#A Officer's corruption part Thirty five

[the-silver-peahen-residence]

||An Officer's Corruption part Thirty-five||

Hello there dears, Peahen mom here but it's time to add another part to the Officer's Corruption series. <3 I was trying to think on this one but I hope you like it.

If you wish to see how or where everything is going, you can follow up on the chapters down below.

||Chapters so far|| 1-30|| ((Click here))

||OVA Chapters 1-7|| ((Written by my amazing friend demon mun and me)) (Click here))

Part Thirty one

Part Thirty two

Part Thirty Three

Part Thirty Four

((Your reading Thirty five))

||Drabble Summary||

As the evening, Some events were happening this night and it seems one between Tae and Chuuya. With more information coming along, will Tae get the info she needs to figure this out? And what of the others during this night? Read to find out.

||Warning||

~Strong heavy NSFW is present in this

~Friends with Benefit is present in this

~Mature and Dark Themes

~Dom/Sub behavior is present in this

~blood warning is present

~drug use is present in this

||Guests in Drabble||

Rave"Oblivion" Daitengu, Fin Reer, and anyone else mention belongs to my amazing Rp partner @demon-blood-youths While Matt Knack with his Lovely Horrors belong to the sideblog @lovelyxhorrors that is run by demon mun.

Luna so-yeon koboyashi, Yuuka Nakano and others mentioned are my OC's and belong to me. While Chuuya Nakahara, Ryuunosuke and Gin Akutagawa from BSD series are mentioned in this but are rped by me as my muses.

Daichi Pheon-X comes from a side blog @chunibyo-x-sorcerer that belong to my beloved amazing friend @demon-blood-youths

Yuji Itadori and Megumi Fushiguro is from the anime serious Jujutsu Kaisen

((Note: Their will be grammar mistakes and errors in this drabble as others have this warning. But like I state before, this is written for fun. So I hope you like it and my friend too. I hope you Enjoy.))

---- Northern State Penitentiary/Private Meeting Room -----

The light chat between Oblivion and Chuuya was a silent one and yet, he was also given some new information that would help her in the long run. Judging by his answers, they did seem close to what she thought.

"So can you tell me about the three people yous saw?" Tae asked waiting for him to answer while he sighed to look at the table with his hands closed together.

"As I remember it was three people. Two male and one female. A male with dark brown hair, blue eyes, but his appearance looked fit but..unhuman like for a guy like him. The second male has black hair, red eyes but he seems too pretty to even be human. So maybe unhuman I guess.." He said seeing her writing this down. "And the female was shorter of the two, long green hair but has dark brown eyes. She seems pretty well known for the weapons she used to fight." he said.

"....Hmmm, I have a feeling that they were sneaking off some drugs and other things. I guess they were rival gang against the port mafia or some shit." he said but Tae blinks.

"What do you mean?"

"..It's just a thought or theory. I figure those three hated that maybe the port mafia wouldn't allow us to work together to sell off their products being what you know so far as their drugs from the black market.

"The black market?"

"Yeah. I figure given the items she left as a trail took us to it, our boss told us to trace it down while being sure we caught them red headed. That or them pretending to wanna make a deal business." he sighed.

She writes this down as well looking unsure about this now. If they were the main reason this happened. Could it be that this was due to a failed business deal?

"However, I can tell you this: the chemical drugs were rather rare. Given they were from the black market it only works depending on the type of gift that one has or quirk I guess. Maybe these chemical weapons or drugs worked unless tested with someone that can withstand them." Chuya explains while Tae looked confused.

"What do you mean by that?"

"Well, some weapons need some sort of trigger to work right? Maybe those assholes needed a test subject to see how it effects someone with a quirk they needed. Maybe they read up her info seeing she had a poison type quirk to boost the power of the weapons? Maybe they were planning on using her to use those weapons?"

".........."

"Soooo maybe whoever heard about this wanted to spread the drug around in order to make it a stronger dose. Maybe they wanted her to use her quirk to make the weapons dangerous. Everyone knows not all poisons are safe and hers were pretty dangerous. I never expected her poison to be that dangerous for anyone." Chuya said but Tae got worried about Yuuka.

"Can you explain when you found out about the location? Do you remember anything they could have left when they ditched?" she asked.

"...Nothing much. All I know a big fight happened, a explosion, the area was covered in a purple mist given it was from that woman. Or it could be the same one that got away during the fight. I hear after the police caught us and thought WE were the ones that did it but the real ones ran off to get away." Chuya said and yet, this got the other quiet.

"....I see........And I guess after, you didn't know where those three ran off after?" Tae asked.

".....No. I only had a thought or the siblings say they might have ran away to the north to hide. The police must still be looking for them. Though, all I can say is look for a trail."

"..And that trail is?" she asked.

".....A trail leaving white footprints. I remember one of our products were something of a white type of mixing agent. Maybe that should help with something you are looking for?" he said simply. Tae was quiet but thinks.

'A trail of white footprints? Did he mean from them leaving a trail of some kind to find them? Did they leave some DNA trail?' she thought.

"Uhhhhhh..."

"And the mixing agent? That's something you guys really sell?"

"Yep. As I said, Port Mafia is not into drugs and some shit. We are not into that stuff. Now other gangs and other people, now they would be even when it comes to try selling a dangerous black market drug for billions and billions of dollars to get rich. Or maybe they were making it and testing it on that Yuu girl to see the results. Maybe they got them and wanted to enhance it more and more. Anymore and she might end up being dead." he said.

Tae's eyes slightly widen hearing that but her hand closed into a fist to grip the pin. She didn't want anything like that to get into the wrong hands. However, this was very concerning.

"However, given of the drugs. If one wanted to use that against someone, they would mold them into someone that can't be saved. They'll end up forgetting who they are if it's that bad.....but it's a theory."

"......"

~~~~~~Meanwhile in Area D~~~~~~~

"St..stop...stop stop sto..ahhhhh.....e..enough.." Gin smiled looking at Jason to see him bucking into her while feeling how wet she felt inside. She's been teasing and teasing him non stop that he growls claws the wall while she had him under her touches. Such a precious puppy he was and yet it already got her wet.

"Heh, good boy....very good boy. Just relax. I said I was going to move for you. You just gotta lay there and enjoy it......" she coos to slowly bucking her hips down as she started speeding up. He gasped feeling his own cock hard from the soft yet light touches of her fingers to the tightness inside. He moans throwing his head back but she held the leash she made with his belt to be sure he keeps still.

"Haaaa st..stop..p..please..please...I..I can't.."

"Ohh yes you can. You are so aroused right now. Hard and throbbing inside of me just to get some relief. But thanks to you, I've gotten excited myself. Can't you feel how wet and tight I am? How aroused you made me thanks to you. Don't it feel good? Do you like it? Or are you trying to fight off how good it feels inside of me."

He could smell the sweet toxic scent lingering from her but he was panting feeling so close that she even smiled to carefully make him sit up to look down at him. Still moving her hips up and down while panting against his lips. He looked so dazed right now while she was bucking her hips faster.

"Haaaa...hhaaaaaa..."

"So cute....you are so cute. Don't try to fight it. Don't try to ignore this feeling, this heat..this wetness. You love it so much your throbbing inside of me..." she whispered against his lips almost close to kiss him but he takes in more of her sweet scent, feeling more aroused that she feels him twitching. He wanted to touch her, hold her, do something!

This was punishment to him that he was able to kiss her neck that she gently push him back on his back while kissing his lips. He shook from the softness of her lips that she was making out with him. Her body pressed up against his own while they make out.

When the kiss was broken, she smiled looking at his dazed expression to tease. "Want relief now? I wanna see your expressions as I'm riding you..would you like that my puppy?" she purrs that he gulps feeling aroused again.

"Haa..Y...Yes..Yes fuck..I..I want.."

"What? What do you want?" she asked looking at him.

"...You know what I..I want! Damn it, don't tease me please!" He said that she only smiled to look right at him. So cute, already slowing her hips down with a lick of her own. Gin made him back up against the wall but he was about to touch her that she grabs his wrist to stop him.

"Ah ah ah....keep your arms down and no touching. Just sit right there and enjoy." she teased that he shook again. That dominating voice was a lot but he only sees her adjusting herself starting once more but harder. He gasped clawing the wall as she threw her head back moaning out while holding the leash in one hand.

"Ohhh fuck such a good puppy....you feel so good..." she panted bouncing on him as she tightens around him once more.

He moans softly feeling her bouncing onto his lap that she was shivering moving her hips faster and harder. Her sweet moans slip past her kissable lips while enjoying this feeling. However, she pushes her hips down more that she fully sat on him. Both him and her moan together as he feels her pressed her chest against his own while panting against his lips.

"Haaa...P..Puppy....puppy..."

She was a tight one alright but this made him grit his teeth as she was having her hands resting on either side of his head on the wall. She was looking down at him seeing her hair covering her shoulders and over her back.

"T..tight.w...why are you s..so tight?" he groans but she chuckled breathless to smile.

"Because you got your first taste.....but I still said I was going to savor this......" The light claps of skin heard as he groans shuddering to feel her moving. Her chest moving each time she bounces up and down taking him deeper and deeper inside. It felt hot, tight, wet, and really good that his own primal instincts were telling him to breed her right now. However, hearing her soft moans as she bounces on his lap tells him he had to be a good boy or she would punish him for it.

"Haaaa....hhaaaaa......"

"S..see? F..feels good right? Your such a good doggy aren't you?" she panted bouncing on his lap as Jason moans leaning his head back. Even if he wanted to touch her she give him a look to keep him where he was.

"F..fuck..ahhh....s.....mmmmm!!....mmmmmmm...." as he was savoring this feeling, Gin smiled leaning over him as she keeps bouncing her hips up and down taking him in deeply inside. It fit just right to fill her up but she wonders how long he would hold on before begging to breed her? Only time will tell and this night was a long one. She wouldn't mind that.

"Good boy, just savor it a little longer and if your good..I'll let you go wild.."

~~~~~In Area E~~~~~~~

He was not expecting himself to be trapped like this, under the hungry eyes of a killer. The sound of squeaking from the bed to the loud clapping skin noises leads to a wild night indeed.

Ryunosuke was biting into his bottom lip with his red eyes glowing with his hair covering some of his face. He was being roughly pounded by the officer who was snapping his hips upward while Ryu was leaning back being taken like this.

"MFFMMM!!"

"Heh, who would have guess hhaaa that a naughty little hellhound like you could be such a dirty little thing? Your already so wet and you haven't stopped cumming since I started." Matt panted against his neck already coated in bites from him. Some of his blood shows on Matt's lips and chin before forcing Ryu's hips to slam down taking it even more.

"MMMMMMM!!"

"What's wrong hellhound? Wanna speak?" He asked even pulling his head back hoping to make him release his lips to speak. However, Ryu just keeps being forced to bounce that his own hips was moving on their own. Damn this officer, even if he was so rough with him..it felt way too good to stop! He was hitting his right spots just right and it felt so different.

With a muffled whimper, Ryu then felt Matt force him on his knees on the bed and grips his waist. He slams forward again to make Ryu scream out clawing the sheets this time.

"Ohhhh F..fuck!!"

"There we go. I knew it must feel good if your moaning like this for me." he teased ramming into him quickly that Ryu was gasping out rapidly taking it.

'H..He's crazy! How in the fucking w..world ooooo can he be t..this good in bed!?' he screams in his mind, moaning in a dazed while doing so. 'And yet.....my body..my body won't listen to me! It's just letting him do what he wants t...to me. This damn officer has to be mmmmmm...ooohhhh f..fuck messing with me!!'

Even with Matt ramming into him, he could hear the wet claps of skin to the feeling of some of his cum dribbling out. He didn't care and yet, his own heated desire was burning wanting to mate with Ryu over and over again.

As Ryu tries to move he yelps being pulled back closer that Matt lays on his back pinning his hands down with his own. "Oh no you don't. Your not running away. You're going to be good..and take every bit. Your not getting out of this yet.." he growls against his neck that Ryu shudders drooling from the heat as he was being taken.

"Ahhhh..ahhhhh...p..Please..f..fuck s..slow nuggghhh down..please slow down! I..I can't.." he tries to speak but Matt only bit into his shoulder making Ryu moan again before he tightens up around him hearing a primal growl from Matt. Letting his shoulder go, he laps his tongue at the bite mark while thrusting.

"Haaaaa......I'm not...mmmm..slowing down. As I said, we are in for a long night. I intend to breed you till you are mine. Getting the drunk taste of a true heated breeding."

"B..but...but..."

"No buts." He warns gripping his hips to grind against him, hearing Ryunosuke moaning worse in a slutty tone that he feels him turn his head kissing him deeply. He could taste the copper in his mouth but feels the fingers brush his skin when doing so. He even twitched feeling some pre-cum leaking from the tip to the bed. After a bit, both break the kiss seeing their lips touching panting heavily in heat.

"I'm going to make you beg."

He snaps his hips hearing Ryu gasp. "W..wai.....mmmmmm!!"

"Moan...."

He started moving again deeply and hard, getting moans as he said this. "Mmmmmmm.....ssssssss...."

"And scream.." He smacks his ass hearing a louder moan like scream from Ryu who shakes again. "AHH!!!!"

"For me...as I make you mine. You got a chance to play...so now I'm going to have fun breaking you." He growls to grip some of his hair that he begins pounding once more hearing Ryu screaming out drooling.

"Ahhhhhh f...fuck!!! Haaaaaaa......" Matt panted still moving but he wanted to hear more. See more of the hellhound and his aroused state. He was going to enjoy this as much as he could while wanting to hear him beg.

~~~~~Meanwhile at lycan Harlem prison~~~~~~~

"Wait, what happened?" Jaron was shocked hearing this but he was not expecting her to say that. Given the fact that he heard that she was saying that. It seems that Melinda was telling him what she reported before Fin went to do something important. Regarding what happened after sending the inmate to his cell. Even Ahmed was checking on someone being it just them.

"Hold on, you mean to tell me you found a inmate in the air vent spying on you?" Jaron asked to see her nod.

"Yes. I was just done taking a shower and was about to get dressed when I heard heavy breathing. So I knocked out whatever was in there and checked it out. Seeing that it was indeed an inmate in the air vent. I get the feeling some of them are able to travel through them from their cells." she said but Jaron was silent.

"I....freaking jerks. I knew the inmates were stupid but seems not all of them are. And..it's no help with what Fin told us might happen later on." He said sighing.

"I don't know I guess some of them are more dangerous than we thought. And now the whole prison is under some sort of lock down watch.." she looks down at the table but Jaron was looking to her worried.

"I know from what he said. Most of the female officers were already on break from this but Melinda, are you sure you don't want to-"

"I'm not leaving just because of the Weres in this prison are....t..that. Besides, I want to help given the fact what might happen." she knew the risks and Jaron did too but he didn't want any of them trying to harm or worse..claim Melinda as their own.

"Then...If you are serious about it Melinda then I'll be sure we can watch each other's back. We don't know what might happen given the following days. I don't want any of them trying to harm you.." he said holding her hand but she looks to that then at him. A worried look was seen in his eyes but she only looks away to sigh.

"I know and given how some are...its a bit more risky. You did see that when were trying to return to our posts but Fin told everyone to stay on guard in case." she said.

"I know that much.."

"But..it leaves me worried about one thing." she said to look ahead then at Jaron. "I know you have some jackal blood in you. Wouldn't that mean you-"

"N..No. I don't usually get like that.....or it never got that bad. So I should be fine even so." he said looking to her. "Besides, I'm not like that as some of these jerks. I have control.." he said.

"...I see....at least I know you are strong Jaron but can't blame me for being worried about you." she mutters only to lift his hand up and held it against her cheek. "Besides, I don't want anything bad happening to you." she said even kissing the palm of his hand.

This made him quiet but he tried not to blush from that then looks to the side. Melinda was too innocent in a way even if he wished to prove she was his. He would to these jerks she was not up for grabs. She was his.

"Right...I know that but that goes for me too with you Melinda. So, I guess we should be alright for now...lets just focus on what we need to do...." he said.

"That works...though, do you think Fin and Ahmed will be alright? "she asked as they stood up to head to their posts. Jaron said nothing walking with her but as he passes a cell, a inmate watches her as he was growling. Jaron heard to glare at him as a warning to back off. Seeing that dark anger in his eyes made the other back off.

Melinda noticed seeing him look. "You okay Jaron?" she asked.

"Yeah, I'm alright Melinda. And to answer you..I'm sure Fin and Ahmed is alright. Their strong guys so It should be alright." he said as they walked but in his own thoughts he was worried.

'Knowing how they are strong..even they have a weak spot. I know I do too when it comes to melinda. I wonder if they knew about that and these guys. No matter..I'll have to stay close to Melinda to insure none of these assholes touch her....' he thought walking.

However, within the other side, Fin was trying to deal with it. He was tied down but Winter was making out with him while keeping him still. She already saw him holding her hand while kissing her but she had him inside while slowly moving her hips hearing his deep growls within his throat. She was way too soft but she smelled really nice. Both him and her were still making out with one another before she breaks it giggling.

"What's wrong? Does my ice wolf love getting kisses?" she teased hearing his growling.

"Stop making fun of me Winter. You are not fixing anything but making it worse for me!"

"How am I making it worse? You said to fix it so I'm trying to fix it. Besides, it's not my fault your so aroused right now. It's practically throbbing inside of me while you feel yourself deep inside. Maybe you need to learn to behave like a good boy."

"Grrrrrr..."

"Besides, I love being able to finally tease you like this. Knowing you..I bet you want it just as bad as me right?" she teased to look at him while touching him. One hand resting on his lower stomach then moves up to feel the pounding of his heart. He looks away only for Winter to lean up kissing his lips softly.

"I..st..stand by what I've s..said..f..fix it O..or else-"

"Or else..what?" she asked to start grinding against his body to let him feel her, she still keeps moving slowly to let him savor the feeling of being inside of her. She seriously was aroused as he was but he was seeing that she was savoring this for as long as she could. "Besides, I think I'm not the only one who is falling too..I wonder if your partner is having the same issue." she teased making Fin wonder.

"W..what-"

"I found out one of my fallen sisters is in this prison. You were so mean to keep her away from me...but I know she has good company right now...given the fact she is...'helping out.' she said to think but for a quick glance in the dark of another cell, you couldn't see but just a bit.

From inside, someone was sitting on someone's lap making out with them but the two breaks the kiss panting heavily against each other's lips before the other being Summer moves to kiss on the other who was Ahmed that held her close while being bitten again by her. She was grinding against his body hard wanting some relief but he was shaking as he was clawing her prison outfit to tear it. Even if she moves her head she shows canine teeth before kissing him deeply hungry for him.

Fin blinks but he glares only to twitch feeling Winter keep him down. "The hell did she do to Ahmed?"

"Nothing to harm him..just tease him till he breaks. You weres all have a breaking point. I know you do..just like aching to have someone to breed for hours on in till you fill them up.....telling me..." she speaks in his ear softly to say, 'You wanna breed me hard..don't you officer Reed?' she whispered that he said nothing.

"That's..that's not-"

"Not true? You know lying is bad Fin.....or...maybe you don't want relief then?" she said even to slowly stop her movements and sat there on his lap up looking at him. Fin looks at her quickly but he only glares seeing her smile.

"The hell are you-" Right away, she grabs him to hold him close while tightening around him while looking right into his eyes. "?!?"

"Since you wanna lie..I'll punish you for it...." she slowly lowers to gently leave kisses to his chest as Fin tenses trying to move but she lets him move one hand to feel in between. She had sat up slightly enough to feel him pull out. Right away, he felt her wet as well. It was dripping over his fingers as she shivers from the touch.

"......."

"See? I'm affected as well thanks to you. And you tell me this is not the truth....even now your aching for pleasure....so maybe I should help you out or give you want you are craving right? Don't you want that?" she asked. "I can make you feel good..I can give you what you ache for officer Reer. All I ask..is for you to submit to me.." she said looking at him.

"Y..You.." That's when she sits back down fully on him, hearing a hiss of pleasure from Fin but she didn't move. She sat there. He opens his eyes to glare into her own glowing lustful eyes too. Beautiful but deadly.

"M..Move.."

"No....remember what I said? You have to behave like a good boy..or I won't move.....You wont' get relief like you want if you misbehave my dear. Besides, I could leave you like this and pleasure myself for you to watch. You won't get to touch or taste what your missing." hse teased looking at him.

"Besides.....I want it badly too. I want us to go crazy like wild animals this night..but...with you being so bad..I will have to make you savor it like this till you do.." she said for Fin to say nothing but he felt her tightening again shuddering again.

"Now I'll ask again...will you behave....or misbehave. The choice is yours warden." she said looking at him as she was grinding into his lap to let him pick. Again she moves her hips making him claw the floor but she felt so damn good! What would his choice be? Misbehave or behave?

