1 - 20 of 29 Works by pretentiousashell
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Damien follows the pull of fate to the decrepit space station known locally as "Twelve"—although his relationship with fate is more literal than most. And yet, Damien's presence seldom means that anything good is about to happen. Once there, he is tasked with unraveling the mystery of Twelve's inexplicably decaying orbit, but the people on Twelve have hidden agendas of their own.
Celestine's family has been able to talk to ghosts for as long as she can remember, and even if they typically prefer to converse with her more charismatic brother, Celestine has a particular talent for exorcism. But something is wrong with the ghosts on Twelve—they're deteriorating at a much more accelerated rate than they should, and she has no idea why or how to help them.
As Damien and Celestine's paths orbit one another, they must disentangle Twelve's mysteries before time runs out.
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Make the People Grotesques by pretentiousashell
Fandoms: 龍が如く | Ryuu ga Gotoku | Yakuza (Video Games)
07 May 2025
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Now, Kiryu descended into a flat, eerie sort of calm. “I have to make things right.”
Staring, Majima searched him for the falsehood that must be present in such a statement, seeking the resentment that must be boiling just beneath the surface.
He didn’t find it.
Fascinated, disgusted, Majima whispered, “You really, really mean that, don’t you?”
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Like the Wanting Monster by pretentiousashell
Fandoms: 龍が如く | Ryuu ga Gotoku | Yakuza (Video Games)
17 Feb 2025
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He watched Saejima get dragged away again, and Majima knew he wouldn’t look back, so he didn’t hope for it.
The fact that the pigs were after Kiryu too was the fucking cherry on top of it all, insult to injury after injury. Majima shut his eye, let his head thunk back against Kiryu’s door in overwhelming exhaustion. He didn’t know how many more times he had it in him to watch them turn their backs, didn’t know if there’d be anything left of him in their excessive wakes, scraped clean with their twin exits like the forsaken thing he was.
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“You won’t find him here,” Chiyoh says with an idle sort of distaste.
“And why is that?”
She weighs her response. “I saw him go.”
He is going to find Will. In the pigpen, Hannibal had gained a remarkable sense of clarity, and he has decided that he needs Will as animals generally require oxygen. He, evidently, cannot survive their separation—or he at least refuses to.
A Digestivo AU in which Will decides it's high time to cut and run.
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"I am a stranger to you.”
“Are we still strangers?” Will asked.
“I occasionally entertain the thought that we cannot claim to know any separate self,” Hannibal nodded at the space between them, “but I also confess that I only entertain this thought insomuch that I might endeavor to disprove it.”
“Well,” Will said, not without humor, nor without cruelty, “to separate selves.”
Will and Hannibal attempt to roleplay as strangers meeting at a bar.
Series
- Part 2 of And whom I will bite so there's blood
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“You’re happy,” Will says with disbelief.
“I believe, in fact, that I am.”
Will shakes his head in wordless rejection. “I should’ve killed us,” he says.
Now, Hannibal does look at him. His smile is easy, but his eyes hint at the precipice of danger. Another fall, perhaps, whose consequences neither of them can quite stomach yet. “You still can.”
Series
- Part 1 of And whom I will bite so there's blood
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Morbidly curious, Goro reached out, pushing a hand through Ren’s hair. Ren only shivered.
“Well,” Goro whispered, withdrawing. “Well.”
So, he was dead. He was lingering. He supposed that he was panicking, that he was floundering, that he was perhaps even dissociating, but could one experience any of those things, truly, if one were dead?
When reality returns to normal, Akechi haunts the living.
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“Nobody seems to know what to do with you. When I received the call, the warden seemed bewildered that you were even here at all.” It was a phone call that Naoto would not soon forget—the chilling way that the warden seemed to continually forget what he was asking mid-sentence, unable to latch onto Akechi’s name as if his existence was something contingent on his direct and immediate presence.
Akechi bared his teeth, eyes in shadow. “Nobody has ever known what to do with me,” he said, voice dripping acid.
“Then, this should be refreshing for you,” he said, delighting in the way that Akechi’s gaze sharpened as Naoto plucked a nonexistent piece of lint from his coat. “You’re coming with me. To Inaba.”
At the end of P5R, the world forgets Akechi.
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“So… What the hell is this? It looks like you’re having some—uh—trouble.”
Minkowski scrubbed a hand across her face before planting both hands on the ground behind her, leaning back onto them. “Don’t laugh.”
“Only if it’s not funny.”
Pained, Minkowski forced a smile that looked more like a grimace than anything else. “It’s supposed to be a treadmill.”
Lovelace and Minkowski, after it all, versus the treadmill.
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Unmade by pretentiousashell
Fandoms: 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
07 Nov 2020
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Endeavor was dead. The skeleton of hero society would crumble at the slightest breath. He rolled the information over and over in his head, letting his limbs begin to unstiffen, like a thing coming to life for the very first time. He didn’t owe the rotten world a single concession of anything anymore. He could watch it all turn to ash, could be that ash, and all he would feel would be numb euphoria, he knew.
“Dabi,” Compress said behind him, and Dabi let his head bow forward.
“I can’t tell him."
In which, after the War Arc, Shigaraki is the only one who didn't get to witness Dabi's identity reveal.
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Truths Would be Tales by pretentiousashell
Fandoms: ジョジョの奇妙な冒険 | JoJo no Kimyou na Bouken | JoJo's Bizarre Adventure
17 Oct 2020
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Extras from IBYF, ITF, and WTW.
