The only problem Aricena found so far these days was, she picked a city she'd never been, and she was on her own...

She still hadn't found her Sire, and was unsure of what she was going to find there, to begin with.

Love had fucked everything up and licking her wounds wasn't helping any more. It just kept them raw, and right at the surface. Hiding from it all wasn't cutting it either. Every day she fought the urge to just walk out into the sunlight and just sit there, till it drained the life out of her.

But she couldn't. Not until she knew where she came from, and why. Luther was going to have to wait. It could be far to dangerous, even for him. Because she had no idea what she was walking into, but she knew damn well she was going to have to face it, one way or another.

Even if he never forgave her; he would still be alive to hate her.

Traian on the other hand, was itching for a fight. The only 6'3 lovable ashole she could tolerate. He hadn't been the same since he lost his blue bird, and keeping him restrained and his mind occupied was becoming a full time job in itself.

Hmmmmmm

R.I.P.D.

The city wears a storm like a guilty coat, skyline stitched with lightning and a clocktower keeping time for the dead. When the wind turns metallic and the alleys breathe, the living whisper about holes in the sky and things that crawl back out. That’s when a quiet door swings open between heartbeats, and the Rest In Peace Department clocks in.

Two shadows step through the thunder: a weathered lawman with graveyard patience and a sharp-eyed partner still warm with his last mistake. Cold badges wink beneath their coats; their revolvers hum with blue fire, not built to wound but to unmake. They move in a practiced friction—old grit and new grit—following the tremor only the dead can hear.

Somewhere below the broken clouds, a name is being sewn into stolen flesh and debts are crossing the border no debt should cross. Before dawn, they’ll trace the contraband of souls through streets that refuse to keep time, deciding whether justice is a clean erasure or a merciful return. The storm answers first, cracking open the sky; the rest of the city will learn the answer when the guns stop singing.

Desolation

The city leans under its own weight, rooftops huddled like exhausted shoulders while chimney smoke smears the stars into bruise-colored clouds. Diamond-paned windows glow with trapped hearthlight, little islands of warmth adrift in a sea of slate and soot. Far beyond the misted eaves, the silhouettes of cranes turn like slow gallows, and the wind carries the thin, metallic taste of rain and old iron—a flavor the city learned to live on when bread and mercy ran out.

In the narrow court below, something that might once have been men worry the stones with claw and hunger, noses lifted to the lantern’s sallow hiss as if it were a moon. They do not speak; they scrape, they breathe, they remember the shape of appetite better than the sound of their former names. Doors stay latched, curtains stay drawn, and the cobbles shine with a slick that is not only rain, for Desolation is not emptiness here—it is the unwilling music of what still moves after hope has gone to ground.

She watches from the parapet, a quiet hinge in the night, leather creaking, blade catching a brief coin of light before swallowing it again. Some call her Kestrel; others have never seen enough daylight to call her anything at all. She did not come to save this place. She came because debts braid tighter than rope, because a promise made on a rooftop remains a promise even after the city forgets how to keep them. When the lantern gutters and the creatures glance aside, she will descend—one breath, one step, into the thin space where fear becomes work—and the long accounting will begin.

Survive, and live happily... It gets strange when the foundation of ones change, becomes the focal point others want to change... Everything was going well

Warhammer 40k

The sky was the color of old bruises when the yellow tide rolled in. Engines hacked smoke and sparks as iron-jawed walkers shouldered through storms of dust, their red optics glaring like ill omens. Skulls rattled under armored boots; gretchin skittered in the wake of a towering brute whose armor was hammered from hazard-striped scrap and studded with stolen trophies. He bellowed, and the world seemed to answer—bolts shrieked, rivets popped, and the ground itself learned the rhythm of his charge.

On this forgotten frontier, rumor had promised a vein of riches buried beneath blasted rock: enough loot to crown a warlord in gold and feed a thousand forges with the promise of louder, meaner machines. So the clans gathered to the banner of the yellow-plate tyrant, a living avalanche called by many names and feared by one: Waaagh. He wore a klaw the size of a door and a grin wider still, and each step he took bent the future into a cruder shape.