~~~~~~Prison T/Lower cells~~~~~~

'W..what am I g..gonna do? I shouldn't...b.but no matter what I do I..I'm feeling..s..so hot. My body won't stop....I shouldn't even be seeing this......and yet..' Jinx had her eyes half way open but she already came twice feeling her fingers twitching as they were thrusting into her. 'It feels too good to stop. I can hear it but I have to be quiet or t....they will..' as she thinks this, she tenses hearing a sudden moan to look again.

~~~~~~~~~

"Come on Megumi, you gotta move your hips. We have to make sure Kisho feels good too. Your getting double the pleasure. We can't leave him out of this you know." Yuji teased slamming into Megumi who was moaning out arching his back. Why did he have to feel this good being rewarded like this?! It made his mind fuzzy but was panting trying to behave.

"B..but I-"

"What did I say about you lying to me Megumi. You love this feeling..this heat. I mean look at how dazed Kisho is..isn't he cute?" He made sure Megumi opens his eyes to look seeing Kisho's expression. He was really out of it, boucing on his lap wanting more. It already felt too good and he was growing hungry for more.

"See? He's lost to the pleasure..just like you. It would be sad if he didn't get it right?" he said even pulling his nipples making Kisho cry out tightening around Megumi who grunts. He was tightening around him again! It's like a inner flame growing hotter and hotter. He didn't say anything feeling this only for Yuji to smile to sigh.

"Though..if you wanna not be honest.." That's when he suddenly slams into him deep but stops moving to let him savor the feeling. Megumi winces feeling this but Kisho gasped whimpering.

"n..No no no no please..d..don't stop..don't stop I n..need it. I need you, Fushiguro-sama...." he was begging for it now even if Megumi was shaking.

"See? He's begging for you to give it to him. I would do the same for you too Megumi but you have to be honest.." he said caressing his thighs now to look at him.

"I......" right away, he shivers feeling Kisho tightening around him but Yuji pulls him back against his chest to make Megumi look at him. "Kisho...Maybe we need to make him be more honest.......why not do that?" he asked but Kisho only shook to look.

"B..but he..." that's when he feels Yuji deeply kiss him to show Megumi what he's missing. He made sure he saw this; a heated slow kiss with his hand holding his cheek. Megumi gulps seeing how primal Yuji was. His eyes glowing half way open as he kisses Kisho. As for him, his eyes were half way glowing as well shaking as he was held against him.

"............"

In a moment, Yuji's eye looks right at Megumi who tenses shaking. That hungry look in his eyes was dangerous that he breaks it hearing Kisho panting softly whining. Before long, Kisho begins moving on his own having his back pressed up against Yuji's chest as he moans moving himself. His dark brown hared bangs covered his eyes as he drools moaning out loudly in the cell for Megumi to watch him.

"Heh, See? He's aching so much..heated and hungry for pleasure..he's craving it so badly he's moving on his own Megumi..can't you see? Why not tell him Kisho? How hungry are you right now?" he asked as a order.

"Haaaaa...hhhaaaa..h..hungry..I w..want Fushiguro-sama t..to claim me h..harder t..than this..I w..want it..I want to be dominated by him a..and you...Please don't l..leave me like this.." he panted still moving his hips slowly but Megumi moans leaning his head back feeling this. Kisho took the time to see this that Yuji lets him go and lets him lean over Megumi to hold his hands as he was moving.

"B..besides..d..don't you f..feel good too Fushiguro-sama? I wanna feel good..I wanna make you feel g..good.." He whispered only to kiss his neck while laying on top of him. However, Yuji had a idea to slowly pull KIsho's hips up to pull out.

"H..Huh? W..what are y-" Right away, Kisho's eyes widen screaming out as Yuji slams into him suddenly. Megumi feels Kisho shaking but he was drooling twitching on top.

"Maybe you need to be proven you want it...so maybe Kisho should tell you what your missing." he said starting to pound into him as Kisho moans out holding onto Megumi while gripping some of his hair.

~~~~~~~~~~~

'H..He's pounding into him again...how much stamina does this tiger have!?' Jinx said shaking but she was biting on her shirt trying to quiet her moans and this only made her wetter now thrusting her fingers in deeper.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Ahhhhh!!! Ahhhhhhhh!!!! F..fuckkkkkk!!! Itadori s..sama!!!"

"Tell him Kisho..Tell him how good it feels!" he said but Megumi shook feeling him pounding away.

"Ahhhhh I..It feels good!!! He's pounding the daylights out of m..m.m.me! I c..can't t..think straight...I can't even st..stop him. His thrusts a..are too p..powerful! Ohhhh f..fuck m..me h..he's...mmmmnnnggg!!!"

"That's it..keep going..." Yuji whispered while Kisho was shaking.

"H..He's s....so hhaaaa r....rough...s.so very rough my body i..is so w..weak...begging for more. It's like he's going to break me!!! I'm gonna b..break!! I'm gonna break!!!!" he moans out with tongue hanging out just a bit, drooling as he was moaning for him and Megumi to hear. Megumi was aroused again seeing this but he whines wanting to do this. He wanted to make Kisho feel good too. Yuji noticed to chuckle darkly.

"Haaa see Megumi? He feels so good..tight and hot at the same time...don't you wanna see more of this? Hear and feel more....he's only getting better each time I thrust into him." he said growling while Kisho kept taking the thrusts to make Megumi grip the sheets.

"Besides, he loves it rough..don't you Kisho??"

"Y..Yesssss oh god yes I love w..when your r..rough with me..p..please I want more! I need more!! I want y..you..I..I want Fushiguro-s..sama too!!!" he begs for him to let Megumi listen to each word.

"Then ask.."

"I...hhaaaa p..please...Fushiguro-sam....a....m..make me yours t..too..make me yours....." he begs about to kiss him till he threw his head back screaming out.

"Hey, I'm pleasuring you too remember? don't forget about me.." he said as Kisho screams out feeling the tight hold from Yuji.

"F..fuck S...sorry Itadori-sama!"

"Good boy..now keep screaming!" he orders as Kisho moans loving it.

"Haaaa Y....y..yes!!!!! Yes yes yes yes!! R..right there!! RIGHT THERE!!" he moans gripping the sheets beside Megumi's head as he was taking Yuji's thrusts. He shook wanting to have him but Yuji only keeps pounding into him till he pulls him up by the arms slamming up.

"Ahhhhhh...ahhhhhhh ahhhhhhhh!!!!!!"

"Good little phoenix..good grrrrr fuck so good...." He growls as Kisho drools loving it. However, Yuji looks to Megumi who whines wanting in. He even spread his legs wanting Yuji back inside.

"I....shit.."

"Now do you wanna be good?" he teased Megumi but he only looked flushed spreading himself. He wanted it while stroking himself.

"Y...Yes...yes I w..want it too.."

"Will you be good then Megumi?" he asked still pounding Kisho who still was moaning loudly.

"Y..Yes just please!! Please I n..need it. Fuck me already!"

That gives a clear answer that he suddenly stops making Kisho whine.

"W..why did you-Nuggh!!" He pulls out to make him be over Megumi but slams his hips down making both Kisho and Megumi moan throwing their heads back cumming accidentally.

"A..ah....ahhh.."

"Haaa....Fushiguro-sama.." He looks down at him shaking with tears from his eyes but the two held each others hands again ready to make out with one another. That's when Yuji slams back inside of Megumi making him moan out again thrusting up into Kisho who moans as well. Both grip each other's hands while panting.

"That's it.....much better." He teased. "Make sure he feels good Kisho and I'll work on making Megumi feel good..." He said licking his lips that Kisho nods starting to slam his hips down onto Megumi's cock.

"H..Hey w..wait-" As Megumi speaks, he groans out moaning out feeling this.

"Y..Yes haaa Itadori-s..sama...I'll m....make him f..feel good...." he said lowering down. Before Megumi speaks, he got kissed again by the other. However, the kiss was broken with the two screaming out their eyes hidden while taking in the pleasure.

'I knew they would be this dazed for it. Their expressions are so hot...but tell me my little panther..I wonder how your enjoy this?' he thought knowing she is indeed still there. What he didn't know is her grinding against her own fingers having her own pants off just a bit while panting heavily pleasuring herself.

