Hour 2: A Fish in the Hand (Is Worth Two in the Pond)
Summary:
Madara loves his family.
No matter what.
Author: @phlebaswrites
Rating: General
Fandom: Naruto
Relationship: Uchiha Izuna & Uchiha Madara & Uchiha Kagami
Word Count: 289
For @kurakura0-0 , @dawen, @greencuttingmat , and @lazuliofheaven who encouraged this insanity!
Part 3 of Fishing (For Family)
"Oh, hush." Madara bounces the boy in his arms a little, resettling Kagami more securely even as he ignores his brother's muttered curses. "You've always fought each other to a standstill before, I can't imagine why you thought that would change now."
"But it was the medaka!" Izuna protests angrily. "And I caught it! Surely that should have counted as a win!"
"Not when he caught one too," Madara presses a kiss to the wildly curling hair of the boy in his arms to hide his amusement, careful not to dislodge the bowl Kagami is cradling so carefully.
because you're tenacious. because you care more about the truth than you do about your own safety. because if I was scared for my life, I would run to you.
“I need to tell the President,” Haruno tells herself for the nth time.
She haven’t used the– her... hers– her ability since she walked out of her dorm’s door that morning. It’s weird really, to think that she has her own now, even if it’s temporary.
Her gaze sweeps across the office. The other members are quietly working on their reports. They’re quieter than usual, in another time Haruno might wonder about that, but right now, she ponders on what the members might be feeling when they first knew of their abilities. Were they scared? She knows she shouldn’t be. But it’s hard not to when she knows so little about the ability that she was given. And that mysterious voice... It should be the same voice that others have talked about. A magic shared by the anonymous to change them in a way.
Haruno sighs. Perhaps she can take a break for a while and follow Naomi to the Cafe.
The file I’m watching on YouTube is much shorter than an hour (44 minutes!!), but that’s because the poster kindly removed the “VT” (shudder) from random countries (it always boils down to [insert country’s name’s] fans wilding, and there’s only so much of that I can take).
Still, hour 2 is fucking ICONIC for many reasons, the biggest being Harry’s barely constrained rage. Yes, Louis’s “done with it all” demeanor on 1D Day is (justifiably) legendary, but Harry’s right there with him (twin flames, y’all). I can’t tell if he’s coked up, genuinely angry, or just passive-aggressively petty because someone told him he had to speak more quickly, much more loudly, and with some enthusiasm, for chrissakes. Oh, he delivers, all right, so much maniacal shouting. Deets under the cut.
Hour 2 is all Lirry, and I, for one, love Lirry, so it’s 44 minutes well spent. Liam tells us, “We’re kicking it off with VT from France, give it up for France!” (“FRANCAIS!” Harry yells), and after the missing bit of French VT, we’re back to Lirry, with Harry vacillating between murdering the French language (“Mercy boo coo to France”) and shouting “I ATE SNAILS” as his contribution to what they did in France last time they were there (Liam played football with some guys near the Eiffel Tower, fwiw).
The first guest is Dynamo (or, “DYNAMO, EVERYBODY” if you’re Harry), and he’s here for card tricks and more (“OH, SNAP” is Harry’s response to Dynamo nearly twisting his own finger off, and god, it’s horrifying). Harry’s fairly manic through the entirety of the card tricks, but I love Liam because he’s me in every card trick (“I’m glad mine’s easy to remember because I’d probably forget,” which is true of any card you take, like, ever???):
“WHO LOVES MAGIC!” Harry shouts, and there’s a needlessly complicated special interactive trick that gets introduced here, with Dynamo saying that he wrote a prediction on a piece of paper and sealed it in a box at the beginning of the day, so he needs to Harry to keep the key safe. Points if you correctly assumed that Harry will stuff that key right in next to his dick as a joke.
Because nobody rehearsed or prepared for this epic full-day live event, there are all kinds of problems with the cameras, and if you want a fun drinking game to get you hammered within 45 minutes, take a shot every time you see a variation of this (Liam looking vaguely concerned while Harry aggressively points at the sky or the camera while shouting):
A horrifically bad segment that’s a poorly disguised advert for Google Hangouts (lmaoaoaoaooaoaoa) kicks off questions from all over the world (the audio is bad, none of the visuals syncs), but we get some iconic answers to deeply important questions, like, “If you were in the Hunger Games, who would survive the longest?” Liam says he’d hide and then kill passersby (yikes), and Harry says he’s more of a lover than a fighter, so he’d hide in a tree until it all blew over. Liam: “Oh, yeah, you’re definitely more of a lover.” Harry: “Easy there, Piers Morgan.”