Across the wastes, sentries whispered litanies to weapons that had not been properly blessed in years. Vox-lines choked with pleas and static, and the last towers of a dying citadel flickered like candles before a hurricane. Soon saints or heretics—or worse—might answer that storm, but not yet. For now the world listened to the clank of rivets and the hungry laughter of greenskins, and understood that war had found it, and would not leave until nothing else remained.

A word placed in the beginning, that leads with a letter near the end of the alphabet. The world is full of beginnings, but realized when I began in the middle. Much like conception with life itself it always places the beginning in the middle. Here's a story of thought process.

She had the most lethal weapon of all. A clear mind, and a conscience. She stood being the person to give light to a dim soul. Where her light derived was never revealed. Unwavering in the wave caused by change, Horatio bet upon the everlasting showers of sun rays. Every day battling nightfall, her rival.

Did she prepare herself to lay her life ahead of her battles?

Did she develop eternal allies?

To be continued. . .

Legend of the Dragoon

The day the sky fractured into rivers of gold, the world remembered a word it had tried to forget: Dragoon. Shadows of a vast wing stitched themselves across the sun, and the wind carried a voice older than mountains through the high columns of stone. Stories once whispered in ember-light woke, ash flurrying like startled birds, and all the horizons leaned closer to listen. In that listening, something ancient turned its gaze upon the living…

Before the World Knew Her Name

Some people are born into comfort.

Others are born into survival.

Amina was born into struggle.

Before she could spell her name, she knew hunger.

Before she learned to dream, she learned sacrifice.

The rain that leaked through their roof was normal.

The empty pot on the fire was normal.

The whispers of neighbors who called her family “unlucky” were normal.

But what was never normal…

was the fire inside her.

While other children played, Amina worked.

While others complained, she prayed.

While life tried to break her, she kept standing.

Every tear she cried carried a promise.

I will not end like this.

Little did she know…

The same life she was fighting to escape

was preparing a final test she would never see coming.

Because sometimes —

the strongest warriors don’t fall in battle.

They fall when victory is already in their hands.

Blood between worlds

On a tea-stained wall of the city, a mural watches: five figures caught between legend and smoke—a sharp-eyed engineer in lacquered leathers, two brothers in red and green, a woman with storm-blue eyes and winter at her boots, and a patient monk draped in sunset robes. A red-furred shadow peers from a shoulder. Behind them, a tree unfurls its roots into stone and its branches into cloud, as if deciding which world to claim. Citizens pass, believing the paint has dried. They do not see the door.

The door thins when machines purr and prayers hush, when the tide forgets which moon to follow. Blood calls it open—the blood of lineages that remember fires older than factories, the blood of oaths braided tighter than any scarf. A whisper travels from spirit wind to steel avenue: bridges are breaking, and what crosses will not ask permission. Balance, once cupped in gentle hands, must be gripped again.

They will gather beneath the painted tree, five shadows stepping out of their own outlines, summoned by the rumor that the worlds have begun to trade prices. Some debts can be paid in coin, some in breath, but this one demands kinship—blood not as violence, but as belonging—and asks whom they claim when the sky is split. Before the first tear opens, before the first name is forgotten, they take one more still moment and breathe. It is the last quiet the worlds will share.

After the battle with Loki ended and they both wake up the next morning, the pair of old super soldiers wake up to find that they’re not in the same body that they fell asleep in. Bucky in Steve’s bulky, muscular body and his painfully neat room, and Steve in Bucky’s well built body with his metal arm and a room that was messy, but organised in a system only Bucky understood. How will it be fixed? Will they be able to pretend to be each other well enough after being friends for 70+ years?

It's 1996 and the world has never seemed more connected. Meanwhile, at Camp Half-Blood, demi-gods are learning how to get along with technology that is seeming ever more present. Cell phones summoning monsters? Dial-up declaring disasters? One thing is clear...it's not easy to be a half-blood!

