Tw: Attempted Murder - Tumblr Posts
Jessie Drugs James and Is Generally Abusive: Jessie Evolves Into a Poison Type Pokémon (part two of four)
Another installment of "Reasons I'm Glad I Instinctively Had a 'Lurk More' Mentality as a Kid." Featuring "What the Fuck Was Up with Twelve!me?"
Part one is here.
Content Warning: First-person mixed points-of-view; abuse; workplace violence; questionable depiction of medical issues and injuries; possibly uncomfortable discussions of romance; angst over romantic orientation that might hit too close to home; poisoning by chemicals or drugging; forcible injection; sexual abuse; suicidal ideation; attempted murder plot; Pokémon/Human romantic (maybe?) relationship; out-of-character behavior for James and Meowth; absolute character assassination of Jessie; Jesus Hades Christ twelve!me tortured James a lot in fic (this isn't even the worst of it)
-O-o-O-o-O-
(Meowth's point of view)
Lately, I noticed James acting differently. When he was around Jessie, he wouldn't look at her or talk to her. If she talked to him, he'd burst into silent, but violent tears.
Then one day, he asked me for advice about something that surprised me, but sort of didn't. This was probably the bravest thing James did because he was so shy about romance.
"Meowth? What do I do if….I-I love another boy?" James asked.
"What?" I said.
"I'm in love with another boy," James said softly.
"Who?" I asked. James looked away suddenly. He was probably afraid to say it. "Okay, you don't have to tell me."
"I don't know how it started. I can't even remember when it started." James managed to say this and then broke down into tears.
"I don't even want to have these feelings," James sobbed. "I don't want to fall in love."
"Why don't you want to fall in love?" I asked.
"What if the person I'm in love with hates me? What if they think there's something horribly wrong with me for falling in love with them? What if they abuse me? What if they act like I'm not there? And if I get married, what if they make me do….forbidden things with them?" James began wiping away tears again.
"But don't you want to be happy when you're in love?" I asked.
"I won't be happy if I'm in love! I'm not ready to fall in love. I just want to take care of you," James said.
"Are there any other reasons why you don't want to fall in love?" I asked.
"I-I'm still afraid of being tied to someone," James whispered.
I could understand why. With all that Jessiebelle put him through, no wonder James was afraid of romance.
I didn't blame him for fearing love.
-O-o-O-
Another very unexpected thing happened. It frightened me.
It also proved how crazy Jessie was.
James was sitting in the tent. Jessie came in with a medicine cup. It was filled halfway. The liquid in it was a weird cream-colored white.
"Meowth, go outside," Jessie said.
"Why?" I asked.
"James and I have business," she said.
I went outside. What business could Jessie have with James?
I saw a small opening I could look through. I peeked in and didn't believe what I saw.
James was holding the medicine cup and eyeing it suspiciously.
"What is it?" he asked.
"Your medicine. What else?" Jessie acted like James was on drugs or something.
"I'm not on any medication," James said.
"Just drink it."
"No."
I must've tuned out because I heard a cry from James.
"Get off me! Stop it! I don't want it!" James yelled.
Jessie was sexually abusing James!
Jessie stuck the needle full of liquid in James's arm. James fell unconscious.
As soon as Jessie left, I went in to see James.
"Wake up," I said softly. James didn't move.
"Wake up," I said loudly. James still didn't move.
"Wake up, James! Say something!" I was crying and yelling.
James opened his eyes. He looked sad and serious. He almost looked hurt.
"So it was Jessie, wasn't it, Meowth?" James said. His voice was breaking and he sounded like he was going to cry.
"Yes," I said.
I wished I hadn't said that because James began to cry quietly. I hated to see James so unhappy.
The fact that it was Jessie who was hurting him made it worse.
-O-o-O-
I was coming out of the tent the day after the "medicine" incident. James wasn't in his sleeping bag, so I decided to look for him. I found him sitting near the river.
He was picking off the petals of a rose. I could hear him saying, "He loves me, he loves me not."
When he picked off the last petal, he said, "He loves me not." He sighed sadly and threw away the stem.
After a while, James shuddered violently. He looked into the river at his reflection.
"I'm such a failure. I don't blame Jessie for trying to drug some sense into me," he whispered. I could hear the tears in his voice. "I should end it now."
"Don't do it!" I yelled. I ran over to James, crying. I hugged him. "Don't kill yourself. Don't do it. I love you."
James hugged me back. I was crying with my mouth open, so I got to taste James's tears. They were weirdly sweet.
Just like James.
When we finished crying, I looked at James. I never realized how beautiful he was before. His silky hair was a rare violet color. For some reason, a thin clump of hair hung down in front of his face, which was so cute. His green eyes shone like emeralds. He was slender with delicate hands and feet. His skin was smooth and soft against my fur.
I envied the boy he loved.
(James's point of view)
The next day was the day everything went wrong.
Jessie told Meowth to get out of the tent. Meowth obeyed.
I had a sinking feeling in my stomach. I always got that feeling when I was alone with Jessie. I wished Meowth wasn't so obedient sometimes.
Jessie handed a bottle to me. It had black liquid in it.
"What's this?" I asked.
"Poison. Put it in Meowth's food. Pour half of it in," Jessie said.
I swallowed so I wouldn't throw up.
"Will it kill him?" I asked.
"Of course it will! It wouldn't be poison if it didn't," Jessie said.
"Will he notice?" I managed to say.
"He'll die in his sleep," Jessie said.
That night, before I cooked dinner, I was driving myself crazy about it. When I left the camp, Jessie asked, "Where are you going?"
"I'm going to get some firewood," I said.
I was out of Jessie's sight. I was about to go look for the firewood when I remembered I had the bottle of poison in my pocket.
I looked at the bottle in a daze. I couldn't kill Meowth. But I didn't want to go against Jessie's orders. I decided to dump the poison out secretly.
I knelt down and dug a small hole, about the size of Meowth. Then I got a disturbing thought.
What if I drank the poison?
I opened the bottle. The poison smelled awful, worse than the cleaning liquid. I couldn't do it. I poured the poison into the hole I dug. I'm not suicidal and I'm not a killer.
I put a rock in the hole and buried it. I used another rock as a marker.
