If you don't mind sharing, I'd love to hear about Nihil and how his relationship with his boys changed after the ritual was decided on?
Hehe. Evil time.
Basically there could no longer be a relationship. It just stopped existing. Nihil learns that there are no other options and that they have to go through with this, and he just kinda shuts off. Sister tells him to not get attached and he takes it far too seriously and just stops wanting to interact with them all together. He does the bare minimum if he has to and that's about it.
A part of him hopes they'll forget about it, but at that point all three are old enough to remember him being nice, so resentment grows in all three of them. Especially Primo, who remembers the switchup the clearest. Surely that will not have any effect on his psyche.
Yes I am saying Primo was actually a normal kid with normal kid feelings at one point. It didn't last very long.
Other people reading this who don't know what I'm talking about, go read thiss
Ussop likes making up stories about his soulmates, its his second favorite thing besides injecting some life into his sleepy village by warning them of pirates (that aren't here now, but maybe one day).
After all, he's already met on them. Kaya's amazing! She nice and always listening and actually really, really smart and the best audience.
The white ribbon of her mark wraps around Ussop's neck like a banner against his dark skin, and the woody-brown of his own mark wraps like a ring around Kaya's pale, left pinky finger.
Kaya doesn't like her own soulmark though, will frown at on his skin (white like death, around his neck like a noose, an ill-fated mark for an ill-fated girl that won't make it adulthood). Ussop understands because sometimes he doesn't like his soulmark either (small, easily overlooked, forgettable like a child no one came back for)
People like to talk about meaning and patterns in soulmark colors and locations - red for bravery and confidence, blue for gentleness and grace. They always say those who give their soul mates white marks are fated for tragedy, because they look the same whether the person who gave them is alive or dead. No color can fade when the mark had none to begin with.
Ussop doesn't like those stories though, so he tells another. About how the gods broke up a light beam into a rainbow, and used that draw soul marks on people's skin. Only some people were just so great, they had to use all the colors so the marks came out white like a light beam or brown like mixed paint pallet - just like Kaya who is so bright and the great Captain Ussop who is so clever.
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He's got a million stories for each of his unknown soulmarks, the gold one that takes up his upper back and peeks out over his shoulders is for his best friend, his future first mate, his fated rival. The fluffy yellow-orange cloud on the left side of his chest is for his future cabin boy, or an apprentice, or for a mysterious princess. The purple club is for his cool mentor, his future ship's best fighter, his evil nemesis.
Ussop also got a lot of, well, worries though. You can't not meet your soulmate, but you can miss them. Everybody knows some old person who died on their death bed with a mark they never realized they shared, a passing acquaintance that shaped them deeply but with whom they never shared enough love to compare marks.
A soulmark means a connection, but it doesn't guarantee friendship or love, or even like.
(It doesn't mean they'll come back)
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Luffy is stupid and has no sense of direction and is somehow more of a little kid than the actual 8 years olds Ussop used to watch, but he's also a ridiculously strong, badass, real pirate captain.
(And he's kind, too. Good in the way that the sun on your face, or the wind in your hair is good - like warmth and freedom and the promise to be there tomorrow, reliable and natural as the promise of sunrise.)
He's also like, covered in marks, the most obvious being the beautiful red-orange flames and white-blue waves crashing up and down across his right arm, but like he's got hints of color on every limb and twisting out from his back.
They haven't compared marks yet (nobody on the crew has to Ussop's knowledge, which is a little strange when they seem so close) but it's hard to imagine Ussop's plain little mark on somebody so … colorful. So he choses not to stare at Luffy's left hand, where a pale-brown ring might encircle his pinky near invisible against his tan skin, or more likely might not.
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Ussop double-takes upon seeing Nami in a bikini top, and not for the usual reasons. (Well maybe a little for the usual reasons, Nami is really pretty and she knows it in a way that just makes her even prettier).
Rather he's feeling a sense of giddy excitement at the gold mark on her upper back that he recognizes from his own skin. A shared soulmate is a wonderful thing, people who might be strangers woven together by a shared fated person, like paintings that have been touched by the same brush.