The next question is from a group of girls wearing Christmas sweaters, which annoys Harry because “it’s a whole month and two days early,” but I think his issues are bigger than jumping the gun on holidays (and honestly, the UK doesn’t have the twin buffers of T’day and H’ween, so you KNOW this is just part of his general rage). Anyway, they want to know what other careers these two would be involved with, sans the D, and because they’re five, Liam says spaceman and Harry says baker.
After a series of horrible glitches, the next question is about which superhero they’d be, and me as Harry, blowing a giant raspberry as he ponders this important question with the level of exhaustion he surely must feel, three years into this band/interview technique. Liam can read the room, so he picks this one up and says he’d be Kung-Fu Panda, which makes it easy for Harry to say Hong Kong Fuey (!!!) or Top Cat.
With that mess done, it’s time to “ROLL THE VT!” (according to Harry) for Switzerland, and because the producers here are nothing if not cliché lovers, that means tiny cowbells for Harry to play with when we come back. He quickly tires of this, throws the cowbells off stage, yells “WE NEED A CAMERA,” and walks straight into the call box with the overwhelmed girls from hour 1. These girls are still weeping, but Harry says, “Thank you for listening to the album, you’re getting kicked out, sorry,” in the flattest voice possible, so good cop Liam hurries over to ask the weeping girls which song they liked and usher in two new people.
“Happily” is debuted, but we don’t get to see it, boo, but we do get ushered over to a theater with some contest winners. Or as Harry says, “We’re here backstage to meet some fans who have won a chance to be here…SHUT UP…in our VIP cinema,” and then, “You’re crying…is that because I told you to shut up? I didn’t mean it.” Liam is there again to save the day, but there are lots of sound problems, so it’s hard to tell what’s happening, tbh.
Anyway, these fans get to ask some iconic questions, such as, “What would we find in your fridge?” which gives us this classic from Harry: “I DON’T LIVE ANYWHERE, SO NO FOOD,” as the audience says, “awwwwww” in the background.
There’s a question from a lady on the screen, saying that she’s in front of the X Factor studios, and she wants to know what they would change their audition song to, if they could go back in time, and because Harry’s well aware of his various stalkers, he says, “I saw her the other day at the X Factor studios, 100 percent” (fwiw, Harry would do “Wrecking Ball” with props, and Liam would do “Mirrors”).
The last question is what they would change if they could go back in time, and Liam says probably his older haircuts, and Harry says that one day in April (and he mentions April again later in the hour, so someone investigate), he had a dodgy breakfast burrito, so he’d probably change that (he also had a dodgy batch of prawns one time, too, but that’s a different story, and god, he’s an underrated comedian). The sound is for shit, but Liam doubts this, prompting Harry to scream, “DON’T JUDGE ME, LIAM, I’M TRYING MY BEST,” and whyyyyyy is he so on fire (and why do I love it so much):
We get back to the studio with an inexplicably breathless Scott Mills (he says he ran…but from where, lmao) and do another spin to figure out who the official 1D account (????) will follow on twitter. Harry starts cheating before people start yelling at him to stop, which is a shame, really, just follow all of these poor bastards, honestly!
We don’t get to see the VT from Germany, but we do get to see Lirry bickering about camera problems and stolen lines, plus an exhaustive rundown of all the thrilling things to come, and I’m so thankful to the person who made this moment a Dua Lipa meme all those months ago:
One of my favorite segments has a really awkward setup, but tl/dr/dw, Harry brags, “I’m a bit of a chef myself, and if I’m honest, Liam, I’m pretty damned good at it,” so we get a “ROLL VT!” and an aggressive finger point, both from Harry, and a silly but charming cook off with the tour chef, who seems like a lovely lady (p.s. look at how glorious his hair was under all those tablecloths…also, he’s chewing gum in a gross way, but this whole bit is worth watching in full):
The cook off is genuinely funny and results in a beautiful pavlova from Sarah and a basic sandwich (with pickle and paprika) from Harry, judged by Mark Jarvis, Gemma Styles, and Lou Teasdale, all of whom Harry bribes. I’m more fascinated with this ring, and my head canon has it either saying ILY or JEN (both of which make me smile):
With that bit over, we move on to more rapping of random tweets, and it’s embarrassing, so I won’t get into that. But the VT of Liam surfing is something special, not only because he looks so obviously happy while he’s doing it, but also because he says some very profound things in the interview around it: “I get followed a lot, so it’s quite nice to get out in the sea where nobody can follow you […] it’s so nice and peaceful […] it doesn’t matter what you look like, you can just have a good time, it’s a bit of an escape,” and ouchhhhhh, that’s some real talk.