At dinner, Meowth was quiet. Did he know what Jessie wanted me to do? Meowth didn't look scared. He looked worried.
Good, I thought. He doesn't need to be scared.
I do.
When we went to bed, Jessie asked me where the poison bottle was. I handed her the empty bottle.
"Good. It'll work better since you used all of it," she said.
I couldn't sleep. I really wasn't feeling well after lying to Jessie. I decided to run away with Meowth and turn Jessie in to a mental institution.
I set my alarm for 2:00 AM.
-O-o-O-o-O-
Moral of the story: Meowth picks the worst times to have romantic thoughts. Also, he likes the taste of James's tears.
Flashback
He tried to push me out of his car while driving 80 km an hour.
He was cruel and I was crying. I had put my face out the window into the night air to try to stop crying and feel better.
In one smooth motion he undid my seatbelt and grabbed my door handle.
Had I not shifted suddenly at his abrupt undoing of my seatbelt his hand may never have slipped off the door handle preventing it from opening properly.
My crime? Someone might have seen me.
I have been close to being murdered a lot more than one person ought to be.
* VIOLENT ACTION STARTERS Send me a NUMBER for your muse to :
001. — Backhand my muse. 002. — Stab my muse. 003. — Put out a cigarette on my muse’s skin. 004. — Hit my muse with a blunt object. 005. — Throw something large at my muse. 006. — Kick my muse. 007. — Punch my muse. 008. — Break one of my muse’s bones. 009. — Scratch my muse. 010. — Headbutt my muse. 011. — Shoot my muse. 012. — Knock my muse out. 013. — Strangle my muse. 014. — Push my muse roughly. 015. — Grab my muse by the hair. 016. — Bruise my muse. 017. — Threathen my muse with an object of harm. 018. — Go to harm my muse’s eyes. 019. — Bite my muse. 020. — Tear away parts of my muse’s skin. 021. — Force my muse’s head under water. 022. — Throw something scalding at my muse. 023. — Burn my muse. 024. — Step on my muse’s fingers. 025. — Rip one of my muse’s teeth out. 026. — Slash my muse’s achilles tendon ( s ). 027. — Clothesline my muse. 028. — Harm my muse enough for them to cough up blood. 029. — Drive into my muse with a vehicle. 030. — Electrocute my muse. 031. — Slam my muse against a wall. 032. — Force my muse’s arm behind their back. 033. — Kick my muse’s crotch. 034. — Trip my muse. 035. — Put my muse in a headlock. 036. — Break my muse’s nose. 037. — Force their fingers down my muse’s throat. 038. — Crack my muse’s head against a wall. 039. — Attempt to kill my muse. 040. — Attempt to kill my muse creatively.
I imagine Marcy is the type of streamer that always has the craziest shit going on
Because when she was younger, their clumsiness and lack of spacial awareness had her walk into a place full of snakes, and
Amphibia.
So I imagine they're just like a bad luck magnet
They'll go missing for a week and then be like "oh sorry I missed a scheduled stream, I got kidnapped and held for ransom :)" and not elaborate
"Yesterday a car tried to hit me- calm down chat they missed! But when they couldn't hit me they flipped me off and screamed about my comic being trash. They must've been a _____ shipper!"
"OH oh oh, so apparently my relatives still thought I was a missing person, so they just thought I was dead? And when I visited them, they tried to exorcize me! Just another example of my parents forgetting that people other than themselves exist."
"Sorry about that one time somebody broke into my house on stream. Apparently, I was doxxed? Sorry, I didn't realize. I've moved now, dw!"
Meeting
Whoo first chapter! meet my little beans as they meet each other.
Contains= Gun mention, usage of said gun, violence, attempted kidnapping, restraints, gag, swearing, minors using vapes
Tatiana
--- I felt a little empty. Like always.
Staring at the board, I waited for class to start, barely able to ignore the noise.
I heard the teacher yell for silence and stiffened, breathing in. My heart pounded in my chest and I had to resist the urge to run out of the room.
I gripped the edge of my desk, and my music blasted in my ear, and I practiced the breathing exercises my therapist taught me.
I somehow heard footsteps in my left ear and looked out the corner of my eye to see a ginger with blue streaks in her hair. She was tall, her shoulders broad, and she looked like a confused puppy. And I found her beautiful.
She wore sleek black headphones, a black leather jacket, and black leggings, and her gray bag had a keychain of a white, plastic balloon animal, as well as a blue wolf with wings. Her eyes were a strange mix of green, blue, and gray, with one much lighter than the other, and a few fiery golden flecks were visible.
I wished I were prettier in that moment, so I’d even stand a chance with her. I had blue beads braided into my hair, but that was only temporary. My olive skin was patchy and had darker discoloration, I was short, and my face had a beauty mark on my left cheek.
She looked at the teacher, who finally noticed her and told her to sit down next to me. I felt my skin burn and let her.
“Alright, class. First product of the quarter, we’ll be doing partner work. Pair up with your seat partners, and if you have any grievances, talk to me,”
She looked at me and whispered, “So, we’re doing this together?”
I nodded, and Mr. Simmons explained the instructions. We’d be researching what an assigned country did during World War one throughout the whole quarter, and I pulled out my mom’s old work computer when we were assigned Brazil. The other girl pulled out a nearly shattered HP computer, and Mr. Simmons took attendance.
Her name was Chamomile, and corrected him in a whispery, yet strong voice, “I prefer Cami,”
“Apologies, Cami. Also, please take off your headphones,”
Just as he had when he told me to take out my earbuds.
Cami pulled out a crumpled piece of paper from her bag and said, “It’s in my accommodations list,”
She handed him the paper, then took it back when he read what he needed to.
“Thank you for telling me,” he said. “However, I’m sure you don’t need it,”
He took her headphones, as he had with my earbuds, and set them on his desk next to my things.
“You can collect them at the end of class,”
She tensed, and when people started working and we’d been assigned Brazil, she covered her ears and didn’t talk for the rest of class, only writing what she wanted to say down on a whiteboard she pulled out of her bag.
“Hey, are you alright?” I asked multiple times. Each time, Cami shrugged and wrote, ‘Could be worse.’
Eventually, the bell rang and she went and got her headphones as I got my ear buds, and she left.
