voice says one night when he’s brooding on a rooftop. Ryan whirls, blades already primed to throw-
It’s Geoff Ramsey.
Slowly, Ryan lowers the knives. “You’re persistent,” he notes.
Ramsey shrugs. “It’s a talent.” He steps a little closer, seemingly casual, but Ryan sees the way he eyes the knives, and he’s pretty sure that he can see Pattillo in the shadows by the rooftop entrance, rifle trained on Ryan’s head. They all know that a bullet will hardly do much other than slow him down, but he supposes that’s all they need. “So,” he says, “what do you think?”
Ryan tilts his head to the side. “I like what you do,” he admits.
And that’s that.
***
Michael’s death is as violent as he is. As he falls unconscious, torn asunder by an improvised bomb, he thinks that it’s some sort of shitty poetic justice.
And then he’s awake again.
He’s not in the bank where he’d been running a really poorly planned heist. Instead, he’s lying on the floor of a lab or a bathroom or a morgue, and there’s someone standing beside him
“Never in my life have I seen a death so brutal,” the guy says. Michael vaguely recognizes him. That gang leader. Ramsey. “Like, holy shit, dude.”
Michael raises an eyebrow. Honestly, it’s shocking that he still has eyebrows, after the magnitude of that explosion. “Thanks, I guess.” The word echoes around in his head. Death. Death. Death.
So the rumors are true, if Ramsey’s here.
“You’ve got heart, kid,” Ramsey tells him. “And you’ve got the stuff.”
“If you mean the whole ‘not dying against all odds’ thing,” Michael groans, easing himself carefully up into a sitting position, “then thanks.”
“Still,” Ramsey continues, going to a sink and washing his hands. Red trails from his fingers into the sink - Michael’s blood, he realizes - only to be washed away. “Your planning was piss-poor. You need a crew.”
“I need a crew,” Michael repeats.
Ramsey looks at him over his shoulder. “Was that a yes?”
“Was that an invitation?”
Ramsey laughs at that, shaking his head with a weird sort of fondness. “Damn, kid,” he sighs, “you’ll fit right in.”
***
Jeremy falls to a rival gang, gunned down viciously after a deal gone awry. He means, shouldn’t he be able to take a cut of the earnings? He was the one who actually did all the work. He should get more than just the cost of hiring him.
Maybe he should’ve just raised his rates.
Left for dead, he coughs up blood and stares up at the sky, waiting for his vision to go dark.
It doesn’t.
The sun’s blocked out.
Jeremy groans and blinks, and someone’s face swims into focus, hovering right in the place where the sun is supposed to be. The silhouetting effect doesn’t really help much, especially since his vision is all sorts of fucked up, but he has a vague idea.
“I’m sure you’ve heard of us,” the guy says, and holy shit, that’s Geoff fucking Ramsey.
“Yeah,” Jeremy says, and he coughs again. He can taste his own blood again, but somehow it doesn’t hurt as much. He shifts and coughs again. “Not really how I imagined meeting you guys.”
Ramsey grins. “Been looking forward to this?” he asks.
Jeremy blinks and tries to sit up; to his surprise, someone helps him up, and out of the corner of his eye he sees a flash of gold glasses. Free, then. “Kinda,” he admits.
“Then you understand why we’re here,” Geoff says. He crouches beside Jeremy and pokes him through one of the bullet holes in his shirt.
Jeremy yelps at the touch, but it’s not even out of pain. Maybe it’s the expectation of pain. He frowns and looks down, and to his surprise the bleeding as stopped. Weakly, because this can’t be happening, he says, “I think I might have an idea.” But the immortal Fake AH Crew is just a myth. This can’t be real-
“It’s real,” Geoff says, as if he can read Jeremy’s mind. “Wanna come along?”
There’s not even any doubt about it.
“Fucking yeah.”
***
There are others, over the years.
Trevor is smart enough to come directly to them; he’s heard the rumors. Cradling a broken arm and sporting burns from what he claims was a military rocket test, he offers them his intel and his ability for a chance at revenge against the government that let him walk into danger.