Just what in the world is this sort of Prison!?

~~~~Meanwhile at Eclipse Prison~~~~

The doctor that was assigned with Yuuka was checking her vitals today or her daily check up. She didn't move while he was looking at her. She was already given her medicine that he saw her looking ahead while he held her arm.

"I see your scars are healing which is good. Such a good girl." he said gently but he saw her not react violently right now. He smiled petting her seeing how 'behaved' she was that she looked tired that the arm she was scratching was bandaged up. Such a delicate woman she was. Even if she freaked out and got sick last night, the medicine was doing well on her.

Even when she tried to use her quirk it only showed particles of poison. "You know, the medicine is doing wonders for you isn't it? Seeing that it has gotten your dangerous quirk to tone down in strength this is good as long as we keep giving you your medicine and shots. Then you might be able to be accepted again.." He touched her cheek and yet, she was not moving while he helps her lay back against the pillow.

".........."

"Though, I'm curious if they might triple the strength but that might be a bit much for you." he said setting the clipboard down while checking something else. Yuu didn't even respond to him but he thinks a little.

"Now, where did I put your shot anyway?" he asked seeing it was around and yet, Yuuka remains quiet looking at her lap as her purple eyes were dulled due to seeing the worms under her skin. She was too tired to say anything but she was still scared because of it. Looking like they could rip out of her any second. However, it was all in her head due to her having hallucinations now thanks to it. When the doctor sees the shot he held it.

"There we go. Alright Miss Nakano, lets go ahead and give you your shot alright?" he said as he sees her not move to make the doctor quiet.

"Come on now..please behave and lift your arm.." he said but she didn't do it. Maybe she was still tired? Shaking his head, he sees her slowly move her arm up that he was seeing him hold her wrist.

"Good girl. Now.." He started to inject the needle and start giving her the shot as she feels it once more. It's still irritating but she was again too tired to fight it off. Even with her quirk weakening since the night shot she got. He smiled knowing she was behaving this time before finishing up to place a gauze down and pulls it out.

"And there. See that wasn't so bad was it?" he said as she was helped to lay back again. However, Yuu looks ahead while she didn't move. As he was putting a bandage on where she got her shot, the door opens quickly to see two people.

"Hey!"

"Hmm? Oh good evening Warden Luna and officer Swan, how can I help you?" he asked quietly.

"Did you give her that stupid shot again!?" Luna asked but the doctor blinks to hear the angry tone in her voice. What got into her this night?

"To answer you, I just did and she didn't fight me as she did in the beginning. I think the medicine and shots are finally working! Even with the double strength, she's been such a good little thing." He said happy but Luna was worried. She looks seeing Yuu just lay there quiet but she didn't do anything. No fight, no shouting, nothing.

"....."

"But it's great isn't it? If this keeps up, she'll be better and let out in no time. Given with her quirk being weak, she might be able to go on patrol soon-"

"What do you mean!? She looks sicker now! You need to stop giving her the shots and medicine. Can't you see it's not helping her?" Swan said worried.

"You have told me many times I know but if it's not helping her, then how come she's not as violent? That has to say it's working. I figured they should have doubled the strength in the beginning but It's finally kicking in a bit more." He said checking Yuu'a reactions to the shot.

"Let me see; no nose bleed so that is good, eyes are a bit dulled by they will recover, injection site is not swollen...see? This is good!"

"This is NOT good! Look at her. She's-"

"Listen ladies, I know you are worried but I'm her doctor. I know what I'm doing. And the same for the Public Safely Hero Commission that gave me that order. As a doctor I'm helping her." he said. "Besides, she didn't even freak out from the needle when I gave it to her."

"That's because she looks too out of it! Those double strength shots are making her look worse Doctor Lee. Please, you have to at least stop giving her the shots so we can find a way to help her." Swan said.

".....And why do that, officer Swan? You are a doctor here too correct? I'm doing as I'm ordered to help her. She will be fine and you'll see this helped her. Look at her, she seems perfectly fine!" he said turning to look at her but that's when Luna and Swan saw her nose bleeding again as she was not even reacting to it.

"Oopsie, here dear.." He held her cheek taking some tissue to clean her nose. And yet, she didn't react to him touching her. She looks down at her lap while he was cleaning the blood off.

"See?!? What do you call that!?" Luna said.

"Her body still is getting used to the double strength but it might take a while for it to do so. The medicine she took is doing well, just the shots need to be getting used to before she is good." he said but lowers the napkin seeing her nose still bleeding before placing some new ones and held her head back.

"............."

"Yuuka? Yuu can you hear me? Are you alright?" Swan wanted to check to be sure and yet, she didn't say a single word to her either. She just remains quiet looking down before laying against the pillow. She only looks ahead but it's like she was either sick or just really depressed.

"Why won't she respond now? Is she that weak?" Swan was worried now but Luna was angry wondering what the shot did.

"Oh come now, she's probably tired given the fact the drugs tend to do that. I'm sure in a few days she'll be her old self again and healed too. I've studied her quirk for a while..Imagine if she was a demon now that would be dangerous. Though, this is still a amazing discovery thanks to the drugs. Her quirk is even weaker from being dangerous now which is good-"

"You mean her quirk is weakening more!?" Luna said.

"Well, it's to keep it under control. This way, she'll be no threat and welcomed back in open arms. The people will be so happy to see their requests were heard." he smiled to look at Yuu. Even reaching to hold her hand as she remains looking ahead.

"How in the world is this a good thing!? Have you NOT seen what she is like!? Officer Seon will be furious with you for doing this to her inmate she's watching over!"

"Oh come on, she won't be angry. She'll be thanking me the moment she comes back. Seeing her quirk is still amazing too and yet Yuu is learning. She's a good girl now!" he smiled petting her.

"You.."

"Now, if you mind, I need to keep a eye on her. You have your duties as I have mine...." the doctor said as Swan was worried and Luna was angry. The two sees the doctor checking on her as they leave but Luna didn't trust him.

When they were gone, Doctor Lee sighed but looks to Yuu once more. He smiled to touch her hand while she didn't react. "I know this medicine is strong but trust me, it will help..you know that.." he said but she didn't respond for him to even pull her in close to hold her. She looks down while petting her head.

"............"

"See, it's alright now. The officers are just doing their job..but you shouldn't trust them. They are trying to make things worse for you." he said but she looks down with dull purple eyes while he was petting her.

"Even with the drugs weakening you..it's something. I wanna help you see the error of your ways..a pretty woman like you should be safe. Obeying what you are tone right? Even that other officer Seon is something.." he grumbled but she heard that to slowly look up at the ceiling.

"......." she tries to speak but he hushes her.

"Now now, don't speak. I'm telling you this for a reason. These people don't care. I wanna help you...besides if that woman wanted to help you, she would have right? She would be here but disappeared. You can't trust anyone Nakano....don't trust them..." he whispered as she had her face hidden.

".....D..don't...t.....trust......t....th..em.."

"No, don't trust them. They'll hurt you..you can trust me." he said but he was lying. He was lying to turn her against them but with Yuu's given state she only looks at her lap again.

"....Besides, they want you dead Yuu..even that Oblivion woman...."

".......O..b...livion?........"

"Yes, her. You can't trust the police..you know that...don't trust them....they might sound nice..but their evil. Remember? Their giving you these shots to keep you down.." he was lying again. Was he trying to manipulate Yuuka?!

Even if he says that, Yuu didn't respond.

"This way at least you won't be assassinated. Just repeat after me; Do not trust them. Don't trust the warden..and don't trust Officer Seon. Understand?" he said.

".......I...c....can't...I.....I t...tru-"

"Tch, no no no. You don't trust them. They are lying to you Yuu. Everyone wants you dead remember? They were giving you these drugs to keep you down. I read that you were hurt....you can't trust them my dear. Do you understand?" he said grabbing her shoulders tight. Even if that should hurt, the drugs in that shot made her too dulled out.

"........"

"Do you trust them besides me?" he asked firmly.

"......Y....Yes.....I c..can't....I can't......" she was muttering looking scared again for the doctor to sigh.

"You really are out of it..oh well. Maybe you need some sleep then." he said but that's when he quickly covers her mouth and nose seeing her struggle in his hold.

"!?!?" Even if she was slightly weak, she tries to stop him but he keeps her down waiting for the knock out drug to kick in.

"Shhhhhhh..shhhhhhh..it's alright now....don't fight it Yuuka.." For a moment, she was thrashing and muffle shouting to get him off before her world went dark. She goes limp right away but the doctor sighed removing the cloth.

"........."

"Too bad. Guess we'll have to keep working on breaking that self will before Officer Seon and the others figure this out. I will be sure you listen. Even if you hate it or not." he said but goes to throw it away but keeps watch on Yuu who remains asleep right now.

Seems something was going on with Doctor Lee but what?

[kentocidal]

OPEN UP AND SAY "AHH..." .txt

USERS: dentist!kento nanami x fem!afab!reader

WARNING! THIS FILE HAS BEEN CORRUPTED WITH THE FOLLOWING MALWARE: dubcon, oral inspection, gloves, medical malpractice(?), oral (m!receiving), spit, dacryphilia, choking/gagging, power imbalance, oral fixation, ask to tag

NOTES: something happened to me while i was writing this. anyway, here you go. ~3.2k words.

the dentist’s office was one of those medical buildings that was clearly a house before it was an office. built in a cape cod style with a tiny parking lot that had been added far later. you had found this place online, after it had gotten some stellar five-star reviews that you trusted enough to schedule a consultation and a cleaning. 

it wasn’t one of those gimmicky, commercialized dentists either. it didn’t have a tooth for a mascot, or a commercial with a jingle that never left your head. it was simply a dentist’s office. the page on google came up as “kento nanami, d.m.d., dental practitioner and surgeon.” 

something about the blandness of the webpage, matched with the homey feel of the office, dissuaded your nerves. you had finally found an office you felt comfortable going to get your cleaning at.

you took a breath in as you stepped through the threshold, and found that the home had absolutely been converted to a medical building. the hardwood flooring, the almost sickly yellow lighting, the stock paintings on the walls of oceans or some tropical place. it would almost be tacky in any other place, but it felt right for a dentist’s office such as this.

the girl at the desk, clearly some part-timer, popped her gum as she looked up from her phone when you approached. “do you have an appointment?” “ah, yes. at twelve-thirty?” you nodded faintly, eyes glancing over the girl’s nametag. ‘k. nobara.’ perhaps she was studying under dr. nanami.

she hummed softly as she clicked around on her desktop for a moment, then nodded in agreement. “i see it. here, just fill this out, and i’ll send you right back.” she flashed the barest hint of a bored smile at you as she placed a teal clipboard on the desk with a pen, and you thanked her before going to sit in one of the padded chairs.

name, address, insurance information, when you had your last cleaning, reason for your visit. standard paperwork for a new patient. 

how did you hear about dr. nanami?

you wrote in: online. all positive reviews! :) 

you filled out the rest of your medical information before walking the paperwork back up to nobara, who took it from you and popped the bubble she made with her gum. she barely even looked at it before taking it to the scanner and making a copy. once she finished her own side of the paperwork, she looped around the desk and opened a door to lead you down a tiny hallway. “just this way, please.”

she brought you into a small room retrofitted to be an examination room. the dentist’s chair was in the middle surrounded by all of the necessary equipment. there was a television mounted to the wall, displaying what was on the computer monitor in the corner, there to reflect x-rays and other important images. nobara moved a little table filled with sharp instruments on it over to the side to allow you space to sit in the chair. you sat, taking a breath and sitting back. the leather squeaked under you, and it wasn’t the most comfortable place to be, but it was to be expected.

nobara made sure you were settled before grabbing a piece of blue medical tissue and a thin ball chain with clips on either end, leaning over you to place it around your neck as a bib.

“dr. nanami’s just finishing up with his patient, he’ll be right in for you.”

you nodded and thanked her again, to which she smiled softly before leaving and shutting the door behind herself.

it was quiet outside of the ticking of a clock behind you and faint music playing from another room. it didn’t take long for the music to be turned off, footsteps to come down the hall, muffled chatter to be heard as who you assumed to be the doctor’s last patient gets checked out.

you shift in the seat and lick your lips, nerves returning. you didn’t really like the dentist (who does, anyway?), but you couldn’t find a reason to be so worried about it outside of superstition and online horror stories. 

just as you buried yourself into your head, there were two rapt knocks on the door behind you before it was pushed open. “ms. l/n?”

“ah,” you turned your head and peered over the back of the chair the best you could as the doctor entered and shut the door behind him, “yes, that’s me, hi.”

“nice to meet you.” he was tall, broad, curt; his hair was perfectly styled atop his head, wearing a blue polo and khaki slacks rather than scrubs. the only dentist-ish thing about him was the surgical mask that was pulled under his chin. 

brown eyes met yours and his lips quirked up into a cordial smile as he approached. you smiled back, feeling heat rise to your cheeks; he was far more attractive in person than he was on his medical profile.

“nice to meet you as well. thank you for squeezing me in, i-”

“it’s no problem. there was an opening. it made sense to get you in here quicker rather than make you wait.” he shook his head as he grabbed the rolling stool from under the nearby desk and took a seat, dragging the computer stand over with him to start typing away. 

“you’re here for a consultation, yes?”

“consult and a cleaning, yeah,” you breathed, fingers curling into the fabric of your pants. “it’s… been a while.”

“when was the last time you had a cleaning?”

“three years?” you smiled sheepishly when the doctor cast you a sidelong glance and clicked his tongue. “i didn’t mean to keep forgetting! i was new to the area at that time, and it just kept slipping my mind.”

“still, it’s not good to neglect regular visits like that. i’ll make sure you schedule your six month follow-up before you leave today.”

you nodded, because that made sense. at least he seemed to care about your health, unlike some other dentists you’ve had before in the past.

dr. nanami typed for a moment more before pushing the computer away and getting back to his feet. “before we can start, i need to take some x-rays of your teeth. have you had this done before?”

“a long time ago, yeah,” you watched closely as dr. nanami took a step over to where a protective vest was hanging, watching him pull it down before approaching you again.

he used a foot pedal to lean the chair back slightly, and you went with it, your head resting against the high back of the chair. he looked much taller from this lower angle, his cheekbones high and his jaw cut and perfectly angled. 

he laid the heavy vest over your chest and then leaned over your body completely to reach for the x-ray camera that was hovering overhead, tugging it down closer to you. you sucked in a breath; he smelled of some foreign, expensive cologne, the scent making your head spin slightly. 

dr. nanami hummed in the back of his throat as he stepped away from you to reach for a box of gloves on the desk, tugging out two of the black latex garments and pulling them on, one at a time. you watched the latex shine in the sickly fluorescent light of the examination room, watched the way he stretched the rubbery material over thick fingers and broad palms. one by one, he snapped them on, making sure he was protected. 

you shifted in the chair again when he leaned over you to bring the plastic piece to your mouth. he was so close – he had to be, this was an exam, snap out of it! – “i just need you to open up wide and then bite down on this, okay? it’s going to take a few photos of your teeth and your jaw.”

you blinked like a deer in headlights, because suddenly a gloved finger was tapping your cheek. you opened your mouth, nice and wide, and felt the cold plastic slip past your lips and rest between your teeth.

“bite down,” and you did, “that’s it. good. now stay still.”

you found yourself preening under his ministrations. he would step away and let the machine whir as it photographed your teeth and your bones and your jaw structure, and then he would be right back in your space to adjust where you were holding the piece between your teeth. he took about five or six pictures (it felt like you were swimming in his cologne) before he finally pulled the piece from your mouth with a soft pop and pushed the attachment away.

his wide, gloved hands lifted the vest from your chest, and you felt like you could breathe again once the weight was gone.

“not so bad, hm?” dr. nanami quipped, though he didn’t smile, and you laughed airily like a little girl who got caught with ice cream she shouldn’t be having.

“not so bad, right.”

he nodded once before he took a seat on the stool again and sat right next to you, pulling up the fresh x-rays as they loaded up. you were presented with the images on the television just as dr. nanami viewed them up close on the computer screen in front of him.

“your teeth look good,” he murmured, as if it was more to himself than to you. “all even – none missing. adult teeth grew in almost perfectly, though you did wear a retainer briefly, did you not?”

“yes.”

“right.” he clicked over towards an image of your molars, humming under his breath. “have you been experiencing any pain in this area?”

“hm? no, why?”

“there’s a bit of a dark spot here,” he moved the mouse over to a spot on the image, on a tooth that had to be all the way in the back of your mouth. “it could be a cavity.”

you moved your tongue in your mouth to feel for it, but came up short. “i don’t feel it, but maybe.”

dr. nanami pushed the computer away and shifted closer to you, reaching up over your body to grab the light fixture and drag it down towards you. using the foot pedal again, he brought your chair back, back, back; it felt like you were completely horizontal by now. 

he rolled his stool over to be behind your head, leaning over you. it was almost as if your head was in his lap, separated only by the chair’s headrest.

he pulled the light down lower until it was perfectly on your lips. once settled into position, he moved his surgical mask back up and over his mouth and nose, and you thought that it somehow made his eyes all the more alluring to you.

“i need to conduct a further oral examination to assess the cavity. is that alright?”

“yes,” you breathed, and dr. nanami made a sound of approval. 

you figured he would reach over for the metal table and grab for one of those little mirrors, or maybe even a water pik of some kind, but, no; dr. nanami leaned more over you and pressed two gloved fingers to your lips.

“open up and stick your tongue out, yeah?”

you blinked at him, heat rushing up to your cheeks once again. you felt as though your ears were playing tricks on you; dr. nanami had sounded huskier, like his voice had dropped an entire octave when he muttered the command to you.

you swallowed the saliva that pooled on your tongue before opening your mouth as wide as you could, sticking out your tongue and flattening it so he could see your teeth better. 

“good girl.”

your whole body shuddered the moment those gloved fingers pressed on your tongue with the utterance of those two little words. what was this?

a part of you was saying that something was off about his ministrations, about the way his fingers pressed and almost petted the flat of your tongue before starting to explore deeper. the other parts of you, however…

it felt as though you were floating as dr. nanami brought his other hand up to your face to hook a finger in your cheek and pull slightly, tugging your mouth open just a little wider. your eyes fluttered and you made a wet little sound, only for dr. nanami to click his tongue behind his mask and murmur for you to settle. 

his fingers continued their journey, probing and prodding at the warm flesh of your cheeks, the hardness of your teeth, rubbing and feeling over your tongue and your flesh and bone.

you whimpered softly when you felt his index finger rub over your molar in the far back of your mouth. it felt as though his whole hand was forcing your little mouth open, but that definitely wasn’t the case. 

“what a pretty little mouth you have,” muttered the doctor, before his fingers dove down towards your throat.

you gagged harshly around his digits and kicked up a fuss in the chair, rattling the attachments and kicking your feet. dr. nanami let up only for a moment as you felt drool start to form at the corners of your mouth and coat your tongue. your eyes brimmed with tears, wetting your lashes, and dr. nanami only watched you with those golden brown eyes.

you couldn’t see the bottom half of his face, but he had to have been panting.

“your teeth are in very good condition,” he spoke in such a soft tone it almost had you relaxing again as he unhooked his finger from your cheek, letting your jaw slip just slightly closed again to try and find comfort. 

“ah, i’m not finished,” dr. nanami chastised you with a tap of his wet finger on your cheek, and you whined softly under him as his forefinger started to probe and inspect your mouth yet again.

one by one he inspected all of your teeth the best he could, feeling each one, filling your mouth with the taste of latex and the scent of his cologne. your eyes were locked on his face, while his were locked on the way your lashes stuck together, wet with tears, and drool started to drip from your lips and drag down your cheeks. 

his eyes flickered away from his inspection for a brief moment to watch the way your thighs were squeezing together, and that was it for him, the sign that he needed.

he pulled his fingers from your mouth and tugged his mask off of his face, placing it to the side as you heaved.

“now then,” he started, shifting back away from you as you caught your breath, “your teeth are in perfect condition, but i’m concerned about your throat. let’s… conduct an experiment.”

your wet eyes shifted hazily backwards as you tried to look at him again, only to be met by a thick cock springing free from dr. nanami’s khakis. he was leaky and drippy at the tip, and it smacked wetly against your cheek.

oh. oh.

you squirmed in the seat and moved yourself backwards (or, well, up towards him) with a bit of his help, a wet hand on your shoulder tugging your body up so your head would hang off the headrest of the dentist’s chair. 

from this angle, dr. nanami didn’t even need to get up. he could stay seated in his stool and let you do all the work.

but you were his patient, and he was your doctor. he would take care of you.

he shifted his weight and took his cock in hand, guiding the tip over your spit-soaked lips. his other hand wrapped loosely around your throat, his thumb hooking onto your jaw to force your mouth open.

“there you go, nice and wide, just like that…” dr. nanami hunched over you, studying your fucked out expression. “is this okay?” “ye-yes,” you whispered, and dr. nanami finally smiled down at you. it was brief and fleeting, but it was there.

and then he gathered spit between his lips and let it drip down onto your waiting tongue.

you moaned, quiet and wanton, just as dr. nanami slipped his cock into your mouth.

he tasted musky and salty and perfect. he fucked your mouth open slowly, his hand a nice weight on your throat, helping to hold your twitchy body down as you shook with anticipation.

slowly, slowly, he worked the tip of his cock further and further into your mouth, until he was muttering, “open wider, wider, just like that, good girl, take it…”

it felt like all of your blood was rushing to your brain in this position, but at the moment, you didn’t care. all you cared about was how you choked and gagged around the tip of dr. nanami’s cock as he worked it into your awaiting throat.

he sheathed himself in your tight heat and started to rut into you as your throat fluttered around his girthy length. the room filled with the sounds of skin-on-skin, soft gags, wet plaps, and dr. nanami’s little gasps and moans.

he moved his hand from your throat to the hem of your pants, managing to undo the button and the zipper with just one gloved hand before it was slipping into the front of your panties to graze over your clit.

you gasped and moaned around his cock before starting to choke again, drool dribbling all over your cheeks and face as dr. nanami collected some of your slick on his gloved fingers to rub your clit in quick circles.

“shh, quiet. feels good, right? feels nice to have your throat fucked like this? you like it when your doctor touches you here?”

you had gotten so turned on that his words were almost enough to send you over the edge, your nails clawing at the rubbery material of the dentist’s chair.

“i can feel you throbbing,” he grunted as he fucked his cock deeper into your throat, “go ahead, cum on my fingers, cum, cum-”

his fingers didn’t stop even as you creamed in your pants and all over his gloved hand, your body jerking and your throat constricting around his cock. dr. nanami groaned low in his throat as he finished down yours, pumping his hips slowly and riding out his own high.

he pulled back from you and panted, pulling his hand from your panties and licking your juices off of his glove, then discarding both. 

you laid on the dentist’s chair, head hung over the edge, boneless and still twitching from the waves of your pleasure.

“now, for your cleaning…”

—

“so, do you want to make your six-month follow-up now? or should we send you a letter reminder in the mail?” nobara popped her gum and twirled her pen between her fingers as she looked you over.

“i’d-i’d like to make it now, please.”

“sure. and don’t forget to leave us a good review online, alright?”

[scotianostra]

August 28th 1296 saw Edward I of England hold a "parliament" at Berwick that required all prominent Scots to swear allegiance to him.

The names of those that attended, and it was almost all, were recorded on what has become known as The "Ragman Roll",two theories exist of the name for the document, one is it is from the tangle of seals attached to it, the other name may also have been derived from an earlier record compiled for the purposes of Papal taxation by a man called Ragimunde, whose name was corrupted to Ragman.

This was part of his campaign to rule Scotland after forcing John Balliol to abdicate in July. I've said before John Balliol I think has been treated a wee bit harsh by historians, Longshanks chose him as he thought he would be the weakest of the contenders, but when the English asked him to send troops to help him fight the French he refused, instead he signed the Auld Alliance in 1295. After dethroning Balliol Longshanks chose to rule Scotland himself, the oath nobles had to take was;

I will be faithful and loyal, and will maintain faith and loyalty to King Edward, King of England, and to his heirs, in matters of life and limb and of earthly honour against all mortal men; and never will I bear arms for anyone against him or his heirs … so may God help me and the Saints.

There were around 2,000 said to have "signed" orattached their seals to this document but it is highly unlikely they all attended Berwick, instead many seals and oaths may have been gathered as Edward's army took control of Scotland after they defeated us at Dunbar in April.

However you feel about the circumstances behind the Ragman Rolls, they were and indeed are a valuable statistical document concerning Scotland. It was originally four great rolls, comprised of thirty-five pieces of parchment sewn together and upon which were affixed the seals of the two thousand Nobles and Clergy who paid homage and fealty to Edward I.

The price of refusing to submit to Edward was summary execution.

A long time later as a consequence of the 1328 Treaty of Northampton, the 1296 ‘Ragman Roll’ was returned to Scotland. That original has long since perished, but records of both ‘Ragman Rolls’ are preserved in the Records Office in London.

[unseededtoast]

Rectify | Bucky Barnes

Part 1/37 | Part Two

Summary: I've lived every day for the past five years looking over my shoulder. I knew they'd come for me, it was inevitable. I was foolish to think I could outrun my past. It's followed me everywhere I go, lurking in the shadows, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. Never would I have anticipated that the shadows would lead me to the light.

Bucky Barnes x OC

Series Warnings: Discussion of human trafficking, alcohol consumption, graphic depictions of violence, sexual content, discussion of suicidal thoughts.

a/n: Hi everyone, thank you for checking this out, I appreciate any and all support! This series is also posted on Ao3 and Wattpad if you prefer those formats/platforms! This is a completed series, and it's going to take some time for me to transfer it to Tumblr, so please bear with me!

Memory is fragile. It can be corrupted, suppressed, removed from the subconscious. Memory is what makes us, us, in a way. One day when you're old memories are all you will have left, if you're lucky. Sometimes people aren't fortunate enough to retain those memories, be it from disease, or trauma, or deliberation.

