Chapter 38: Taking Two Sides
As hours had crept into several days of nothing happening, Axel was tired of waiting. There wasn't really anything else for him to do, though, beside stare blankly at the gray ceiling and try not to think gray thoughts. He'd run out of stuff to do: recounting old stories and playing word games could only go so far, after all.
It was a dull cycle of fall asleep, eat the bland food, contemplate the absolute mess his life had become, and sleep again.
Despite having nothing to do but sit around and think, he still had very few ideas for what to do about this whole situation. Not that he had many options to work with in the first place. Escape wasn't viable, of course, as being stuck in what was essentially a cement box with no door would make that quite difficult.
At least contemplating what-ifs and maybes killed some time.
Besides, despite the inherent drama in being kidnapped by a ninja mad-scientist, his days in the cell had been pretty calm and, in all honesty, a little bit boring.
After he'd gotten most of the immediate panicking out of his system, the monotony of empty gray silence was kind of driving him nuts. He'd taken to talking to himself—commenting on his own train of thought, as if having a one-sided conversation—in an attempt to fill the empty space with something. Even if it was just mentally-stressed ramblings.
Yeah, Axel was going stir-crazy.
Which explains why his first reaction to Orochimaru dropping in again was less 'oh no, the mad scientist is back to probably experiment on me', and more along the lines of 'finally, something is happening'.
Well, to be technical, his first reaction upon waking up and finding the ninja in the room with him was to jolt upright with a surprised squawk. Followed closely by wondering just how long he had been standing there, and if he had done this the other times he'd slept as well… but Axel set those thoughts aside for the moment.
Leaning against the wall opposite him—and not acknowledging him at all—Orochimaru flipped though a few of the documents he was holding. After a pause, he scribbled something down. Though it had been a few minutes since Axel had woken up to find he wasn't alone, as of yet absolutely nothing had been said.
The quiet that had settled over the cell was worse than just being left alone. As if, in some way, this silence was sharp.
Purposeful.
It was really starting to get to him.
Which could possibly (quite probably) be the whole point: getting him nervous enough to maybe blurt out important info. A very ninja-esque plan, in his opinion, and it wouldn't be out of place in a spy-thriller movie.
Although he wouldn't usually think of Naruto, being a somewhat power-of-friendship action anime, as falling into that genre, but…
Axel shook his head a little, trying to get his thoughts back on track. He wasn't living in the pages of a comic book—crazy as this was, it was real life. Even if the ninja certainly looked the part of a fiction-typical supervillain. Slit golden eyes, purple eyeliner, long dark hair, ashy pale skin: all together, it kind of made his pristine white lab coat look mundane and almost nonthreatening in comparison.
"Are you a doctor?"
Axel blurted out the question without really thinking it through—of course the ninja's not a doctor, he's a researcher. Perhaps the filter between his brain and his mouth had deteriorated these past few days, given how much of that time had been spent talking to himself.
Orochimaru glanced up from his folder, one brow raised in question. "I do not have time to waste on students."
That wasn't—
"Students?" Axel repeated, frowning. "Aber… Of course 'sensei' means teacher, but I had thought…" He shook his head, now just muttering to himself. "Japanisch ist manchmal so verwirrend…"
Honestly, calling it 'confusing' was an understatement. This particular mistake—a mix-up of the noun 'sensei' versus the honorific—was fairly simple. Other word confusions could be much worse: far too many words had far too many meanings in Japanese (or whatever the language is called locally, he still hadn't figured that out).
The ninja was giving him a narrow look, like a fox—or, more aptly, a snake—watching a particularly interesting sparrow chatter away.
And sure, he had definitely started to ramble there: no doubt another side-effect of having been locked inside with nobody to talk to for days.
"Never mind." Then, finally processing the ninja's reply, Axel frowned. "Wait, you're not?"
Unintentional as that spin on the question had been, the answer was unexpected. From what he recalled of the show and of his sister's rants (mostly the rants, to be honest), he could've sworn that Orochimaru did, at some point, have a student—maybe even several. But perhaps that stuff hadn't technically happened yet, on this end.
"How very curious." The ninja seemed to… inspect him, briefly. "It is a strange assumption to make, given what little you know of me," he observed, with a graceful—but pointed—gesture to the room around them. "Tell me, why would you think I would be a teacher?"
