#this is violent

[super-rangers]

Think on me

The fight isn’t going well. Zedd’s already taken out Billy, and it’s up to Trini and Zack to distract him until Jason and Kimberly can figure something out. When Alpha had said the Zedd was nothing like Rita, Trini hadn’t expected this. Zedd acts like they’re nothing. He’s barely exerting any effort as he swats them away like flies. 

Zack charges him from the side and Trini sees an opening. She charges, daggers held out in front of her. Zedd turns his head to look at Zack, an arm shooting out to catch him around the throat before he can even make contact. Without even looking away from Zack, Zedd strikes out, his foot slamming into the center of Trini’s chest. Trini hears something crack, not sure if it’s the sound of her armor or her ribs. It hurts, but everything hurts right now so she can’t tell. She tumbles back, one hand reflexively dropping a dagger so she can clutch at her chest. 

Zedd tosses Zack aside like he’s nothing, body limp as he hits the rubble that used to be Krispy Kreme. Trini grits her teeth in anger, shaking off the pain so she can focus on fighting Zedd, destroying him. (She’s willing to destroy herself if it kills him. He’s hurt her family, her town, and Trini is tired.)

“Your world will bow before Lord Zedd,” he says, his strangely accented voice echoing around them.

Trini ignores him, ducking under his staff and slamming her shoulder into his gut. She plunges downward with her remaining dagger, trying to drive it into his thigh. It bounces off him like she hadn’t even attacked. Zedd takes two steps backwards, absorbing the force of her tackle.

“You’re beneath me.”

He grabs the back of her neck and hammers his knee into her face. Her visor cracks. He releases her neck only to bring his elbow cracking down in the same spot, almost sending her sprawling. Trini punches at him, trying to see through her spotty vision. He doesn’t even seem to notice her weak, uncontrolled hits.

 Zedd kicks the side of her knee, the loud popping sound drowned out by the sound of her pained yells. She knows this time that the noise was her and not her armor. Her leg buckles, knee bent oddly outward even with her armor supporting it. She hits the ground hard, barely managing to roll out of the way of Zedd’s stomp. It leaves a dent in the asphalt where Trini used to be. He doesn’t miss the second time. A harsh blow sends Trini spiralling through the air. 

There’s nothing but concrete to catch her. She writhes on the ground, coughing. Her mouth tastes like copper and her lips are slick with blood. Her vision is hazy around the edges, fading to black every once in a while, even as she struggles to stay conscious. 

Jason and Kim enter the fray like avenging angels, taking on Zedd like a well oiled machine. They’re not beating him, not even close, but they aren’t dead yet. They keep his attention divided, their voices echoing through the coms. Trini lets her eyes flutter closed. (Just for a second. She just needs a second.)

“Kim, now!” Trini’s eyes snap open at Jason’s rough yell. 

She sees Jason running straight at Zedd, Kim drawing attacks from Zedd’s staff.  She manages to catch his arm on a downward swing and holds him still, muscles straining as she slowly bends back under the force of Zedd’s strength. Jason tries to stab Zedd with the sword, but Zedd knocks him away, the sword clattering to the ground at Zedd’s feet. Jason hits the ground with a sickening crunch and doesn’t move. 

Kim glances down at Jason’s sword, her arm shaking from the effort of holding Zedd at bay. Trini knows her thought process almost like Kim is explaining it to her. Grab the sword, and in the split second before Zedd attacks, stab him. It’s not going to work. Trini knows it won’t work. (Kim probably knows too.)

“Kim, no,” she pleads.

“It’s okay, Trini,” Kim replies. Trini can almost see the sad, contemplative smile on Kim’s face. “Someone’s gotta do it.”

“Please don’t.” Trini’s not sure if she actually spoke, if Kim heard her. Her body is seizing up, tense and waiting to see what Kim is going to do. 

Kim’s head turns, her mask melting away as she looks at Trini. There’s that smile, melancholy but still so, so beautiful. Trini’s already shaking her head, rejecting whatever’s coming. Kim is crying. Staticky, through the banged up com system, Kim speaks.

“I love you, Trini.”

Kim turns like she hasn’t said anything, dropping Zedd’s arm and darting close in the small moment he’s off balance. She scoops up the sword and drives it into Zedd.

And Trini’s longed to hear those words, has dreamt about Kim saying them to her, but not like this. If this is how Kim tells her, Trini doesn’t want it.

