Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/ works/13618503. Rating: Explicit Archive Warning: Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Major_Character_Death, No_Archive Warnings_Apply, Rape/Non-Con, Underage Category: F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi Fandom: Devilman_(Anime_&_Manga), Devilman_Crybaby Relationship: Asuka_Ryo_|_Satan_&_Fudo_Akira, Asuka_Ryo_|_Satan/Fudo_Akira, Kuroda "Miko"_Miki/Makimura_Miki Character: Asuka_Ryo_|_Satan, Fudo_Akira, Kuroda_"Miko"_Miki, Makimura_Miki, Lot's of_OC's Additional Tags: agnst, slow_built, Intersex_Character, Hermaphrodites, Canon_Gay Characters, Canon_Bisexual_Characters, Fix-it_fic, Ryo_is_a_drama_queen, Akira_has_major_ptsd_and_needs_a_hug_and_therapy, BAMF_Miki, Miko_is_a snake, Angel's, Christianity_mythology, Islamic_Mythology, Abrahamic Mythology, hebrew_mythology, Mesopotamian_Mythology_-_Freeform, morality grey_characters, smart_Akira, Ryo_won't_be_easily_forgivin, God_is_MIA, God_need's_a_break Stats: Published: 2018-02-13 Updated: 2018-03-08 Chapters: 2/? Words: 5042 ****** Not Today, Satan ****** by Lenia Summary Akira's dead, Satan suffers, and the Earth is destroyed. Rinse and repeat until Satan receives divine intervention to save himself and Akira from their personal hell through dreams and memories. Now that Ryo remembers everything from the previous time loop he is prepared to fix his mistakes and be with Akira! That might get in the way now that Akira remembers absolutely everything and make things between them a "tiny" bit more complicated. Notes IT'S DONE!!! The first chapter of my story "Not Today, Satan" has been posted! Oh my god it's been two years since I written anything and posted on this website and its good to be back! I thank HEAVILY for my amazing beta Martherat!!! https://martherat.tumblr.com/ and this is mine http:// ariessy.tumblr.com/ as for https://ultrainstinctkaka.tumblr.com/ with all your ideas and input and https://amanoflamancha.tumblr.com/ with the angel lore! THANK YOU GUYSSS <3 <3 <3 I have big plans for this fanfiction and thank you, everyone, for your love and support and Martherat, without you my fanfic wouldn't come alive as it did with your help :) See the end of the work for more notes ***** Lucifer ***** "I take it back!" Satan screamed into the broken atmosphere. His cries overshadowed by the chorus of celestial bodies crashing down to earth like meteorites. "Please...God...I repent!" The angel sobbed cradling Akira's cold dead body in his arms. He knew God could hear him. That old fuck, he was getting a show out of all of this. The Earth shook, trembled and cracked, around him as if the Earth was giving its final last breath until it would die. His wails and sobs were getting lost in the middle of the destruction and suddenly he felt even worse. This is not what he had wanted, not this way. He was supposed to be powerful and to be outside God’s domain. He had done everything he could think of and yet… Why couldn’t Akira see it? Why couldn’t he understand? His tears were blurring his vision and the pain in his heart surpassing the limits of his body as he roared into the starry abyss. However, no one was there to hear it. It was just him and everything was crumbling apart in front of his eyes. Do demons have hearts? Do they feel love? Akira’s voice reverberated in his head like a song because now he knew for sure what Akira finally meant. "Please...Akira...” the angel sobbed, pleading the corpse that had stiffened in his arms with the rigor mortis already making his fingers twitch and bend in odd angels. His eyes. His eyes that were once passionate earthy brown now stared dully into oblivion. Those eyes that used to say so much from just one look and that used to glint so easily were now empty like two marbles. Those eyes were just making the roots of his misery dig even deeper, far deeper. He put a hand on his cheek in a foolish attempt to feel some type of warmth. “Akira,” he whispered again “was it my fault? Did I really cause all this to you?” He couldn’t see himself but he already knew how much he was crying and he wasn’t even surprised that it was happening, he felt no shame. He had lost that long ago. And even if he still had shame, there was no space for it now, his heart was flooding with despair and a sorrow so heavy he was sure angels could feel now, that angels had a heart of their own. Or at least he did. You are crying too, Ryo a childish and wavering voice appeared. He had denied it so heartily that one time but now if admitting it was going to bring Akira back he would do it. After all, he was starting to believe that himself, he wouldn’t be lying and Akira would gladly appreciate some honesty, right? “Is that what you want?” He snapped in a new outburst of emotions fueling him to do something but he still didn’t know exactly what. “Is it?! Then yes! I am, I’m crying Akira. Look at me! I’m even worse than you so please… just…” his voice barely above a whisper by the end. Sobbing, hopelessly bawling tears streaming down his porcelain face like rain while holding a dead body