They find Lindsay in the fighting rings of Los Santos, of all places. Before the Fake AH Crew, she is all about challenges and dares and she has never backed down. Her snapped neck means nothing to them, and they help her to her feet with a smile. She grins when she shifts her head back into place on immortal shoulders, and they welcome her.
Matt’s killed because he knows too much, and the LSPD want to get rid of him quietly. They get some cronies to throw him from the Maze Bank. They must’ve thought it’d look like a suicide. That doesn’t stop Matt from collecting his shattered body from the pavement. By the time the Crew finds him, his bones have healed and his eyes are bright with the promise of every creative way to kill.
Alfredo is the newest and the youngest of them, still growing into his immortality. They pick him up after a gunfight they stumble across that he somehow crawls away from, bleeding from half a dozen wounds to the chest and head. He’s good, they admit, and they tell him as much.
***
They’re not perfect. They’re not always right. They’re sometimes in it for the greed; for the chaos; for the fun. But they do what they can.
They’ve got a long time to make this city theirs.
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Endless Chapter 2 Damian Wayne x reader (x various)
Summary: You just wanna relax but evidently, two costumed asshats have other plans- also you make a new friend!
Warnings: Cursing, Damian Wayne’s attitude
Authors note: I love Jon Kent with all my heart that is all bye. -Admin A
The rest of Monday was uneventful, after the fiasco at lunch, the principal deemed the attack good enough to warrant the rest of the week off.
I originally planned to spend this newly obtained free time at Dana’s or get some extra hours in at the library but no, of course the one time we get any sort of off day the spandex junkies decide to pay me a visit.
After about an hour of reassuring my mom I was in fact alive and well, I managed to sneek away to my sacred place, I wrapped myself in a thick hoodie, hood up, with the strings pulled tight to trap in the maximum amount of warmth, sure I looked like a cone head but damn was I comfortable, I plopped myself on the chair I managed to get up there and cracked open the Dr.Pepper I snagged from my mom’s stash, I figured today more than ever I earned some relaxation time.
Just as a sigh of contentment left my lips a cough caught my attention.
There in the far corner of the roof stood a looming figure, cape flapping in the wind, the moon illuminating their figure in the most dramatic of fashion.
“(Y/n) (L/n), we need to talk.” A mechanically altered voice called out raising every hair on my body.
I let a moment of understanding pass before swallowing, standing straight up I nodded “Yeah okay, sure- mysterious stranger who knows my whole ass name, let’s settle down for a nice chat.”
They slowly took a step closer seemingly satisfied with my response, they were still too hidden by shadows to properly identify but knowing who they were was far from a priority.
“It’s come to my attention you seem to be enhanced, how’d you get your powers?” I mirrored their earlier action and took a step forward, “Oh hilarious story, see one day I was walking down the street and-” I interrupted myself throwing the soda can a hard as I could in the spot I imagined their face would be. With a satisfying ‘thunk’ I made a break for the door, my fingertips barely brushed the cold handle when a- well when a something whooshed through the air, before wrapping itself around my ankles. My body hit the floor with an ungraceful ‘oof’ and before I knew it heavy footsteps marched their way to my crumpled form. What I assume was a foot gently rolled me on my back before the figure leaned down.
“Oh you’re definitely hiding something.”
I tried to scoot away the figures face still shrouded in shadows making the experience all the more terrifying. I closed my eyes, trying to will the light to tell me what to do, after all I didn’t wanna die up here, when I reopened my eyes the person had changed positions, his face now somewhat illuminated, enough so I could see the iconic domino mask peering down on me.
“Wait a sec- your that sparrow kid right?” He made a 'tsk’ noise
“It’s Robin, and you don’t get to ask questions until you answer mine.” A glimmer caught my eye, the foot closest to me? 'oh come the fuck on I don’t wanna piss this guy off.’ I thought, this stupid light was trying to get me killed.