He chokes a little when Zoro looks up from one of his near constant naps and upon seeing Nami, says "Oh so you're Luffy's soulmate too?"
This prompt's Nami to start whacking Luffy on the head with loud yells even as she can't hide a pleased looking smile that Ussop can feel on his own face and see mirrored on Sanji and Zoro.
Eventually Luffy's confused apologies are enough to satisfy Nami's wrath and he shows them each their marks on his skin.
Zoro's is a black ragged line across his right palm. (The swordsman presses their right-hands together so their palms go flat like they are clasped in prayer.)
Nami's a bright, orange pinwheel - the same design she tattooed on her shoulder - on his right upper thigh. (She smiles, proud and protective, like a dragon hoarding its treasure.)
Sanji's a grey, smoking swirl that twists around his left leg. (He looks away with a huff, but they can all see a giddy smile take over the chef's face.)
And finally, near-invisible against his tan skin, a pale-brown ring around his left pinky is Ussop. (Luffy - his captain- hooks his pinky with Ussop's own and smiles, and it feels like a promise.)
“you’re making me think that what they told me about you was right.” with roceit~~
this is a snippet from pre-Marks AU :eyes:
soft angst starters
Tears sting at Roman’s eyes as he resolutely stares down Octavian. He hates crying in front of people but he won’t allow himself to be the one embarrassed in this situation. “So, what? You don’t have any marks at all?”
Octavian shifts his gaze to a spot beyond Roman’s shoulder, avoiding eye contact. “No,” he whispers. “None at all. I never have.”
Roman has heard about people like that: people who will never have any kind of soulmate, platonic or romantic, because they aren’t capable of returning any deep feeling. The hurt and anger cloud his vision against any kind of feeling that Octavian might be feeling over this; he doesn’t care. Roman is a one-way soulmate with an Apathetic– worse, an Apathetic that conned him into believing that their relationship was reciprocal.
“People like me aren’t super uncommon,” Octavian tries. “I’m not–”
“I know what an Apathetic is, Tav,” Roman snaps. “I’ve heard about your kind before. And you’re making me think that what they told me about you was right.”
Roman is a hopeless romantic. His skin is a rainbow of marks, but he’s never felt a stinging betrayal like this before.
Octavian flinches like the words actually hit him. His face twists into a sour grimace. “Yeah. Maybe they were right.”
Roman isn’t the only one who feels as though the floor has been swept out from underneath him. Octavian hunches his shoulders, evens out his expression, and turns towards the door.
They want him to have a hard heart? His will be solid ice.
One of the things that made Nami's mom so cool was that she had tattoos.
Nobody else in the village had tattoos, and sometimes she'd hear people grumble about how disrespectful Bellemare marking her skin up like that was to her soulmates. Those people are just stupid though, Nami and Nojiko have their mom as a soulmate and they've both agreed Bellmere's tattoos are great!
Bellemere lets her daughters trace the tattoos, the Marine seagull on her shoulder, the orange tree across her thigh, and the neat list of every ship she'd served on decorating her inner wrist.
"Fate was definitely right about you two being important, my precious little girls, but I wanted to show off the other parts of myself." She'd pointed at her orange tree, "Where I came from." The seagull, "What I believed in." and then the ships' names, "And what I'd chosen to do."
She'd smiled, "And now with my Nojiko's little flower on my stomach and my Nami's little pinwheel on my leg, I've got everything that matters to me on my skin."
Something warms had bubbled in Nami's stomach, as Bellemare tells the story of what she'd chosen to mark on her skin, what she'd chosen to be, just like she'd chosen to be a family with Nami and Nojiko.
"Don’t encourage them" Gen had muttered, from where he'd come over to dinner. "The villagers already think you are raising them to be hooligans, it is only going to be worse if they go and get tattoos of all things."