Swallowing, Axel tried to figure out what to say. "Well, uh… Jiraiya has students," he tried, somewhat weakly.
"Indeed." There was a pause, eyes narrowing ever so slightly. "However, I do not believe that is what you were thinking."
As a matter of fact, he hadn't been thinking.
But whatever. Trying to explain that he was fairly sure that the first season of the anime had included a character that had been Orochimaru's student would be several levels above the stupid mistake that inadvertently led to this topic in the first place.
So he just shut up, shrugged, and tried to move the conversation (as it were) along.
"What are you doing here?"
The mad-scientist-ninja gave him an inscrutable look—certainly catching the obvious subject change—then, slowly, returned to perusing his folder. "I find I can accomplish more when not regularly accosted by fools who seem to believe the best use of their time is to waste my own."
A harsh way of putting it, but…
Axel found himself nodding, thinking back to when his life had been mundane, with a normal job and everything. He had enjoyed working in the office—and the time spent abroad was amazing—but work is work, and people are people: sometimes you just don't want to deal with either of them.
After some days that had more meetings than actual productive work, the temptation to just hole up in a free conference room and lock the door was palpable.
(He'd done it before. It was wonderfully productive.)
"Understandable," Axel half-murmured, turning to stare at the gray ceiling again. That sudden surge of old memories—even about something as drab as office work—made this entire situation seem fake.
He knew this was serious, that this was all too real: he could die here, and nobody who cared would ever find his body. Coming to terms with the reality of this world had taken him months, and would no doubt never fully settle in his mind.
Taking a deep breath, Axel centered himself.
This is real.
Dangerous.
Despite the fact that he mainly just felt… tired.
And stir-crazy.
"So…" He adjusted his seat on the cot, knowing this was probably not a great idea—not even a good one, really, and quite probably just plain bad—but unable to help his curious glance to the ninja's stack of documents. "What are you working on?"
Orochimaru paused, brows drawn together in the slightest of frowns, and Axel decided that asking had definitely been a bad idea. The ninja had come here to avoid so-called fools wasting his time, after all.
(But part of him had to wonder… Why come here? There had to be better options.)
Then, between one moment and the next, the slant to the ninja's expression suddenly looked more thoughtful than annoyed—like a serpent coming across an untended nest, and seeing an opportunity. Axel was, to be perfectly frank, a little unsettled by the shift.
After taking a second to flip through his stack of papers, Orochimaru pulled out one of the papers and held it out to him.
Axel took the offered document before really processing what was happening.
It was a medical chart—or a summary of a lot of medical charts, he guessed, given how it was formatted. Most of the kanji were complete nonsense to him, so he couldn't tell what the rows or columns were actually about.
"Uh…" he managed, intelligently.
The mad-scientist-ninja most certainly noticed his quietly vocalized confusion, but he didn't bother to acknowledge it. "The current test subjects are undergoing abrupt malignant mutations, essentially uncontrolled cell growth, which ultimately results in total system failure."
Oh dang, there had been a lot of unfamiliar words in that.
And yet…
Something about that description poked at his brain, sticking there, regardless of the fact that half of the necessary definitions were missing from his mental dictionary. From the very few words he did understand, which was basically just the part about 'uncontrolled growths', it seemed like—
Wait.
What was he doing?
Why was he even being told this?
He shook himself again—stay focused. In this situation, the why mattered less than the fact that it was happening at all. If he was being told, Orochimaru must expect to get something out of it.
Which didn't make much sense to him, but there's no accounting for mad scientists.
Axel studied metallurgical and materials engineering in university, and as such knows very little about medicine and even less about medical stuff in a world with ninja-magic chakra craziness.
But… he did have one idea.
"That sounds like—" Axel started, but cut himself off. The keyword he was looking for, 'cancer', was understandably missing from his vocabulary.
"Interesting." Orochimaru stilled, and his expression remained perfectly neutral. "It seems as though you have heard of something similar."
"…Maybe." Axel shrugged, and tried to recall what he knew. "It has something to do with… very little parts that make up…" He scowled to himself, annoyed at all the too-specific words needed to try and explain.
Regardless of his inability to clarify, the mad-scientist-ninja seemed to be well aware of what he was trying to say. "I know—"
"Gene!" Axel blurted out, suddenly recalling one of the words he'd wanted. Goodness knows how that had made it into his vocabulary. It must have come up in some nearly-forgotten conversation when he had been working in Japan. "The littlest parts, the gene, that's what get messed up. I think."
