Irrepressible

cynthero·:

final score

☆ —       evening has fallen in fódlan. everywhere she walks, she smells sweet sugar and fruity filling long splattered across the floors. pie still clings to the walls. 

      [...]

      “two-for-two, huh, caspar?” cynthia teases. “anyways, good job everyone! team cynthia, you’re on clean up duty! i already told all the staff i could find to go take a vacation for the day!” mostly groundskeeper mozu though ‘cause she really didn’t need that lady yellin’ at her again. last time it took forever and she didn’t really even understand what she was saying in the first place. too many weird farming metaphors. “everyone else, come with me! let’s go to the baths. i have got fruit in places that fruit should not be! i didn’t let lucina cook this time! or,” hm, it didn’t seem fair to let everyone else clean before they could eat. “alright, everyone come with me! let’s go party, then you have to clean! thanks for playin’!”

      playing, she says, as if she didn’t enable at least a quarter of the student body to commit pie-related war crimes.

Garreg Mach is a sweet and sugary mess by day’s end. Even though last time, he and Cynthia had both agreed that they would never do this again--well, here they were, and even if Caspar hadn’t had any role in planning the shenanigans this time, he’d still pounced on it the moment he knew it was going down. Really, then, he hadn’t learned anything at all since that time long ago, and judging by the look of bright-eyed, bushy-tailed bliss on his face, he wouldn’t have it any other way.

Cynthia calls for their attention then with a... rather unconventional shriek (did she really not have it in her to whistle?) and he snaps to attention, trying his best to forget that godawful noise. The only part of the announcement that sticks was the color designations: Team Cynthia was white; Team Ain-the-whatever had black; and he was on that second team, judging by a quick glance at his arm.

He’d apparently drifted close enough to Cynthia in the midst of her speech for her to spot him and wave, effectively beckoning him closer. “Two for two, huh, Caspar?” she teases.

“Two for two?” How? While he did remember enough of last Piemageddon (once he thought past the ignominy of being the very first to fall, anyway) to recall that it had been Cynthia’s team, not his, that won, where had win number two come from? Hadn’t Cynthia just said that her team was on cleanup duty? “But didn’t you just--?”

A stray glance at the ribbon in her hand not long after he opened his mouth, and then he shut it again. Oh. Oh. So that’s what the alphabet-salad name had been! A slow, incredulous grin spreads across his face as he shakes his head in disbelief. “Cynthia, you clever minx! Did you do that on purpose?” he teased back. “Our team was just your name spelled backwards, wasn’t it? And by setting yourself up on the ‘backwards’ team, you guaranteed you’d win no matter how it turned out." It wasn’t a question; honestly, he had no idea how it had evaded him beforehand now. The boy smiles wide as he offers a fist to bump hers in celebration. “You win again,” he admits with a laugh, “but at least this time I managed to win too, and we don’t have to clean the campus this time! And--!”

... And I managed to not get KO’ed in the opening act. He cuts himself off just in time. It... wouldn’t be very tactful of him to say that to her now, would it, not when he’d been the one to take her out, not when they’d been on the same team all along. Still, he can’t exactly leave it completely hanging; his gaze turns sheepish and flicks briefly away. “Sorry I nailed ya back there,” he apologizes. “If I’d’ve known...”

Would it have changed the outcome? In this chaotic biannual pastime they’d apparently created, all was fair in pie and warfare. If she didn’t take it too hard, then he wouldn’t either... right?

At any rate, Cynthia seems ready to go straight to the aftermath party, even inviting the cleanup crew in on the fun. Caspar is only too happy to join in--but did she really have to remind them of all the different unmentionable places they’d gotten the various pie-parts lodged in? “You don’t have to say that twice!” he agrees, turning to trot off to the baths.

The boy looks around once. Twice. Then with a devious grin perhaps touched with a hint of the maniacal, Caspar cranks the mechanism, fires, and keeps firing.

After a little while, all the pies were gone, flung to Goddess knows where inside Garreg Mach. Man, that was cathartic.

Don’t get him wrong; Caspar really appreciates the adrenaline sharpening his senses that enables him to dodge basically everything everyone’s thrown at him thus far.

He just really hecking wishes his senses would get sharper so that he’d stop having all these damn near-misses.

Whether it be instinct or whatever cruelly fanciful spirit was protecting him now, the hairs on his head prickled and he hops back, narrowly evading another hit. Oily globs of meat slick past his nose, close enough for him to feel the breeze (and grease) from their passage. An arrow? Even with its tip generously buried in and cushioned by meat, he didn’t want to think about something that might feel in his head.

The shot came from above, but when Caspar craned his neck up, he couldn’t see who or what had assaulted him on high. In a moment’s glee (or delirium?), he sang, “Missed me, missed me, now you gotta--”

Karma’s a bitch, man.