that meant much more than any possible living thing. His beloved Akira, the one he was cradling, rigid and pale but still precious. A flap of wings followed by a bright wave of light and heat appeared behind him and he tightened his hold on Akira's torso. Satan curled his wings around the both of them like a mother bird would do protecting their young from a predator. Satan curled himself protectively as the lonely cliff he was lying on trembled around him. The feeling of a frightening familiar presence filled him with trepidation and a sensation of nausea that made his core burn. “I don’t know what hurts me more, seeing you go through this again or seeing humanity go through it again,” said a sad voice, one he already knew. And then, suddenly, in an instant shorter than a second, the chaos stopped. Time had frozen with the rocks no longer flying across Earth, the volcanoes ceased their final eruption and the heavenly bodies hovered like glowing disks above the cracked stratosphere before they descended. Satan looked warily around him while holding Akira tightly. The voice he thought he had long forgotten still had the same characteristic tone, that worried sound made people think she cared. He was wrong, he hadn’t forgotten it. “I have come here so many times already and yet you are always the same by the time I arrive, crying over Amon’s body and making promises you never fulfill. It quite suits you” It's unmistakable. He didn't have to lift his head to know who was behind him. Actually, he didn’t want to lift it either, the darkness behind his long and heavy wings was giving him a false sense of safeness. A sense that it was only him, Akira and him, just the two of them. The darkness behind his wings hid him from reality and from the weight of his actions. But the only thing he couldn’t pretend there was Akira’s death. Akira was dead. He had left him, twice. And if he didn’t love him enough he could swear he was feeling anger all over again. But it wasn’t resentment, or at least that’s what he thought, it was sorrow and disappointment because Akira had chosen those humans instead of him. It was that, but he was seeing how those feelings had been wearing a mask before, camouflaging themselves as anger and hunger for power. And, even if he wanted to avoid the encounter waiting for him behind his small haven, he couldn’t. She wouldn’t let him. "What do you want...Gabriel?" The smaller angel pressed her full lips together and swallowed thickly at the way her name had been pronounced by the other. Full of acid and venom and pure loathing. As if he took her name and spat it back out in disgust. She would not falter, it had been too long since... "You care about what someone else but you want? If that was the truth then this wouldn't have happened all over again" Satan glared beneath the feathers of his wings to look at her. She hasn't changed one bit since he'd fallen. The same heavy silver plated armor and the blue tunic she wore underneath were shinning with the flames around them and the lights floating in the blood-red sky. Gabriel's six wings and halo overshadowed her body with an aura of light making her dark skin shimmer like a polished smoky quartz. Her lips curled into a crestfallen frown and her amber eyes were downcast. Gabriel did not look at him in the eye, she didn’t want to. She made her eyes travel far away from her brother as if she was being modest, averting her gaze because of his nudity or because he is just too pitiful to be seen. She let out a deep sigh of utter defeat and took in the burning world around her,” It will never stop, you will never stop. You'll keep destroying yourself until you get what you want and it won't be enough! Like that poor creature you have in your arms." She pointed at the mutilated human corpse, ignoring the icy glare from her brother. "And honestly I don't know how much more of this I can take" she finished, just above a whisper. She traced her coily, brown hair with her left hand and decided to look at the destruction around her again since that was still a better option than looking at the shadow of who she once had called her most precious brother. "Lucifer, do you really want to take it back?" she asks him while hoping for some sincerity this time around. "Satan." "What?" “Call me Satan.” The winged figure on the ground hissed, cold and threatening, again peeking from behind his large wings. His eyes were narrowed, rigid, cold, hard. His glare only intensified when she began speaking. "Satan...?” She repeated slowly, savoring it and frowned deeply. "Satan? Is that what you call yourself now? Is this what you have truly become?! Have you truly turned your back on us?" "I wasn't the first one to turn my back" He answers with sharp bitterness lacing his voice even in the midst of his despair and anger, even as he feels something inside of him twisting and turning he still resents her and cannot stop himself from showing it. Actually, he wants to show it because he wants her to hurt as much as he had, to experience what he had. "I wasn't the one to cast someone and I was surely not