Series
- Part 5 of Orphan Heirs of Fixed Destiny
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Hail Infernal World by pretentiousashell
Fandoms: 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
27 Aug 2020
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“You play a fool’s version of a game I was forged to beat. This will not end how you think. For either of you.”
“And how,” Hawks ground out, “do you think it’s going to end?”
“Dust to dust, and all that,” Tomura said, feeling his smile stretch into something ghastly.
Series
- Part 2 of What though the field be lost?
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Neck of Gold & Heart of Stars by pretentiousashell
Fandoms: Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek
18 Aug 2020
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There was Michael, rejected from her first dream—her first love, found in the stars—and scrambling to protect her next dream—her second love, found in the rush of blood in her veins and bruises on her skin.
There was Michael, winning.
She was here at the Federation’s Twenty-Second Olympics, and she was wearing the red robes of Vulcan, and she may have even belonged here.
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Just Shy of Tangible by pretentiousashell
Fandoms: 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
13 Aug 2020
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Now, they stared at each other, and Shouta bizarrely thought that he could identify an expression through the inky mist of Kurogiri’s face. The sickly glow of his eyes flickered and, slowly, he extended a hand.
Shouta took it numbly. Kurogiri’s hand was freezing. It felt like a haunting parody of something sickeningly familiar. Mist coalesced into condensation too firm to be real, the ghostly imitation of fingers and a palm, and Shouta gripped it much too tightly, but Kurogiri did not react.
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Into the Inferno by pretentiousashell
Fandoms: 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
21 Jul 2020
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“I have less reason than anyone to stray to villainy,” she managed, desperately trying to change the subject. “What do you imagine that I would even say to convince them that I wanted to join them?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps that you’ve seen firsthand how deep the corruption of hero society runs, that you’ve tried to fix it and have never fully succeeded by working from the inside. Or, perhaps that you’re simply tired of living in Dabi’s shadow.”
Fuyumi flinched.
She took an easy step back. “Just a few examples, off the top of my head.”
A roleswap au where Fuyumi and Dabi are a pro hero duo.
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Nameless in Dark Oblivion by pretentiousashell
Fandoms: 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
05 Jun 2020
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“I was always going to be able to corrupt myself a little too willingly for this mission, I guess,” he mused, more to himself than to Dabi, like a revelation that required a voice to be understood. “I can’t be their hero anymore.”
Dabi’s blood ran cold as he finally recognized the source of the discordance hanging over the confrontation. That Hawks didn’t look like a hero about to die for one of his stupid causes. No, he looked like a soldier. Proud. Condemned. Sightless. The flames in his hands sputtered and died at the confusion of it.
He knew the skeleton of Hawks’ history, knew enough to know the name he’d given up, a name ripped from his bones. He did not know enough to understand the picture before him.
When Hawks is declared dead, he and Dabi start to work together, for real this time.
Series
- Part 1 of What though the field be lost?
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Amalgamations of Ghosts by pretentiousashell
Fandoms: 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
04 May 2020
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A fierce protectiveness rose up in him, stronger than the inclination to give substance to the void in his chest. Oboro thought that maybe if he held a mirror up to his heart, he’d see a rage at the injustice done unto him, a reflection of the stoniness creeping into Izuku’s face before him.
“I’m not going to forget what made me, but I’m also never going to be that thing again. I’ll read my books. I’ll make my coffee.”
A muscle in Izuku’s jaw jumped, and when he spoke again, it was with an uncertain, soft sort of bubbling anger that couldn’t be directed at anything but the inevitability of an unchangeable situation. “So, you give up your dream.”
“You find a new dream, Izuku.”
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Broken Time Is Not the Only Thing by pretentiousashell for cathpalugs
Fandoms: ジョジョの奇妙な冒険 | JoJo no Kimyou na Bouken | JoJo's Bizarre Adventure
21 Mar 2020
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Narancia stayed silent at his side, an absent presence set to make his bones ache. As if he were a century old instead of just eighteen.
He had a role to play in this miming dance, just out of reach of his vague and haunting memory. He knew the steps like he knew Narancia.
Mista and Narancia get a second chance.
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Witness the World by pretentiousashell
Fandoms: ジョジョの奇妙な冒険 | JoJo no Kimyou na Bouken | JoJo's Bizarre Adventure
28 Feb 2020
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“The arrows?”
“The arrows,” Giorno agreed. He closed his eyes.
Trish and Sheila E exchanged a glance. The thing with the arrows had ended ages ago, they’d thought. They’d thought that Giorno would stop hearing and seeing things from the other stand arrows after he’d fully united with the Requiem arrow, but every now and then, something would cast doubt on that certainty.
After I'll Be Your Foil, Trish navigates the realities of the stand arrows.
Series
- Part 4 of Orphan Heirs of Fixed Destiny
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That Dreamers Often Lie by pretentiousashell
Fandoms: ジョジョの奇妙な冒険 | JoJo no Kimyou na Bouken | JoJo's Bizarre Adventure
16 Feb 2020
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Mista took the opportunity of the mandated silence to set his magazine aside, studying Narancia’s features as he listened, half-enraptured, half-smug. He was horribly passionate about every single thing he did. Sometimes, it made Mista feel like he was living a hollow version of a life, like just existing in the brightness of Narancia’s periphery was enough to reduce him to a silhouette.
Mista and Narancia figure out how to be in love with each other.
Series
- Part 3 of Orphan Heirs of Fixed Destiny