I walked to my next class, where I saw my friend Ashley. I hugged her, and her feline pupils dilated to saucers. It’d been a week since we last saw each other, as she’d gotten covid, and while her voice still sounded scratchy, she wasn’t sick anymore.
As a kenomi, the last remaining kind of shifter, other than the dragon-folk, who refused most contact with society in favor of the non-shifting dragons, she was a tiny bit cat. She had cat ears, a tail, the amber eyes of a cat, while most didn’t have cat eyes, and all of them, but those afflicted by an illness that shifters could get, could shift at will. Those with the illness would randomly shift, and on full moons, they’d be too dangerous to be around. Most died after their first shift.
Ashley, thankfully, wasn’t one of them.
We walked into our class and the teacher told us we could sit where we wanted. We sat next to each other, and a girl with light brown hair and blue eyes that came in almost late, sat on my right.
We had a getting to know you activity for class, in which our teacher asked for us to answer questions on a survey, then write a short paragraph on our summers.
When the bell rang an hour and a half later, Ashley and I went to chemistry next, and Luna came by and hugged us both. Many people called her Moon, including us, not because of her name, but because her blond hair looked like the moon.
She was coming from AP biology and going to math class, as it turned out, meaning we had the same lunch, last lunch.
Ashley and I were not table partners, I had someone I knew from the psych ward, and their name was Bramble. Bramble was another kenomi, they had light brown ears and a light brown tail with a white tip, as compared to Ashley’s charcoal gray ears and black tail.
They hugged me and said, “Long time, no see!”
“Isn’t that a good thing?”
“No, I’ve been out for the past- well, since you last left, actually,”
Three months.
“That is a shockingly long time for your parents,”
“Yeah- they tried, but I kinda ran away for two days, and they took the hint,”
Their voice broke into a song-like tone as they spoke those words, until they got to, ‘They took the hint’. There, it changed to a normal tone.
We’d exchanged numbers at one point, but we didn’t really use them considering Bramble’s parents put them back in the psych ward every few weeks when Bramble did anything vaguely ‘depressed’. Normally complaints about life in general. Bramble may have been actually depressed, but their treatments were working on them. Not like my treatment.
We weren’t doing much, the teacher just wanted to see what we already knew and getting to know us.
When the bell dismissed us for lunch, I introduced Bramble and Ashley, and they started talking to each other and exchanged information pretty early on.
They twined tails and we set our things at an empty table that seated eight, then saw Moon and waved her over.
Moon left her other friends and sat down next to me.
I saw Cami, and she sat at our table, the only empty spots. She didn’t interact with us, just stayed silent.
Moon tried to interact by saying, “Do you want to tell us your name or…?”
Cami looked up and mumbled, “Um- no- sorry,”
“So, what are your interests?”
“Medieval history,”
“Anything else?”
“Um- wars. Especially the goofy ones. The lobster war, Emu war, Soccer war, things like that,”
“Never heard of any of those,”
She immediately went into a tangent on the Lobster War, “fought” between Brazil and France.
I added that much of my dead family was actually living in Brazil at the time of the war and we still had one of their lobster costumes.
Cami looked like she’d just had the best pie in the world as her first pie.
“Can I see it?” she asked.
I texted my mom for a picture of the costume, and said, “By the way, my family couldn’t really afford to do the schools for dance, so it's very…” I paused, searching for the right word, “...strange,”
It was dulled, moth eaten red fabric with a rusted, ruined wire frame to keep it up. Strange was an understatement, but it was all they could afford. I was glad my family was better off now.
My mom sent me the photo and I showed it to her, and even though it was essentially over glorified garbage, she looked even more ecstatic than before, practically jumping up and down in her seat.
She then showed me a picture of a helmet and said, “This is a brodie helmet, I found it buried in a trench when my mom took me to visit her hometown in France,”
“You stole the lobsters?” I jokingly said.
“What- no my mom isn’t a fisher- she was nob- she’s a doctor,”
“It’s just a joke, sorry I confused you,”
Her eyes brightened and she looked a bit nervous as she stuttered out, “Oh- um, okay,”
“From now on, you can ask me if I’m making a joke, okay?”
She nodded and said, “Thank you. I just realized- I don’t know your name,”
“Maria Tatiana, everyone calls me either Tatiana or Tati,”
“Oh, cool,”
Cami took out a book called A History of France and started reading.
The bell rang and Cami stood, as did I.
We went to the same class, me, Cami, and Moon. The door was locked, and there wasn’t a teacher, so we waited, and Cami and I somehow veered the conversation to the dynamics of a steam engine, then to crocheting in about two minutes.
The teacher arrived and opened the door, and directed us to our seats. He prefaced that he’d heard about Moon and I’s friendship and had us separated, then told us to take our earbuds and headphones out. He was much more understanding to Cami and I than Mr. Simmons when we told him we had the accommodations and let us keep them with the preface any music played had to be low.
I sat in my chair, and Cami was sat next to me, and other students slowly trickled in. I recognized a few, one of Moon’s friends, a girl named Marina, and her twin brother with the scars on his face I could never remember the name of. He sat next to us, and Cami stiffened and made an almost dog-like whine.
He sneered at her and snapped, “Not so wolf-hearted now, are you?”
“Leave me alone,” she squeaked. “It’s been five years, please,”
“Well, wolf-heart,” he said. He leaned in close and whispered something, and she abruptly stood and walked over to the teacher, tears glistening in her eyes, before a light blue paper was handed to her and she left.
“What did you say to her?” I accused. He didn’t answer.
The teacher moved him to a solo desk next to him and started talking, introducing himself, then having the small class of about fifteen people say their names and one fun fact.
Mine was that I was bilingual, while everyone else’s was something goofy like the time that one kid broke his arm when he was two.
Then came Marina’s twin, Hunter, and his fact was that he was attacked by a wolf five years ago, giving him the scars on his face.
Cami re-entered eventually, and said, “Guidance wants to talk to you, Hunter,” before sitting down next to me.
“Okay, so, would you like to stand up and introduce yourself?”
Cami shook her head with her eyes wide.
“At least your name?”
“Chamomile, but most people call me Cami,”
“Thank you, Cami,”
She breathed out a sigh of relief, and her shoulders relaxed.