It seemed to grow brighter in response to my questioning, I rolled my eyes before grabbing his ankle and yanking as hard as I could, he hit the floor in surprise before rolling over, sitting on my stomach and pinning my hands with a growl.
“At least by a girl some dinner before you get into the kinky stuff.” Without seeing his eyes I could feel the vicious eye roll he gave me, with a scoffing sound the pressure on my wrists increased.
“You’re pissing me off, answer the question.” He demanded, I winced, trying to thrash from his hold but it was like iron- Jesus what did this kid do for fun? Lift cars? Bench press grown men?
I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of answering me, after all who the fuck sneaks on someones roof, and demands answers like they own the place, the longer I thought about the more angry I got, I tried to use the light again, but it just surrounded the strangers body, for once I was clueless on what to do, wiggling wasn’t helping the situation, and that was my only option.
I groaned in frustration, I hated feeling helpless, I refused to be helpless.
I panted relaxing my body as a warm feeling spread throughout my body.
“What are you doing? Stop whatever that is- now!” Before I realized it the building pressure and heat released, like a cannonball his weight was suddenly gone. I opened my eyes just in time to see his body mid air before crashing into the fence opposite to me.
Okay so that was definitely new.
After the temporary shock I scrambled to untie my feet, I jumped up just in time to dodge something he without a doubt threw.
“You’re coming with me, one way or another.” I jumped behind my beloved chair, and unable to stop my remark.
“What kinda line was that you discount bond villain!” He smirked before pulling three more of the stupid projectiles from somewhere on his body.
“This won’t kill you but it’s gonna hurt.”
Almost in slow motion I watched them spin in the air, headed for different parts of my body, ready to make me a pincushion, when a body swooped- I kid you not, swopped in and blocked them.
The dark figure rose- 'Jesus Joseph and Mary why is there another one?!’
This one was taller, decked out in a black body suit complete with a blue bird thing on his chest.
'What’s with these guys a birds?’ I thought peaking over my chair, the new guy casually strolled up to Robin, before giving him a good smack upside the head. “So this is where you disappeared to.” He spoke now leaning on the shorter male like he was a desk.
Robin swatted the new male off his shoulder. “I’m investigating the possibility of a new meta. Go do something with yourself.” He tried to wave him off with a 'shoo’ motion.
The stranger made a 'hmm’ noise before swiping down and getting the fallen weapons. “Investigating huh, interesting way of getting your information.”
Robin grumbled something under his breath snatching the weapons and putting them back wherever he found them. Blue boy shook his head, a sigh leaving his lips before he turned to me.
“Hey there!”
“Uhm, hello?” I asked, he made his way over, stopping close enough for me to make out a smile stretched across his face, but far away enough not to make me bolt which I very much wanted to do.
“I’m real sorry about him, he’s new. I’m Nightwing, are you alright?” His voice was really calming, I tried to unravel the knots of adrenaline in my stomach before I answered.
“Oh yeah I’m peachy, I love being threatened by Gremlins- my favorite pastime really.” Nightwing snorted, comically scratching the back of his neck. “We’re definitely gonna have to work on that- look I know you’ve been through a- uh stressful evening so we won’t take up much more of your time.” I nodded waiting for him to continue.
“You know how it’s our job to protect the public from any kinda danger right? Well it’s also it’s our job to investigate any potential threats, aka people who pop up with any interesting abilities.”
I chewed the nail of my thumb out of habit. “I don’t- look all I wanna do is graduate with a high GPA and get into a college in a town that doesn’t get destroyed every few years. I don’t want-” I gestured to the two hero’s with a wave of my hand. “-whatever all that is. No offense but I think you guys got it all covered.” He nodded, still holding a smile on his face, “The world- the way things are, needs all the help it can get.” He finished his little speech with a tentative step towards me before reaching out his hand, a card with nothing but a number laid in his outstretched palm.
'where on earth was he hiding that?’ I shook away my useless thought and grabbed the card.
“You’re a good kid, I’m not worried about you but just in case you change your mind.”