I look at the clock hanging on the wall in my office and close my laptop with a soft click. Tucking the laptop between my torso and arm, I grab my keys so I can lock my office behind me. My heels click on the polished tile floor as I head to my next class, the last one of the day. I should be relieved that the day is almost over with, but this is the class I dread the most. The majority of the students seem uninterested and it's discouraging because I believe it's one of the most fascinating topics.

Fighting back the pessimistic thoughts, I walk into the classroom and start setting up the lecture powerpoint as the students file in and take their seats. It's a Friday afternoon and I already know I don't want to be here any longer than my students, it'll be a short lecture today. I walk to the center of the room and look at my students. Half are looking back with tired expressions, others are clicking their pen, and very few look like they actually want to be here. I lick my lips and shift my weight to one foot.

"So, who actually did the reading I assigned on Wednesday?" Maybe five of the thirty students raise their hand. I nod and pick on one of them,

"Can you tell me, Sarah, which part of the brain is responsible for memory?" Sarah was always the quiet one of the class, yet she's so brilliant. I wish she had more confidence in herself, I've been trying all semester to show her how smart she is; yet she continues to shy away.

"Um, I believe the part of the brain responsible for memory is the prefrontal cortex?" She states as a question. I know she's capable of a deeper answer, an answer more well-rounded than the other students can provide. I nod with a smile on my face,

"Yes, you're right, the prefrontal cortex is one of the parts associated with memory. Can you tell the class the specific part that's associated with episodic and recognition memory?" I know she knows this.

"Is it the hippocampus?" I nod once again and turn my attention to the rest of the students.

"The hippocampus is right. There are four main areas of the brain that are related to memory. As Sarah said, the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus are two. The others are the amygdala, which is related to fear and fear memories and the cerebellum, which deals with routines or procedural memories." The students still look bored and uninterested. I bite the inside of my cheek in frustration. Why did they bother signing up for this class if they're not going to pay attention? I take a deep breath and push that thought away, wanting to get through this class and go home to drink a glass of wine on my couch and watch trashy reality tv.

"Memory is fragile. It can be corrupted, suppressed, removed from the subconscious. Memory is what makes us, us, in a way. One day when you're old memories are all you will have left, if you're lucky. Sometimes people aren't fortunate enough to retain those memories, be it from disease, or trauma, or deliberation." I click to the next slide which shows a brain afflicted with Alzheimer's. I watch as some students jot down what I'm saying, the few who are paying attention.

"There's current research being done trying to figure out if Alzheimer's is reversible if caught early enough. Alzheimer's is unique because as you can see, the disease destroys the brain, and takes the memories along with it. Unfortunately, at this time, people diagnosed with Alzheimer's typically only live four to eight years after their diagnosis. But we remain hopeful that a cure, or treatment, is found. With advancing technology it is likely that within the next decade some answer will be discovered. As you may know, I have received funding in order to research the possibility of a treatment, and I'm still hoping that one or two students will join, it will be phenomenal experience to add onto your resumé. " I click to the next slide and see the back door of the classroom open. A man sits down in the corner seat, he looks too old to be a student, and he didn't bring anything with him. I turn my focus back to the class and lose my train of thought.

"Does anyone have any questions at this point?" I ask, not remembering what I was going to say next. Someone's hand goes up and I nod for them to ask their question.

"How likely do you think it is for someone to regain their memory after a traumatic experience?" One of my students ask and I see the man in the corner lean forward in his seat, he seems to be intensely listening. His presence is unnerving for no particular reason, but I don't want to seem rude if he's a faculty member or a potential research sponsor.

"Well, it may take some therapy and counseling to unearth the suppressed memories. Typically when people are introduced to a traumatic experience at a young age their subconscious tends to bury that memory in order to protect them. I can't say with absolute certainty that someone with suppressed memories can ever get them back. I'm not sure they would want to remember what their mind deemed unfitting. But it's also not entirely impossible, this is usually a case-by-case basis." I answer the question in what I hope was a satisfactory way. The student nods, and once again the man in the back stirs in his seat. My stomach twists with anxiety and I feel like my shirt's collar is choking me. I tug at the collar to get it away from my skin and decide class is over.

"Okay, well, I think I'm going to cut it short here. Please if you didn't already read what I had assigned on Wednesday, do it. It will be on the quiz." I say and walk over to the podium and grab my laptop.

I hope my anxiety is acting up, and the man is merely an observer or potential sponsor. Maybe I was under evaluation. If that's the case I surely failed. But something just isn't sitting right with me about the man. I make a direct line for my car, fumbling with my keys. My palms are sweaty and I just need to get home.

"Where are you off to in such a hurry? Got a hot date or something?" A voice calls out to me. I look up and see the man from class walking towards me, hands in his pockets. I swallow and try to force a smile, hiding any signs of being anxious about his presence.

"Actually, I'm just headed out to meet my husband. He's expecting me for dinner." I say with false confidence, hoping he doesn't see through my lie. He reaches my car, looks me up and down and raises an eyebrow. I don't think he bought what I was selling him.

"A husband? Hm, I guess they forgot to mention that part to me. But I digress, that was a very insightful lecture, professor Averina." My heart freezes on the spot and I feel like my blood is running cold. My name isn't on the outside of the lecture hall, he knows I'm lying about my marital status. I push the anxiety back and continue with the aura of false confidence.

"Thank you, I'm very passionate about my work. And if you don't mind me inquiring, were you asking around about me?" I question him, looking around the empty parking lot for anyone else but seeing nobody. I don't have a weapon on me and I'm not confident that this man is here for my wellbeing. He laughs and shakes his head,

"Oh no I wasn't asking around about you. Some old friends who haven't seen you in a while told me all about you and what you're up to these days. They're curious if you're enjoying your vacation abroad. They miss you, they sent me to see if you're okay. Oh, and they also wanted me to tell you that you've got a one way plane ticket with your name on it. Hope you still have a winter coat." I adjust the keys in my hand, the pointy end sticking out from my palm. I nod my head as he finishes speaking,

"Well, you can tell those old friends that I'm not going back, and I got rid of my winter coat." Quickly, I slash the man's face with the key. He grunts and holds his hand to his cheek where there's now a jagged bleeding line. His eyes go dark with anger, and I know I have to get out of here fast.

I get in my car hastily and weave through traffic, needing to get home quickly. Of course the traffic is congested when I don't have the luxury of time to wait. I know the man is likely behind me, I just don't know where. I need to get home and pack, I need to get out of here. I'm no longer safe. I continue pushing my way through the traffic and pull into my driveway with a small squeal. I leave my car running as I rush to the house. Flinging the front door open, I head straight for my bedroom and grab the book from my nightstand. I find a bag underneath my bed and stuff the book in there. Rapidly, I pull open some drawers and shove handfuls of clothes in there as well and swing the bag onto my shoulder as I turn to leave. As I turn into the living room I freeze in my tracks, my breath catches in my throat.

The man is standing in the main doorway of the house, angrily staring at me with blood dripping down his jaw. I drop the bag, knowing he's not going to let me leave here without a fight. He lunges at me and I dodge it, thankfully. He's being fueled by adrenaline and rage. I grab a lamp from an accent table nearby and smash it against his head, disorienting him. I shove past him, grab the bag and go to my kitchen to get a knife. This is the only way I'm getting out of here. The man comes back to his senses and follows me to the kitchen, where I'm pointing the knife at him.

"You can't kill me. You need me alive." My voice wavers as he wipes blood from the hole in his cheek and smiles sinisterly. My hands are shaking and I know I'm not intimidating to this man.

"We don't need you, we are way past that point. However, we need what you have to finish our newest project." He says and eyes my bag. Any leverage I thought I had is gone. He lunges at me again, and I unskillfully thrust the knife forward. His weight knocks me over as he dodges the attack and we're both on the kitchen floor. My eyes dart around for the knife that flew from my hands, I know I have to act fast. I fumble for the knife and manage to grip the wooden handle as the man grabs my calf and pulls me toward him.

I kick my feet frantically and he loses his grip on my leg. I use the momentum from my kick and manage to stand. As the man tries to rise to his feet, I kick his ribs which sends him right back to the floor. I use my foot to roll him over so his back flush against the floor. In the blink of an eye, the man pulls a gun on me as I plunge the knife into his chest, just below his sternum. It's surprisingly easy to cut through the flesh.

With adrenaline coursing through my veins, I pull the knife out of his chest and stab the man in the neck which sends blood spurting everywhere. I stumble back from the dying man and push the hair from my face as I turn and grab the bag that slid across the floor and run to my car.

The blood on my hands makes it difficult to grip my door handle and the steering wheel, it's being smeared over everything. With shaking hands and a racing mind I pull back out onto the road and know I've run out of options. There's only one place I can think of that can offer me the level of protection I need. As I speed towards the only chance of safety I have, my breathing becomes erratic and I hold back sobs.

I just killed a man, I plunged a knife into his jugular. I feel sickness rise in my throat but manage to choke it down. I'm not even sure that the traffic lights are green as I speed down the metropolitan roads, but I don't care I just need to reach safety.

[emiliocarrasco]

➵  BASICS

NAME: Emilio Carrasco GOES BY: Emilio, Deputy, Deputy Carrasco AGE / D.O.B. 3rd June, 1963 [61 yo] FACECLAIM: Benjamin Bratt GENDER & SEXUALITY: Cis-Male, hetero. HOMETOWN: Lima, Peru. CURRENTLY:  Queens, NYC. AFFILIATION: NYPD. / Law Enforcement.  JOB POSITION: Deputy Chief of Police EDUCATION: High School Diploma / GED, Police Academy. RELATIONSHIP STATUS: Involved. ➵ Amelia Carrasco, wife; thirty-three years married. ( m. 1990 ) CHILDREN: ➵ Luis Carrasco, eldest son; thirty-one. ➵ Alex Carrasco, eldest daughter; twenty-seven. ➵ Oscar Carrasco, youngest son; twenty-five.

➵  TRAITS

POSITIVE: Focused, Decisive, Dedicated, Passionate, Determined. NEGATIVE: Controlling, Temperamental, Aggressive, Harsh, Stern.

➵  BIOGRAPHY

"We are not here to create disorder, we are here to preserve disorder. We are not the enemy, we never were; we serve to protect. We are justice for you, not the desperate revolution. I am - pardon the cliche - the arm of the Law tasked with keeping New York safe. And I will do that until it no longer stands; and I'll make it be long after I am gone." Emilio Carrasco, 1996, NYT.

Carrasco cringes at least once a month at his old pre-written statements given as a young officer. Feeding the wolves what they wanted to hear in order to quieten the howls.

Everything had to stop being pre-written after '97, and then '01... and then '07-'10 where Emilio's faith in Law was shaken. '18 seemed to be the reality check within the force, shortly followed by '21. When did it stop? Promising impossibilities?

From one tumulus country, to another. Emilio had grown numb to the viciousness, and vile corners of humanity. He had spent years of his early life clawing out of stigmatic labels, keeping his head down and studying to be the change he wished he could be in the world.

He was naïve then. A young boy convinced with one right voice; with good intentions he could change it overnight.

The clawing never stopped. Thirty-four years later, and he simply moved one position closer to that change. Maybe it was still a little foolish to think that he could keep stability after everything Carrasco had seen. After he had balanced a working life, and an outside life so precariously that he wasn't sure which life would crumble first.

Emilio's problem always was that he put the job first; he put the criminals ahead of his wife, of his children. Fiercely defending them in a way that was suffocating whilst being entirely too absent. But he was making the city safe for them, and every citizen who called New York a home.

The media could write one right thing about him, out of twenty. It would always mean very little to him. But reputation; a standing was part of the fragile clockwork that ran the city. He understands that, and he'll put on the face of severity. He will continue to put individuals behind bars, and bring justice - because, without them, who else would?

The gangs?

An unholy kind of justice. Emilio would see righteousness reign first.

➵  CONNECTIONS

AMELIA CARRASCO | Wife; 55, freelance editor. (m.1990) LUIS CARRASCO | Eldest son; 31, casino pit supervisor. (b.1992) ALEX CARRASCO | Eldest daughter; 27, poli-sci graduate. (b.1996) OSCAR CARRASCO | Youngest son; 25, graphic designer. (b.1998)

➵  HEADCANONS

If you attempt to corrupt him, your efforts will be solely wasted.

Has worked for NYPD since 1989; academy; rookie; detective ['13-'20]; captain['20-'22]; deputy chief.

Married the love of his life; a teenage whirlwind over the course of a crazy summer, in 1990. It was one year after Emilio began his pursuit of law enforcement. Were happily married, turning toxic and unhealthy due to Emilio's determination to clean up the city.

Two years after they married, their first son was born; Luis.

Mentions of divorce in '18, during rife gang war.

Children have some resentment for him due to missing familial commitments due to work - however, Emilio loves them dearly, and would never encourage the animosity. He does his best.

Loathes the media, of course. Has a special place in his heart for dismissing them. Has been photographed previously getting aggressive with those waving microphones, and cameras in his face. It was followed by public apologies.

Motivated by the belief that one day New York will be safe; the streets will be safe to walk on at all hours. Crime will be at an all time low before he retires. As it stands; a pipe dream.

Bilingual, from his parents - and few years as a child in Peru.

A man that does everything - mostly - by the book. Throwing himself headlong into danger is not by the book. But he won't miss an opportunity.

Self corruption is a different kind of trouble.

Listens unironically to Beyonce albums in his office, accompanied by a glass.

Where his limits stretch, is often with his children; he knows they can get into trouble. But it isn't a good look. It makes bad headlines, and looks worse when the prosecutions are light.

There have been rumours in the past about his marriage, and adultery. They are not true from Emilio's side. ( He has not the time. ) And Amelia has denied them too. Emil assumes it is a personal attack on the force to try and unstable him, and he will not allow it to cloud his judgement. But it affects his children.

He is stern. Because he feels like he can never really drop the jacket of the law, even at home where he can be softer - and loving, he finds it difficult to switch off.

[the-decaying-ramskull]

Mannequin- Part One

A/N: Please read CW before continuing, this is my darkest work and not for those easily offended. This is part of my contribution to @cyancherub ‘s Wheel of Misfortune collab.

CW: dark content, not sfw, non-con, medical torture, knife play, gun play, drug use, amputation, body horror, horror, minor character death, serial killer, living dolls, stalking, gore, violence, ambiguous ending, abduction, corruption, nightmares, mind break, breath play, dacryphilia, obedience, fear play, fem reader 

Summary: You are a mere secretary in the city’s busiest hospital, however with your current lack of luck you have caught the eye of a serial killer who likes to turn his victims into living dolls. It’s all you can do to survive when you can’t even speak unless he lets you. ---

Part One: Cry Real Tears, Cry Them All For Me The steady ticking of the clock was the only sound in the quiet office. It was moments when it was quiet like this, that your skin prickled uncomfortably, that you knew a rush was about to hit. The sheets of pouring rain outside were no comfort to your nerves. A darkness had descended in the form of thick black clouds and also in the shadows that crept into your mind. Your body tensed, starting to click the top of your pen in time with the seconds being counted. It was almost rush hour. You glanced over at the other secretary beside you and saw the same frozen and expectant face. Was it bad of you to anticipate the injuries, the deaths, and the carnage? It was a given though.

Thirty minutes after five pm and the first wave hit, a three-car pile-up, with more patients in coming. People were screaming, moaning, begging for help all around you. Blood flecked every white sheet and uniform. Once clean scrubs were doused in vomit, urine, and god knows what other bodily fluids. It smelled like metal, like burnt flesh, like impending demise, and still more patients poured in, the voices only growing as doctors and nurses yelled out instructions. You catalogued fast, fingers flying across the keys, handing out assignments, answering calls, and watching orders slide into your careful filing system. Your eyes scanned the steadily growing lines of text, the carefully printed papers, and the manilla and mint green folders; everything was going as planned. Mass casualties were expected, car accidents were common in weather like this. Yet once the flow started, you were a machine, unshakeable in your calm mask and you steadily set about your tasks. The secretaries were the lone island of order in this storm of chaos. It brought you peace being able to offer this little amount of help.

A nurse called to you, and this was the first occurrence that was out of ordinary. It should have thrown up red flags and warned your obsessive brain that something was about to change your plans in such a way that you may never recover. However, you were naïve, you were stupidly simple minded considering the world you saw every day. “We need a stocked supply cart over here,” they shouted, trying to make themselves understood over the jumbled mess of agonized moans and doctors screaming commands. You nodded, “Right.”

You hurried off, not thinking for a second something might go wrong. Not worrying about anything else but finding that supply cart, just wanting to help, wanting to save lives, if you could. It’s why when you found the body you stalled. You were prepared for mass casualties, your brain pre-prepped to take care of car accidents and surrounding trauma. What you, didn’t think you’d see was this? The woman was long dead, rigor seeming have already set in. Her face too frozen for it to have not. A face which was painted so prettily, like maybe she was going out with friends… if not for the clean cuts, carefully stitched back together, the eyes frozen wide open, and the legs… where were they?

You thought the world fell away at that point as you looked at this woman. This woman who had somehow fallen through the cracks during the chaos and landed in the corner just behind that damned supply cart you’d been looking for so frantically. This woman who was so obviously very dead and not by the fault of a car crash. This woman who looked like terror personified, even though her mouth was in a serene smile, lips carefully colored with peach lipstick. Her eyes were sunken, her cheeks hollow, and under the white décolletage of her short lace-trimmed dress you could see her ribs where it should be fat with breast tissue.

You couldn’t breathe, the desire to vomit, the need to wake up from this exact moment and have hallucinated this entire thing; gripped you aggressively. You whimpered, stumbled back through the crowd leaving your precious files on the corner of the supply cart. No longer thinking about the wounded waiting for help. Instead, all you could see was her stiff face and lifeless eyes that seemed to beg for someone to help her out of the misery that had been her end. Your fellow secretary caught your eye and frowned, “Where’s the paperwork?”

“C-call the police,” you sputtered, voice so pathetically small. “What?” she asked, obviously unable to hear over the cacophony of the wounded. “Call the fucking police here now!!!” you screamed; your entire body was shaking but you willed yourself not to cry yet. That’s when your small city learned you had a killer in your midst, someone depraved, someone angry, and someone who had medical training. It flipped your entire world on its head. Everything you thought about safety, about healing, about helping others, was wrong. And you didn’t know who to trust anymore.

---- Tsukishima hummed calmly, his eyes narrowed in concertation as he took stock of the wounds and cause of death, carefully writing his report. The body sat before him, washed clean of the thick pasty make-up, stitches removed, and injuries probed. He’d weighed organs and given his review both orally in his meticulous recordings and in his detailed notes.

The steady tap of heels alerted him to someone walking down the hall. He carefully underlined something before he glanced up to meet your anxious figure. He cocked his brow when you walked in. “Oh,” you paused, face visibly paling. “I-I brought y-you, the paperwork… from the p-police.” He tilted his head curiously, watching as you carefully avoided looking at the corpse laid out in front of him. Your face had turned from white to a shade of green. Your brows drew into a frown, lips curved down and chin trembled. Didn’t you look like a vulnerable little doll. Like one little tap and you might shatter like glass.

“Are you going to faint, or something?” his lips parted in mean scoff. Your eyes snapped to him, and your frown deepened, taken aback. “Well?” He held out his hand, chin tilting a bit higher, and he looked down his nose at you. “Going to give that to me?” You glanced down at the body, whose amputated limbs only looked more necrotic now that the skin had been reopened and exposed to the bright light of the medical examiner’s room. The harsh glare of the metal tables likely not helping. Black skin encroached upon pale pink muscle and carefully peeled tendons. There was no smell though, and you numbly wondered if that was just because of the overwhelming scent of formaldehyde.

“Yeah… yeah sure,” you mumbled, swallowing back the bile that threatened to push passed your stomach. You gave the body as wide of birth as possible, severely disappointed in yourself that you would let something like this upset you so much. Tsukishima’s lips twitched as he watched you, such an innocent, little thing. His golden eyes slid slowly over your face, the length of your torso, and the width of your hips, before they trailed up again and he took the papers. Your wide stare was focused on his ‘patient’ and so you didn’t even notice his slip. “That’ll be all,” he muttered dismissively, turning back to the papers in his hands and scribbling something down. You blinked at him slowly, dumbly, before pursing your lips, “Just because you deal with the dead all day, doesn’t mean you can be an ass to the living.”

You bared your teeth in a snarl at him, which probably looked far stupider than you wanted it to, and you spun on your heel to stalk from the room. Kei’s lips twitched into an appreciative smirk as he watched your back. Perhaps you were innocent, but good lord, you were interesting. He lifted his phone, zoomed out, and managed to snap a quick picture of your retreating form. It wasn’t the best, blurred around the edges from movement and honestly, he would like several close ups of your face and legs, so he’d need more to be certain. But you looked promising. His tooth caught his lip to discourage his grin from growing, as his thumb gently traced the outline of your spine on the image. ---

Sleep was a distant memory for you. It had been a week, maybe more, days were melding together as you felt yourself slowly lose your grip on reality more and more. You had never done well with sleep deprivation, even a few hours off and you felt the tingle of exhaustion in your fingertips. Your thoughts were fuzzed, and sluggish, simple tasks seemed like the hardest thing in the world. But hard tasks were impossible. Breathing alone seemed to be something you needed to consciously force your body to do.

How long were you sleeping at night? Were the meager hours you got, even considered sleep since they were plagued with painted, lifeless faces and mangled, bloodied stumps that were barely recognizable as thighs. Let along something that had once been a whole leg? You stared at the ticking clock. The steady count of the second hand to rush hour, once again your pen joining the repetitive sound as if you couldn’t control it. This felt so familiar. Hadn’t you done this recently, where you silently counted down the minutes, where the waiting room had been disturbingly calm for a few hours, and where the rain fell in steady curtains. You couldn’t place it, but a foreboding anxiety churned into your muddled brain, something your tried to pick apart in the sticky fog of your lethargic thoughts. But it was so hard to remember anything past the need to sleep, past the drag of your heavy eyelids as the ticking lulled you toward the darkness.

It was so strange, this awareness of not feeling, this awareness of missing something. Darkness surrounded you, somehow cloudy even though you couldn’t see anything, were your eyes open? The sensation of something thick on your face encouraged you to touch your face, to drag your fingers through sticky gloss on your lips and powdery blush on cheeks. You frowned, eyes frozen wide, but brow pinching in disapproval. You tilted your head down to look at where the sense of numbness came from, to where sensation left you. Your fingers continued to drift down your chest, checking for more of the make-up, only feeling the lace of cloth.

As your eyes drifted down, as you pushed yourself up on your elbows, you choked back a scream or maybe it was a sob. What happened? Why… why were you split in half!? You could see where you were still connected, a tiny segment of spine and tissue holding your torso and lower body together, and this time you did sob, because your innards were everywhere. But-but you couldn’t feel it.... You couldn’t feel the pain. You weren’t sure if that was worse or not. Were you in shock? Why could you still move? H-how… were you still alive? God… someone help! Someone kill me, someone fix me, just anything! Your mind scrambled to hopefully find a way to fix this.

You lifted a trembling hand, scooping at the mess that was your intestines, seeing maggots and beetles writhe through the rotting flesh. A face smiled from the darkness surrounding you, watching as you scooped and scooped but more just seemed to fall out of you. You couldn't stop it! You couldn't stuff it back in! Sobs were falling from you freely, just like that disgustingly purple and black mass of flesh. Tears rolling from your eyes as you looked at the partial face, looked hopelessly for help from the thing that seemed to take pleasure in your horror. The face grinned, all white teeth and glinting eyes, nothing else discernable in the blackness. “Didn’t think I’d let you get away, did you?” it hissed, laughing lowly.

You woke with a gasp and immediately lent over the small garbage can under the desk to throw up. Bitter bile, stale coffee, and the partially digested sandwich from lunch, laid heavy on your tongue. You swallowed, trying to control your rebellious gut as it pushed you to gag again. The images and the terror from the nightmare still bubbled underneath the surface of your mind and you turned to find a maintenance worker before you were needed.

Your eyes glanced at the clock, and you froze, that’s right… today is exactly like the day you found her. You heard the scream of sirens in the distance and glanced to over your shoulder at to your coworker who was watching you with an anticipatory stare. Like she expected your shake apart right in front of her. Though, you wouldn’t deny it… she may be right. You felt like your mind was cracking and just waiting for the right pressure to shatter completely. Your shoulders jumped, and the twitch seemed to settle in with a consistent interval of every few minutes. The stress in your body now tensing your muscles beyond your control. There was this fathomless pity in the other secretary’s eyes, and you hated her for it. You hated every doctor or nurse who walked past who gave you the same look. You swore you almost preferred the way Tsukishima had looked at you that day when you dropped off the paperwork and was trying desperately not to throw up on his shoes.

You glanced up as your manager stepped closer, placing a steady hand on your shuddering shoulder. You flinched at the look in his eyes, the painful amount of worry projected, he wasn’t a man who showed such an emotion regularly. “Go home, I’ve got someone to cover for you,” his voice was soft, soothing, and seemed to stroke your broken and frayed nerves back together. “I shouldn’t have let you come back so early anyways.”

You wanted to argue but the sound of squealing breaks and muffled shouting caused you to tense more. Your mind whirled, thoughts spilling over each other, and trampling any semblance of control you had. So, instead you hung onto what your manager told you to do. Used that as a guideline for your next action because you sure as hell weren’t making decisions any time soon. Your teeth sank into the soft inside of your lower lip. Chewing and chewing, as you nodded and walked to the lounge, tearing into the slick, plush flesh until you tasted the tang of metal on your tongue and felt the skin break beneath your bicuspids. Your eyes pricked dangerously, threatening to spill over with tears, instead focusing on sucking and worrying the new wound in your mouth in hopes the pain and flavor would ground you.