the one to betray my brother". Gabriel feels something inside of her writhe in disgust and pain because even though she has done this so many times, it still feels like the first time all over again. She cannot get used to her brother's suffering grimace with his reddening eyes and tear-stained face. She cannot get over the fact that part of it, in her mind, it's her fault. "You're right," she whispered. "On that day you wished for me to join you..." she closed her eyes at the memory of the day in when she had averted her hand from his own outstretched one. "Even if I had joined you, you would have never listened to reason. You were too far gone, your quest to defeat God was too strong for me to try to do something. And for what? To carve up a scrap of land to call it your own? To be God of ashes? If I had joined you, I would've ended up like that boy!" "Coward! You've always been one! And an envious one at that. Do you think I never realized how you were hoping for my demise?" Satan growled back at the girl who just couldn't stop herself from wondering if he had always been like this or if it was his hunger for power that had made him this way. "Who was the one that got the most benefit from my fall? You think I didn't know?" the demon continued spitting while ignoring how he was breaking the girl's heart all over again. "I've got no one now, I had someone that had made me forget the pain of oblivion, the pain of being thrown aside and disposed of as if I was nothing, do you think I care about whatever you have to say?" "Don't play the victim, you brought this on yourself!" she retorted, her tone final and cutting like a blade. Her heart ached and she glanced at the human hidden by Satan's wings. "I doubt you cared about what he had to say." She said spitefully. "I cared! Of course, I did but he did the same as you, he turned his back to me" Satan cried pain naked on his face. Something she had seen already in all the times before one but it still didn’t make it less grievous. Satan hugged the cold limp body in his arms closer to him and covered it again with his wings. He didn't want Gabriel to see him, he didn't want her to know about Akira because it felt as if he was sharing him and the thought despised him, Akira was only his. He caressed his face with his long fingers staring into Akira's eye's were dull and lifeless like a china doll. "I would have given him the world and everything he wanted..." he whispered tearfully, plaintively.   "Then, what would you do if I gave you another opportunity, another chance so that you can show him that instead of—" And she stays quiet for a second because she doesn't know how to put in a phrase everything that happened and everything her brother had done to that poor soul. "Instead of what you did show him" Gabriel finishes, making the offer completely official and leaving the decision to her brother. Gabriel kneels down in front of him and notices how after taking a look at her armor, Satan crawls back away from her. She thinks it is because she looks imposing or perhaps it's because he seems more vulnerable than ever with his wings wrapping both him and the already dead human in his arms. “In exchange for what?” A small voice comes from under the pristine white feathers. Even if it sounds so out character and nothing like the Lucifer she remembers, she knows it’s him, after all, there’s no one else but them in the middle of all the desolation. “In exchange for leaving this planet at peace.” She said diplomatically. She looks up at the infinite stars above them and the horde of angels remained frozen, hovering above them frozen in time because of her own will. “There is no more I can do brother, God is too strong and he’ll never stop and there is no more than I can do but give you the gift of dreams.” “You are going to help me? That’s a good joke, should I feel grateful?” It was in comments like this that Gabriel saw how much her brother had changed but also how much he had stayed the same. He had always been temperamental and in possession of the biggest drive, she had ever witnessed, more than hers, more than Michael’s. But she had decided to give him a chance, to believe in him for once. “Do I have to believe this change of heart came because you are generous and merciful and oh so understanding?” Satan added trying to balance any ulterior motives because it was extremely hard for him to believe that someone had no ulterior motives at all. She sighed, she can’t tell him the truth it will be too much and they don’t have time. “You’ll figure it out, you’ve always been smart” And with that Gabriel raised her dark hand to touch his white forehead, brushing his blonde bangs aside. A pulsating bright light blinded Satan he couldn’t see what was happening around him but he could feel the Earth moving and accommodating again. The skies, once plagued with darkness, were now becoming clear under the blinding light coming from Gabriel’s hand. “If you have any doubts remember you can always find me in your dreams, brother”. ***** Bits and Pieces ***** Chapter Summary HEYY!! Sorry its been awhile <3 school's been tough and everything happening especially with the Parkland shooting which hits home in so many levels because I'm a Floridain My school I'm part of the SGA Volunteering where we are going to organize the march on the 24 for March For Our Live which I am absolutely excited to be apart of^^ So I wanted to throw this quick chapter today because tomarrow im gonna be swamped with the 8 hour SGA meeting tomarrow ughhh Thank you so much to this is mine follow_me_on_tumblr_if_you_want! Ariessy https://martherat.tumblr.com/ My RP partner https://cuteshywriter.tumblr.com/ My editor Chapter Notes See the end of the chapter for notes Consciousness creeps over him slowly, sunlight hitting Ryo across his face burning his eyelids. Huffing in annoyance, he rolls over and instantly regrets that motion when a jolt of sharp pain sprung up from his back. He opens his eyes against the blinding sunlight filtering through the glass windows, hitting his face harshly and making him feel like an ant beneath a magnifying glass. "Did I oversleep?" he wonders allowed, taking note of the sun setting high in the middle of the sky and so realizing it’s noon already. He sits up rubbing his eyes lazily, trying to piece things together in his sleep-muddled mind that can't shake off the feeling of something is off. He found himself sleeping on his sofa, and he still had his clothes on from the night before. He attempts to get up trying to make sense of it all, his feet dragging, and he feels his back is very sore. The muscles on his back feel tender all over when he moved. He winces, stretching his body and feels a shock of pain travel up his rhomboid and down his lower spine, every movement making the pain flare worse. It feels as if parts of his skin's been ripped from his body or as if he'd been flayed. What exactly did I do last night? Ryo wonders in puzzlement. The utter sense of wrongness and familiarity sets over him like a wave. He'd never blacked out before or had woken up with his back hurting him. Well not without reason. He's sure he hasn’t thrown his back out in any of his workouts. So why? Rubbing his temple in frustration trying desperately to clear his fogged mind, he decides he needs 100% Colombian coffee to clear his head. A flash of white appears right before his eyes and he feels his brain bleeding from the inside out. The jolts of rippling sensation shoot up his head and it was so deep and acute, he wanted to rip his own head off. He falls to his knees and his head finds the ground. Hard. But he doesn’t complain because that's a slight compared to the feeling of nails scratching the insides of his mind. He loses his senses. His mouth disconnects itself from his body and goes wild. He screams, the cry almost ripping his vocal cords to shreds. Ryo convulses into the floor and gripping his hair, yelling for it to stops. It doesn't and his mind is assaulted by onslaughts of ghastly images clawing its way into his consciousness, burrowing itself deeper and he sees visions. Horrible, distorted and nightmarish images flash before him like a montage appearing one after the other. He sees red, blood, demons, and war. It goes so fast he doesn’t have enough time to see neither of those images. He hears voices and they get louder and louder and he feels his brain being ripped apart as if someone was personally using his hands to put things back into place. He sees a dark hand and two ember eyes like twin suns. Those hands are taking something and putting it somewhere else. He feels that same hand clutching something within the depths of his memory, a place that not even himself knew of, and said hand puts whatever came out against the light. His stomach roils 's and he vomits into the floor, staining the white carpet. In his agony, he is able to understand. The voice rips into him with its words, slicing him raw and bloody but he can understand. Find me in your dreams a girl’s soft, sweet and helpful voice rips into his ear canals and tears his eardrums apart. It is with that he knows who the voice belongs to and whose hands he’s being tortured with. Brother Gabriel, he seethes when a wave impacts inside his head, a wave showing him more of what that hand had taken out of that very dark pit inside his own mind. =============================================================================== It hurt to open his eyes. He didn't want too. The pained feeling lingered on like something putting his brain on purée. His eyelids felt as if glued together and the slightest movement would reel him in more agony. He tries many times and, in every one of them, he feels his eyes rolling back. Yet his lids don’t separate. His head hurts too much to move, just like the rest of his body. Slowly, his senses started to report back to his brain and, once he felt assured, he tests the waters. Ryo's mouth tasted like stale vomit and Listerine when he moved his tongue around. His eyelids were looser, so he tries again. Slowly, Ryo opened his eyes slightly and he's grateful that everything was dark around him. Still, even with no light to stab his eyes, his eyes