I couldn’t help the snort that fell from my mouth. “Did you just- y'all have business cards now?” He laughed, and with a shrug made his way to the edge of the building where the Gremlin had been brooding our entire conversation.
“I’ll see you soon kid.” He flipped over the edge with a wave, Robin waited a moment, making sure to send me a glare, I stuck my tongue out at him just as he disappeared from sight.
I looked at the crisp card in my hand, I toyed with the edges with a small scoff. Thinking of the kinder man’s last words I shoved it in the pocket of my hoodie.
“Doubt it.”
I spent the next few free days thinking of what he offered and trying to move things around my room, for the life of me I couldn’t recreate what happened before with that bird boy. Usually the light only showed up when I was in trouble and told me what to do like a video game tutorial, it had never physically acted before, and I’m not weak but I sure as hell couldn’t have lifted that dude off of me let alone throw him half way across the roof.
Another thing that bugged me was the fact that he knew, I kept this shit on lockdown, only a few people in my life actually knew what I could do, my mother (obviously), my Grandma and my best friend Dana, I could show up on any of their doorsteps with a body and they’d help me hide it no questions asked, they were loyal to a fault and I trusted them with my life, no way they blabbed to the bird duo, so someone had to have watched me, but I was always careful if I had to use it in public. I groaned, sliding a hand down my face, even my scared roof top couldn’t cure my frustrations, my eyes would always be drawn to the spot they stood, they knew things about me. Total strangers knew an uncomfortable amount of information about me, and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it.
Which lead me to now, it was Friday afternoon and work let out early giving me a free schedule for a few hours. Usually I’d bother Dana but she had tutoring today, so here I was wandering the streets not really sure what I was looking for. After two whole Spotify playlists had ended, I found myself up on the docks, the murky water bringing a sense of rest for my scrambled thoughts.
I smiled letting the bitter smell of saltwater calm me, after a while of letting the crashing waves lull me into a state of relaxation, I began walking on the pier, occasionally passing the little binocular machines pointed at Metropolis.
They costed about a quarter, and at first I couldn’t understand why you’d spend money to just look at a city but the longer I stood there and people watched I realized why they might be doing it, I could see why it be fun to look it was pretty funny how opposite the sister city’s were, Gotham- yeesh do I even have to describe it? Look at our city’s mascot, he’s fucking terrifying.
Metropolis on the other hand, man was that city golden, it seemed like nature divided the two areas completely, all blue skies there, and here? I looked up to see a pool of grays above me.
Yep, polar opposites.
I laughed popping a quarter in the binoculars, sure their city was golden and their hero was- well come on it was Superman, but still, I don’t think I could leave Gotham, this city had soul, the people- most of them for that matter- were wonderful, they’d been through hell and back and still helped pick each other up.
Gotham had character, an extra oompf ya know?
Pulling away I noticed the ferry that traveled back and forth between the sister city’s arrive, I felt a familiar pull leading me to the boat, I’d never seen the golden city in person and I did have a free afternoon. With a smile I shot a quick text to my mom and bought myself a ticket.
After snagging a donut and grabbing a free seat, I peacefully sat listening to music, and before I knew it I was walking off the wobbly ramp and into the people packed streets of Metropolis.
I realized quickly that I was dressed for Gotham weather and shrugged off my school hoodie throwing it in my bag, I thanked the stars I dressed okay instead of the usual joggers and oversized long sleeves. I walked in a random direction looking for an adventure.
Alright that’s a lie I’m looking for food, problem was every restaurant I passed was either packed or had a line out the door and the chaos of people was the opposite of what I needed.
I followed a random street till I stumbled in a hole in the wall ramen restaurant, there were very few people inside which only further drew my interest.
I sat down at a booth, looking over the menu, problem with spontaneous food adventures was you never knew what to get. I stared at the worn down menu for what felt like hours when someone tapped my shoulder catching me off guard.
Damnit that keeps happening.