“Can’t cry here,” you murmured. You were moving so blindly, so fast, that you didn’t see Tsukishima on the other side of the door and almost hit him with it. Thankfully, he was quick enough to step out of the danger zone with nothing more than a scoff and an irritated scowl. Drawing himself up to glare down through his glasses at you like you were a fleck of mud on his shoes.

“Watch where you’re going,” he snarled. His sharp words, his ridiculous height, and his confident presence instantly soothed the savage beast of fear inside you. It pushed the monster trying to claw its way out of your chest back into its cage, and you hiccupped a dry sob at his words. Relief flowed through you, warm and welcoming, wrapping you in a soothing embrace of barbed comments and harsh stares.

You didn’t want sympathy or pity. You wanted to forget what you’d seen, you wanted the world to move on, not be reminded of it every fucking turn by people staring at you with puppy eyes. It’s not like the nightmares didn’t remind you enough. Tsukishima’s nose crinkled, “Are you gonna cry?” He asked the question like if you did happen to start tearing up, it would be the biggest inconvenience to him in the world. Still, he didn’t make to leave the room. Instead, he stood awkwardly in the way.

“No,” you responded, frowning petulantly because you know your words sounded stuffy due to your nose. You refused to cry even more now just to spite him. Instead, you crossed your arms, though the effect was greatly diminished when you sniffled, and glared at him. “You gonna move?” you demanded, imitating his same dry and annoyed tone. “Tch, brat,” he muttered but moved out of the way. ----

Oh, you were feisty, even when you were on the verge of a meltdown. Kei couldn’t help but want to put you in your place. Make it so you could never speak out against him again, maybe… he’d let you keep those legs, for once maybe he’d found a pair that was aesthetically pleasing. He brought his phone out as you bent over to pull out the items in your locker, he zoomed and snapped a couple pictures quickly. When you shifted to stand, he did the same of your back, isolating your lower back from you upper, and then focusing two pictures on the base of your neck. You really were such a pretty toy.

You began to turn, and he calmly saved the pictures and looked down at his phone, pretending to scroll through something. “You going home?” he asked. “Yeah, still shaken up from the other day,” you slowly began to pack your bag as you talked but even across the room, he could see the slight tremor in your hands.

He grunted; he didn’t need you to confirm which day it had been. He knew there was only one reason you would be forced to leave early that wasn’t physical illness. He narrowed his eyes, forcing a soft understanding smile to curve his lips. “I’ll leave you to it then,” he turned on his heel and left without so much a backward glance. Though if he was honest with himself, he still wanted to play with you. But… tonight was not the night. That would be rushing things, and he still wasn’t sure you were the one yet.

[agentxnova]

*     ◟    :    〔   tessa thompson ,      cisfemale   +   she/her    〕 nova   vergara ,      some say you’re a  forty lost soul among the neon lights.      known for being both  dedicated  and  cynical,  one can’t help but think of  hurricane by cannons  when you walk by.    are you still a   federal agent  at   the NYPD   /   the government,     even with your reputation as the workaholic?     i think we’ll be seeing more of you and   a collection of blue prints with detailed specs scribbled on the cover, a stack of neatly organized files with color coded labels, and a graveyard of electronics that didn’t survive  humanoid wrath  although we can’t help but think of athena grant 911, olivia pope scandal, rosa diaz from brooklyn nine-nine   whenever we see you down these rainy streets.      (     j  ,      33  ,     she/her  ,      mst    +   none  .      )

BASICS -

Birth name:  REDACTED

Name currently: Nova Vergara

age: forty

gender/pronouns: cis female, she / her

height: 5′4

sexual orientation: bisexual

relationship status: Married to her job

birthday: May 10th

zodiac: Taurus

alignment: chaotic good

hometown: REDACTED

affiliations: the government

occupation: federal agent

current residence: brooklyn, sometimes a cot under her desk

financial status: higher middle class

familial connections of note: tbd

BACKSTORY-

TW: Kidnapping (implied), Child Death (implied)

Nova thought her parents boring, and being the eldest life itself was paved in disappointment. It wasn’t until a school paper unlocked something that intrigued her. Because of their escalated reactions to a paper about her history. She was seven and her sister was five.  They said that it didn’t matter what they came from, and pointed out that their midwest life was paved in happiness.  It took them two hours in a round about way to not answer her homework. The consequence? A D on her paper. Why would they act that way?

The truth surfaced her senior year of high school when she became romanced with the idea of free education under the guise of the US military. Except for when she went to turn in her applications with her stellar grades at first she was turned down - Nova Vergara’s social security number actually belonged to a deceased child under the name Vanessa Suarez.

Eighteen years old and she was sat next to her sibling holding their hand. The agent at the table with them dealt the pure honesty to them as lightly as possible. The two Vergara siblings were protected. Why? They didn’t know. 

A corrupt federal agent had enlisted them in a veiled witness protection program. One that no one knew the code to crack. Their lives had been a lie. Their parents weren’t their parents, or were they? They wrapped the news with a ribbon that the siblings could enlist in the military, or take hush money to start their lives again someplace else. Her sibling chose the money, and moved to New York. A city lifestyle and nothing remote that they were used to. Nova, however, chose the military. The Air Force to be exact is where the testing landed her. 

It wouldn’t be until after she climbed the ranks, and returned to midwest with metals scattered across her dressings. Nova’s eyes would lock to the parents that raised her through a plastic guard. Letters left unanswered by her, but they still sent them. Part of her thought perhaps there were codes in the letters themselves. In her career, she had studied other coding, but still that feeling never left her. To this day she still has the letters. Once she turned thirty-five her coworkers alerted her. A prison break, and her parents were now missing. Never found. The letters still come with different areas of postage, and she has not told a soul.

Nova settled at the NYPD office as a federal agent to investigate the spikes of criminal activities four years ago. A stern expression, because no matter how much she climbed that letter of the government. One question still remained unanswered.

Who was she really? Who was her sibling? 

Timeline  (need to finish! ) -

WANTED CONNECTIONS

Air Force buddies - from her time in the military. Could also be rivals.

Fellow “heroes” - other agents trying to clean up the world like she is currently.

Baddies - people she is currently tracking/ trying to collect enough to arrest them. 

Paths crossed - Those she may have dealt with before, maybe she put someone they know in the prison system? maybe themselves and they’re out now? 

Significant Other - Nova is a workaholic 10/10, but i figure she has a spouse that may or may not be tired of her shit. Missing dates because she’s locked into the intel of files. Forgetting anniversaries, you know the drill. 

Coworker she shares pets with ( co pet parent) - Her sibling took note of her loneliness without her having to mention it. Taking a note from their parents she leaves a letter attached to some creature that she figures Nova can’t fuck up. It started with a goldfish, a betta, a rabbit. Smaller pets, and still sometimes Nova tries to pawn them off on other people because she’s busy. 

Childhood friends - someone that grew up with her in the midwest, and runs into her in NY. 

Exes (0/5) - She has an ex graveyard, mainly because her career always came first. She is most likely the reason it didn’t work out, and she wouldn’t be apologetic about it. Tense ex connections that will likely not rekindle. 

Something’s off (0/2) - Possibly someone that uncovers some real shards of who she really is. They could dangle the info over her, and she would play ball for a bit. Before she punches them in the face. 

Mentor (55+)  - the agent that broke the truth to her and her sibling, which would have later been the person to show her the ropes. 

[unlocktxt]

in the darkness of tomorrow | c.yj

choi yeonjun x female reader

series masterlist :

prologue | part one | part two

genre: royal au, fluff, angst

description: the selection is happening once more to find a wife for prince yeonjun. y/n swears to hate the royal family, but when it’s time for the prince to choose a wife, she gets tied up in the mess.

note: this is inspired from the book the selection by kiera cass, however even though i use some of the ideas there are major differences.

word count: 3.3k

warnings: mentions being whipped and starved

tag list: @binniebutter @nshitae

this was the first time you had ever felt heartbreak. your heart has been a constant reminder that daniel ended things days ago. it haunted you, even as you passed by all of the bright faces in the city.

it seemed like heartbreak wasn’t enough for you. the world had to punish you some more by the announcement made yesterday. the news spread fast around town that day, “the selection application was required for all women of a given age.” you happened to be a part of that age group.

you doubted that the prince would choose you to even be considered as one of the options, but what if’s filled your mind. you still weren’t ready to let go of daniel. right now you wished you would’ve stayed to hear what he wanted to say, but now it was impossible.

you did anything to get your mind off of his frozen blue eyes, including thinking of the prince. unlike everyone else, you thought that prince yeonjun felt a little too entitled. single, willing women weren’t enough for him so he had to make those whose hearts belonged to someone else apply. unlike all the bright faces hoping to be picked, you didn’t want to be one of his little playthings.

they say that the selection was unbiased, but most people knew that wasn’t true. many girls who were unfortunate enough to be in castes five and lower, where they could hardly or not even make ends meet, rarely ever got picked and they were the ones who needed it most. you could stay a four and bake pastries all your life if it meant the people in castes lower than you could afford food.

besides, you had seen first hand what this kingdom has done and you didn’t agree. you would be caught dead before you ever bowed to their spoiled and corrupt system.

“hey mom!” you put on a small smile to please her worried eyes when you walked into the bakery. her small streaks of grey hair added to her beauty.

“i’m so sorry sweetie. i know how much you didn’t want to apply.” her shoulders relaxed, but she continued to place out new baked goods.

you let out a sigh, “yeah well... it doesn’t matter. it’s not like i’ll get picked.” you smiled at the thought. it was all just a waste of time.

your mom stopped, placing the basket of bread on the counter. “it’s supposed to be random... we never know.”

you furrowed your brows and laughed a bit, while giving your mom a look that said “really?” she smiled, shaking her head to acknowledge that you were probably right.

“anyways... where’s dad and taehyun?” you didn’t see or hear them in the bakery.

your mom looked up at you and for a moment she looked distant before returning to her warm demeanor. you caught the change but decided not to bring it up.

“going on an errand,” she responded simply before filling the basket of bread with a few cakes.

she wasn’t going to give you the chance to ask, but you didn’t mind. you knew she’d tell you later.

“so... this arranged engagement with taehyun.” you looked to the side while preparing your face for a whistle.

“you know he’s a great boy and he’s a doctor... a three. he also helps to manage the orphanage with the eights. he’s a great boy y/n.” your mom looked disappointed when you looked back at her.

“it’s just... when does a four ever get put in an arranged marriage. plus...” you looked down at your hands where your fingers were playing with each other, “what if... i could love someone else.” your eyes glistened at the thought of daniel always waiting for you on that tree branch. you didn’t know what caste he was in... even if he was an eight you’d be willing to be homeless with him... although now he’d be a two... all because of the draft.

your mom sighed as your little sister, seoyeon walked in. “that’s enough for now y/n. take this basket to the orphanage.”

seoyeon was all muddy, indicating how she came inside after playing around in the dirt. you grabbed the basket harshly, trying to show your mom that this was not over.

“can i go with?” seoyeon asked, looking at mom. your mom slightly nodded, so you took seoyeon’s hand in yours. you resisted the urge to glare at your mom before smiling at seoyeon.

“okay... we have to get to the orphanage... what’s the best route?” you asked your sister who wore a sly grin before pulling you out of the door.

seoyeon rushed towards the river as she pulled you along. it was your little secret space that no one visited. the two of you had been running for quite a while, slowly passing by fewer and fewer people.

once the two of you made it to the river, seoyeon balanced on the thin makeshift bridge with her arms sticking out. she wobbled here and there but made it over. you followed soon after, carrying the basket in your hand and making sure to avoid any wet slippery spots on the bridge. seoyeon laughed as you made your way over to her.

“hurry slowpoke!” she called before running off into the field.

you shook your head before fastening your pace. once you got off the bridge you took off into a sprint. by the time you caught up to her she was already at the orphanage and you were panting. that was one thing about seoyeon, for small legs she could sure as hell run.

“it’s about time.” she giggled as she took in your bent-over body. “i was starting to think i should’ve carried the basket.”

you rolled your eyes, waving her off before you straightened up. seoyeon had already run off to play with the kids her age. when you walked in there were a few kids and teenagers around your age sitting towards the entrance.

“are taehyun and jihyun around?” you asked, looking around to see if you had missed them in the small orphanage. all you could see at the moment was how it needed to be remodeled, like many things in this area.

“taehyun left a long while ago, but you could probably find jihyun upstairs if you like.” one of the teenage girls, who you knew to be yui, spoke. you nodded before moving towards the kitchen area to place to basket down, with a little note not to eat more than one.

you knew how hard it was for taehyun and jihyun to keep this orphanage up and running. it was hard to get everyone here a proper meal. taehyun nearly passed out from exhaustion when he came to visit your family. he had given up plenty of food just so those who were sick could eat enough.

you made sure to get the plates and napkins out to remind them not to leave the bread lying in unsanitary areas. once you felt your job had been done, you went upstairs to their office. unlike most days the door was closed. you knew something was wrong and the sniffling coming from the room only confirmed your suspicions.

you hesitated for a moment before knocking on the door and letting yourself in. jihyun’s sorrowful eyes burned through yours, making your heart drop.

“y/n thank god you’re here.” she cried before attacking you in a hug. you rubbed circles on her back to try and get her to calm down.

“what happened?” you asked softly, scared this question might break her.

she sniffled, “o-one of the boys-” she let out a sob and you continued to try and soothe her.

“it’s okay you don’t have to say anything.” at this point you moved one of your hands to her head and rested it there.

“n-no he... he stole some meat and they’re going to whip him y/n. they’re going to whip him. he’s only seven!” she cried looking at you in your eyes. she was pleading, pleading for you to do anything. you weren’t sure you could.

“where’s taehyun?” you asked looking around, maybe he went to help. maybe that’s what he and your dad were doing.

“i don’t know.” she finally calmed a bit, hiccuping here and there. “he left before we received the news.”

you were left to wonder what the two were doing, but you didn’t have time for that.

“i promise i’ll go help the boy.” you gave jihyun a determined look. “what’s his name?” you asked halfway out the door.

“hak hyunwoo.” she barely whispered it, probably ashamed. you gave her a reassuring smile before leaving and finding seoyeon.

by the time you had arrived back home they already were gathering people around the city to witness the poor boys' punishment.

“what is your name boy?” the masked man shouted more to the crowd than to the boy. you had been struggling to get closer to the wooden post.

“hak hyunwoo.” he was crying, his tears wouldn’t stop flooding. he had nobody to watch out for him.

“and what is your crime?” the masked man yelled out once more.

hyunwoo was silent before speaking. “theft.” it was quiet.

“your punishment will be...” he waited to see if the crowd of people would react. only a few weren’t excited, it was disgusting how many people were cheering. everyone was just sitting back... watching.

“thirty strikes to the back!” there was a roar in the crowd, but the noise died out in your mind. that was way too much...

you pushed even harder, “stop!” you screamed, but no one could hear you over the crowd. you saw them grabbing the whip, only making you lunge forward, forgetting about hurting the people in the crowd. you stumbled forward after reaching the front. it didn’t matter if he was an eight, you had to help him.

“wait!” you screamed, now where the two in charge of this could hear. the guards were watching you with cautious eyes.

“miss you can’t intervene.” one man standing to the side had said.

you took a deep breath. “this boy did nothing wrong. can’t you see he’s malnourished? the kingdom failed this poor boy... they’re the ones at fault.” you had to try anything. everyone gasped as you accused the royal family of this boy's actions.

“if you must punish someone. punish me, but theft does not deserve thirty strikes to the back.” everyone's eyes were on you, making you nervous. you never really asked for attention, but here you were gaining it.

the masked man was staring at you, no doubt glaring. “fine. get up here.” he nearly threw kyunwoo off of the tiny stage.

you were surprised that worked, you were just desperate, but now you would have to face the consequences. as you walked past the little boy you told him to run home, which he did. that gave you a little comfort.

“what is your name?” the masked man was seething.

“kim y/n.” you tried to sound brave and strong, but you couldn’t help the waver in your voice.

before he could do anything else, more soldiers rushed toward the tiny wooden stage.

“you mustn’t hurt this young lady. she’s been selected and the prince would like to see her now.”

you weren’t sure which guard had said it. you were stricken with shock. tears threatened to fall and you didn’t know whether it was from the relief of not getting whipped or because you’d have to leave everyone to be a plaything for prince yeonjun.

guards had escorted you back home. you were still in a daze from the information, even as your little sister cheered for you. your mom was the only one to snap you out of the trance.

“i’m sorry sweetie... just know that we will all be waiting and ready for anything that happens. we will support you no matter what.” she rubbed your shoulder as you stared at all of the paperwork in front of you.

there had been a palace worker standing beside you stating the rules and how the caste systems worked as if you didn’t know.

ones were royalty and family of royals. twos were celebrities, soldiers, and politicians. threes were people who worked pretty stable jobs like teaching and nursing. fours were business owners. fives were musicians and entertainers. sixes were those who helped others with jobs. sevens were mainly outdoor workers. then there were eights... these people were mainly cast out of society.

staring at the paper only made you even more frustrated. you were practically signing your life away for the possibility of being a three or one if you’re “lucky.”

everyone had to be virgins, single, and if caught in a relationship could be met with death. you rolled your eyes once more thinking about how it wasn’t optional this year. you guess it was a good thing daniel never asked you out and ended things.

then the man said that it’d be ill-advised to refuse anything the prince asked. that confirmed your suspicions, you were practically being sold off to a spoiled brat. the only one who could send you home was the prince himself and no one got a say in what the prince did.

of course, everyone had to be civil and not fight, but you had to wear what the palace gave you, nothing else. one of the worst things was that you couldn’t leave the palace on your own accord. you’d be trapped and watched for the entertainment of the show.

there was one last thing about being one of the last 10. it meant you were the elite, but you doubted that would ever be you. with that... you signed your love away.

your mom was the one to give the signed paper to the man at the front door who had been waiting to take your paper to the palace. she was going to see you off because your dad still wasn’t back yet.

“wait y/n!” seoyeon ran towards you, hugging your legs tightly. “are you going to be a princess?” her eyes lit up when she asked. you couldn’t crush her.

“maybe... that’s up to the prince.” and that was the truth. you didn’t have a choice, but you’d do everything in your power to leave.

it seemed every choice was being made for you as you followed the palace worker, the guards following behind.

the ride to the palace was slow and lonely. you were forced to look longingly at the forest, regretting not saying goodbye to daniel. you thought of all the things you wanted to say to him.

i’ll wait for you because i love you.

we can get through this.

please don’t leave me.

i can’t live without you.

be safe.

at that moment all you knew was that you had to find him somehow and he’d be in the palace. maybe staying for just a little bit wouldn’t be that bad if you could find him.

when you saw the large palace nausea rested in your throat and stomach. you don’t know why he called you here this early, but it couldn’t be good. all the other girls would be arriving tomorrow morning as they had announced.

it was weird being escorted in, but your nerves were exploding within you. you weren’t ready to see royalty. you vowed to die before you bowed before them, but here you were walking straight in and scanning the area. all you managed to see were maids and soldiers around, giving you another few moments of the pride you were willing to die for.

you were passed off to three maids who had been waiting for you.

“it’s amazing to meet you lady y/n.” the title made your face crunch with distaste.

“please... just call me y/n.” your voice was quiet, not allowing yourself to be comfortable in an unknown area.

“we can’t do that miss.” the shortest of the three informed, making you close your eyes and pray to the heavens that you would be able to survive this.

“okay then... may i know your names?” the three of them looked at each other before the one who led the path spoke up.

“i’m aeri, she's isuel, and that’s minsuh” aeri pointed at each of them. you noted that the shortest one, issue, was probably the youngest. you only nodded in response as they led you further into the palace, upstairs, and down long hallways.

“this will be your room,” aeri announced, opening the door to reveal a large room with many small details on the furniture. it was a bit much, but you didn’t expect anything less from people at the top of the caste system.

“we have to get you dressed because the prince will be seeing you soon.” minsuh rushed over towards the large wardrobe, that when opened revealed many different dresses. all of them... dresses.

“i say we should put you in the pink one!” iseul shouted, excited. the other two nodded enthusiastically, but you were too defeated to protest.

it was almost as if prince yeonjun had been waiting the whole time because as soon as they zipped you up, a knock came from the door. all of the maids ran to the door, leaving your pleading eyes behind.

“your majesty.” was all you heard before a few mumbling and giggling. they rushed out immediately and prince yeonjun replaced them. his hair was dyed pink now, making you wish you protested the dress’s color. your maids were sly.

your heart was pacing, scared from the uncertainty.

“it’s a pleasure to meet you lady y/n.” there it was again. the title you wanted to get away from.

“the pleasure is all mine.” you tried to hide the sarcasm in your voice as you stood strong in front of him. don’t you dare waver.

“i heard you got into some trouble today... i’d like to discuss that.” he was calm, every word held a hidden strength behind it. this was why he called you here early.

“i’d hardly call it trouble.” you stopped to watch him step closer to you. you wanted to tell him to stay away, not get close to touching you, but you kept quiet.

“oh really? you don’t call asking to be punished for someone else’s crimes trouble?” he was standing right in front of you now, but he was relaxed and wore a soft smile. he found this humoring. it was anything but.

“i call that two innocent people paying for a kingdoms failure.” the words slipped out before you could hold them back, but you didn’t regret them. not when you saw how prince yeonjun backed away, looking to the side.

“innocent? he was a thief.” yeonjun looked back at you, determined and unwavering. two could play at that game.

you walked towards him this time. a power move. “the world is not all black and white. he was a young boy, an orphan that was placed as an eight. your rules are the reason he was starving, leaving no option but stealing.” you were glaring now, trying to ignore the fact you had to look up at him.

he didn’t seem to want to back down either. “yet if we let one person steal something what’s stopping others?” he leaned his face closer to yours, noses only inches apart.

don’t you dare give in.

“if higher castes can pay their way out of punishment, why don’t the lower castes get a chance?” at this point, you couldn’t move any closer, but you could spit on him. that was only a passing thought to entertain you.

prince yeonjun was quiet after that, staring into your eyes as if he was trying to search through every part of your life. it felt interrogating. he hadn’t responded, so you took that as his loss and back away.

“is that all you wanted to discuss?” your voice was quieter now, not accusatory.

“for now... but you might want to learn some respect.” and then he left you to be swallowed in your anger.

part 2 sneak peak:

the castle had been dark for a while. all day today you were looking around for a familiar face, one that didn’t seem to show.

the creaking of your door alerting you of a new presence. you swore you told everyone you’d like to sleep peacefully tonight, but here they were interrupting you.

“princ-”

“i heard you’ve been looking for me.” you could recognize that voice anywhere. the playfulness in his tone lit your heart on fire.

[the-silver-peahen-residence]

||An Officer's Corruption part Thirty-seven||

Hello there! I'm back with another chapter to the Officer's Corruption series. <3 Thanks to my amazing friend, she got me thinking of a chapter so I hope you like.

If you wish to see how or where everything is going, you can follow up on the chapters down below.

||Chapters so far|| 1-30|| ((Click here))

||OVA Chapters 1-7|| ((Written by my amazing friend demon mun and me)) (Click here))

Part Thirty one

Part Thirty two

Part Thirty Three

Part Thirty Four

Part Thirty five

Part Thirty Six

((Your reading Thirty-Seven))

||Drabble Summary||

After getting more and more information, Oblivion has got some leads that might help in finding the ones that started this. However, she got an alarming text from Luna. What could it be? Also, a new man has come to visit the prison but to deliver some details but he meets with Charlie. Who could this man be? Read to find out.

||Warning||

~Light NSFW is present in this

~Mature and Dark Themes is present in this

~blood warning is present

~drug use is spoken of in this

||Guests in Drabble||

Rave"Oblivion" Daitengu, and anyone else mention belongs to my amazing Rp partner @demon-blood-youths

Luna so-yeon koboyashi, Jinx violet, Yuuka Nakano and others mentioned are my OC's and belong to me. While junichiro tanizaki and others spoken of comes from the anime BSD but also me due to rping as them.

Yuji Itadori is from the anime series Jujutsu Kaisen but also me due to rping as him.

((Note: Their will be grammar mistakes and errors in this drabble as others have this warning. But like I state before, this is written for fun. So I hope you like it and my friend too. I hope you Enjoy.))

----- T Prison - Lower Cells -----

"There we go. That feels much better don't it?"

"Mhmmm..."

Yuji smiled seeing a relaxed Jinx sitting with him in the hot bath tub to help relax her and his muscles. Her hair was wet now but some was covering her chest as he was holding her close to him. She seems like a relaxed kitty cat. Or it could be due to the deep purring she was doing right now.

"Seems even after all that you must have tired yourself out a bit huh?" he said but Jinx only relaxed more against him while looking at the water since it was a bit steamy in the bathroom.

"A..a little b..bit." she said but feels him nuzzling against her cheek.

"I see. Well, even so, your still precious and also my little kitty cat. Next time we will get to play a lot more since you did take a peek of us having fun. You must have been lonely." he said but she only hums to nod relaxing against him.

"I was lonely but..it's fine. I'm not the type to hold a grudge.." she said gently though Yuji smiled still while they sat in the bath tub together. He even looks to gently begin rubbing her back while already helping her get clean before she would have to head back. He knew the other two officers might be worried but they knew she was fine.