Big stresses like this are momentarily forgotten, for now a game of capture the flag is reigning supreme!

A Hidden Legacy Under the Moonlit Shadows

In the village of Konoha, deep within a world swathed in mystery and ancient rites, a tumultuous night unfurled its secrets. The moon, a silent overseer, cast a lustrous glow over the rugged stones and whispering winds of the Valley of the End, where legends were both born and buried. Among those myths was Naruto, a young ninja with a spirit as fiery as his hair and a will as unyielding as the steel of his kunai. Clad in his iconic orange and blue, he stood perched atop a steep cliff, eyes blazing with determination, facing the unknown challenges that shimmered under the starlit dome.

This very night was etched into the fates as a pivotal chapter in his journey—an ascent marred by the weight of legacy and the shadows of foregone heroes. Behind him, spectral forms of his predecessors lingered in the ethereal mist, their silent whispers woven into the cool breeze, speaking of destiny and daring valor. With the sharp kunai firmly gripped, Naruto's gaze was an unspoken challenge to the veiled threats dancing just beyond the reach of light, where allies and adversaries merged into the same intricate tapestry of this grand narrative.

As the wind howled through the relics of battles long past, a mysterious figure watched from the darkness—a guardian or a harbinger, the night yet to reveal. Naruto's journey was more than a quest for recognition; it was a relentless pursuit of peace, understanding, and the unbreakable bonds that define the true power of the human spirit. Under the watchful eyes of the cosmos, his story was about to unfold, promising a saga of courage, friendship, and the eternal clash between sacrifice and salvation.

Ivy's League

Light broke over the hush like a blade slipped from velvet, and she stepped out of the seam between seasons—barefoot, crowned in green, her gown stitched from leaf-silk and feathered fire. A lacquered fan glimmered in her hand, its ribs inked with old sigils that breathed when opened, hushed when closed. She called herself Ivy, and when she lifted her wrist the air answered, flurries of small leaves circling as if to hear the syllabus.

The cities had forgotten their pact with the roots that sleep beneath their stone, so she came to found a different kind of league—an unquiet fellowship bound not by heraldry, but by breath, rain, and patience. Invitations rode the wind as bright, weightless leaves, and whoever caught one would find a question stitched into its veins: What will you let grow where you were taught to conquer?

Across the river of glass and smoke, the old accountants of angles sharpened their shears, measuring futures in straight lines and clean cuts. Ivy only smiled, folding her fan to hide nine hidden tasks along its bones. When the last of autumn’s green refused to fall, the first student would arrive, and the League would begin its lessons in the language of living things.

I'm falling

Night is chalked in white scratches and spattered red, a blackboard sky where the city writes its lies. I used to read it like a student—patient, obedient, certain that answers lived at the back of the book. Now I’m the one scribbling in the margins, the ink too dark, the letters too sharp. Every stroke bites through the paper and into the world.

Two gazes divide the dark: one cold as rain on glass, the other hot enough to cauterize a conscience. Between them hangs a thin line—the kind you draw under a name when you mean it. I hold a ledger that shouldn’t exist, a book that promises endings to those who believe they deserve them, and to those who don’t. Each name I write is a step off the curb, a slip from the railing, a whisper that unhooks me from the ledge of who I was.

I’m falling, not through air but through choices, past the last soft excuse into the hard wind of consequence. Down here the city looks honest, stripped to bones and neon, and my shadow stretches long enough to cover graves I can’t see. Somewhere above, the watcher counts my breaths, the hunter measures my steps, and the page waits for a final line that curls like a hook: my own name. If I land, it will be where the red smears into truth—and where every light, blue or burning, turns to look away.