I peeked over the menu with an uneasy smile, I did not do well with attractive people my brain got all jumbled.
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry to bother you miss but you seemed to be struggling with the menu.” Heat instantaneously found its way up my neck.
’ I’m a whole ass idiot- oh no he thinks you’re stupid aHH-’ I cleared my throat pausing my mental panic before nodding.
“Was it that obvious?”
He smiled sympathetically, shaking his hand in a 'eh’ motion.
“Maybe just a little.”
I handed him the menu.
“Alright mysterious stranger, what would you recommend?”
“Miso is always a safe option! But depending on what you like you could add different flavors or toppings this place has the best ramen hands down.” He talked a mile a minute but damn was he cute when he did it.
“This actually may take longer to explain than expected- may I?” He gestured to sit down, oddly hyped to explain the differences between broths and such, it was kind of adorable I gotta admit.
I nodded “I don’t see why not-help from a cute stranger doesn’t come along every day.” His face went red faster than I thought possible before he muttered a quiet “Oh my stars.” He cleared his throat and after a few minutes of his excited narrating he proceeded to help me narrow it down, if we’re being honest, I was too hungry to let him talk about food for another minute, so I picked a random number.
“You sure know a lot about this place, do you work here?”
“Oh no I’m just a regular.”
After placing my order and buying a soda I was surprised to see he followed me back to my table.
“Thanks for all the help, I woulda been here another hour trying to decide.”
He smiled with a casual no problem, after a silent moment of staring he awkwardly laughed “I should probably stop standing here like some kinda creep- anyway have a good day miss.” For one reason or another I called out stopping him in his tracks. “I can’t properly thank my hero if I don’t know his name.” He smacked a hand against his forehead, nervously tugging on the strings of his jacket.
“Gosh I’m sorry, it’s Jon! Jon Kent pleasure to meet you miss.”
I laughed taking his outstretched hand, “You can drop the formalities kid I’m only seventeen, and my name’s (Y/n).” The grin had yet to leave his face.
“So are you new to Metropolis? I don’t think I’ve seen you around here.”
I sighed leaning against the table, lightly flicking the napkin dispenser a few inches away before replying.
“Unfortunately I’m just visiting, I wanted to see what the hype was about. I’m from Gotham.” His smile got wider- somehow. He quickly slid back into his previous seat. All previous nerves seemingly evaporated.
“No way! I’m actually moving there! Like soon! Really soon!”
“Wait what? You’re leaving the golden city for the problem child city??”
He leaned back tossing his hands behind his head.
“Well yeah- I was actually born there! We moved here when I was like what, five?” He hummed drumming his fingers on the table. “This is actually my last day here, I wanted my favorite to celebrate.” He gestured to the small shop surrounding us.
I nodded, his stupid little smile was contagious and I found myself grinning along.
“Do you usually tell strangers your life story?” He leaned forward, puffing the dark hair from his eyes.
“Well no, then again we’re not really strangers are we?.”
I leaned closer, my brow raised “We’re not?”
He shook his head with an almost offended look on his face.
“Of course not, I helped you order ramen, that’s a bond for life.” He joked, I snorted into the can I was drinking before skeptically nodding.
“Right- of course. How could I forget.” We shared a laugh before my food came, as soon as I laid eyes on the beautiful bowl I nearly forgot he was there, I chowed down, my eyes rolled into the back of my head.
Fuck this is good. I came back into reality when he laughed, handing me a napkin.
“Shit did I say that out loud?” He simply smiled in response.
“Sorry I’ve been looking forward to this all day, I zone out when it comes to food.”
“No harm done, this place is crazy good.” I inhaled a few more bites before the question popped up in my head.
“Are you gonna attend Gotham academy by any chance?”
His eyes perked up, “Yeah, how’d you know?”
“Lucky guess.”
He sat back, somewhat flabbergasted.
“Wait do you go there??”
“Indeed I do good man.”