~~~~Meanwhile~~~~~

"Hey Kali? Do you think Jinx is alright? I Hear she's been still on patrol right now." Kali looks up hearing Ink speak, seeing some prisoners just relaxing right now in their cells.

"Ehhh I'm sure she's fine. Knowing her, she tends to be just as bad as you. So I wouldn't worry about it." she waves a hand with eyes closed that Ink tilts her head to think about it.

"Hey, what's that suppose to mean?" she pouts that Kali sighed.

"Nevermind."

"Is it the same thing like you and the other inmate your watching over? Are you even going to say who he is-"

"I told you I don't tell you anything of what I do remember?! Why are you always so nosy!?" she said.

"I was just curious!" Ink said laughing happily that Kali's eye twitched a bit.

"Uhhh you okay Kali?"

"I'm..I'm fine just..holding back the urge to bonk you on the head..." she said but Ink looks at her then smiled.

"Okay!"

"Ugghhhhh..."

~~~Back with Yuji and Jinx~~~

Yeah, they were fine for now, he wanted to savor this moment for a while before she would be heading back later on. This moment was pretty peaceful for him as they relaxed. Even better seeing her relaxing in his arms together.

'So precious..' he thought only to kiss the top of her head.

~~~ Back at Northern State Pentiartary/Main office -----

"So I take it they heard about it too huh? Which results in them sending you?" Dazai was speaking to another male but he was setting some papers and files down. He looks to Dazai but sighed right after.

"Well, you asked us to look into something so we did. Unless you got something else we need to look into." junichiro tanizaki said while looking to Dazai. He was from the other building across from here but he tends to come here to check up on Dazai and give him information if he asks for it. Knowing him, Dazai can count on him for giving hidden files, documents and other things if it's hard.

"I did, I did. I was just doing something else at the moment and having a visitor. But I take it the info you gave me says things are fine? Any leads?" he asked Tanizaki who shook his head.

"Not yet. I got some trails but most of them are cold. I can keep looking into them for the moment till then. Do you have anything that might help with that?" he had his arms crossed but Dazai thinks only to reach into his pocket to take out some paper. He hands it to him as Junichiro opens it and reads.

"........"

"So far, that's what I have but maybe you can take a closer look into it? I'll be sure to send whatever I need to you if requested." he said as the other folds the paper.

"Understood." He said but as he was about to turn, the door opens showing someone. Tanizaki sees a woman walking in wearing the uniform. She had blonde hair in a pony tail. She has beautiful blue eyes and has scars on her body judging from what he sees. However, she looks pretty tough.

"Warden Dazai, I got Miss Seon to a room. She is ready for-" she stops seeing another standing there but another male? He looks only to see her look back.

"Oh thank you Charlie. Also, don't be alarmed he's an ally. Tanizaki this is Charlie. One of my officers for a section in the prison. Charile, this is Junichiro Tanizaki, a officer that does more of the shady dark needed things if it's from looking for something needed." he explains this to see Charile and Tanizaki look at one another.

"Hmmm, it's..nice to meet you Officer I take it?" she said seeing him look back at her and nod.

"Yes. It's a pleasure to meet you." he said bowing his head slightly to her that Charlie looks at him.

"Sir, you said he's a hidden hire. You never spoken about another helping out outside." she said hearing Dazai laugh.

"True but don't get me wrong, he's one of my best hired help. Or to say my most dangerous one. He's well known to his job and is able to finish the task no matter what he has to do or who's blood he spills. He gets it." he said simply that Charlie blinks then looks at him. What sort of things does this guy deal with?

"Even so, in time he will be transfered over here to help you and Jason in the future. He's just finishing up some documents for me." he said showing the file folder.

"I....see..."