When class was over, Hunter still hadn’t returned, so we left and I didn’t think much on their interaction.
Cami
----
I left the audition, left the school, and got in my cousin’s car. She’d lied to me my whole life about her name, at least until about three years ago.
Lyorna’s girlfriend was in the car with her, meaning I had to call her by her given name, and Lyorna immediately started teasing me.
“So, how was your first day of school?” she said in a very joking tone. Some people I could read more than others. Lyorna was like a book at this point, Tatiana, though I liked her, was like a stone wall I had my eye pressed up to. I couldn’t yet tell if she wanted to be my friend or was just a sweet person.
Lizzie smiled at me, looked over at Lyorna and mouthed with a sleepy grin, “We finish later,”
“Finish what?” I asked. Lizzie’s lipstick was smeared, I realized. “Oh… never mind,”
“Good, unless you want all the smutty, smutty details,”
I turned up my music as Lyorna started talking.
Lizzie pulled out a vape, and used it. It was sticky sweet- too sweet.
I covered my nose and said nasally, “Please stop, it smells awful,”
“Oh. Sorry, Cami,”
She opened the windows and let the smoke air out as Lyorna started driving. I’d never understood why anyone liked vapes if they smelled like the embodiment of a sugar buzz, but that somehow worked for some people.
I looked out the window and eventually, Lyorna dropped me off, and I started up the long, windy gravel path to my house. My mother was an immortal being, and had bought this land roughly two hundred years ago when she’d moved out west. She had spent twenty years on the house and path. Twenty, long years. In those years, a friend of hers named Mary Magdalena Jones had died, and her husband at the time, a dragon-shifter named Balan, or Prayer, had been paralyzed waist-down by a tree collapsing on him in a storm. In the end, she had a house roughly five thousand square feet and eight bedrooms and she was pretty well off at the time for compensation of helping the union army with weapon supplies. The mansion had since been fixed up more and more until it resembled a big brick house, the only things that remained suggesting its ancientness being the cornerstone that said, ‘Est MDCCCXCVII,’ or for simpletons, 1897, and the inner walls being wooden slats.
Good ol home. I unlocked the door and set my bag inside, and my brother, Corey, ran up to me and gave me a tight hug.
He had no control over his shift, as he’d never been interested, and as such, he went to a private school that was all shifters. The same one I went to until I got expelled after I broke an asshole’s jaw after she called me the r-word and gave me a bloody nose. I still had to deal with her in my pack, and she still hated me.
I retreated to my room and stayed seated. Olivia texted me, and I went out to meet her.
She looked like what most people thought a dragon shifter looked like when in her hybrid form. Olive skin, big dark eyes, ears like an avali’s but scaly. She had white and gold scales in striped patterns, and serrated dragon-like claws at the end of her fingers if she wanted them out. Keyword ‘like’. Dragons’ claws typically weren’t serrated and therefore weren’t war crimes, they were more like a bayonet, triple edged. Just no gun underneath. But as we weren’t sure what she shifted into, she called herself a dragon shifter for simplicity's sake.
We walked along the path from my house to the hiking trail, and we walked along for a while. Eventually, Lyorna came by, and we talked and joked for a while, when Olivia squealed and said something amazing.
“Viper finally said I’m ready to be a healer!”
She was jumping up and down and her magic glow shooting everywhere.
“Funny, considering you still faint at the sight of blood,” I joked.
“We were twelve-!”
“I wasn’t,” Lyorna laughed, cutting her off.
Olivia stuck her tongue out at Lyorna and I heard a gunshot.
We instinctively hid under bushes, and in the earth; in Olivia’s case, and I felt someone grab me by the back of the neck and hold a gun to my throat.
I twisted before they could shoot, and flipped them over, then felt the bullet hit me in the foot. I shrieked, and Lyorna knocked out the other person, emerging from behind him and punching him in the back of the skull.
She lifted me and kissed my forehead, then called for Olivia.
Olivia emerged from the earth, the spaces between her scales caked with earth and grass. She shook her scales loose of dirt and put her glowing hand on my ankle and healed the foot over the course of an hour.
“Thank you,” I croaked.
I tried to stand and fell, and Lyorna giggled, “Oh, do you want mommy to come and kiss your little boo-boo-”
I stopped her and said, “Don’t finish that fucking sentence or I’ll take that gun down there and shoot,”
“Sorry,” she said, “Too far?”
“Too far,” I confirmed.
She carried me as a bundle in her red-mud wings for a while until I could stand again, and we walked for a while longer, when Lyorna’s ears twitched, and she pulled all of us off the path.
A blond girl I recognized as Tatiana’s friend jogged by, eyes filled with tears, an adult’s handprint on her cheek, and a small, half-filipino girl that looked about eight but talked like a ten year-old that followed after.
The little girl went ahead and Moon stopped, bending over and stretching.
The girl turned, and walked back to Moon, then Moon lifted her up, when came a gunshot, and Moon ducked to the floor, the little one almost completely hidden.
Someone walked by us, and I ducked further into the bush and closed my eyes.
“Where is Chamomile Malkom?” Hunter hissed.
“Hunter- What are you doing?” Moon whispered. I heard her backing away from the crunch on the gravel path.
“Luna, don’t play dumb. Where is she?”
“I DON’T KNOW WHO YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT!” she screamed.
I heard rapid footsteps, and dared to open my eyes. From what I could see, Hunter had wrapped a pistol around Moon’s throat, and her face was turning red from lack of oxygen. The child was trying to pull Hunter away.
I decided to act at that moment.
I howled, and he let Moon go, who rubbed her throat and sank to her knees, tears falling even harder.
I crawled out in my wolf form and nudged her with my snout.
“Cami, what are you doing?” Olivia hissed in the dialect of the shifter tongue we spoke.
“Relax,” I said.
I nudged her again, and she took the hint and started running, when Hunter ran out of the bushes and laughed.
He shot me in the side, and I roared. Moon returned to me and I accidentally bit her. She collapsed, and Lyorna ran out of the bushes, grabbed her and the little girl, and flew upwards to get them to safety.
Hunter didn’t chase them.
“I’ve been waiting years for this,” he snarled.