“Look at my luck, I’ll already have a friend- wait you wouldn’t mind hanging out at school would you? I mean I don’t wanna pressure you or anything-in fact let me shut up.” I couldn’t help the smile crawling on my face, the guy sure was cute when he rambled.
“I don’t think you’ll have a hard time making friends- like at all, but fuck yeah dude we’re definitely hanging out. I can show you the best studying spots in the library- oh! And what extra classes are worth it.”
After paying, our conversation continued, ranging from school to parents to what to expect living in Gotham.
“By all means stay away from alleyways, avoid popular areas that usually where the bad guys like to commit their shenanigans uh- maybe carry some mace or something.” He laughed shaking his head.
“Don’t worry about me I’ll be fine.”
I flailed my arms in his general direction.
“How can I not worry? I’ve known you a solid two hours and you’re pure, what’s the word I’m looking for- fluff.” His laugh was quickly becoming a fast favorite of mine.
He raised a brow, questioningly mouthing the word 'fluff’ to himself.
“You’re a huge softie, they’ll eat you up if you’re not careful.”
“I’m not too worried, especially with someone like you looking out for me.” He gently bumped my shoulders.
“You are way too optimistic.”
We laughed for a little while longer before my phone alerted me, the ferry was leaving soon so we headed in that direction, Jon refused to let me walk alone even though we both knew nothing would happen.
As we made our way to the building we managed to swap numbers and I couldn’t help but laugh at the situation.
“What’s so funny?” He asked leaning against the railing as we waited for my boat.
“It’s just pretty ironic, I came out here to laugh at how different from home Metropolis is and I ended up meeting Metropolis personified.” He tilted his head like a confused puppy.
“I mean you’re all bright and happy and kinda beautiful in a totally not weird way.” He tried to look away, cheeks a'blazin.
“You’re gonna give me a heart attack with all these compliments.” The sound of a unnecessarily loud boat horn stole out attention, shaking my head I made my way to the newly docked ferry boat.
“Get used to it Kent!” I yelled over my shoulder with a wave.
He stared at the boat with a dreamy expression, his eyes following it until it was a tiny dot on a sea of blue. If he wasn’t sure before, the new friend he found seemed to confirm his thoughts.
'yeah, Gotham is gonna be great.’
#damian wayne#dc imagine#dc reader insert#poc reader#jon kent#superboy imagine#superboy#damian wayne x reader#poc imagine#dc#robin imagine#nightwing#dick grayson#endless
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appendix blog, part 3
“working out... is.... good?”
Hey so I’m skipping Eorl, I already blogged him, or at least I read him. I don’t conceptually separate those processes any more, thanks fiends. I, uh, I meant to type friends there but let’s call it a Freudian typo.
Ah fuck yes after the list of Rohirrim kings it’s time for DURIN’S FOLK
So “Durin is the name that the Dwarves used for the eldest of the Seven Fathers of their race.” Are we ever going to hear about the other six fathers, or is it one of those things where dwarves are extremely close-mouthed about it and only Durin, who they cannot ever shut up about, is ever mentioned near other races?
Durin “slept alone” until the awakening of his people. Did all dwarves sleep alone? Is this a gem kindergarten situation? Please say yes. Please say there is a Durin-shaped hole somewhere that is only known to dwarves and they like, sometimes try to fit themselves into it. The one who is the same size and shape as the original Durin becomes Durin the N+1th. “This hole was made for me,” he declares, and fits himself into it. Everyone cheers, and then they fish him out with a hook before he can slide too far into the mountain. Anyway during the time of Durin VI the dwarves, who are in an absolutely defensible position but are too bored to stop mining, wake up a balrog and have to flee. Durin VI’s son Nain goes to Erebor and finds a very nice rock; most of the Khazad-dum dwarves go to the Grey Mountains in the north, because exploring is fun and profitable! Unfortunately north of the mountain everything is full of dragons. “At last Dáin I, together with Frór his second son, was slain at the door of his hall by a great cold-drake.” I really like the implication I just made up, that the north is full of dragons because they migrated from Angband.