"Genes?" His golden eyes, which had narrowed with annoyance when he'd been interrupted, shifted almost jarringly to curiosity.
…Whether that's good or bad was yet to be determined.
"Well, yeah." It occurred to him that maybe they have a different word for it here. "Uh, genes are what tell the body how to make new parts to replace old ones," Axel tried to explain. "But sometimes those can get messed up, so the body starts making parts that are messed up, and it all goes out of control."
Orochimaru looked… well, it was a hard expression to break down, not least of all because it was so subtle. None of this stuff about genes was new information to him, obviously, but he still seemed strangely pleased. Like he'd just confirmed something to himself.
Weird.
Axel looked back at the document, trying to see if he could parse out anything. A symbol at the top of one of the columns was one he thought he recognized: 'death'. Or, in this context, maybe something more like 'deceased'.
There were a lot of black marks under that symbol.
So many.
He went over everything he thought he knew about this situation—everything he knew from watching the show, from listening to his sister, from his own impressions—and he had to swallow back a rising tide of disgust.
Human experimentation.
It wasn't a surprise. Axel had expected that much, given he was fairly certain that was why Orochimaru had been kicked out of the village in the anime.
This level of fatality, though… somehow, it hadn't occurred to him.
In a world with ninja-magic that could literally revive the dead—seriously, he could recall multiple different ways that could happen in the anime—one would think that human experimentation could be weirdly safe. No less creepy and wrong, but less deadly.
Then, why wasn't it?
From what little he'd seen of him, Orochimaru was… amoral, certainly, but not cruel for the sake of being cruel. More driven by calculations and goals rather than by emotions when it came to determining right and wrong—very utilitarian.
Which was strange, because, near as he could tell, Orochimaru was the only researcher involved with… whatever he was researching. Sure, ninja keep basically everything to themselves, but when it comes down to it, tests like the ones going on here would be safer and more productive when done with the support of—
Oh.
Right, there isn't really a scientific community in this world: just a whole bunch of people all figuring things out then keeping it for themselves. Which meant that, well…
Orochimaru wasn't a medical specialist, he's a scientist with a focus in human biology. And, because of ninja ideals that placed secrecy above all else, he was alone. If his test subjects got hurt in a way he wasn't able to fix, there was nothing that could be done. There were no paramedics he could call for: no doctors or surgeons on hand who specialized in keeping people put together, rather than cutting them up.
"There has to be a better way to do this," Axel said, gesturing to the plain gray walls of his cell but meaning everything happening in the facility beyond. "You're trying to help the village, right? So why do you need to keep it all secret?"
Orochimaru quirked a brow, honestly surprised. From the ninja's perspective, there shouldn't really be any reason to suspect that it was all a secret. Technically, given the village functioned under what was, in essence, a military dictatorship, he could have been detained (kidnapped) and taken here by order of the Hokage himself.
But Axel had just assumed, from the beginning, that none of this was on the up and up, so to speak. And he was right.
"Given you were able to deduce that this is not approved research, I would think that the reason is obvious." Orochimaru regarded him with vague disdain, or perhaps something like disappointment: as if, for some reason, he had expected better. "There are some realities the Hokage is unwilling to face. He would not accept the necessary costs."
"That—" Axel cut himself off, thinking.
Keeping things secret was very important in this world. He knew that. In a way, he could even understand the need for so much secrecy: for personal techniques or fighting styles, certainly, and there was some sense in keeping business tricks under wraps.
But overall, to him, it just seemed so strange.
Regardless of the different social norms, he knew what he had wanted to say. He also knew full well that actually saying it out loud would be pretty stupid. Actually, it was phenomenally stupid. Tremendously so.
But… it was the truth.
If he was going to die, it might as well be for something worth saying.
Axel took a breath, and said, "That's wrong."
The ninja remained outwardly unmoved, though now there was a cutting glint to his golden eyes—as sharp as a drawn blade and immeasurably more dangerous.
"Well, keeping it a secret isn't wrong," Axel admitted. "But those 'necessary costs' seem… more like a result that comes from keeping all these secrets."
Orochimaru still said nothing, regarding him with an unreadable expression. It took more courage than Axel ever thought he had to hold that edged gaze.
This was so stupid.
He wasn't even sure what he was trying to do—or, more to the point, why.