It’s almost in slow motion, the way Zedd raises his staff and drives it through Kim’s torso. It’s like her armor isn’t even there. 

Kim grabs at the staff, the armor peeling away from her hands. Her palms come away slick with blood. Someone’s screaming. (It’s her. It’s Trini but she doesn’t know if she can stop. Doesn’t know if she’ll ever stop because Kim - Kimberly.)

Kim looks up at her and smiles one more time, blood spilling over her lips. Even through her screams, through the sounds of chaos around her, Trini hears Kim speak, crystal clear.

“It’s okay, Trini. It’s going to be okay.”

Zedd looks down at the sword sticking out of him and teleports away, Jason’s sword clattering to the ground. His staff disappears too, and Trini’s stomach turns at the spray of blood that erupts from Kim’s stomach once it’s gone. Kim drops to the ground like a sack of stone. She doesn’t even move to catch herself as she falls. (Kim’s always reminded Trini of a doll, but she hates the comparison right now. Kim falls to the ground like a doll cast aside by a bored child.)

Trini drags herself to where Kim lies unmoving on the ground. The pink armor has closed over the wound, a strange clean spot in the midst of the blood slicked metal. Kim is pale, her washed out complexion only highlighting the bright red of the blood leaking from her mouth. She’s so still. Her chest is hardly moving but Trini can see her pulse beating rabbit-fast in her neck. Trying to make up for the blood loss. Trying to keep Kim alive. 

Trini cups Kim’s face, opening her mouth to say something, anything, but all the things she wants to tell Kim get jumbled in her throat and all she does is sob. 

Jason stumbles over, holding Billy in his arms. “We need to get them to a hospital.” He sounds just about as broken as Trini feels. She sees Zack dragging himself to his feet behind Jason.

(She doesn’t know if a hospital will help but-) “Yeah.” (-she’ll take hope where she can get it.)

[magnuslightwoodbane]

hidden gems

read on ao3

follow up to

warning for violence

The Clave had, unsurprisingly, been incredibly unhelpful in something they deemed as a “solely warlock” problem. Alec being there at the time was apparently his own fault. He thinks that the representative he’d spoken to was still disgusted by Alec’s decision to “taint” the Lightwood name by joining it with a Downworlders’, with Magnus Bane’s, rather than actually believing that it wasn’t something they could poke their noses into like always.

That’s okay, though. Alec knows loopholes like old friends, and this means that so long as Magnus leads the investigation, they have a lot more leeway as to process AND punishment.

(He thinks of themselves as they far more often than not now; he and Magnus are a team, and if you wrong one you wrong the other no matter how slight the injustice.)

It wasn’t easy tracking down the person behind the warlock trap, but it wasn’t all that difficult either. It took them about a week to gather enough concrete evidence to implicate Roland Wantor, a young but promising warlock who had the misfortune to own a personality that kept grudges; grudges over things like being a downright asshole towards him when he worked as a barista in the 70’s (Lorenzo) to rebuffing his advances (Magnus).

“I was with you at the time,” Magnus grumbled. “And I was perfectly polite about it!”

Magnus and Alec had decided the best course of action was for the two of them to approach alone, with backup a portal away; far better to go in and arrest Roland peacefully than to storm the place with armoured Shadowhunter soldiers, after all. Alec doesn’t mourn the version of himself that would have thought differently.

Magnus goes to knock on the door to the house they’d tracked his last location to, but it creaks open under the first rap of his knuckles and he glances back at Alec, frowning. Alec doesn’t draw his bow, but he does rest his hand on the hilt nestled in the holster strapped to his thigh as they both silently agree to move forward. The large house looked ordinary from the outside, grass perhaps a little unkempt for this particular Hamptons neighbourhood, but everything inside is covered in a thick layer of dust. Unopened envelopes and flyers for long-past fairs and fetes litter the wooden corridor, and everything that Alec can see is painted in a murky blue-grey, the light struggling to make it through all the closed blinds.

They stop, make eye contact, reassess. Alec draws his bow and takes the lead.

They move silently towards the open door at the end of the hall. All the others they pass are locked, and while simple locks are no match for runes or magic, it would be a waste of their time. Alec takes the first step into the open living space, eyes trained to his left, while Magnus follows close behind and sweeps the right side of the room.

There is eerie silence. Then-

“Come to seek revenge, Mr Bane?”

The voice rings out around the room; its source is everywhere, nowhere.