Of course everything had to come crashing down someday, and how. He'd barely gotten done clearing the remains of Annette’s mincemeat pie off his face, barely finished wolfing down the gingersnap cupcake he’d pilfered from the kitchen to replace the one he’d thrown at Azura’s child (Didn’t he deserve some kind of reward for lasting as long as he did? he’d thought when he saw it), when he hears the innocuously friendly voice. Looks up... just in time to see the vicious pie suddenly hurtling his way.

He doesn’t even have time to dodge, and Ignatz had thrown it with enough force that both his chin and he go staggering back a step. He thought glasses guys were typically weak. Had Ignatz always been that physically strong?

“Ow! Why, you--” His arms tense before he remembers: He’s already out. He’d even left the kitchen without any pastries in hand... and it’d be kinda mean to bean him again after he’d--

He scrubs the pie-gunk off his face. Squints.

Wait a minute. Did Ignatz not have his glasses on?

Did Ignatz just bean him dead-on without his glasses on?

No warning. He had no warning whatsoever.

Dodge? 10 = no

Survive? 19 = yes!

The shout of warning is more than enough to cause Caspar to dodge. Maybe. He’s got to stop getting these near-misses, they’re giving him palpitations--!

The splat he hears somewhere behind him tells him whatever was in that pie, he would not have liked to get pied by it. And when he turns around--oh come on, it’s a meat pie???

“Hey!” he shouts at the ginger thief’s rapidly retreating form. “I would actually have liked to eat that instead!”

Dodge? 9 = barely

Survive? 13 = yes!

Caspar doesn’t know how he manages to just happen to see the pie when it’s already flying towards him, but when he turns, some gut instinct within him fires and he drops to the ground almost in an army-crawl, pilfered pies scattering around him with the sudden move. He moves only barely quickly enough to avoid being creamed: As it is, the pie skids over his short mop, leaving crumbs and chunks of whipped cream in its wake. Just where had that--?

Either whatever ninja sense had deserted him earlier had finally returned, or his sheer paranoia at having managed to survive even this long was making him jumpy. (”This” long was a relative term, given how little time he’d managed to last last time.) Regardless, Leon’s warning shout startled him badly enough to send him flying sideways, safely out of range of that damned pie.

“Ha! You’re going to have to do better than that!” he exclaimed. “Only one guy can telegraph his moves like that and come out on top!”

(Well, maybe two, but he hadn’t seen Owain yet this morning.)

Yeesh--not only did the guy intercept his pie without even giving him the courtesy of ducking, he wasted no time in hucking the thing straight back at him. Did this guy have some kind of mad ninja reflex or something?

[Barely hit! Does Caspar stay in the game?]

[4 < 9: No! D8 Saving throw, please!]

[17 > 9 -> saved, yes!!!]

It was fortunate that Caspar had ducked back into his hidey-hole as quick as he did, for his own quick action narrowly saved him from another premature end. His reflected pie thudded solidly against his fake soil-lid shield, but that only served as partial deterrent: Centripetal force spun it around enough that he still felt some pie-cream slide across and past his cheek as he made a poor show at dodging. Gaius apparently had a mean throwing arm--and if he saw it right, he’d even managed to taste his pie before throwing it back, and did not approve.

The boy waited tensely inside his giant flowerpot until he was certain the coast was clear. Apprehensively, he wiped a bit of the cream off his face and licked it himself. It wasn’t all that bad, in his opinion, but then again, he’d heard Gaius was a connoisseur. Perhaps he had elitist tastes, or something.

Although paltry at best, the knights received some leads that point to a group of local bandits. Given the volatile situation in the village, it would be wise not to make too much of a scene. Borrow some of the commonfolk’s old rags and the woodcutter’s axe and infiltrate the hideout as “new recruits” to glean any information you can about the missing food stores. [Grants Axe +1]

@regalblades @forlornwyvernrider 

“This sucks!”

His outburst, however quiet by his standards, is still loud enough to earn him a reproachful stare from both his companions, but Caspar doesn’t care. They’ve trekked across the mountains far too long in this insufferable cold, bunkered down on this high freezing vantage point just to watch, and for what? The little raiding party they trailed here had already gone inside long ago, so just what were they waiting for now?! He’s had it up to here and he is done holding it in… as if his ire hadn’t already started writing itself on his face several minutes prior.

“They’re bandits; they’re the ones at fault for stealing the villagers’ grain. The group we were tracking has even already gone inside! Why don’t we just charge right in, beat ‘em all up, and bring it back to where it belongs? Why do we have to keep on spying and infiltrating outside dressed up like this?”

The boy gestures angrily at the ravine below them, inside which a few huddled bodies stand in animated discussion. The twin layers of coarse wool and brown canvas that now sheathe his arms ill befit one used to finer cloths and trim—they itch, for Goddess’s sake, like nothing he’s ever worn before. Even at his poorest he has never worn something quite so shabby. This lame getup was all Lloyd’s idea, and curse Gerome for outvoting him and agreeing to it, even if he couldn’t have expected someone he barely knew to take his side in the first place. But for all his whining, Caspar could see clear as anyone that they would have stood out too much in their church uniforms, even if they somehow turned out half as warm as these itchy rags. Not that he would admit any of that out loud.