Bellmere had laughed, "Ahh, are you upset I didn't include your mark in the list Gen?" She'd flutter her eyes and leaned down a bit, toying with the buttons of her shirt, "Do you want me to show you your mark right now, to make it up to you?"
Like always, Gen had turned bright red and started sputtering and Nami and Nojiko had laughed along with their mother.
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Arlong's tattoo is the only thing visible on Nami's skin.
The long verdant green stripe along her right stomach that Bellemare gave her - that she shares with her sister and Gen - is hidden under her shirt, along with her two two unknown marks that decorate her back(two, long yellow curves mirrored and just touching like the sun reflecting on the water, crisscrossed by a flowing blue line that resembled a winding river).
Perfect, nobody needs to see those parts of her. The soft vulnerable bits (Bellemare and the family she made of unrelated strangers, those two unknown people that Nami has sworn to protect the way she couldn't her mother) are hidden away, and all that's left is Nami, cartographer of the Arlong Pirates, the cold-hearted bitch thief who works for her mother's murder.
No one gets to see anything else.
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Nami's first act as a free woman is to tattoo the design of her own mark (an orange pinwheel-tangerine, free to grow under the sun and explore in the wind) on her skin, where Arlong's shitty slave brand once lay. She belongs to no one but herself, and she'll proudly wear announce that to the world.
Her second act as a free women is to steal the wallets of everyone in her town (cause she's a tattooed hooligan just like her mother), and use that money to buy herself a cute bikini top to show of her soul marks. Bellemere's vibrant green on her side, and the unknown blue and gold on her back.
Her third act as a free woman is beating her captain senseless when Zoro sees the gold mark on her back and says, "Oh, so your Luffy's soulmate too".
Being tied up is worst during the day, the heat of the sun combined with the dehydration of having nothing to drink but rainwater makes it hard for Zoro to concentrate, his lucidity fazing in and out accompanied by bursts of hungry-nausea and splitting headaches.
Also that stupid son comes back to mock him during the days, which is incredibly annoying.
At night, the cool air makes it easier for him to sink into a state of something like meditation. He can breathe through the hunger, the thirst, the pain of being tied up in such an uncomfortable position. And sometimes when Zoro is absolutely positive he's not being watched, he can twist his head and gaze at Kuina's mark on his right palm (faded with her death, but it had started out white so that was hardly noticeably, a jagged line starting under his thumb then bisecting his palm diagonally - like he'd tried to catch a sword with his bare hand and earned a scar for it).
The other two marks, the one on his shoulder and the one across his back don't matter. He hasn't met them yet, and even if he did it still wouldn't matter. Kuina's mark itself doesn't even really matter, Zoro has their promise and their sword. That is what matters.
He still treasures it though, it’s another thing she'd left him, another part of her he'll take to the top of the world for them both.
To Zoro as a child, it had made perfect sense that Kuina and he were soulmates, they were rivals after all. A soulmate was someone that was such a big part of your fate, such a big part of you, that you carried them around on your skin, and what could be more big and important to a swordsman than a fated rival?
The first time (Zoro 0, Kuina 37) he'd explained this reasoning to her Kuina had scoffed, "What makes you think you are good enough to be a rival to me?"
Which was stupid cause Zoro was gonna be the best and his sword style was way cooler, what did stupid Kuina know? So what if he didn't beat her today, next time for sure!
The second time (Zoro 0, Kuina 1803), he'd reiterated this Kuina had worn a shaky frown, "You don't think it means-? I mean, usually people say that when a boy and a girl of similar age have each other's soul mark it means-" She stops, looking something like distraught or disgusted.
Stupid. Zoro points to his own mark on Kuina's palm (a black jagged line starting above her thumb then bisecting her palm diagonally - like she'd tried to catch a sword with her bare hand and earned a bloody-scab for it), "No, we're rivals. That's why our marks are so similar, though mine's cooler just like my sword style.
Kuina had rolled her eyes, stood up, and added another defeat to Zoro's tally. She'd smirked while she done it too, and just wait one of these days, Zoro is going to beat her.