still ached. He gave himself ten seconds, then twenty and, finally, thirty to open his eyes fully, yet everything around him was blurry. Ryo's throat burns and even breathing was painful. He can feel his eyes watering as his throat contracts again, trying to make him barf even with an empty stomach. A cool cup of water placed on his parched lips and the liquid goes down slowly. "Drink" he hears a deep throaty voice of woman commands, but nonetheless drinks. The water soothes his throat and his insides but he coughs up painfully. Ryo's eyes met the wide, yellow-green eyes staring at him on a plastic, frozen face "Thanks, Jenny," he says, or tries to because in the middle of it he starts coughing again. He instinctively takes the glass of water back to his lips and gulps, holding his breath and trying to control the spasms going through his body. It's going to take a while until he can speak again normally, he figures. "You were found passed out next to the couch," she says behind her teeth yet still audible to his ears. She bends forward, not bothering to cover her breast peeking out of her dress shirt when bringing the blankets more around Ryo. "You've been out for eleven hours." "Eleven hours?" Ryo croaks out alarmed and winced. Eleven hours, he thinks. He feels shivers go up to his arm and quickly, but clumsily, searches for his phone to find it under his pillow. However, before he is able to use it, a piercing pang crosses his head again. His axis feels shifted and he uses his left hand to keep himself steady and in a sitting position. "Try to stay still," the woman says, her tone as monotone as always. He ignores her, swipes the screen with his thumb and his heart lurches. January 5, 2018 Ryo freezes. January 5, 2018 January 5, 2018 January 5, 2018 The date plays over and over again in his head and he drops the phone. He wails, clutching his head and curls over in the covers. His stomach twists again, threatening him. He has to go now because someone is waiting for him, someone ached to see. Akira, he thinks while getting up with wobbly legs. He stares at them with hatred, as if that was enough to make them obey. “You should rest,” the voice of his secretary says but she doesn’t try to stop him. Ryo gives her a glare that would make anyone else mind their own business immediately and continues. He doesn’t really need that with Jenny as she will always do what he orders her to do. However, he is not feeling well at all and definitely not in the mood to reason with her. “I can’t” and with that, he leaves. Stumbling, he gets to the bathroom and splashes cold water on his face in an attempt to clear the dizziness away. His breathing ragged and forced and he still has to remind himself to mind his throat. His head hangs and throbs on his tired shoulders. Carefully, he glances up in the mirror and just stares. There’s little to no light filtering through the curtains but it’s still enough to allow his to see what’s in front of him. His blood boils in disgust making his stomach turn because he despises what waits in the form of his reflection. The reflection was not of his. It couldn’t. It was too small. Too weak. Looking at his waxy complexion in the mirror, he trails down his hand to the side of his jaw. Ryo's face was the same, except for it was rounder and boyish. He absentmindedly directed his hand down to his chest, flat and solid with no softness of his breast to greet them. His skin looks dull and close to dead. It lacks the shimmer it used to have, a shimmer that used to make him look even greater. He frowns when that thought goes through his mind because he is not great now and he can’t stop himself from thinking that as his eyes go to his shoulders, waiting to see something that is not there. Not now at least. His right hand goes up because he thinks, for a second, that perhaps his eyes are lying to him. Ryo touches his shoulder and he has no more option than to accept it. The heavy and strong, yet soft and pliable pair of wings is missing and nowhere in sight. His second hand joins the other one in the search for his lost wings and it travels to its opposite shoulder. They are not there And the thought sounds like a death sentence. He feels even more pathetic looking into the mirror and catches his posture. He looks as if he was hugging himself, trying to make himself feel better after realizing he is back to nothing. He's human. And repulsion makes itself present again. He would blame his eyes because they too are different, so perhaps they can’t see clearly. But he’s not that pitiful. Because even though his eyes seem muted and dark, he knows his sight is fine. He knows that what he is seeing is the reality. And he fucking hates it and himself. Ryo tries to stand straighter, tries to make his posture compensate for everything he lacks. He bights back a yelp when the pain flares on his shoulder blades and the muscles prepare themselves for something greater. Yet he’s not going to do anything great, he’s just going to stand up straight. His muscles confirm him that extent of them is missing and he feels like crying in