(Goddess above, how he missed the fields of Gronder in summer. Heck, right now he’d even take Garreg Mach’s mountainous chill. Faerghus is a veritable frozen hell by comparison—how anyone could live here, let alone thrive?)

Whether his companions had simply ceased to reward his grousing or whether the howling winds had stolen the fire from his voice, neither Lloyd nor Gerome gave any further indication that they had heard him. Meanwhile, far below, another small group of bandits began trickling in, blissfully unaware of even the noisiest church-agent lurking not so far above.Pointless it would be to keep complaining, so reluctantly, Caspar finally shuts his trap and joins them in observation. His body, however, is not quite done complaining: A sneeze rings out and the boy shudders, wiping his freezing nose with a gloved hand.

🌴: a favorite canon character in my fandom + 🌷:  a song I identify with my character (also asked by @prayerwitch )

This is kinda long now, so I’ll have fave chars above and representative songs below the readmore. I recommend you click the readmore regardless XD Biased, but I have songs that miiight apply to Edelgard, Dimitri, and couples in there too.

a favorite canon character in my fandom

Within the entire Fire Emblem series, I have a huge, rose-tinted boner for most of the Archaneans, particularly Camus/Nyna (I’m well aware this is a decanonized ship, sigh), Midia/Astram, Horace, Navarre/Ogma, Roger for recruitment mechanism, Marth, Caeda, Merric, Cain, old-man Lorenz, the Whitewings (particularly Catria and/or Palla), Belf, Leiden... This is in no particular order, though Camus and Nyna are nearly untouchable as far as my favorites thanks to super-thick rose-tinted lenses. To some extent, these are also the characters I used most in my playthrough, which was also my very first experience of any Fire Emblem game in general. Alas, I was always terrible at using armor knights like Draug, even though the info I read later and his performance in FEH say he’s an amazing unit who can actually be VERY good outside his default armor-knight role.

Excluding Archanea, I tend to very quickly jump for: 

Lance boys, e.g. Ephraim, Seth, Dimitri, Percival (strictly on sight in FEH--I haven’t played his game). Bonus points if they’re kickass warriors and/or noble (social rank or ideals) or mounted (I looove range). 

Camus archetypes: Almost obligatory. Examples include Camus+, Mustafa, and Reinhardt. 

Hotheads, e.g. Kieran of the Radiant games and Caspar himself. 

Certain playboy characters, especially with more depth to them, e.g. Sylvain, purple-boy Lorenz after supports, and Ringabel (latter from the Bravely series). 

Old but tough guys are fun too, e.g. Mycen, Duessel, and old-man Lorenz.

Within Fodlan, my favorite characters are:

The entire Faerghus Four: They and particularly Dimitri are why I went BL first. Dima hits the aesthetic and classic noble lord checkbox and HEAVILY reminded me of Marth esp after one CG; Felix is “cold” yet hyper-focused and caring = aaa <3 ; I knew Sylvain had more to him than being a playboy and was not disappointed; and Ingrid was initially an aesthetic pick (was sad when she lost the braid) and if paired with Dimitri struck me as the perfect pretty/blonde homecoming king/queen couple at a glance--this may stem directly from Camus and Nyna also being blonde), 

Caspar: adorable doofus, though my love of him definitely grew as a result of hanging around here so long

Petra: such incredible drive; wish I could match it

Marianne: her war aesthetic appealed to me esp because it was such a confidence change from academy phase

Constance: huge visible personality change -> I really want to dig into it more

Lorenz, Claude, and Leonie grew on me as a result of later readings and TOA. (Edelgard too, though something about her still rubs me the wrong way and Idk exactly what it is...)

a character I wish to write with

(Cleaning the few VERY old asks out of my inbox. This was dated to early March, around the last time I reblogged this meme, but only now did I think of something competent to say...)

Kneejerk answer: Caspar is inspired by heroes. Their valor, their badassery, their noble/chivalric values... Just look at his initial reaction to Catherine XD as well as his heavy admiration of Count Gilead von Bergliez, the Adrestian War Hero (and his various war exploits and how he treats his soldiers like men and comrades). No matter how little or much he hears of him, Holst falls under this umbrella too. On another note, I’ve mentioned in some previous post that Caspar’s favorite books (and he’s not at all a reader) are hero stories, and that he will occasionally read them alone in his room when no one’s watching.

Somewhat more thoughtful answer: Caspar is inspired by people who follow their principles and/or what’s “right”. It doesn’t matter so much whether said principles benefit him directly (indeed, he takes offense to the idea that Edelgard thinks him a victim of (and someone who can benefit from) the system she wants to destroy). Thus, any of the lords will inspire him if he hears (enough) about their ideals; he admires Petra when she doesn’t kill him in their A (recall that he didn’t ever think she would be wrong for committing to it in their previous supports); he expresses admiration of the size of Raphael’s heart in their B... I could probably go on, given enough time.