I started laughing. “With your patience? You insist on using the scholar’s mate opening so the match is over quicker,”
He turned red and shoved his pistol into my mouth. With difficulty, as I was over a foot taller than him. And most people.
“Shut up,” he snarled.
I nodded.
He chained my wrists behind me, and I heard Olivia following us.
I didn’t really try to fight back, I have to admit. I was only playing a game with him.
He eventually settled for weakly punching me in the jaw, and I faked a blackout. He dragged me along for a bit, and I had to resist the urge to laugh at him.
---
Eventually, he stopped after dragging me down a flight of stairs and called, “I found a were-bitch!”
At that moment, I decided to open my eyes, and as the Critura of my pack, I was able to turn people into shifters if they made direct eye contact with me when I had my eyes glow gold.
One of them seized up, and they immediately blindfolded me and gagged me. I heard one of them approach me and kick me in the gut as I tried to spit out my gag.
I doubled over, and roared loud enough to make at least one person’s ears bleed.
Someone tilted my chin upward, probably to make me meet their eyes, and I spat in their face, then threw out one leg, swept the other person and pulled apart the silver cuffs with brute force.
I pulled off my blindfold and immediately ran away, ignoring the pain in my side.
Three chased after me. My history teacher, Hunter, and my guidance counselor. Mr. Simmons had a rifle that he periodically tried to shoot me with, Hunter had his pistol, and my guidance counselor had a dagger that she didn’t throw.
I eventually threw them off, and the adrenaline caught up with me.
I was aware when my cheek hit the ground and less so when Olivia and Lyorna lifted me.
Meeting
Whoo first chapter! meet my little beans as they meet each other.
Contains= Gun mention, usage of said gun, violence, attempted kidnapping, restraints, gag, swearing, minors using vapes
Tatiana
--- I felt a little empty. Like always.
Staring at the board, I waited for class to start, barely able to ignore the noise.
I heard the teacher yell for silence and stiffened, breathing in. My heart pounded in my chest and I had to resist the urge to run out of the room.
I gripped the edge of my desk, and my music blasted in my ear, and I practiced the breathing exercises my therapist taught me.
I somehow heard footsteps in my left ear and looked out the corner of my eye to see a ginger with blue streaks in her hair. She was tall, her shoulders broad, and she looked like a confused puppy. And I found her beautiful.
She wore sleek black headphones, a black leather jacket, and black leggings, and her gray bag had a keychain of a white, plastic balloon animal, as well as a blue wolf with wings. Her eyes were a strange mix of green, blue, and gray, with one much lighter than the other, and a few fiery golden flecks were visible.
I wished I were prettier in that moment, so I’d even stand a chance with her. I had blue beads braided into my hair, but that was only temporary. My olive skin was patchy and had darker discoloration, I was short, and my face had a beauty mark on my left cheek.
She looked at the teacher, who finally noticed her and told her to sit down next to me. I felt my skin burn and let her.
“Alright, class. First product of the quarter, we’ll be doing partner work. Pair up with your seat partners, and if you have any grievances, talk to me,”
She looked at me and whispered, “So, we’re doing this together?”
I nodded, and Mr. Simmons explained the instructions. We’d be researching what an assigned country did during World War one throughout the whole quarter, and I pulled out my mom’s old work computer when we were assigned Brazil. The other girl pulled out a nearly shattered HP computer, and Mr. Simmons took attendance.
Her name was Chamomile, and corrected him in a whispery, yet strong voice, “I prefer Cami,”
“Apologies, Cami. Also, please take off your headphones,”
Just as he had when he told me to take out my earbuds.
Cami pulled out a crumpled piece of paper from her bag and said, “It’s in my accommodations list,”
She handed him the paper, then took it back when he read what he needed to.
“Thank you for telling me,” he said. “However, I’m sure you don’t need it,”
He took her headphones, as he had with my earbuds, and set them on his desk next to my things.
“You can collect them at the end of class,”
She tensed, and when people started working and we’d been assigned Brazil, she covered her ears and didn’t talk for the rest of class, only writing what she wanted to say down on a whiteboard she pulled out of her bag.
“Hey, are you alright?” I asked multiple times. Each time, Cami shrugged and wrote, ‘Could be worse.’
Eventually, the bell rang and she went and got her headphones as I got my ear buds, and she left.
I walked to my next class, where I saw my friend Ashley. I hugged her, and her feline pupils dilated to saucers. It’d been a week since we last saw each other, as she’d gotten covid, and while her voice still sounded scratchy, she wasn’t sick anymore.
As a kenomi, the last remaining kind of shifter, other than the dragon-folk, who refused most contact with society in favor of the non-shifting dragons, she was a tiny bit cat. She had cat ears, a tail, the amber eyes of a cat, while most didn’t have cat eyes, and all of them, but those afflicted by an illness that shifters could get, could shift at will. Those with the illness would randomly shift, and on full moons, they’d be too dangerous to be around. Most died after their first shift.
Ashley, thankfully, wasn’t one of them.
We walked into our class and the teacher told us we could sit where we wanted. We sat next to each other, and a girl with light brown hair and blue eyes that came in almost late, sat on my right.
We had a getting to know you activity for class, in which our teacher asked for us to answer questions on a survey, then write a short paragraph on our summers.
When the bell rang an hour and a half later, Ashley and I went to chemistry next, and Luna came by and hugged us both. Many people called her Moon, including us, not because of her name, but because her blond hair looked like the moon.
She was coming from AP biology and going to math class, as it turned out, meaning we had the same lunch, last lunch.
Ashley and I were not table partners, I had someone I knew from the psych ward, and their name was Bramble. Bramble was another kenomi, they had light brown ears and a light brown tail with a white tip, as compared to Ashley’s charcoal gray ears and black tail.
They hugged me and said, “Long time, no see!”
“Isn’t that a good thing?”
“No, I’ve been out for the past- well, since you last left, actually,”
Three months.
“That is a shockingly long time for your parents,”
“Yeah- they tried, but I kinda ran away for two days, and they took the hint,”
Their voice broke into a song-like tone as they spoke those words, until they got to, ‘They took the hint’. There, it changed to a normal tone.