“Come to seek justice, Roland, and perhaps more importantly answers.”

The voice scoffs. “If it’s answers you want, well. I don’t mind divulging them to dead men. I wish to be feared, revered, and if I need to stake my reputation on making sure everyone who wrongs me meets a violent end, then so be it. Have you brought this random Nephilim again just to pretend that you didn’t just reject me outright? As if you would even look twice at one of their kind.”

Magnus’s eyes narrowed, offended at the very notion that anyone could disregard Alec’s importance like that, and Alec smirks. This warlock really doesn’t know the type of fire he’s playing with.

“This random Nephilim just so happens to be one that I not only looked at twice but also then married, Roland. Why don’t you come down here and address us face to face, hm? And we can settle this in a civil manner?”

“Are you accusing me of incivility?!” the voice snarled back, louder now. I mean, attempted murder probably qualifies, Alec thinks, before his senses begin to prickle, hairs on his arms raising in a manner that he was intimately familiar with.

“Magnus, dem-“

A burst of magic cut him off mid-sentence, slamming him against the nearest wall hard. Pain shoots through his arm as he lands awkwardly, dropping his bow as he feels his wrist snap and crying out through gritted teeth. It’s nothing an iratze can’t fix, but Alec cannot move. He tries, but none of his limbs make any sort of headway against the invisible force pinning him there.

“Perhaps if I keep him there, you’ll be far more inclined to be nice to me,” the voice says, closer this time. Alec looks over at its new source; a pale, lanky man stood where no one had a moment before, clad in a tweed jacket, his legs those of a goat and his brown-grey hair slicked back. His eyes were sharp and cold over the frames of his small round sunglasses (completely ineffective, thought Alec). The words hit him then, and he can’t help the laugh that escapes him.

“Is something funny, Nephilim?” he spat.

Alec laughs again. “Oh man. You have no idea who you’re fucking with, do you?” The warlock frowns, as roughly insectoid demons shimmer from the air around the room, and despite his decades of training, Alec is near indifferent. He trusts Magnus, knows his capabilities, knows that Roland Wantor is about to get the rudest wake-up call of his life. “I’m all good here babe, take your time, have some fun,” he calls out cheerfully. Magnus nods in acknowledgment, closes his eyes in contentment.

When he opens them again, they are his own. The stillness of the air is suffocating.

The battle begins in a second and Alec attempts to drink it all in, despite tears of pain clouding his vision. As Magnus conjures wards for Alec, Roland surrounds himself in his own sickly green shield, attempting to leave Magnus to the mercy of the demons he’d summoned. One of them pounces from the back of the room straight at Magnus, only to be impaled on a spike of clear ice, splintering the floor and reaching towards the high ceiling. Alec smiles.

Magnus is a master of control, a brilliant dancer, and here in his battle element he is no different as he ducks and weaves and gestures a path of destruction. He cuts one demon in half using a portal closed opportunistically, causing its severed head to fall at a stricken Roland’s feet. Alec can’t help noticing Magnus’s shirt sleeves straining as he moves, the blood spattered across his brow from when one tried to get too close. If this is how Magnus felt when he saw Alec do this last week, he completely understands his husband’s recent desire for rougher sex.

The sight of demons felled in battle is poetry to Alec; there is a beauty in it he can’t describe. Even though he wishes he were the one partaking, admiring Magnus fulfilling the duty he was raised for feels a little like salvation. He watches as Magnus corrals four demons into pairs without them realising; one pair he lifts and surrounds in a sphere of moving water, the other he begins the same but encases them in a metal orb. He spins as they hover in the air, throwing out a stream of daggers of pure light with a mere wave of his arm at one who dared skitter into view, hitting his mark with every one. He smirks at Roland, before his outstretched palms call forth elemental destruction. Lightning strikes the sphere of water, causing the unfortunate beasts to explode inside their exoskeletons, viscera flowing now with the water. Fire envelops the metal orb and burns with intensity, and Alec can hear the shrieks as that pair are cooked alive.

There are still three more left. Roland looks terrified. Magnus doesn’t seem to care.

One brave one leaps, and Magnus pirouettes, catching it out of the air by its back and slamming it into the floor, crushed immediately as Magnus stamps, shards of bone and blood flying out in a perfect circle around it. He kicks its body into its comrades, knocking it back from its advance where it meets a wall of force that hadn’t been there a second ago and disintegrates where it passes through.