Without respect, it's virtually impossible to convince anyone of anything. Just look at the internet: bickering with strangers online never goes anywhere, as neither side has any particular reason to put much stake in what the other is saying. It doesn't matter what facts are brought to the table, because nobody really listens.
Axel knew that. It's just that it had never really mattered before.
Here and now, he's a prisoner. To be more honest about it, he's just shy of being nothing more than organic research material: that's about as far as one can get from a position of respect. He shouldn't be trying to start arguments.
And yet, here he was.
Then again, there wasn't really any point in turning back now. Axel took a second to get his thoughts in order—and, more importantly, his words: it'd be pretty stupid to mess this up with a linguistic fumble.
"For one thing," Axel started, carefully, "my guess is that, right now, you have to do everything by yourself because it's all being kept secret." This was nerve-wracking. "With less secrecy, maybe you could actually have useful help."
"What's to say I don't?"
The question—more of a curious statement, really—was asked with a strange sort of detached interest, as if this conversation was simply a somewhat amusing diversion. At least that's better than taking it as an insult.
"You said that the people you're working with waste your time," he pointed out.
Orochimaru may have nodded, very slightly: a mild concession.
"Working with people can be hard." Axel wasn't quite sure if he had meant that as working with coworkers or working with bodies—what a grim thought. "But having more people who can do the healing… stuff… would only be useful."
Some of the skepticism shifted, becoming just a little bit more speculative.
Hesitantly, with a glance to the document he still held, he added, "You'd lose less of… the test subjects. That'd be better for everyone." He shrugged. "Besides, learning works better with groups."
That last bit may have been pushing it, but, again, it was worth saying. This whole society was built on secrets—a natural consequence of ninja—but science could really take off when people got better at sharing things they figure out.
With all the secrecy, anyone trying to advance anything had to start at square one.
"Science," Axel mused, after a moment, "is like a forge. To keep it going, the fire always needs fuel, needs air… needs more. Without adding more…" He shook his head and gestured with his hands, as if trying to mimic dying flames with his fingers. "And if it goes out, the next person has to start from ashes."
The analogy could go further, but he wisely shut himself up before he could stumble that direction. After all, a forge is dangerous: it's not smart to continue feeding the fire simply to see how hot it can get.
"That is an… interesting comparison." Orochimaru had given him a lot of odd looks during the course of this conversation, yet somehow this one was the oddest. "Even so, I doubt inviting incompetent idiots into my lab would help anything."
"Sure. But just because somebody isn't a genius," said Axel, matter-of-fact, "does not mean they're completely useless."
There was a worryingly long pause—golden eyes level and cold—then, just maybe, his expression became slightly less sharp-edged. He remarked, "I suppose a determined idiot can get more done than a lazy genius. Occasionally."
Orochimaru was definitely thinking of a specific 'determined idiot', and from the (admittedly very limited) number of people he had seen the mad-scientist-ninja interact with, well… it was an easy guess.
There was a pause, and the small gray cell settled back into silence.
Thank goodness for that, because Axel felt that he had well and truly used up his reserve of courage in the past few minutes. He may have only just woken up, but he was already completely exhausted.
He quietly lay back down on the cot, staring up at the by-now-familiar concrete ceiling. Across from him, after a moment, he heard a return to quiet paper shuffling.
All in all, it was… surprisingly peaceful.
Apparently—unexpectedly—Axel dozed off at some point, because he found himself drowsily waking up a while later. He sat up and glanced around his small cell to confirm he was once more alone: just plain gray walls, and a new tray of plain gruel to eat.
Scratching his head, he…
Wait.
Axel trailed his fingers along the area around his temple, finding the edges of a patch of hair cut to barely two centimeters long. It definitely hadn't been that short when he had fallen asleep.
Which meant…
Well, it meant that Orochimaru had trimmed off—and presumably taken—some of his hair while he slept.
That's kind of disturbing.
As he flexed his hands and feet to double check that the rest of him was still in one piece, Axel supposed that the unexpected haircut wasn't too bad. Given the circumstances, anyway. He still had all of his extremities, after all, which technically wasn't guaranteed.
What a terrifying thought.
Taking a deep breath, Axel set aside the twinge of panic before it could twist into his gut and grow into something worse. He was fine.
The fact that he'd gotten a trim while unconscious was still unsettling, of course, but… all in all, it was just some hair.