We’d exchanged numbers at one point, but we didn’t really use them considering Bramble’s parents put them back in the psych ward every few weeks when Bramble did anything vaguely ‘depressed’. Normally complaints about life in general. Bramble may have been actually depressed, but their treatments were working on them. Not like my treatment.
We weren’t doing much, the teacher just wanted to see what we already knew and getting to know us.
When the bell dismissed us for lunch, I introduced Bramble and Ashley, and they started talking to each other and exchanged information pretty early on.
They twined tails and we set our things at an empty table that seated eight, then saw Moon and waved her over.
Moon left her other friends and sat down next to me.
I saw Cami, and she sat at our table, the only empty spots. She didn’t interact with us, just stayed silent.
Moon tried to interact by saying, “Do you want to tell us your name or…?”
Cami looked up and mumbled, “Um- no- sorry,”
“So, what are your interests?”
“Medieval history,”
“Anything else?”
“Um- wars. Especially the goofy ones. The lobster war, Emu war, Soccer war, things like that,”
“Never heard of any of those,”
She immediately went into a tangent on the Lobster War, “fought” between Brazil and France.
I added that much of my dead family was actually living in Brazil at the time of the war and we still had one of their lobster costumes.
Cami looked like she’d just had the best pie in the world as her first pie.
“Can I see it?” she asked.
I texted my mom for a picture of the costume, and said, “By the way, my family couldn’t really afford to do the schools for dance, so it's very…” I paused, searching for the right word, “...strange,”
It was dulled, moth eaten red fabric with a rusted, ruined wire frame to keep it up. Strange was an understatement, but it was all they could afford. I was glad my family was better off now.
My mom sent me the photo and I showed it to her, and even though it was essentially over glorified garbage, she looked even more ecstatic than before, practically jumping up and down in her seat.
She then showed me a picture of a helmet and said, “This is a brodie helmet, I found it buried in a trench when my mom took me to visit her hometown in France,”
“You stole the lobsters?” I jokingly said.
“What- no my mom isn’t a fisher- she was nob- she’s a doctor,”
“It’s just a joke, sorry I confused you,”
Her eyes brightened and she looked a bit nervous as she stuttered out, “Oh- um, okay,”
“From now on, you can ask me if I’m making a joke, okay?”
She nodded and said, “Thank you. I just realized- I don’t know your name,”
“Maria Tatiana, everyone calls me either Tatiana or Tati,”
“Oh, cool,”
Cami took out a book called A History of France and started reading.
The bell rang and Cami stood, as did I.
We went to the same class, me, Cami, and Moon. The door was locked, and there wasn’t a teacher, so we waited, and Cami and I somehow veered the conversation to the dynamics of a steam engine, then to crocheting in about two minutes.
The teacher arrived and opened the door, and directed us to our seats. He prefaced that he’d heard about Moon and I’s friendship and had us separated, then told us to take our earbuds and headphones out. He was much more understanding to Cami and I than Mr. Simmons when we told him we had the accommodations and let us keep them with the preface any music played had to be low.
I sat in my chair, and Cami was sat next to me, and other students slowly trickled in. I recognized a few, one of Moon’s friends, a girl named Marina, and her twin brother with the scars on his face I could never remember the name of. He sat next to us, and Cami stiffened and made an almost dog-like whine.
He sneered at her and snapped, “Not so wolf-hearted now, are you?”
“Leave me alone,” she squeaked. “It’s been five years, please,”
“Well, wolf-heart,” he said. He leaned in close and whispered something, and she abruptly stood and walked over to the teacher, tears glistening in her eyes, before a light blue paper was handed to her and she left.
“What did you say to her?” I accused. He didn’t answer.
The teacher moved him to a solo desk next to him and started talking, introducing himself, then having the small class of about fifteen people say their names and one fun fact.
Mine was that I was bilingual, while everyone else’s was something goofy like the time that one kid broke his arm when he was two.
Then came Marina’s twin, Hunter, and his fact was that he was attacked by a wolf five years ago, giving him the scars on his face.
Cami re-entered eventually, and said, “Guidance wants to talk to you, Hunter,” before sitting down next to me.
“Okay, so, would you like to stand up and introduce yourself?”
Cami shook her head with her eyes wide.
“At least your name?”
“Chamomile, but most people call me Cami,”
“Thank you, Cami,”
She breathed out a sigh of relief, and her shoulders relaxed.
When class was over, Hunter still hadn’t returned, so we left and I didn’t think much on their interaction.
Cami
----
I left the audition, left the school, and got in my cousin’s car. She’d lied to me my whole life about her name, at least until about three years ago.
Lyorna’s girlfriend was in the car with her, meaning I had to call her by her given name, and Lyorna immediately started teasing me.
“So, how was your first day of school?” she said in a very joking tone. Some people I could read more than others. Lyorna was like a book at this point, Tatiana, though I liked her, was like a stone wall I had my eye pressed up to. I couldn’t yet tell if she wanted to be my friend or was just a sweet person.
Lizzie smiled at me, looked over at Lyorna and mouthed with a sleepy grin, “We finish later,”
“Finish what?” I asked. Lizzie’s lipstick was smeared, I realized. “Oh… never mind,”
“Good, unless you want all the smutty, smutty details,”
I turned up my music as Lyorna started talking.
Lizzie pulled out a vape, and used it. It was sticky sweet- too sweet.
I covered my nose and said nasally, “Please stop, it smells awful,”
“Oh. Sorry, Cami,”
She opened the windows and let the smoke air out as Lyorna started driving. I’d never understood why anyone liked vapes if they smelled like the embodiment of a sugar buzz, but that somehow worked for some people.
I looked out the window and eventually, Lyorna dropped me off, and I started up the long, windy gravel path to my house. My mother was an immortal being, and had bought this land roughly two hundred years ago when she’d moved out west. She had spent twenty years on the house and path. Twenty, long years. In those years, a friend of hers named Mary Magdalena Jones had died, and her husband at the time, a dragon-shifter named Balan, or Prayer, had been paralyzed waist-down by a tree collapsing on him in a storm. In the end, she had a house roughly five thousand square feet and eight bedrooms and she was pretty well off at the time for compensation of helping the union army with weapon supplies. The mansion had since been fixed up more and more until it resembled a big brick house, the only things that remained suggesting its ancientness being the cornerstone that said, ‘Est MDCCCXCVII,’ or for simpletons, 1897, and the inner walls being wooden slats.