"Even so, I hope you two will get along!" he giggled seeing both Tanizaki and Charlie look at one another. Get along, well, that is for later to see but who knows? Seems like it's a strong possible view.

~~~~~With Oblivion~~~~~

Tae was waiting for Luna to pick up her phone as she dials the number to her. She hopes she would pick up. In a moment, she heard a click on the other line and heard a familiar voice.

"Hello? Tae?"

"Hey Luna, I got your text message, what's going on? You said something urgent.." she said.

"Yes this is urgent. I know you already got the update regarding how Yuu is right? Well...I got more news I have to tell you but it's private. You are alone right?" she asked on the phone.

"I'm alone yeah." she said.

"Well, I'm alone too but here. The reason I'm calling you is to give you another update about her. She..." she sighed on the other line but was in her office with the other officers busy.

"What's wrong Luna? Is their something else wrong with Yuuka?"

"She's....she's gotten a lot worse Tae. Like bad worse." she said.

"What are you talking about Luna? How bad?"

"....Like ill bad." she said. "Ever since the Public Safely Hero Commission sent orders to the doctor they sent, she's been given a double dose of the medicine and shot..she seems like she's...sicker. Even if they say she would be better she don't seem like that." Luna said.

"The double dose? Hold on, they started that right now? I thought it was still being under view?"

"It was before I called to ask about it."

"Okay and Yuu? Is she....."

"I heard she's still taken the medicine and shots but too weak to even fight back right now....those drugs really weakened her Tae. Like baby weak..in a sense."

"What do you mean?" Oblivion asked.

"Well, remember how violent she was when you saw her a while ago or a few days ago? She's not as active anymore Tae. When me and Swan spoke to the head active present, he denied our request to stop the drugs."

"Hold on, he denied the request?! Why!?"

"Because he assumes the drugs was helping her. They say it's their way to insure she won't be a danger to the public."

"......."

So now we are trying to get some results of our own to see what the hell is in the medicine and shots Doctor Lee has been given her and of the double shot." she said looking worried.

"We even went to visit her and she....she didn't do much. She was just laying back upright on the bed looking ahead. Her quirk isn't as strong now because the double strength of that medicine and shots are making her weaker and weaker like she's losing her quirk. Hell, purple particles are only seen now unlike what you saw before..it's really gotten a lot more weaker now."

"What!?" When did this start to happen! "Wait wait wait, then how is she now?"

"Still the same. She still gets frequent hallucinations and she's more afraid now. I don't know what he's been doing but something is off with that damn doctor they sent us. It's like their trying to either get her to become quirkless or...I'm worry they are going to do more worse harm."

"......And she didn't even react to you nor Swan?" Oblivion asked.

"No. She just kept looking down even after Swan checked on her. She's not responding to us but the look in her eyes they dulled out. Lost their color Tae. That damn doctor says the medicine is 'working' and she's not as dangerous but it looks like it's only killing her from the inside. I don't know why but it feels like she's just lost in her little world without responding to anyone else. We can't get through to her." Luna said covering her face.

This was not what she was expecting but Tae only grips her phone to try calming down. Anger was rising inside of her but she looks ahead before asking, "Can I see her? Or can you do a video call?"

"Huh? Well, yeah I can but Tae..I really don't think you want to-"

"Luna please..I need to see for myself."

"......" Luna was quiet on the other line but sighed closing her eyes. "I can do that. Just a moment."

Tae heard some shuffling noise in the back but heard that Luna was leaving her office to where Yuuka was. She still was in the main hall before heading down to the right. She gets to the medic ward hallway section and goes into the area. A few were not in this area but she was heading to the other one where Yuu was.

The medic ward for heavy observation 24/7 was there but she was looking at the door where Yuu was. Doctor Lee was off today so Swan was watching her. She knocks on the door. "Swan? You in there?"

Obivion heard the door open in the background.

'Yeah, I'm here. You come to see Yuu again?' she asked as she lets Luna come in.

'Yes but..I got Oblivion on the phone and she wants to do a video call with her to see how she is.'

'....I..Is that wise? What if she-'

'She needs to see her Swan.....' Luna said but Swan only sighed to nod.

'Understood..' she said going to help sit Yuu upright on the bed. Luna moves but she sits down to pull the phone back but puts it on speaker.

'You still there Oblivion?'

"Yeah, still here."

'Alright. I'm going to put you on video call but you might not like what your about to see. Are you still sure?' she asked.

".....Yeah...I'm sure."

"Okay..Hold on."

Oblivion lowers her phone but looks seeing the screen change to a video call showing connecting please wait on her screen. She hopes Yuuka was alright but she was not expecting to see just how bad Yuuka was. Within seconds, the connection went through showing a room. It looks like the medic ward alright but she saw Swan and Luna.

"Oblivion, you there?"

'Yeah, I'm here. Where is Yuuka?" she asked but the two looked at one another but sighed.

"She's here.." Luna lifts up the phone but points it to show Yuu. As soon as Oblivon saw her, her own eyes slowly widen seeing Yuu's condition. Yuuka Nakano was sitting up right in bed but she looks ahead while not moving a inch. Her purple hair was messy but kept up in a pony tail, she was wearing a shirt and sweatpants while looking at her fingers. They seem to be shaking a little. She looked really tired but not thin since they still were giving her food. She just looked ill with bags under her eyes but she was only remaining quiet looking ahead. Oblivion looks shocked but she sees her.

"Yuuka?...Yuuka, can you hear me? You have a visitor today..." Swan said hoping she was respond but she didn't. Luna saw she remains still but her eyes were hidden.

"..........."

'As you can see, she's been like this since she got the double dose shot and medicine. It's pretty strong and it's effecting her physically and mentally. We got word we think she's seeing things in her mind. Or having bad memories that keeps haunting her. We are trying to do everything in our power to keep her calm Tae but...we are worried of what those assholes are really planning on doing to her.'

"I......she's been like this since the damn double dose was given to her?" she said seeing Swan answer.

"Yes. That's what I got from her recent blood work. She remains like this but still gets the heavy nosebleeds and having trouble sleeping. It's like she's too scared to close her eyes because of seeing things." she said but Oblivion said nothing gripping her phone tight wanting to break it but she was keeping calm trying not to. She looked so tired and sick. What the hell is with the drugs?

Being quiet, Oblivion looks to her. "Yuuka? Hey, can you hear me? It's me, Officer Seon...." she speaks loud enough in hopes she hears her voice. The two looks at Yuu seeing her not respond but Oblivion looks worried now.

"Yuu...please can you hear me? It's me......please let me know you can hear me.." she said a bit louder from the phone but hearing that made Yuu blink her eyes slowly before Luna carefully shows the phone and Oblivion on it. In a moment, Yuu slowly looks to Oblivion but saw her on the screen.

"........."

"..Yuuka?"

In a minute, Yuuka slowly reaches to touch the screen of the phone but Luna saw Swan hold it near her that Yuuka reaches to hold it in her hands to look at it. She can see her but she seems so far away.

"......O...Offi....cer.....S....seon.."

The two were silent but was shocked seeing she spoke! She was silent all that time but she only shook holding the phone.

"...Yes, it's me Nakano."

"......Where......a...re...you....you..d..disappeared...f..from here.." she speaks quietly.

"..I'm.....out at the moment but I was calling to check on you...see how you been." she speaks in a calm down even if she was angry now. Those assholes. What have they done to her!?

Yuuka said nothing laying back but Swan helps her lay on her side as she was looking at the phone with a hold stand to keep it there. She looks at the screen with dulled eyes.

"You....went....out...I...g...get i..it.....I h..hope...you c...come b..back...I'm..s...scared. I'm s..scared of t..the doctor..the ni...ghtmares....t..their getting w..worse...I don't wanna s...sleep.." she mutters in a tired tone.

"Easy now Yuu..You have to get sleep. It's not healthy to stay up like that." Tae said but saw Yuu only grips the sheets trying not to freak out but tries calming down.

"But b..bad things..t..the w...orms..t..their still....c...crawling inside of m..me....r..ready to r..rip out..I'm s..scared Oblivion..I'm s..scared.." she said softly.

"Worms?"

"T..the scary w..worms....their eating me f..from..inside o..out...It's s..scary..I'm s..scared..they started getting a...agitated a..after they gi....ve....new m..medicine. It hurts al..all over and f..from injection s..spot..it was....to h..help with d..dangerous quirk....it's d..dissappearing...." she said and shows trying to form some goo but the two with her and Tae saw purple particles but no goo.

Both Luna and Swan was shocked seeing how weak it's gotten. Even Tae was shocked.

'I can't..e..even use my flames r..right now..t..too tired...I'm too tired.....to conjure up some...' she said. 'Then it m..means I'm g..gonna....be quirkless r..right? Is t..that what the p..people wan..wanted?' she mutters.

"No no it's not Yuu. That's not what-"

"It's true..s...see?" she shows her arm seeing the injection spot but it shows some bandage covering it since they gave her another one. Oblivion said nothing but Yuuka lowers her arm to look at the phone.

"Yuuka.."

"I'm..s..sowwie...I'm s..sorry f..for being m..mean t..to you and o..others h..here..I was j..just scared....I'm scared being a..alone......."

"Yuuka, your not alone. I'll be back soon okay? Just hang in there for me. When I come back, I'll help you okay? You don't have to be scared.." Oblivion said but Yuu looks to the phone but she only blinks once slowly to relax.

"You w..won't..l..leave me a..alone?"

"I won't...I'm trying to help you, Yuu but when I have what I need, I'll be there with you..I promise. I'll find the ones that did this to you...and make sure they pay for this..." she said that Yuu only held the phone near but she was quiet. It was rather nice to hear her voice and it was calming to her.

She remains quiet but only looks to the screen that Tae saw tears now running down Yuu's cheeks. She was really upset about this.

'P...lease....c..come b..back okay? I really...wanna..s...see you come b..back...I'll..t...try to be c..calm..' she mutters. Tae was quiet though, she's never seen her that calm before even when meeting her. Was this...how she used to be before the drugs? She wasn't sure but it seems like it.

Oblivion sighed but looks at the phone.

"Don't try, just....just give it your best. I want you to rest more Yuuka okay? You have to try and get some sleep. Rest up....that's all I ask." Tae said but Yuu only looks to her then down.

"I..I'll..t..try..I......." she started to speak only to feel something run down her nose. Yuu blinks to look seeing her blood again that she reaches to touch it. "......"

"Yuuka?" Luna said.

"Oh no, not again." Swan said worried trying to clean her nose but Yuu was moving away from her. "Easy now..I'm not going to hurt you.."

"N..No no..d..don't...don't touch me! Don't touch me!" she said suddenly freaking out as she tries to move away, Luna tries to help keep her still to calm down. "NO! Please let me go! Let me go!"

"Yuu calm down!" Luna said wincing as she was thrashing violently now.

"NO MORE MEDICINE! I DON'T WANT TO BE FORCED T..TO TAKE ANYMORE! OFFICER SEON H..HELP ME!! PLEASE HELP!!!!"

"......" Oblion was shocked hearing this and seeing it was worse. However, she saw but Swan quickly have some golden feathers floats around her. Yuuka tenses seeing the feathers but when they were around, she slowly started feeling sleepy.

"St...stop..l..let me.."

"Rest Yuu your safe...just calm down.." Swan said in a quiet tone trying not to scare her. Luna kept holding her but Oblivion saw the whole thing before Yuu goes limp in her arms.

"........"

"What the hell was that!?" Oblivion asked seeing Luna lay her back on the bed.

"That's..something she does if she freaks out or something she's seeing that we aren't. She's been doing that for a while now or maybe side effects from the drugs. Right now, we have to keep her here to insure she won't attack staff which she hasn't. Right now, we are worried. We don't know how bad this can get for her......but we will do everything to insure she is alright." Luna explains but Oblivion said nothing to nod.

"I..I get it..I'll do everything in my power to help her and come back. Just..keep watching her for me till then okay?" Oblivion said.

"We will don't worry. If you find anything let us know but I'll do the same keeping you up to date. Just...find out the jerks that did this to her and make them pay Tae." Luna said.

"I will. Just keep a eye on her....I'm counting on you two." she said seeing them nod before the video call ended. Oblivion slowly lowers the phone down but when she did, she slowly stood up to try and process this. When she did, she punches the wall hard looking down.

She's never seen her like that and it worried her. She was a strong woman but not right now. She was someone that needed help......for now, she lets out a slow breath to try calming down.

Whoever did this to her...they would pay dearly for this.

[mojave-pete]

COLLUSION

COLLUSION How The Obama Administration Set In Motion Democrats’ Coup Against Trump Rep. Devin Nunes realized the purpose of Obama’s dossier. 'Devin figured out in December what was going on,' says Langer. 'It was an operation to bring down Trump.' By Lee Smith OCTOBER 28, 2019 The following is an excerpt from Lee Smith’s book out October 29, “The Plot Against the President: The True Story of How Congressman Devin Nunes Uncovered the Biggest Political Scandal in U.S. History.”

AFTER DONALD TRUMP was elected forty-fifth president of the United States, the operation designed to undermine his campaign transformed. It became an instrument to bring down the commander in chief. The coup started almost immediately after the polls closed.

Hillary Clinton’s communications team decided within twenty-four hours of her concession speech to message that the election was illegitimate, that Russia had interfered to help Trump.

Obama was working against Trump until the hour he left office. His national security advisor, Susan Rice, commemorated it with an email to herself on January 20, moments before Trump’s inauguration. She wrote to memorialize a meeting in the White House two weeks before.

On January 5, following a briefing by IC leadership on Russian hacking during the 2016 Presidential election, President Obama had a brief follow-on conversation with FBI Director Jim Comey and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates in the Oval Office. Vice President Biden and I were also present.

President Obama began the conversation by stressing his continued commitment to ensuring that every aspect of this issue is handled by the Intelligence and law enforcement communities “by the book.” The President stressed that he is not asking about, initiating or instructing anything from a law enforcement perspective. He reiterated that our law enforcement team needs to proceed as it normally would by the book.

From a national security perspective, however, President Obama said he wants to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia. . . .

The President asked Comey to inform him if anything changes in the next few weeks that should affect how we share classified information with the incoming team. Comey said he would.

The repetition of “by the book” gave away the game—for there was nothing normal about any of it.

Rice wrote an email to herself. It commemorated a conversation from two weeks before. The conversation was about the FBI’s investigation of the man who was about to move into the White House—an investigation from which Obama was careful to distance himself. During the conversation, the outgoing president instructed his top aides to collect information (“ascertain”) regarding the incoming administration’s relationship with Russia.

“To any rational person,” says Nunes, “it looks like they were scheming to produce a get-out-of-jail-free card—for the president and anyone else in the White House. They were playing Monopoly while the others were playing with fire. Now the Obama White House was in the clear—sure, they had no idea what Comey and Brennan and McCabe and Strzok and the rest were up to.”

Boxing Trump in on Russia Meanwhile, Obama added his voice to the Trump-Russia echo chamber as news stories alleging Trump’s illicit relationship with the Kremlin multiplied in the transition period. He said he hoped “that the president-elect also is willing to stand up to Russia.”

The outgoing president was in Germany with Chancellor Angela Merkel to discuss everything from NATO to Vladimir Putin. Obama said that he’d “delivered a clear and forceful message” to the Russian president about “meddling with elections . . . and we will respond appropriately if and when we see this happening.”

After refusing to act while the Russian election meddling was actually occurring, Obama responded in December. He ordered the closing of Russian diplomatic facilities and the expulsion of thirty- five Russian diplomats. The response was tepid. The Russians had hacked the State Department in 2014 and the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2015. And now Obama was responding only on his way out.

Even Obama partisans thought it was weak. “The punishment did not fit the crime,” said Michael McFaul, Obama’s former ambassador to Russia. “The Kremlin should have paid a much higher price for that attack.”

But the administration wasn’t retaliating against Russia for interfering in a US election; the action was directed at Trump. Obama was leaving the president-elect with a minor foreign policy crisis in order to box him in. Any criticism of Obama’s response, never mind an attempt to reverse it, would only further fuel press reports that Trump was collaborating with the Russians.

Spreading Intelligence to Spring Leaks In the administration’s last days, it disseminated intelligence throughout the government, including the White House, Capitol Hill, and the intelligence community (IC). Intelligence was classified at the lowest possible levels to ensure a wide readership. The White House was paving the way for a campaign of leaks to disorient the incoming Trump team.

The effort, including the intended result of leaks, was publicly acknowledged in March 2017 by Evelyn Farkas, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense in the Obama administration.

Obama’s biggest move against Trump was to order CIA director John Brennan to conduct a full review of all intelligence relating to Russia and the 2016 elections. He requested it on December 6 and wanted it ready by the time he left office on January 20. But the sitting president already knew what the intelligence community assessment (ICA) was going to say, because Brennan had told him months before.

Brennan’s handpicked team of CIA, FBI, and NSA analysts had started analyzing Russian election interference in late July. In August, Brennan had briefed Harry Reid on the dossier and may have briefed Obama on it, too. Earlier in August, Brennan sent a “bombshell” report to Obama’s desk.

When Brennan reassembled his select team in December, it was to have them reproduce their August findings: Putin, according to Brennan, was boosting the GOP candidate. And that’s why only three days after Obama ordered the assessment in December, the Washington Post could already reveal what the intelligence community had found.

“The CIA,” reported the December 9 edition of the Post, “has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency, rather than just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system.”

The story was the first of many apparently sourced to leaks of classified information that were given to the Post team of Adam Entous, Ellen Nakashima, and Greg Miller. The reporters’ sources weren’t whistle-blowers shedding light on government corruption— rather, they were senior US officials abusing government resources to prosecute a campaign against the newly elected commander in chief. The article was the earliest public evidence that the coup was under way. The floodgates were open, as the IC pushed more stories through the press to delegitimize the president-elect.

A Wave of Leak-Sourced Stories All Saying the Same Thing The same day, a New York Times article by David E. Sanger and Scott Shane echoed the Post’s piece. According to senior administration officials, “American intelligence agencies have concluded with ‘high confidence’ that Russia acted covertly in the latter stages of the presidential campaign to harm Hillary Clinton’s chances and promote Donald J. Trump.”

A December 14 NBC News story by William M. Arkin, Ken Dilanian, and Cynthia McFadden reported that “Russian President Vladimir Putin became personally involved in the covert Russian campaign to interfere in the U.S. presidential election, senior U.S. intelligence officials told NBC News.”

The ICA that Obama ordered gave political operatives, the press, and his intelligence chiefs a second shot at Trump. They’d used the Steele Dossier to feed the echo chamber and obtain surveillance powers to spy on the Trump campaign. The dossier, however, had come up short. Trump had won.

But now, on his way out of the White House, Obama instructed Brennan to stamp the CIA’s imprimatur on the anti-Trump operation. As Fusion GPS’s smear campaign had been the source of the preelection press campaign, the ICA was the basis of the postelection media frenzy. It was tailored to disrupt the peaceful transition of power and throw the United States into chaos.

Because Trump hadn’t been elected by the US public, according to the ICA, but had been tapped by Putin, he was illegitimate. Therefore, the extraconstitutional and illegal tactics employed by anti-Trump officials were legitimate. The ultimate goal was to remove Trump from office.

“If it weren’t for President Obama,” said James Clapper, “we might not have done the intelligence community assessment . . . that set off a whole sequence of events which are still unfolding today.”

Nunes agrees. “The ICA,” he says, “was Obama’s dossier.”

Changing the Intelligence Assessment Nunes is sitting in his office in the Longworth House Office Building along with his communications director, Jack Langer, a forty-six-year-old former book editor and historian with a PhD from Duke University.

“The social media attacks on Devin began shortly after the election,” Langer remembers. “They’re all hinting at some vast conspiracy involving Russia that the chairman of the Intelligence Committee is part of. And we have no idea what they’re talking about.”

Nunes points out that his warnings about Russia fell on deaf ears for years. “And all of a sudden I’m a Russian agent,” says the congressman.

Now Langer and Nunes see that the attacks were first launched because the congressman had been named to Trump’s transition team. “I put forward [Mike] Pompeo for CIA director,” says Nunes. “He came from our committee.”

The attacks on Nunes picked up after the December 9 Washington Post article. The assessment provided there was not what the HPSCI chairman had been told. The assessment had been altered, and Nunes asked for an explanation. “We got briefed about the election around Thanksgiving,” he says. “And it’s just the usual stuff, nothing abnormal. They told us what everyone already knew: ‘Hey, the Russians are bad actors, and they’re always playing games, and here’s what they did.’”

By providing that briefing, the IC had made a mistake. When it later changed the assessment, the November briefing was evidence that Obama’s spy chiefs were up to no good. “I bet they’d like to have that back,” says Nunes. “They briefed us before they could get their new story straight.”

‘They Kept Everyone Else Away from It’ Nunes acknowledges that he was caught off guard by many things back then. “We still thought these guys were on the up and up,” he says. “But if we knew, we’d have nailed them by mid-December, when they changed their assessment. ‘Wait, you guys are saying this now, but you said something else just a few weeks ago. What’s going on?’”

After the Post story, Nunes wanted an explanation. “We expressed deep concern, both publicly and privately,” says Langer. “We demanded our own briefing to try to determine whether that Post story was true or false. They refused to brief us. They said, ‘We’re not going to be doing that until we finish the ICA.’”

Nunes says the fact that the IC conducted an assessment like that was itself unusual. “I don’t know how many times they’d done that in the past, if ever,” he says. “But if the IC is operating properly, when someone says what can you tell me on X or Y or Z, they have it ready to pull up quickly. The tradecraft is reliable, and the intelligence products are reliable.” That was not the case with the ICA. There were problems with how the assessment had been put together.

“If you really were going to do something like an assessment from the intelligence community, then you’d get input from all our seventeen agencies,” says Nunes. “They did the opposite. It was only FBI, CIA, NSA, and DNI. They siloed it, just like they had with Crossfire Hurricane. They kept everyone else away from it so they didn’t have to read them in.”

‘Manipulation of Intelligence for Political Purposes’ Nunes released several statements in the middle of December. The HPSCI majority, read a December 14 statement, wanted senior Obama intelligence officials “to clarify press reports that the CIA has a new assessment that it has not shared with us. The Committee is deeply concerned that intransigence in sharing intelligence with Congress can enable the manipulation of intelligence for political purposes.”

After the statements warned of political foul play in the IC’s assessments, the social media attacks on Nunes became more regular. “They were constant,” says Langer.

Anti-Trump operatives recognized that Nunes was going to be a problem. The HPSCI chair had previously called out the IC for politicizing intelligence. “They said that we had defeated Al Qaeda in Iraq and Syria,” says Nunes, “and I knew that wasn’t true. Then they withheld the Osama bin Laden documents to conceal that Al Qaeda worked with Iran, because the administration was protecting the Iran deal. So when I saw them changing this assessment of the 2016 election in midstream, I knew it was the same old trick: they were politicizing intelligence.”

The speed with which Brennan’s handpicked analysts produced the ICA and then got a version of it declassified for public consumption was another sign that something wasn’t right. “All throughout Obama’s two terms, his IC chiefs aren’t paying attention to Russian actions,” says Nunes. “We give them more money for Russia, which they don’t use. But now they know so much about Putin that they manage to produce a comprehensive assessment of Russian intentions and actions regarding election interference in a month—at Christmastime, when everything slows down. And then they produce a declassified version in a manner of weeks. None of this is believable.”

Three different versions of the ICA were produced: an unclassified version, a top secret one, and another highly compartmentalized version. According to a January 11, 2017, Washington Post story by Greg Miller, Ellen Nakashima, and Karen DeYoung, an annex summarizing the dossier was attached to the versions that were not declassified.

‘Designed to Have a Political Effect’ The FBI had been working from Steele’s reports for more than half a year. Including the dossier along with the ICA would provide Comey with ammunition to take on the president-elect. Both he and Brennan were manipulating intelligence for political purposes.

“A lot of the ICA is reasonable,” says Nunes. “But those parts become irrelevant due to the problematic parts, which undermine the entire document. It was designed to have a political effect; that was the ICA’s sole purpose.”

The assessment’s methodological flaws are not difficult to spot. Manufacturing the politicized findings that Obama sought meant not only abandoning protocol but also subverting basic logic. Two of the ICA’s central findings are that:

Putin and the Russian government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. Putin and the Russian government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him. To know preferences and intentions would require sources targeting Putin’s inner circles—either human sources or electronic surveillance. As Nunes had previously noted, however, US intelligence on Putin’s decision-making process was inadequate.

But even if there had been extensive collection on precisely that issue, it would be difficult to know what was true. For instance, the closest you can get to Putin’s inner circle is Putin himself. But even capturing him on an intercept saying he wanted to elect Trump might prove inconclusive. It is difficult to judge intentions because it is not possible to see into the minds of other people. How would you know that Putin was speaking truthfully? How would you know that the Russian president didn’t know his communications were under US surveillance and wasn’t trying to deceive his audience?