He hadn't bothered to mess with his hair since coming to Konoha, having had plenty of other things to occupy his thoughts: from the mundane troubles of running a shop, to occasional existential what-happened-to-my-life worries.
Even after having months to adjust, the reality of just how much his world had changed could still sometimes… well, hit him like a truck.
That was a terrible joke, and he deserved to be slapped for it.
The point is, whether or not his hairstyle remained orderly had been pretty far down on his list of priorities. It had actually gotten to be kind of shaggy; Akaiko had threatened to take a kunai to it once or twice, though she'd never found the time to make good on that promise.
In a way, Orochimaru had just beaten her to it. Kind of.
He took another deep breath.
Carding a hand through his hair—keenly aware of the chunk that now dropped out from between his fingers, so much shorter than the rest—Axel tried to wrap his head around what had happened. Not the haircut, but the scary-strange interaction that had taken place beforehand.
He couldn't believe that he'd said half of that stuff, and now that the moment had passed, he honestly felt shaky.
Because, by all rights, he should probably be dead right now.
That he wasn't was… well, he hesitated to call it a good thing, but maybe…
Maybe Orochimaru would listen.
It wasn't all that likely, of course. Not many would put stock in the opinion of a person they'd kidnapped and no doubt planned to slice up out of curiosity.
And yet… Axel felt curiously hopeful.
In the show—even within the first story arc—Naruto was able to talk his way around plenty of antagonists: using his fabled talk-no-jutsu, as his sister would put it. Of course, Axel was not nearly as charismatic as an anime protagonist, even without his language troubles.
But, heck, maybe the people in this world were just more receptive to good advice.
It's technically possible.
(If improbable.)
Perhaps it would be enough.
At the very least, Orochimaru seemed to be a… practical sort of person: though in a way that was distinctly unsettling at times, given his mad-scientist disposition. Granted, Axel didn't exactly have the greatest impression of him, but during their interactions—and sure, it's only been the three times—the ninja had been strangely willing to listen.
…Whatever.
He's probably just being optimistic.
=X=X=X=
Such an argument was just the naive optimism of a civilian mindset, nothing more. An interesting perspective to consider, but ultimately flawed.
It had to be.
Even if he couldn't yet find the cracks.
Orochimaru leaned forward, hands braced on the edge of the lab table. Spread out in front of him were the documents he had been going over earlier, pages of biopsy reports and notes that all painted the same bleak picture: every subject in the S36-45 group was slowly but surely wasting away.
He didn't have time to be preoccupied by the idle musings of a civilian.
No matter how curious.
Although… there had been that word the man had said in passing, 'genes', which sounded eerily similar to the term he had coined for his vein of research: 'idenshi' versus 'iden-gaku'. The fact that the man had inexplicably known the word—or, more to the point, that he had associated it to similar concepts—was quite remarkable.
Perhaps…
No.
He could not allow himself such distractions.
After rearranging a few of the papers to better correlate their contents, Orochimaru turned to a set of slowly dripping titrations on a nearby workbench. There was so much to do. He needed to focus.
But… he found it difficult. His eyes kept drifting to the end of the room—to the grim stack of containers, the dark lines of their preservations seals.
Such a waste.
One he had been convinced was necessary, not even an hour ago. He knew very well that the Hokage would never approve of these experiments. In his eyes, the potential benefits to the village could never be worth the losses. It is too risky, he would say, or too damaging. Too callous.
Too cruel.
Orochimaru scoffed at the thought.
Emotions: such weak, feeble things to place counter to all that he could achieve. Of course there would be a toll for innovation, nothing in life comes without a price. Losing subjects in an experiment is a waste—he is well aware of that—but that loss is nothing compared to what could be ultimately gained.
It was why the commander had approached Orochimaru directly to discuss the possibility. The Hokage would have refused the experiments, even though the village would be stronger if the Wood Release kekkei genkai was restored.
And when the Hokage is unable—or unwilling—to make a difficult choice… well. That is the whole reason why Root exists.
After all, the leaves of a great tree can only flourish in the light because its roots continue to grow in darkness.
So there had been only two choices: either the research was to be done in complete secrecy, or it was not to be done at all. Knowing the incredible advantages the experiments could bring if successful—the village would be stronger, safer—it wasn't much of a choice at all.