There is one left, and this one has learnt. It cowers, snarls and hisses, facing Magnus all the while as he walks backwards through the carnage towards Alec.

“Hey,” Alec says.

“Hey yourself,” Magnus replies, pressing a kiss to his cheek. Alec feels his wrist reset, though truth be told, he’d barely noticed the pain, transfixed as he was. “Mind if I borrow this, darling?”

Magnus’s hand is on his seraph blade and Alec grins in anticipation, staring Roland down. “Go ahead, my love.” Alec enjoys the whimper he hears from Roland as Magnus pulls the blade free, bathing the room in bright crimson light. He strides forward. The demon charges, leaps. Magnus moves faster, grace guiding him, and slices the airborne demon. It hits the ground with three sickening thuds.

Roland’s shield is down now, and he’s backing up towards the door, fear in his eyes as Magnus turns towards him and cocks his head. “You hurt my husband,” he says, voice cold, every inch the prince of hell Alec knew he was by nature, and by nurture could never become. He advances.

Roland is pleading, but Alec doesn’t care to listen. He watches instead as Magnus’s magic snakes out, forcing him into a rigid pose, limbs extended, and begins to raise him up into the air. Even looking up at him, Magnus has all of the power.

Magnus looks utterly vengeful in this light.

“Did you know,” he hisses almost gleefully through his teeth, “that carbon makes up by mass around 18% of a human body? Most of the rest is gas, minus, oh, around 4% of other trace elements?”

Roland squeaked, held aloft and unable to move.

“Did you also know that magic can serve as an effective replacement for the high temperatures and pressure needed for graphene to become diamond? Or, perhaps,” Magnus’s voice dropped dangerously low, “that I am the only warlock on this Earth capable of completely rearranging atoms without consequence? I don’t do it often, but I think I can make an exception.”

Roland begins to scream. Alec sees his legs begin to disintegrate from the bottom up, cloven feet the first victim. Dust falls, which Alec knows must be the trace amounts of solid elements in a human body, and as it creeps higher tiny crystals join the pile, catching the light. The screams sound almost animal.

It’s not until Magnus reaches his knees that the binds holding Alec finally falter, and he drops free to the floor. While there is some small part of him that calls for blood that finds this satisfying, he knows that it’s not the kind of justice he came for. He also knows that Magnus not caught up in the frenzy of battle will regret this; he is harsh and unforgiving to those who do not deserve mercy and yet Magnus’s default state is a drive to do what is right, no matter its difficulty.

Alec kicks carcasses out of his way as he walks swiftly to Magnus’s side, resting his hands on either bicep and gently pushing his arms down.

“Magnus, it’s okay. I’m here. You can stop now.”

There is resistance at first, but as Alec murmurs into his ear and presses his lips to his skin, the onslaught stops.

“You healed me Magnus, saved me. This is not the justice your people deserve, the punishment he should face.”

Magnus only exhales. Roland lowers gently to the ground, open wounds sealed shut, unconscious. Alec kisses the side of Magnus’s forehead.

He knows full well what his husband is capable of, the cruelty he has been forced to wield in order to survive, in order to please his father, knows that this trauma and state of being is as ingrained in him as his love for Alec. He knows this part of Magnus, but he also knows that this is not all that Magnus is, that Magnus is kinder than he is severe, more predisposed to generosity than retribution. He knows this, and knows that he is not going anywhere, and he thinks as his love sags into him that Magnus knows that now as well.

[godzillaahh]

“April you have to destroy expired food and any merchandise being scanned to throw out”

No

[gelopanda]

Years ago people were hating that we didn't "identify as black" in the way others in this country do, and then now that more of us are doing it, they want to take it away lol

[leoflowers]

holy shit this season is really going for it!(it meaning the gore)

[demon-neverland]

[eorzeaisnotcrash]

Day 9: Fair

…save that which we make for ourselves.

(This one’s nasty…)

They’ve been there half a bell now, looking up at the statue and whispering about who might’ve scrawled CUNT all across the surface. Like as not, they already know the identities of the artist and the poor bastard whose veins provided the now-darkened pigment. The Warrior of Nothing nurses her bottle and watches the Brass Blades from the shadow of the warehouse till their little party breaks up. Then she sets off after her target.