Good ol home. I unlocked the door and set my bag inside, and my brother, Corey, ran up to me and gave me a tight hug.
He had no control over his shift, as he’d never been interested, and as such, he went to a private school that was all shifters. The same one I went to until I got expelled after I broke an asshole’s jaw after she called me the r-word and gave me a bloody nose. I still had to deal with her in my pack, and she still hated me.
I retreated to my room and stayed seated. Olivia texted me, and I went out to meet her.
She looked like what most people thought a dragon shifter looked like when in her hybrid form. Olive skin, big dark eyes, ears like an avali’s but scaly. She had white and gold scales in striped patterns, and serrated dragon-like claws at the end of her fingers if she wanted them out. Keyword ‘like’. Dragons’ claws typically weren’t serrated and therefore weren’t war crimes, they were more like a bayonet, triple edged. Just no gun underneath. But as we weren’t sure what she shifted into, she called herself a dragon shifter for simplicity's sake.
We walked along the path from my house to the hiking trail, and we walked along for a while. Eventually, Lyorna came by, and we talked and joked for a while, when Olivia squealed and said something amazing.
“Viper finally said I’m ready to be a healer!”
She was jumping up and down and her magic glow shooting everywhere.
“Funny, considering you still faint at the sight of blood,” I joked.
“We were twelve-!”
“I wasn’t,” Lyorna laughed, cutting her off.
Olivia stuck her tongue out at Lyorna and I heard a gunshot.
We instinctively hid under bushes, and in the earth; in Olivia’s case, and I felt someone grab me by the back of the neck and hold a gun to my throat.
I twisted before they could shoot, and flipped them over, then felt the bullet hit me in the foot. I shrieked, and Lyorna knocked out the other person, emerging from behind him and punching him in the back of the skull.
She lifted me and kissed my forehead, then called for Olivia.
Olivia emerged from the earth, the spaces between her scales caked with earth and grass. She shook her scales loose of dirt and put her glowing hand on my ankle and healed the foot over the course of an hour.
“Thank you,” I croaked.
I tried to stand and fell, and Lyorna giggled, “Oh, do you want mommy to come and kiss your little boo-boo-”
I stopped her and said, “Don’t finish that fucking sentence or I’ll take that gun down there and shoot,”
“Sorry,” she said, “Too far?”
“Too far,” I confirmed.
She carried me as a bundle in her red-mud wings for a while until I could stand again, and we walked for a while longer, when Lyorna’s ears twitched, and she pulled all of us off the path.
A blond girl I recognized as Tatiana’s friend jogged by, eyes filled with tears, an adult’s handprint on her cheek, and a small, half-filipino girl that looked about eight but talked like a ten year-old that followed after.
The little girl went ahead and Moon stopped, bending over and stretching.
The girl turned, and walked back to Moon, then Moon lifted her up, when came a gunshot, and Moon ducked to the floor, the little one almost completely hidden.
Someone walked by us, and I ducked further into the bush and closed my eyes.
“Where is Chamomile Malkom?” Hunter hissed.
“Hunter- What are you doing?” Moon whispered. I heard her backing away from the crunch on the gravel path.
“Luna, don’t play dumb. Where is she?”
“I DON’T KNOW WHO YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT!” she screamed.
I heard rapid footsteps, and dared to open my eyes. From what I could see, Hunter had wrapped a pistol around Moon’s throat, and her face was turning red from lack of oxygen. The child was trying to pull Hunter away.
I decided to act at that moment.
I howled, and he let Moon go, who rubbed her throat and sank to her knees, tears falling even harder.
I crawled out in my wolf form and nudged her with my snout.
“Cami, what are you doing?” Olivia hissed in the dialect of the shifter tongue we spoke.
“Relax,” I said.
I nudged her again, and she took the hint and started running, when Hunter ran out of the bushes and laughed.
He shot me in the side, and I roared. Moon returned to me and I accidentally bit her. She collapsed, and Lyorna ran out of the bushes, grabbed her and the little girl, and flew upwards to get them to safety.
Hunter didn’t chase them.
“I’ve been waiting years for this,” he snarled.
I started laughing. “With your patience? You insist on using the scholar’s mate opening so the match is over quicker,”
He turned red and shoved his pistol into my mouth. With difficulty, as I was over a foot taller than him. And most people.
“Shut up,” he snarled.
I nodded.
He chained my wrists behind me, and I heard Olivia following us.
I didn’t really try to fight back, I have to admit. I was only playing a game with him.
He eventually settled for weakly punching me in the jaw, and I faked a blackout. He dragged me along for a bit, and I had to resist the urge to laugh at him.
---
Eventually, he stopped after dragging me down a flight of stairs and called, “I found a were-bitch!”
At that moment, I decided to open my eyes, and as the Critura of my pack, I was able to turn people into shifters if they made direct eye contact with me when I had my eyes glow gold.
One of them seized up, and they immediately blindfolded me and gagged me. I heard one of them approach me and kick me in the gut as I tried to spit out my gag.
I doubled over, and roared loud enough to make at least one person’s ears bleed.
Someone tilted my chin upward, probably to make me meet their eyes, and I spat in their face, then threw out one leg, swept the other person and pulled apart the silver cuffs with brute force.
I pulled off my blindfold and immediately ran away, ignoring the pain in my side.
Three chased after me. My history teacher, Hunter, and my guidance counselor. Mr. Simmons had a rifle that he periodically tried to shoot me with, Hunter had his pistol, and my guidance counselor had a dagger that she didn’t throw.
I eventually threw them off, and the adrenaline caught up with me.
I was aware when my cheek hit the ground and less so when Olivia and Lyorna lifted me.
Percy walks through the forest at camp after the whole Labyrinth battle. Someone said Nico had disappeared into the trees a while ago. He hasn't emerged since. Percy is worried, of course he is. The kid has a habit of vanishing on him, and he just wants...
He wants Nico to be okay. To have a plan. A place to go. He doesn't have to stay if he doesn't want to, although Percy would much prefer his little cousin stay where he's easily accessible and Annabeth and Grover's eyes can watch him while Percy lives life in the city. But if he doesn't want to stay at camp, Percy wants him to know that he can always come to Percy if he needs help. Or really for anything.