Yet now, from a most unlikely source… it seems there may have been a third option, though not one that would have ever occurred to him—or, indeed, to anyone with common sense.
Or at least, anyone with the usual brand of common sense.
Orochimaru frowned down at his work, but his mind just kept wandering back towards that gray cell. He sent a sidelong glance to his paper-strewn lab table, eyeing a small bundle of blond hair set at one side.
The blood sample he'd taken a few days ago had proved largely inert to any chakra manipulation; though it could technically be forced into a reaction, the energy and control required was unmanageable. It is possible that the man has some kind of kekkei genkai that makes his energies immutable as well as undetectable, but pursuing that reasoning quickly becomes unfeasibly complex.
Then, of course, there was the simple (yet infinitely more confusing) answer: he just does not have chakra.
Orochimaru had to admit, he was tempted to… investigate a bit more directly. After all, it would be easy enough to check for a chakra system during an autopsy.
But killing the man would be shortsighted.
Giving up the test he had been working on as a lost cause—his current lack of focus would only increase the odds of a critical mistake—he returned to the main table and its scattered documents. The summary report he had briefly allowed the civilian to look at was near the top of the spread.
Over half of his available subjects had already been administered the preliminary dosages, and very few had been deemed stable enough to proceed to the secondary and tertiary stages of experimentation. Most were either dead or dying. At this rate, the entire project would prove to be a failure.
A fascinating and informative one, no doubt, but a failure nonetheless.
"Science," Orochimaru echoed the words, thoughtful, "is like a forge."
The Will of Fire.
He had never bothered to place much stake in that founding philosophy. It had its recognizable benefits, of course: strengthened faith in the village, better team cooperation on missions, and loyal shinobi, to name just a few. It would be remiss to ignore those advantages.
Applying the framework of that ideology to his research was… strange.
Yet, perhaps it was not as illogical as it first seemed.
Genin squads grew as a unit, after all, and the teamwork could build even the weakest link into an acceptable shinobi. If such a method could be applied to scientific theorems as well, then…
With that radical thought in mind, he reconsidered the progress of his experiments.
And found it sorely lacking.
The necessity of secrecy had, indeed, cut him off from useful assistance. Naturally, the idea of large-scale cooperation had no place in this research: the material was too critical, too important to the village, and the risk of discovery from any outside faction would be unacceptable.
However, it is also clear that many of the deaths could have been avoided had he access to a skilled healer. Properly maintaining the health of the subjects during testing would logically increase the odds of a successful outcome, and at the very least would offer more time for further examination.
Though he had passable skill at medical jutsu, it was simply not his specialization.
And if he needed a doctor—a medic that he could trust, beyond all others—there was really only one option.
It was just a matter of finding her.
Author's Note:
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.
We have reached a turning point.
Oh. My. Goodness.
This chapter has been an absolute journey to write. Exhausting, sometimes, and obviously it took way longer than I had first planned, but it's been a great experience nonetheless! I think this is the first time I've tried to write such a major shift in character behavior or attitude.
(Why did I have to start with a guy like Orochimaru? He's tricky enough to write when he's just being a mad-scientist!)
That said, since he's such a tricky guy to get right, please point out anything you feel to be off. Assuming it's nothing too major, I'll see if I can iron those things out. But I had to post eventually, or risk it falling into perpetual editing!
Anyway, I usually try to post a chapter once a month on the 15th. That won't be the case for the upcoming 15th, for obvious reasons. Hopefully I can take the next few days to hammer out some things. I feel like I've just crested a steep hill, only to look up and see a mountain range looming. How exciting!
Edit:
So unfortunately I haven't got the next chapter ready for the 15th of November. Based on what I did manage to write, though, we should be fine for December. Sorry for all the delays, I really wish reality could chill for a month or two. Oh well.
Translations:
"Aber…" = "But…"
"Japanisch ist manchmal so verwirrend…" = "Japanese is sometimes so confusing…"
Oh! And about my other story, Under the Veil, which is usually the chapter to get updated on the first of the month… It's still coming! I plan on posting it late tomorrow, but this chapter has been eating up all of my writing energy for a good two months now, and I had to get it out first! Sorry!
If you're interested, feel free to visit the Discord server to chat about whatever, canon or headcanon or fanfiction or anything else.
Here's the invite code: m3CFXnC
Stay safe out there, and I'll see ya on the flipside, everyone!