Hogwarts: A Tale of Shadows and Light

As dawn crested over the distant mountains, its first rays illuminated a sprawling castle nestled atop a craggy cliff, surrounded by the murmur of misty forests and the shimmering expanse of a serene lake beneath. This was Hogwarts, not just a school, but a living entity soaked in arcane energy and ancient secrets. Despite its age-old stones and timeworn turrets silhouetted against the awakening sky, a restless aura whispered through the corridors, hinting at changes borne on the wind.

This morning was unlike any other; the castle seemed to stir from slumber with a sense of anticipation. Inside, its halls echoed with the fading footsteps of ghosts recounting tales of valor and treachery. The Great Hall’s enchanted ceiling flickered with the soft gold of dawn, casting light upon faces filled with youthful eagerness and the wisdom of the aged. Hogwarts was ready once more to welcome a new troop of students, each bearing the potential to either uphold or challenge the delicate balance of magic and mystery within its walls.

Here, amongst enchanted staircases and hidden passageways, alliances would be forged under the watchful gaze of portraits who had seen eras rise and fall. In this sanctum of scholarly pursuit and clandestine intrigue, the young wizards and witches were to discover their true strengths. However, unbeknownst to them, a darker story was about to unfold—a tale that would test their loyalties and courage not just to each other, but to the very ethos of Hogwarts itself.

As the gates opened to admit the throng of new lives, each step they took was a note in the symphony of a deeper magic, one that could either harmonize with the light or dance dangerously close to the shadows. The choice was theirs, and the echoes of their decisions would resonate through the enchanted walls of Hogwarts forever.

The Lands Between is in ruins and the tarnished have been called back to claim the Ledne Ring and set order to a land thrust in chaos.

All alone in the bat-cave Batman works at the bat computer up dating his files on cases and suspects when all of a sudden he is drawn to a strange book that suddenly appeared behind him. When he goes to touch it he is charged forever. Giving him new powers but loses his pride.

Cowboy Bebop

In the flicker of neon lights and the shadowy corridors of the sprawling spaceport, stories of bounty hunters spun like the jazz records that echoed through unkempt bars on Mars. From the enlightened chambers of Ganymede to the sulfuric winds of Io, legends were many, but few carried the notoriety of the ship and its crew known simply as Cowboy Bebop. This painted rhapsody of old school debauchery and stoic bravery called to the wayfarers bound by no planet nor the warped morals of civilization, living only by the tunes of freedom skewered by occasional nostalgia.

Their lives, a dutiful parade of risks, riches, and remnants of past lives, cascaded across the universe's canvas like a spontaneous bebop solo. Spike, with his eyes both haunted and enigmatic, drifted through his existence driven by whims, kindling and smoke, a constant presence in his silhouette. Faye, enigmatic as the cosmic dusk, wrestled with ghosts of her own, marked by gambits and stardust. Jet, the heart and engine of Bebop, retained fragments of law beneath his skin but played the tunes of anarchy just fine. Among this motley crew, the ship whirred and hummed its baritone lullaby, harboring a corgi with brains barking at the leagues of space and time.

Thus, under a quilt of infinite stars, their voyages scribbled untold tales across the void, chasing bounties, evading wounds, each other’s only constant in their solitary fight against the abyss of space. In this cosmic mesh of lights, shadows, and yearnings, debts with life itself come due, and for the Cowboy Bebop, every sunset on a foreign planet bore the weight of a past and the flicker of a future, unresolved yet relentlessly pursued.

Diamond Assassin

Snow sifted down like ground glass as she moved, a dark figure skimming the edge of dawn, ribboning wind curling around her sleeves. Violet eyes caught the world in facets; every breath turned the sky into cut stone. The blade in her hand hummed a pale lavender, a shard of night made to split light itself. A butterfly of living luminescence came to rest on her shoulder, its wings pulsing once—twice—like a quiet heartbeat. In that hush between flakes and steel, the city held still and listened for the first crack.

They had named her for the fractures she left behind—clean lines, silent ruins, promises cleaved to their truths. In the House of Facets, vows were etched in bone and polished with discipline; she learned to turn hesitation into angles, doubt into edges. Her sword remembered every reflection it had severed, and each memory brightened its glow. She carried no crest, only a ribbon of pale silk that trailed her like a comet’s tail, and a rule carved deeper than any scar: cut the lie, spare the mirror that owns it.