The third time (Zoro 0, Kuina 2001), Zoro hadn't been explaining to Kuina but to her father. Maybe he didn't think it was stupid, or maybe he did but gave Zoro Kuina's sword anyway because his daughter's only soulmate was the closest thing he had to a heir now.
It doesn't matter, Zoro might never have won against her, but he'd won the soul mark argument in the end.
Zoro doesn't mention the soulmate thing to Luffy, mostly because it took him an embarassingly long time to notice given the Zoro's mark is one of the more visible ones, dark and on the palm so his soulmates would have to wear gloves to hide it.
In his defense, he was really hungry and dehydrated and there was an power-mad Marine captain trying to kill him.
Also, Luffy's got a lot of visible marks, the most Zoro's ever seen on anybody. A flash of gold on his left hand, smoky grey on his left shin, the edges of soul marks -blue and orange - just visible under the hems of his shorts on both thighs, green dots on his left arm, and a particularly badass mark that dominates near his entire right arm from shoulder to wrist that looks like red and blue flames twisting around his arm and each other.
It's a lot of visual info, so he can probably be forgiven for not noticing his own mark (a black, jagged line on Luffy's right palm) till they are eating at Rika's mom's place. Zoro had stared it for a second, wondered which of his two unknown soul marks was Luffy's, then put it out of his mind.
Their promise was the important thing, the soul mark thing didn't really matter.
(It's the one on his back, golden and swooping. He'll still treasure it because it's something he shares with his crew, something his captain gave them).
Marks AU: you know those soothing pictures with stuff like perfectly ordered stacks of apples and perfectly round snowballs and stuff like that? They drive villain marks up the wall and make their mark urges go nuts. Usually when in shops with perfectly ordered shelves they can resist the urges but sometimes you get stuff like someone (TADASHI) removing one apple and all of them falling while they cackle or Hiro going to soft drink aisles and swapping differently coloured drinks around.
They restrain themselves around Aunt Cass because they know she likes that kind of ordered stuff, but on their own they’re little demons. BOYS NO!
Marks AU: so Tadashi's sitting in a wheelchair in the children's ward, being mobbed by happy kids and there's these little lights everywhere and then a parent walks in just in time to see Tadashi gently toss a glowing orb at least as big as his head at the ceiling. It bursts and suddenly it's raining glowing confetti? Except it's not confetti it's little tiny lights of various colours? Some of which are so tiny they're basically glitter? Also the ceiling is fine.
Marks AU: On several occasions the team has had to deal with teenaged villain marks who got totally blindsided by the surge of mark hormones and urges, didn't know how to deal, and ended up running around smashing things. Hiro mostly suggests that if they HAVE to smash things, use sugar glass or ice, and smash them in the bathtub. Or if they just want to make a mess, GLITTER. Or smash stuff and make a mess in video games.
Marks AU: It actually takes quite a while for word to get out of the city that Hiro’s a villain mark. People from outside the city who are even aware that there’s a villain mark in the group assume it’s Gogo or Honey Lemon (or in one memorable instance, Fred, which resulted in a lot of trolling and hilarity) and then usually assume that everyone else is a hero mark. Sometimes this leads to issues. Like the incident where Hiro got given a thing that amplified mark urges. He ended up smearing mud on his face in two lines and yelling “I’M RAINBOW DASH!”, right in Wasabi’s face, while grinning in a very unhinged way. Then he started laughing.
Luckily they worked out the problem and removed the thing before he went full on hellraiser and started trying to break stuff. (Villain marks gone bad are termed ‘hellraisers’. Dunno what the hero mark equivalent term would be. )
And nobody outside of the Big Hero 6 overheard, which was good.
The mud was hard to explain though.
I’m sensing a glitter theme in this AU. Dunno where I could be getting this from though :P
As for the Hero Mark equivalent term, what about “Paladins”? Because they’re supposed to be super virtuous, but that can actually get kind of annoying for people when the hero marks get too stuck up and absorbed in their ‘goodness’