rage. Even though his whole back is preparing his stance, he cannot fly. Even though he stands straight and his legs feel stronger, assuring him support, it doesn’t matter because he doesn’t even have half the size he was used to be. And even though he still has many other assets, he feels incomplete and lacking. However, he knows is just transitory. He’s sure of that and so he decides to put his new frail image to good use. He looks at himself and decides to memorize this version of himself. He looks at everything but most importantly at what’s not there but should be. He observes the empty spaces with intensity and attention and he promises, no, he swears he’s going to change it. And may this feeble, fake rendering of what he used to become a good reminder of what he lost and what he has yet to achieve. He walks down the stairs and feels his chest aching. Ryo’s hand goes to his shirt and he clutches it, trying to make the pain in his body leave. But he can’t and he needs to stop in the middle of the staircase as the pain just grows stronger and stronger. He feels as if someone is pulling something inside him, something that makes he craved for someone. He clearly knows who that person is because soft, brown eyes come to his mind immediately. Ryo needs to see him. He needs to make sure Akira is fine. He gets to the end of the stairs and that’s when he wonders why. Why wouldn’t Akira be fine? He reasons. But he doesn’t have much time to think because his mind is invaded again as a fast flow of visions appear and then, suddenly, it stops in enough time for him to see it. It is just one but is the worst of them all and Ryo knows and his eyes water. Akira. Cold. Dead. Only half a torso and laying in his arms with his life extinguished. Gone, while Ryo is still there with only eternal loneliness to accompany him. No Akira is alive! He feels it in his bones and he aches to see him. Ryo makes a quick dash to his closet and grabs his guns and as much as he can stuff in his coat. He runs, not sparring to give Jenny a second glance, ignoring those ghoulish yellow eyes drilling holes on his back. Ryo grabs his keys and makes a mad dash to the door. Remembering his dreams memories of blood, death, and Akira! Even just thinking about them sent violent tremors throughout his body his stomach turns. However, that didn't stop him from running down the flight of stairs to his garage to finds his car. His hands are shaking as he presses the bottom of his car alarm to open. Doors are open and he gets in, jamming his keys in the ignition, turning them on, bringing his car to life. Sitting back in his chair he fixes the rear-view mirror and sees his half- crazed and desperate eyes stare back at him. Wide, desperate and full of fear. He cannot bear to look at them anymore and he half minded considers ripping his own eyes in disgust. He doesn't. Because Akira consumes his mind once more and he finds his resolve again. Akira is the only thing that matters. The garage door opens automatically at his command and he's greeted by the complete darkness of the outside. Ryo slams his foot on the accelerator and floors it. The tires gave an ungodly screech of the fractions and Ryo dashes out into the night. Driving at breakneck speed, the world around him turned into a color blur. Shapes did not exist; there were only bright streaks of light when he drove right past them. They looked like something out of an abstract painting. He was sure he drove past seven or eight traffic lights at the speed he was going, but he couldn't give two shits to care. The throbbing of his head didn't lessen, with blood rushing in his ears and heart hammering in his chest. Ryo's knuckles were white, his fingers locking the steering wheel with sweaty hands and gazed down at the dashboard. 3:07 a.m "Only three o' seven in the morning", Ryo whispers to himself and trembled. Three o' seven in the morning. Morning! That means Akira... And the Sabbath... It was before! Before the ritual, before the demons! And Akira is...it was from the very beginning The very start, so that means Akira's body is still pure, untouched by Amon. Sweet baby-faced Akira flashed before his mind's eyes. His innocent brown eyes and bone-thin body he'd once held in his arms… His heart races and his mind can only think of Akira, everything else around him goes mute. "He's still himself," he says and hope resonates inside his chest Because Akira is still himself, gentle, kind and beautiful Akira is still himself. He will hug Ryo like he used to, no questions asked even if Ryo is sporting a machine gun. Because that's how Akira is, he doesn't ask questions, he just gives and gives. And this time around shouldn't be different, right? Chapter End Notes Short chapter I know lol Akira will pop up soon just starting with the dramatic buildup slowly :) ONWARD TO CHAPTER 3 End Notes YEEEAAAHH! So much for the family reunion amirite? lol yeah, there's going to be a lot of family drama between Gabby and Luci omg it's going to get WORSE! Please drop_by_the_archive_and_comment to let the author know if you enjoyed their work!