As he walks through the trees, over torn grass and shattered rubble, it reminds him of nearly six months ago. The first time he looked for him. The realization of who he was. What he was.
The words Percy spoke that night. The promise he made.
He stills in the silence of the stars and bristling trees. The ground is solid, the air is chill, but something... Something is wrong. He can feel it like the pull of a tide. He pulls Riptide of his pocket, uncaps the pen, and steadies the sword in his hand. Another monster, still lurking?
The ground bursts beneath him. He jolted back as muddy hands claw their way out from the earth. Seconds later, Nico's head emerges with a quiet gasp. Percy's heart freezes in his chest.
Nico's face is smeared with dirt. It sits in clumps across his hair. There's a jagged cut, small and healing, just about his left brow. And there are tear-stained tracks across his cheeks that glisten in the moonlight.
He digs himself out a little further, then quietly grunts as he struggles to push himself out of the hole. Percy's heart beats again. Riptide slid into his pocket as he walks the two, three long strides back to Nico, and pulls him out with both hands.
He hiccups a little cry, but nothing else comes from his mouth. Percy lifts the edges of his shirt and cleans Nico's face off. He doesn't complain. But he does flinch at the start and Percy's heart crumbles rapidly.
"What happened?" he whispers when Nico's face is finally clean. His cut has fully healed by now, but Percy can't stop staring at the space where it once sat. It was too small, too delicate, for a monster's touch.
Nico sniffs. He won't look at Percy. "I'm the son of Hades." His voice is a cracking whisper. Like crumbling sand. "I belong underground."
They're words Percy knows Nico believes. He is made of darkness and death and dirt the same way Percy is made of salt water and floods and a chilling cold as you sink, sink, sink. But his tone is too flat. His voice is montone. He is reciting words spoken to him. Not words he thinks.
"Nico."
He flinches, curls his arms around himself. His jacket is a little torn. He fiddles with the ring on his finger. Then, with a shaky breath, "This isn't the first time campers have tried to bury my father's children, Percy."
He states it like a fact, something meaningless to him, but his voice hitches on "bury", and blinding rage as strong as the crash of waves against rocks courses through Percy's veins without hesitation.
"Someone tried to kill you."
Nico tugs at his ring. "I-"
"Someone," Percy repeats, "tried to kill you. Yes or no, Nico." Weakly, Nico nods. Percy bites back to the urge to punch the nearest object. "Look at me." Nico hesitates, then slowly brown eyes meet green. His eyes are wet and wide, desperate and miserable and resigned to fate. "Do you know who?"
He shakes his head. "I don't- I don't know their names."
Names. That cuts through Percy like a knife. He grits his teeth. "Would you recognize them?"
"I-" Nico swallows. Looks away. "Yes. But. Only one by face." He twitches nervously. "I would. I would know the others by their souls."
"That's a really cool power." Percy smiles, but he knows it doesn't quite reach his eyes. The rage is boiling, threatening to spill over the top of the pot. But Nico is shaking, and Percy needs him to know that there's nothing wrong with who he is. "What does my soul look like?"
Nico falters. Surprise sits in his eyes as he turns back to Percy. He watches Percy's face for a second or two. Then, "Green usually. Like a soft green. Feels like..." He closes his eyes. "A sea breeze on a warm day. The sand on your feet. Comfortable. But when you're fighting, it's like a storm. Harsh. Tastes bitter. Angry. Turns dark blue. Sort of gray." His eyes open and he whispers hoarsely, "Feels like a tsunami right now."
Percy gets it. He does feel like a tsunami. He's hit his crest and he's just waiting to fall, to inflict damage, to break, to shatter, to drown.
He doesn't fall though. Not yet.
"Can you take me to them?" he asks slowly.
Nico tugs at his fingers so hard Percy's surprised they don't dislocate. He wraps his hands around Nico's. Nico jerks and shakes. He opens his mouth but there's no sound. Percy squeezes his hands.
"I promised Bianca that I would make sure you were safe. And I told the fucking Fates that I would be the prophecy child so I could uphold that promise," he says and Nico's eyes go wider. He tries to speak but Percy cuts him off. "So tell me who tried to kill you, so I can make sure they never do that again. To you, or anyone else they deem unworthy of being here."
The ocean is not fair. That sits in Percy's gut like a curse. The ocean will swallow anyone whole. There is no worthiness. There is no separation. Everyone is the same.
Everyone can drown.
Nico stares for a while. Then slowly nods, and let's Percy pull him to his feet. They walk hand-in-hand out of the forest, Nico's steps timid and slow the closer they get to the light.
Percy gets it in a way. There were moments he would sink as far as he could go, and look up only to see darkness. And he would be comforted by it. The swimming towards the light, the sky, was always a little sad. It meant breaking out of his element. Meant leaving the ocean behind to stand on land and breathe in air.
Sometimes he wishes he could just drag the people he loves to the bottom of the ocean and never deal with anyone else again. He wonders if Nico wishes the same. He didn't die being buried alive. He is made of the underground. It doesn't kill him.
That's where those idiots went wrong.
Nico points them out with subtle fingers. They're separated from the other campers, milling about before the bonfire, before the sing-along. They're laughing and smiling. They are not ashamed of what they've done.
Percy grits his teeth and thinks bitterly, They will be.
OKAY FOLKS! Which of you remember Carmine from the OG Carmen Sandiego video games?
... oh, you don’t...
Carmine was a cat with the mind of a superthief. The concept is adorable, and she deserves her own fic, so I humbly offer myself as tribute.
Summary:
Carmine is a thief unit, an animal created by the great Doctor herself. She is the best of the best, a good kitty and, with a little luck, soon to be a good thief, too. But when Carmine finds herself alone and abandoned in the cold, she loses everything. ... And finds a new friend.
@playerappreciationweek
No funny gag for this one, I must return to my writing chambers at once.
@playerappreciationweek
Summary:
Carmen is the only person in all of VILE that would care if Player lives or dies. Or at least, that's what Player thinks.
(Made for Player Appreciation Week 2023, Day 3: "Who's laughing now, Troll?")