BTW Dain’s other sons are Thror and Gror. Apparently there’s something absolutely essential about the fabric of Ea that makes all peoples independently name their kids dumb themed names. Someone during the Song of Songs or w/e they’re calling it these days accidentally kept repeating one of their trills and it became a line of code essential to the nature of life. Fuck this.
Thror goes to Erebor again, and he makes lots of friendly alliances with other dwarf clans and the humans who live near Erebor (’northmen’). UNFORTUNATELY you cannot have a great and extremely wealthy time around here without a dragon hearing about it, so Smaug the Golden comes to say hi. Thrain II and his dad Thror (original flavor) flee in secret, and then Thror goes into Khazad-dum (possibly it was a suggestion of his Ring). Thror’s bff creeps over to the doors of Khazad-dum and a bunch of orcs are hiding behind the doorframe with Thror’s corpse, presumably working his jaw like a puppet, and laughing their asses off. Written on Thror’s face is the word AZOG. He is king of Khazad-dum now. Thror’s bff tries to take his body for burial, but the orcs throw a sack of small change at his head. It sounds pretty funny to me, but for Nar it’s probably a horrifying parody of a weregild, and an insult. When he looks back, the orcs are hacking up Thror’s body to feed to the local crows. Omg I hope orcs and crows are friends.
Thrain and Nar muster a ton of dwarves to fight, because this will not be borne. They cut through most of the orc strongholds like butter BUT Azog has been saving his strength in Khazad-dum. “So began the Battle of Azanulbizar, at the memory of which the Orcs still shudder and the Dwarves weep.” I LOVE. The fact that absolutely everyone who was involved with this battle in any way has inherited trauma about it. War is no good for anyone at all! Azog has a jolly old time doing murders, until he realizes that HIS guys are actually getting more murdered! He kills Nain and laughs at him, but Nain’s son Dain unexpectedly kills him. It’s accounted extremely heroic, because Dain is like, 16 in dwarf years. It says that “long life and many battles lay before him, until old but unbowed he fell at last in the War of the Ring.” Wait um. Do you mean... the one that takes place in Lord of the Rings? Were dwarves fighting in that?? This is taking place WAY after the Last Alliance isn’t it?? No okay I looked at the end and found the answer, which is that the War of the Ring actually was like 100 years long but relatively low-intensity for most of it.
Anyway,
When at last the battle was won the Dwarves that were left gathered in Azanulbizar. They took the head of Azog and thrust into its mouth the purse of small money, and then they set it on a stake. But no feast nor song was there that night; for their dead were beyond the count of grief. Barely half of their number, it is said, could still stand or had hope of healing.
Half of everyone is dead or dying, and the dwarf alliance still uses their last bit of energy to be petty. Iconic.
Thrain wants to claim Khazad-dum and live there, but everyone else flat-out refuses. Still a balrog in there, dude! I mean, it didn’t bother the orcs, though. I don’t think balrogs really discriminate between orcs and other sorts of dudes, so maybe they could sneak up and kill it in its sleep! But Dain says that the world must change and some other power come before Durin’s folk will live again in Moria. That was Gandalf, right? He did slay the balrog. I hope the dwarves can come back now in the fourth age!! It’s going to take so much fixing up but like... it still exists, mostly intact. A chance to reclaim their heritage.
Thrain and his son Thorin go into exile with the few people who will still follow him--almost everyone is pissed that he got their entire families killed and they can’t even go get treasure in Khazad-dum. So Thrain and co settle in the east of Ered Luin. There’s a bit here about how the Seven Rings turned out to be totally pointless for Sauron because you simply Cannot enslave dwarves. “They were made from their beginning of a kind to resist most steadfastly any domination. Though they could be slain or broken, they could not be reduced to shadows enslaved to another will.” I love the implication that because dwarves were sculpted--note that we never hear AFAIK what elves or humans are made of!--they are more substantial and solid. Mmm I think they have a super solid connection to Arda, and just as even Arda Marred is still largely influenced by the Valar dwarves cannot be wholly corrupted. IDK it’s just the,,, shadow vs stone thing. Sauron enslaves people and it destroys their substance. Dwarves are too substantial? Someone help me out here.