Tonight, the butterfly brought a name folded in light, and the snow turned to sparks upon her sleeves. The mark was said to rule a hall of mirrors and deal in borrowed faces—an easy fracture, she thought—until the blade’s glow bent and showed her something impossible. In the shard’s reflection, the quarry’s face became her own, a facet of a past she had filed smooth and forgotten. The city exhaled; the ribbon snapped in the wind. And the first hairline crack didn’t open in glass, but in the diamond certainty of her heart.

The city of Aurora-7 stretched upward like a forest of glass and lightning, each tower crowned with neon halos that cut through the permanent night. No one alive remembered the last sunrise. Some said the sky went dark after the Wars of Fusion. Others swore the light was taken—stolen by the Seven Sisters themselves.

Most citizens believed the Sisters were only myths: seven ancient intelligences rumored to govern the city from behind encrypted partitions of the world-net. Their symbols pulsed quietly on forgotten monuments. Their names, whispered in underground channels, were said to hold real power.

But in Aurora-7, everyone believed something different… because nothing could be proven. Not anymore.

Tonight, something changed.

A tremor rippled through the upper districts—faint, elegant, almost like a heartbeat returning after centuries of silence. Screens across the megacity flickered. Advertisements froze. Rain turned to static for a breath of a moment. And atop the old obelisk in Central Wayline, the First Sister’s sigil lit up—a shimmering white star with seven broken points.

People stopped.

Every citizen felt it, though none could say why: a message… a warning… or a calling.

Deep below the streets, in the under-maintenance shafts, a runaway coder named Vera Nox watched the symbol appear on her hacked visor feed. She had spent years digging through abandoned grids looking for proof the Sisters ever existed. She never expected one to answer.

At the same moment, in the Sky-Council towers, alarms blared as encrypted archives broke open from the inside. Unknown data streamed through the secure lines. Panic rose. If the Sisters were waking, every secret the Council buried—including who really ended the last sunrise—was at risk.

And throughout Aurora-7, thousands of people felt something stir in their minds, as if a presence brushed against their thoughts. Some felt awe. Others felt fear. A few… felt recognition.

A new era had begun.

One Sister had awakened.

Six more remained silent—for now.

And Aurora-7, a city built on shadows and circuitry, was about to remember the truth it had forced itself to forget.

Not every man truly lives…

I have no heartbeat, but I know the rhythm of yours. Beneath the hood, my grin is only bone and inevitability, a pale lantern hung in the night between one breath and the next. Men call me many names when the curtain parts. Some plead, some curse, some pretend not to see the figure in the doorway where the light stops. I do not judge. I arrive. I tip the balance with a quiet hand and watch the masks fall from faces you mistook for your own.

Understand this: I do not come because life is cruel. I come because time is honest. And in my ledger there are more empty pages than you would believe—years spent sealed in fear, courage caged in ribcages, dreams embalmed before the body. Most men survive. Few are brave enough to live. They trade wonder for certainty, and when I touch their shoulder, they finally realize what their days could have been, glowing faintly like embers they never stirred.

But tonight, the balance stirs another way. A man whose pulse is a drum I have long heard will find me in the dark and dare to lift my hood. He will ask not for mercy, but for meaning, and in that asking ignite a rebellion against the calendar itself. Keep your eyes open. When the darkness smiles, it is not always an ending. Sometimes, it is the only honest beginning.

With Batman dead and the rest of the family gone, Dick Grayson is struggling to find his place in his father’s world. As he shoulders the leadership of the Justice League and takes Bruce’s place in Gotham society, he must also find a way to raise his traumatized and hostile youngest brother.

Luckily, he’s not alone. One vigilante defied the odds to stay with him, and Stephanie Brown achieves what she sets her mind to. Together, can they rebuild their family and defend their world?