We head back to the studio for a fashion segment with Louise someone; a handful of lucky fans in Sweden won a t-shirt design contest, and Lirry are gonna do some modeling. Louise is happy that Harry knows where Sweden is (Harry: “I got a B in geography…might have been a C, can’t remember”), and some poor shlub working on this trainwreck in the shadow gets dragged out on camera because he’s wearing green jeans, but he’s not there for long (Harry: “GET OUT” *shove*). Louise describes the fashion show to come, and Harry says that he’s quite good at walking in straight lines, but Liam reminds him that he tends to fall over a lot on stage and that the tiny catwalk is actually pretty shiny (god bless Liam for being so responsible).
Luckily for all of us, professional model Cindy Crawford is there to help with some tips (she’s introduced as “IT’S ONLY BLOODY CINDY CRAWFORD” by Harry, and I die with Cindy’s “Hello, boys,” and Harry’s “Hello, Mrs. Crawford”…followed swiftly by Cindy’s, “Please don’t call me Mrs. Crawford”). There’s some sexi modeling, and even though he only wears two shirts to Harry’s three (*and* Harry gets down on the ground to pose), Liam wins, according to the Swedes. He requests a model off with Cindy as his prize, and he’s surprisingly good?
The last segment is with Dynamo, the magic man, and for some reason, Harry’s weirdly agro about his own shirt mic, like, unnecessarily so, ripping it off to speak with Dynamo before gently putting it back where it belongs. Maybe he’s just frustrated about how they have to use Google+ (lololololol) for a totally convoluted imaginary concert that ultimately doesn’t work (me as him, tbh).
While Liam does tech support live on air (!!), Harry asks Dynamo to do some card tricks to stall for time after literally nobody says a word when he monotones, “We’re having a technical difficulty…does anybody know any jokes.” Harry pulls a card as directed, but then, for seemingly no reason, he suddenly starts yelling, “THIS ISN’T WORKING, SHALL WE SEE SOME HIGHLIGHTS? HIGHLIGHTS!!! ROLL HIGHLIGHTS [aggressive pointing]!!” and the highlights are truly awful, and I hope he’s enjoying his smoke break for hour 3, jfc.
You are a most-singular organism, uncommon in the extreme, marked by your deeply anomalous reactions to various quasi-mystical stimuli.
Brought to you absolutely free to enjoy, to test & to share – as always – by the fine folks of my Patreon.
image from here
Prerequisite: You must be The Chosen One, a member of an incredibly rare race all but unique within the setting, or otherwise possess a fundamentally peculiar biology (see Beautiful & Unique Snowflake, below), perhaps due to an extraordinary curse, prophecy or other magical effect
Benefit: Whenever you are exposed to a magical, supernatural or otherwise non-mundane effect or substance for the very first time, you may call for a roll on the Aberrant Reaction Chart below.
Once an Aberrant Reaction has been chosen, it is permanent and is added to the canon of your race’s biology: for example, if you are a catfolk with this feat who is exposed to drow poison for the first time (that is, no other catfolk has ever been exposed to drow poison within the history of your campaign), you might call for a roll on the chart below. Once the result is known, all catfolk -- rare as they are! -- will have the same reaction as your own. You will experience the same result all subsequent times you are exposed to drow poison.
You may possess a total number of Aberrant Reactions equal to your hit dice.
Beautiful & Unique Snowflake: So, what does it mean, exactly, to “possess a fundamentally peculiar biology” for the sake of this feat? Well, sometimes the Slayer has a weird reaction to a spell or potion, while a Kryptonian might behave oddly while under the effects of certain radiation-frequencies, and an exotic “earth-man” might exhibit bizarre behavior when bathed in the light of perfectly mundane ur-Phlebotinum beams.
This feat is appropriate for tieflings only in a setting where tieflings are weird and super-rare, unknown to any but the greatest sages.
If there is another member of your race or lineage within the campaign, that creature is always a special, named character.
Aberrant Reaction Chart [roll 1d8]:
You are utterly immune to this effect.
You are immune to negative aspects of the effect but find the experience mildly pleasant, even euphoric.
You are immune to negative aspects of the effect but have -- for just a moment -- nearly-overwhelming visions. You have strange dreams that night, tied to your bizarre origins.
You are immune to negative aspects of the effect but you gain all the effects of a rage spell for a number of rounds equal to your level.
You are immune to negative aspects of the effect but your alignment reverses (Lawful Good become Chaotic Evil, and vice versa) for a number of hours equal to your level.
You suffer all the normal effects. In addition, you are wracked with terrible and indescribable agony while it is ongoing.
You suffer only half the effect, rounded down, subject to GM discretion. For example, the instantaneous damage and/or the duration of an ongoing effect might be halved; in the case of a condition such as nauseated, you might be sickened; in the event of an effect that drives you unconscious, you might instead be exhausted.
Roll 1d4+1 twice, keeping both results.
You must keep special track of all Aberrant Reactions on your sheet. Once an Aberrant Reaction has been determined, it cannot be changed unless your race changes (if you become a vampire, for example).