Thrain is still influenced by the Ring, though, driven to go in search of Erebor and its treasure again.
As soon as he was abroad with few companions he was hunted by the emissaries of Sauron. Wolves pursued him, Orcs waylaid him, evil birds shadowed his path, and the more he strove to go north the more misfortunes opposed him. There came a dark night when he and his companions were wandering in the land beyond Anduin, and they were driven by a black rain to take shelter under the eaves of Mirkwood. In the morning he was gone from the camp, and his companions called him in vain...
I love how fairy-tale-ish this passage is. Wolves pursued him! Evil birds shadowed his path! He vanished utterly into air! Sauron was the boojum all along! I’m jazzed about this. Less jazzed about the following explanation: he was kidnapped and tortured in Dol Guldur. Whatever, I guess.
Meanwhile Thorin, who is now king, hammers away on his anvil. It will keep his arm strong. Hella.
Thorin meets Gandalf by accident in an inn in Bree and is like “hey I have been having dreams about you, that’s pretty weird right?” “No no,” says Gandalf, “actually I have been dreaming about you too.” And THAT is how The Hobbit happened.
Wait omg it says here Fili and Kili are Thorin’s “sister-sons.” THIS IMPLIES THE EXISTENCE OF A SECOND DWARF GENDER... WTF... don’t fucking toy with my heart like this Johnald. AH--
Dís was the daughter of Thráin II. She is the only dwarf-woman named in these histories. It was said by Gimli that there are few dwarf-women, probably no more than a third of the whole people. They seldom walk abroad except at great need. They are in voice and appearance, and in garb if they must go on a journey, so like to the dwarf-men that the eyes and ears of other peoples cannot tell them apart. This has given rise to the foolish opinion among Men that there are no dwarf-women, and that the Dwarves 'grow out of stone'.
It is because of the fewness of women among them that the kind of the Dwarves increases slowly, and is in peril when they have no secure dwellings. For Dwarves take only one wife or husband each in their lives, and are jealous, as in all matters of their rights. The number of dwarf-men that marry is actually less than one-third. For not all the women take husbands: some desire none; some desire one that they cannot get, and so will have no other.
Why did they even mention Dis? She doesn’t do anything. I’m retconning, this, obviously. Dwarves just have a super low fertility rate, and woman gender is one of those things that like... doesn’t translate well. There’s no woman gender, because dwarves haven’t invented gender. There’s just dwarves who are currently capable of bearing children. I can’t remember if I got this from Pratchett or not, but it’s a good chance. I just really like the idea that dwarves kind of nod and smile uncertainly when asked to understand a culture that has genders. “Humans really do have an exceptionally high fertility rate,” murmurs one to another. “A lot of ‘women.’” “One just can’t keep track of them,” sighs the other. This is kind of incoherent because Tolkien is actively trying to ruin it, but whatever. Moving on.
After the fall of Sauron, Gimli brought south a part of the Dwarf-folk of Erebor, and he became Lord of the Glittering Caves. He and his people did great works in Gondor and Rohan. For Minas Tirith they forged gates of mithril and steel to replace those broken by the Witch-king. Legolas his friend also brought south Elves out of Greenwood, and they dwelt in Ithilien, and it became once again the fairest country in all the westlands.
Nice! Gay! Also holy shit, mithril gates. Where the hell did they get all that. Hey maybe Sauron had a huge stockpile of mithril and some people went to sift thru the wreckage of Mordor and reclaim it. Radical.
We have heard tell that Legolas took Gimli Glóin's son with him because of their great friendship, greater than any that has been between Elf and Dwarf. If this is true, then it is strange indeed: that a Dwarf should be willing to leave Middle-earth for any love, or that the Eldar should receive him, or that the Lords of the West should permit it.
Hey. Hey. That’s gay.
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