They’re only a problem when they’re in a group and their target can’t fight back. One good blow from the woman who kills (well, killed) gods, and the crooked soldier crumples to the ground. Since they’re already near the edge of town, Dagmar simply puts the other woman over her shoulder and strides off towards Parata’s Peace. She looks right at the guard as she goes. He looks back at her, but does no more. He knows better.

The yarzons and toads don’t care to come near her, either, as she stops not too far from the place where the white-robed Ascian talked at her. Ugh, what must be going through his and his evil friends’ heads right now? They’ve probably been celebrating non-stop since learning most of the people standing between them and their next Calamity are dead.

And this bitch played a part in that.

The first person Dagmar tried this with attacked her as soon as he woke up -looking back, she should’ve seen it coming, nobody likes being snatched without warning -so now she always makes sure they can’t move. Her lance, driven through the Blade’s hand into the ground, both takes care of that and brings her round.

Being a soldier, the other woman’s no doubt used to a certain amount of pain in her life, but the element of surprise can get some noise even out of the professionals. A sharp cry proves nap time to be over.

“I don’t know why one of you is stationed all the way out here. Did they transfer your whole group out of the palace afterward? More politics I’m too stupid to understand? I guess it doesn’t matter either way. You’re not going back to work. I mean, look at your sword hand!”

Oh, she’s realizing who it is standing over her. Now she makes some real noise.

“Yeah, it’s me. Scream all you like, the guards can’t hear us,” the ex-Warrior tells her, with as much cheer as she’s able to feel these days. “And even if they could, half of ‘em know what’s been done to me and mine, and the other half are too fucking scared to come near me. It’s just us girls now.”

“What happens now?” growls the Blade. “You run me through and leave my corpse outside of a town, the way you’ve been doing with those Crystal Braves?”

“What would I do that for? You’re not a Crystal-“ Dagmar hisses and shuts her eyes as the woman’s free hand hurls a handful of dirt right into her face. After she’s blinked away the worst of it, she watches her prisoner’s useless attempt to free herself. “You know that’s not coming out till I pull it out, right?”

She spits at her -like that’ll make her life any worse than it already is. “Fuck you!”

“You already have!” The Highlander pins her other hand with a nearby rock, bending down just long enough to yank the mask and turban off of her. Underneath are bright blue eyes and wavy brown hair. “Wow, you’re pretty. I’ve got a pretty sister -in fact, I’ve got four, all older. Growing up, they told me that girls should support each other. I wanted to believe that when I started adventuring…”

The crook is screaming again, thrashing too. Dagmar kicks her in the side with enough force to turn her screams into coughs.

“…but spend a sennight or two traveling round Eorzea, and it’s clear women can be just as vile as men. And yet, when you lot had me on the floor next to Her Grace’s dead body, when you were hurting me-“ she kicks her again- “somehow I couldn’t stop thinking how odd it was that another woman was part of it! I never forgot you. Even with those masks on, I remember each one of you looking down at me. I’ll see you in my nightmares till I’m dead.”

The tears are about to start like they always do. The ex-Warrior is long past the point of dignity, so she goes on, her voice getting shakier and each kick getting harder:

“It doesn’t feel good, does it? Being powerless and alone. The people I care about and who care about me have been cut to pieces by your friends, or crushed by falling rocks, or whatever the fuck it is you’ve done to all the others at the Stones… or, they’re trying to keep it together and live what life they’ve got left, knowing there aren’t enough people now to stop the primals from destroying everything! The ones who turned on us get to keep on being big shots. I bet if I snapped my fingers and magically cleared my name they’d be in my face tomorrow, telling me the next monster they wanted dead. Like what happened to us just didn’t. And you and those fucking corrupt Braves get to enjoy your bribe money! I’m supposed to stay in an active war zone, pretending everything is fine and nursemaiding the brat who made it all possible while everybody fusses about cheering him up and forgets that I can feel too!”

Her throat aches. Her face is wet. A few tears even land on the Blade’s terrified face, which has started to look a sight thanks to a stray kick and the blood she’s spit up.

“I won’t have that! I won’t!” Dagmar shakes her head and wipes away snot. “I wasn’t born just to slave away and be abused and never do a thing about it…”

She looks around, but this area being the way it is, finding what she wants isn’t hard. Here’s a good one. The color of the rocks that fell in the sewer and now block the Sil’dihn Excavation Site. The Highlander picks it up and shifts it in her hands a bit so she can carry it back to her prisoner more easily.

“You ain’t gonna be so pretty when they find you!”