Quality control of information is one of the tasks of counterintelligence—to discern how you know what you know and whether that information is trustworthy. There was no quality control for the Trump-Russia intelligence. For instance, Crossfire Hurricane lead agent Peter Strzok was the FBI’s deputy assistant director of counterintelligence. Instead of weeding out flawed intelligence on Russia, the Crossfire Hurricane team was feeding Steele’s reports into intelligence products. Yet the ICA claimed to have “high confidence” in its assessment that “Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President- elect Trump.” What was the basis of that judgment?

According to the ICA:

Putin most likely wanted to discredit Secretary Clinton because he has publicly blamed her since 2011 for inciting mass protests against his regime in late 2011 and early 2012, and because he holds a grudge for comments he almost certainly saw as disparaging him.

“Most likely” and “almost certainly” are rhetorical hedges that show the assessment could not have been made in “high confidence.” Putin may have held a grudge against Clinton, but there is no way of knowing it.

The supporting evidence deteriorates more the farther the ICA purports to reach into Putin’s mind.

Beginning in June, Putin’s public comments about the US presidential race avoided directly praising President-elect Trump, probably because Kremlin officials thought that any praise from Putin personally would backfire in the United States.

This is absurd. Part of the evidence that Putin supported Trump is that he avoided praising Trump. It is difficult enough to determine intentions by what someone says. Yet the ICA claims to have discerned Putin’s intentions by what he did not say.

There is no introductory philosophy class in logic where reasoning like that would pass muster. Yet Brennan’s handpicked group used it as the basis of its assessment that Putin had helped Trump.

Moscow also saw the election of President-elect Trump as a way to achieve an international counterterrorism coalition against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.

This may be an accurate description of how Putin saw Trump. But Trump’s predecessor also wanted to coordinate anti- ISIS operations with Moscow. On this view, Trump would have represented a continuation of Obama’s ISIS policy. Why would this make Trump’s victory suspicious to Obama’s intelligence chiefs?

Curious Inaccuracies about Russia’s RT Network The ICA also pointed to documentary evidence of Putin’s intentions: English-language media owned by the Russian government, the news site Sputnik, and the RT network, were critical of Clinton.

State-owned Russian media made increasingly favorable comments about President-elect Trump as the 2016 US general and primary election campaigns progressed while consistently offering negative coverage of Secretary Clinton.

Curiously, just days before the election, the informant the US government sent after the Trump campaign praised the Democratic candidate in an interview with Sputnik. “Clinton would be best for US-UK relations and for relations with the European Union,” Stefan Halper told the Kremlin-directed media outlet. “Clinton is well-known, deeply experienced, and predictable. US-UK relations will remain steady regardless of the winner although Clinton will be less disruptive over time.”

The ICA includes a seven-page appendix devoted to RT, the central node, according to the document, of the Kremlin’s effort to “influence politics, fuel discontent in [sic] US.”

Adam Schiff appeared on RT in July 2013. He argued for “making the FISA court much more transparent, so the American people can understand what’s being done in their name in the name of national security, so that we can have a more informed debate over the balance between privacy and security.”

RT’s editor in chief, Margarita Simonyan, is a master propagandist, according to the ICA. The document fails to mention that Simonyan heads another Moscow-owned media initiative, Russia Beyond the Headlines, a news supplement inserted into dozens of the West’s leading newspapers, including the New York Times. Russia Beyond the Headlines has been delivered to millions of American homes over the last decade. By contrast, RT’s US market share is so small that it doesn’t qualify for the Nielsen ratings. Virtually no one in the United States watches it.

Taking the logic of Brennan’s handpicked team seriously would mean that the publishers of the New York Times played a major role in a coordinated Russian effort to elect Donald Trump.

‘It Was an Operation to Bring Down Trump’ Nunes realized even then the purpose of Obama’s dossier. “Devin figured out in December what was going on,” says Langer. “It was an operation to bring down Trump.”

There was no evidence that any Trump associate had done anything improper regarding the Russians, and Nunes was losing patience. “We had serious things the committee wanted to do,” he says. “With Trump elected, we could do some big stuff, like with China.”

Still, it was important for HPSCI to maintain control of the Russia investigation. Otherwise, Democrats and Never Trump Republicans were likely to get their wish to convene a bipartisan commission to investigate Russian interference—with the purpose of turning it on Trump.

“Before they started floating the idea of a special counsel, the big idea was a special commission like the 9/11 Commission,” says Langer. It was outgoing secretary of state John Kerry who first came forward with the proposal.

The point was to change the power dynamic. “In a normal committee,” says Langer, “the majority has the power, and that happened to be us. They wanted to strip our power and make it fifty-fifty.”

“Bipartisan” was a euphemism for “anti-Trump.” “It would have been a complete joke,” says Nunes. “A combination of partisan hacks from the left and people who hated Trump on the right.”

Democrats led by Schiff and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer were joined by the late John McCain, the most active of the Never Trump Republicans. After the election, the Arizona senator had instructed his aide David Kramer to deliver a copy of the Steele Dossier to Comey.

“God only knows who they’d have populated that committee with,” says Nunes. “Anyone they could control. It would have been a freak show.”

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan defended HPSCI’s independence. On the Senate side, Intelligence Committee chairman Richard Burr had only one move. To deflect demands for an independent commission, he effectively ceded control of the Senate investigation to his vice chair, Democrat Mark Warner.

No Evidence of Collusion Years Later Still, Nunes believed that all the talk of Trump and Russia was a waste of time. “They kept promising us evidence of collusion, week after week, and they came up with nothing.”

Nunes’s disdain for the ICA forced the Crossfire Hurricane team’s hand. “Right around the time that they came out with the ICA, they kept saying that we were waiting on something to show us, something important that was coming in,” he says. “They said it was some significant figure who they couldn’t quite track down yet.”

But the FBI knew exactly where its missing link was, the piece of evidence that they thought would convince hardened skeptics like Nunes that collusion was real. They didn’t have to chase him down, because he was sitting at home in Chicago. He submitted to a voluntary interview January 27 and without a lawyer because he had no idea what the FBI had in store for him.

The Crossfire Hurricane team was figuring how they were going to set up the Trump adviser they’d used to open up the investigation in July 2016: George Papadopoulos.

Lee Smith is the media columnist at Tablet. Photo White House / public domain

[spiritedmyway]

Veronica Decides to Die part 3

Summary: A mediocre girl attempts to suicide but things don’t go as planned.

Pairing: Reader x Dazai Osamu

Genre: adventure, eventual romance and um... detective?

Part one, two 

“Are you ready for your first day?” chanted Dazai when the two were approaching the agency.

“Hope so,” answered Veronica.

In truth, she was not. Dazai’s obscure description of what the agency dealt with raised more questions than answered, but it was still better than nothing, and Veronica couldn’t be picky.

Her t-shirt – one of the two garments she still possessed after the explosion – was way too unpresentable, so Dazai offered her one of his multiple white shirts and a black belt to make it more fitting. The shirt still carried the smell of its owner, so subtle trail of fresh grass and jasmine tea enveloped Veronica, constantly making her wonder about this eccentric man beside her.

Dazai pushed the door of the agency open and the two entered the office. The workers – that it, the whole crowd she’d met at the doctor’s office - instantly stopped whatever they were doing and everyone’s eyes darted to the girl, making her stiffen in discomfort.

But the next second, she was warmly greeted by all her new colleagues except only Kunikida who seemed somehow sullen as he looked at his wrist watch discontentedly.

“Two minutes thirty-five seconds late,” his glasses flashed furiously. “I can’t believe you’re already corrupting the new worker!” his eyes shifted to Dazai.

“I am, uh, very sorry,” mumbled Veronica.

“Don’t be sorry, Veronica-chan. Our Kunikida is obsessed with schedules a bit too far. If anything, it’s a manifestation of his own inner issues” smiled Dazai

“Ah, you… come here!”

And the two of them started a comic fight, completely ignoring Veronica, who was starting to feel like the third wheel. Fortunately, her awkward posture was noticed by Atsushi, who gestured, offering her a seat near him at the sofa.

“You look much better, Veronica-san”

“Thank you. It’s been a few crazy days but I’m trying.”

“And how’s your house?”

“I’m going to call the insurance company today, but even with their help the repairs will cost a fortune. I was very lucky when Dazai offered me this job. But well, I still need to pass the test.”

“You know about the test?” his eyes widened in surprise.

“Yes, Dazai told me that I needed to take a proficiency test. I’m quite worried about it,” she admitted confidingly. “I haven’t revised any sciences since school so I hope the questions aren’t too difficult”

“I don’t think you should worry about that,” smiled the boy.

“Really? Oh, I hope you’re right, I need this job.”

Atsushi’s gaze narrowed as he studied Veronica attentively.

‘You know, the exam is more practical,’ he lowered his voice ‘I shouldn’t be telling you this, Veronica-san, but when I first joined the agency, my exam was really cruel.”

‘I recommend you not to stress too much,’ he added secretively.

Veronica was about to reply when someone’s heavy arms fell on their shoulders and Dazai’s smiling face appeared between the two.

‘What are you guys talking about here?’ he asked smilingly.

“Nothing!” hastily answered Atsushi.

“By the way, we have a new case”

‘Already?’

Veronica thought she noticed a strange apprehension on the face of the younger man, but he quickly concealed it.

“Yes, the criminals are not resting. Veronica, you’re coming too.”

“Me too?! To the crime scene?” she gasped in amazement.

“Well, of course, silly” chanted Dazai.

“As a detective of this agency, you are expected to deal with field work. You must be ready for that” added Kuninika.

Veronica felt quite puzzled but promptly decided to pull herself together. She had to make a good impression on her first day. So, she’ll do her best and hopefully, the luck will be on her side.

“I’m ready,” the woman stood up.

Apparently, today’s case involved an overpowered country boy who had recently been fired from their agency and went rogue by spoiling the agency’s property in the warehouse street.

The warehouse that belonged to the agency was a small one-story building with red metal doors and a gable roof located on a quiet street not far from the ocean.

By the time they arrived at the crime scene, the ex-employee had already punched his way through the metal doors and was presently occupied with causing irreparable damage to four fancy jet boats that were stored in the warehouse along with some other equipment.

Besides Veronica, the team consisted of Dazai, Kunikida and Atsushi. The four of them were quietly peeking inside from the remnants of the metal doors.

“This is even worse than with Atsushi” mumbled Kunikida shaking his head in disapproval, “those boats were brand new”

“Yes, he’s definitely got a bit carried away,” admitted Dazai.

Veronica stared at the boy, speechless and absolutely shocked by his incredible strength, which could bend metal with just one punch. Never had she ever seen anything like that. The boy himself looked like a simple country child who she could’ve considered cute or sweet had she not been so appalled by his superhuman power.

“What are we going to do?” asked Atsushi.

“Judging by his behavior, Kenji is extremely livid and poses great danger to anyone...” Started Kunikida

“I’m afraid we must get rid of him,” his glasses flashed coldly.

“What do you mean?” naively asked Veronica.

‘I’ll go get the gun,’ said Dazai nonchalantly.

“Wait!” cried the woman, a bit too loudly.

The four of them turned at the boy but fortunately, he didn’t seem to have heard anything.

“You can’t be serious. He’s just a kid!”

“Do you have a better idea?”

“Well, at least, we could talk to him. See his motives, try to calm him down”

“That’s a good idea” nodded Atsushi.

“He holds a grudge against the agency. Do you really think one of us could talk him down?” asked Dazai. And then, after a short pause, added, “Unless…”

Suddenly, three pairs of eyes expectantly gazed at the woman.

“…Unless it’s a new member. For example, a nice young lady, with soothing voice and friendly manners, who doesn’t have any known connections to the agency”

Before Veronica could interject anything, she was pushed forward and found herself standing in the doorway. The country boy instantly noticed the appearance of a new figure and turned around.

“Who are you?”

Veronica felt startled by the question.

“I? I am…” she started cautiously. “I’m Veronica… I heard some noises from this warehouse, so I decided to look –”

“There’s nothing to look at here,” and the boy turned his back to her.

Even though he was dangerous and angry, there was something… something pure and even sweet about this boy. Something that didn’t quite portray him as a deadly danger. In fact, in anything, he was cute.

It instilled courage in Veronica.

“You know, this is not the solution,” she started, carefully selecting the words, “Whatever is inflicting this anger upon you… punching things is not going to solve it.”

Kenji just snorted, so she made a few slow steps in his direction.

“You can talk to me. I might be able to help or at least, I can listen”

“They fired me!” snapped the boy turning around “it’s my boss. It’s all his fault. It’s all him”

Veronica though that there was something almost implausible about this young boy, as if he didn’t fully believe what he was saying. It gave her the confidence to make a few more steps.

“He fired me so unfairly and now I have to go back to the country! Go back to milking cows and stacking hay, and waking up at four o’clock in the morning!”

“I see” nodded Veronica, coming even closer.

The boy was definitely upset, but at least he stopped hitting objects. She felt that now that he talked to her she had to seize the opportunity.

“He’s an angry and bad man. And he fired me so unfairly and-”

“But you don’t have to be like him!” suddenly interrupted Veronica.

The two of them were now at an arm’s length from each other.

“He might be all those things, but you don’t have to,” continued the woman, carefully measuring each word, “if you do all these things because of your boss, then he wins, don’t you see that? You’re so strong and young, your whole life is ahead of you. You’ll find a much better place and forget that silly man forever. But don’t give him so much power over yourself.”

And Veronica held out her hand for him. The boy looked her in the eyes for a few seconds, as if pondering on her words. And then, a new spark lit up his eyes. A smile appeared on his lips and he extended his arm. He was about to take Veronica’s hand.

A deafening bang broke the moment as half of the opposite wall crushed down. A pale dark-haired man in a long black coat was standing in the hole with a group of armed men behind him. An arrogant expression on his face and ominous, dark tendrils of energy behind his back.

“I see you’re having a party here. Is that right, Dazai-san?”

“Akutagawa,” came from behind.

Veronica turned around to see all the trio standing in the doorway.

“This is a severe violation of the ceasefire,” warned Kunikida, adjusting his glasses, “not to mention this is private property”

“Is that so?”

The stranger’s voice was calm and quiet, but Veronica couldn’t help but feel danger radiating from him.

“I’m here because the agency took something of ours. Is this not a violation of the ceasefire?”

“You were right, Dazai” quietly nodded Kunikida

Slight confusion flashed in the stranger’s eyes.

“Well, what took you so long? You used to be more punctual” asked Dazai, coming forward.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Why? Don’t you see that we threw this little spectacle to lure you guys here?” he smiled “I calculated that some hustle in the port would surely attract your attention”

“And now there’s no more any doubt that you are after our new colleague”

Veronica felt her heart skip a beat. Were these terrifying armed men really after her? What would they want from her? Was she in danger? Would they kill her?

She went numb with fear.

“But I still haven’t figured why. Care to explain?”

“I don’t need to explain our motives to you,” snorted the stranger, “you’re long not one of us.”

And then the stranger turned his icy gaze at the dumbfounded woman.

“If you don’t give her willingly, we’ll take her by force”

Suddenly one of his tendrils pierced the ground centimeters away from where she was standing. Veronica screeched and backed away.

The next moment, it all turned into a carnage. The strangers went into offensive. Veronica astonishingly saw Atsushi turn his arms into tiger paws and defend against the attackers. Kenji started throwing metal pieces at them and Kunikida was simultaneously fighting against five men.

Several tendrils flew towards her. Veronica backed away hastily trying to avoid them. She managed to escape a few, but one of them came dangerously close and was about to touch her.

That second, she felt someone’s strong arms on her waist and was forcefully pulled away.

Veronica found herself pressed against someone’s body. She looked up and her eyes locked with Dazai’, and for a moment, all she could see was his concentrated expression.

“Dazai-san” hissed the stranger.

It seemed that he was strangely fixed on Dazai, cause the next instant he completely forgot about his ultimate target and intently stared at the man.

“I’ve learnt a few new tricks since our last meeting. You’d be surprised”

Dazai let go of Veronica and made a few steps.

“Really? I quite doubt that. You never managed to surprise me”

The stranger’s face immediately flared with anger.

“I’ll make you see it” road he.

A monstrous thread of malevolent energy soared high into the air and then rushed at Dazai.

Her body moved instinctively and she probably didn’t even realize what she was doing.

Of course, Dazai was a professional and even more so, when it came to his former colleagues. He knew their styles and could predict and dodge their blows. And apart from that, he could always use his ability.

But how could Veronica know that?

Dazai’s eyes widened in shock as he witnessed the woman jump forward to cover him with her own body. And Roshomon’s tendrils on her chest.

Touching, but not piercing. Veronica was ready to die, but she felt only a gentle touch of cold and sharp energy against her skin.

Akutagawa must’ve stopped the beast at the very last moment.

For an instant, everyone stopped the fight and just stood silently, too confused and surprised to act.

Suddenly, the cold blade of energy rose up right against the woman’s throat.

“Veronica!” cried Atsushi from the corner.

“Stupid girl, he doesn’t need your protection. But thank you for doing my job easier,” then his eyes darted behind her back, “I bet you didn’t calculate this, Dazai?”

“You won’t touch her. Mafia needs her alive” hissed Dazai.

“True. But alive is a very broad term. Are you willing to risk it?”

And as a proof, the woman tensed as she felt the pressure of the energy blade against her skin.

“Move, girl! You’re going with us”

The woman was too scared to disobey, so she cautiously approached the man as everyone’s eyes followed her.

Akutagawa gave his former teacher a triumphant glance.

“Looks like it’s not your day.”

The following actions happened in a couple of seconds.

A black sleek car pulled over by the hole in the wall. Akutagawa harshly grabbed the woman’s forearm, shoved her into the car and got in himself.

The brakes roared and the car drove off, but before Veronica could do anything, someone put a damp cloth to her nose. And then there was only darkness. _______________________________ A/N: I do intend to add some romance in the following chapters so that the story can live up to its "Dazai x reader" pairing. But sometimes the story writes itself, so I have no idea how we ended up here lol Anyway, in one (max. two) chapters I will add that storyline.

[demon-blood-youths]

An Officer's Corruption - Part Thirty

Hi everyone, this is Deamon-mun with part 30 for An Officer's corruption. This is for my friend @the-silver-peahen-residence who started this series. Here are the chapters so far.

Chapters so far

||Previous Chapters 1-7||((Click here))

((Previous chapters 8-13)) (Click here))

||Previous chapters 14-20)) ((Click here))

Part Twenty one ((NSFW Warning))

Part Twenty two ((NSFW Warning))

Part Twenty three

Part Twenty Four

Part Twenty-Five

Part Twenty-Six

Part Twenty Seven ( Dark Theme Warning )

Part Twenty-Eight

Part Twenty-Nine (( NSFW Warning ))

((Your reading part Thirty)

||OVA Chapters 1-7|| ((Written by me and Peahen ) (Click here))

------ Warnings ----

Violence

NSFW Content

--- Drabble Summary -----

The battle between Matt and Ryunosuke is underway. In the meantime, what were the other officers and the prisoners at Northern State doing in the meantime? and how are things going at T Prison?

-----

"Oh my..." Dazai smiles seeing the fight between Officer Knack and Ryunosuke Akutagawa about to duke it out. "Seems like Matt-kun has found a playmate. Good, good."

Sid looks concerned. "Warden Osamu?"

"Not to worry, Sid-chan. I have full confidence in Matt's abilities. After all, I was the one who recruited him into this prison. Maybe..just maybe he found someone who can matches his strength." Dazai smiles.

"Hm." Sid sighs, "By the way, warden...someone is trying to call you?"

"Oh? Who would that be?" Dazai muses.

"Someone by the name of Tae Kouki-Seon?"

Then Dazai widens his eyes at that. Sid sees this, "Sir?"

"My adorable niece, little Tae wants to call me?! I haven't heard from her in a while!" Dazai placed his hands on his cheeks, blushing as he swayed side to side making Sid sweatdropped. "Niece?" Sid questioned.

"A niece I adopted! Not blood-related but she calls me Uncle when she was a tiny little birdy" He chuckles. "I wonder if I can ask her to zap me with tons of love to death!"

"Um.." Sid said. "Does that mean you approve of her visiting?"

"Not yet. I will call her tonight. Right now, we have a situation on our hands that Matt can easily take care of." Said Dazai. Sid nods, "Very well. I will inform Ms. Seon then." Sid said. "By the way....from the reports...Ryunosuke's ability is very dangerous."

"Is that so?" Dazai smiles. "Well...you and me both know that Matt's power is just as dangerous. It's a pretty good match-up, it might end in the draw."

----- Area E -----

Ryunosuke summons many tendrils erupting from the ground towards Matt. The officer goes to evade by jumping around. It was so fast. Ryunosuke can't help but smile. "Ha! You said you would beat me! But you're just running around like a rat you are!" He laughed.

"Oh is that what you think?" Matt said as he went to land on the wall, however, he used the wall as a launching pad to launch himself at Matt, clotheslining Ryunosuke and making his body spin before he grabbed his leg and proceeded to slam him against the table.

"ACK!" Ryunosuke coughs before he is thrown across the area through a cell. Matt laughs as he sees Ryunosuke cough. He starts to pick himself up as Matt walks towards him.

"So can a rat do that, Hellhound?" He asked him. This got mafioso growls, "DAMN YOU!" He shouted, ordered Rashomon at him as the dark beast turned into huge jaws to crush him. The Rashomon gobbles Matt up as the monster snaps its jaws.

Ryunosuke grins but then Rashomon looks to be struggling then the jaws are snapped open with Matt pushing them apart.

"What the hell?" Ryunosuke stares at this in amazement before Matt jumps away and delivers an ax kick on Rashomon's head, embedding the beast into the ground. He stands on top of Rashomon and smiles at Ryunosuke, "What else you got?" He taunts.

Ryunosuke grits his teeth and bites his bottom lip, drawing a bit of blood. He roars as Matt jumps off from Rashomon and Ryunosuke calls out another attack, "Rashōmon: Endless Gate Jaws!"

Then several jaws appeared and went to attack Matt from all sides in front of him. However, none of them came close as they were knocked away so quickly in the blink of an eye. The blows were so powerful. Ryunosuke felt a force from Matt before he was pinned against the wall and he widened to see Matt throw a punch.

A boom sound is heard as dust appears from the blow. Wade blinks. Did Matt win?!

The gator widens his eyes as the smoke clears. Matt's punch did connect but Ryunosuke was in encased in some kind of wrapped glowing black-red fabric. It covers the bottom half of his face.

"OOoh..." Matt's eyes lit up seeing this. "That's awesome!" Then he widens his eyes, jumping away as Ryunosuke brings out a huge claw, ripping part of his uniform.

Blood begins to spill from Matt's body making Wade and the other guards panicked. "Not bad, not bad. You're full of surprises, Ryu~!"

Ryunosuke growls in response. He immediately used Rashōmon: Tenma Tengai or Demon Wearing Armor before the hit made contact. It took most of the blow since this armor is used for defense. Never he think he would be using it against a guard like this! Then again...this prison is not your average prison.

Matt sighs as he goes to take off his ripped uniform revealing a tight sleeveless black tee shirt. Ryunosuke can see the alethic muscles and he can see the abs as well. Is this man strong enough to do battle with him and his Rashomon? No. It's not possible.

Matt yawns as the wound he received diagonally across his chest heals.

And he can heal. No...there is a chance that he is not human!

"Okay..." Matt rolls his right shoulder as he closes his eyes before reopening them. "Now let's continue playing, Ryu~"

"Don't call me like I'm some kind of PET!" Ryunosuke growled. Matt laughs before he rushes at Ryunosuke. The two begin to fight. Matt is on the offensive while Ryunosuke is on defense, parrying his hits. They keep going until Ryunosuke grabs one of Matt's hands with his hands turned into jaws, clamping him down.

"DIE!" He roared as he directed his tendrils from his back and went to attack Matt. Then right away, Matt grabbed one of the tendrils with one hand but several of the tendrils went through its body.

"Ha! Now you won't escape from this!" Ryunosuke yelled, going for his next attack. However, Matt pulls the mafioso using the tendril he caught in his hand. Then he brings his head back and headbutts him on the forehead. Hard.

This stuns Ryunosuke giving Matt a chance to slip out of his hold. He grabs hold of his shoulder and flips him onto the floor before throwing him again, this time into a cell. The prisoners were taking cover under the tables, knowing not to butt in if they know what's best for them.

Ryunosuke tries to move but can't get up. He looks up to see Matt in some kind of armor. He had dark violet big upward curve horns with red highlights. He has a dark upper armor in a X-shape. His eyes glow red under his black hair and guard cap.

"Ha...ha..."

"Wow. I wish I could fight with you more but it's about time to put you infirmary and then cell."

"You bastard...." Ryunosuke growled. "Don't you dare underestimate me!"

"Underestimate you? No way! I found you really fun to fight with." He said truthfully. This got Ryunosuke madder. "Fun!? That's what you think?"

"Yeah. I mean after all...you were having fun too, weren't you?" Matt asked. This made Ryunosuek pause for a moment. Matt continues, "Besides...you were smiling through and through."

Ryunosuke doesn't want to admit so he goes to throw a punch at Matt but the guard quickly intercepts and knocks him out again. He caught Ryunosuke in his arms. "There, there. Let's get you to the medical ward." He said.

"Wade! Get everyone back in their cells!" Matt ordered. Wade nods, "Of course!"

------ Warden's Office ----

"Awww...seems like the fight ended." Warden Osamu smiles, "Seems like Akutagawa's nickname isn't for a show of course, and as always Matt managed to subdue him."

"Indeed he has," Sid said. She has full confidence in Matt's abilities.

"That said...we need to explain to the others that the situation at Area E is taken care of."

"Of course!"

Before the fight ended, things were happening at other areas.

---- Area D ----

Jason goes to take a quick shower after what he just experience. He of course, goes to relieve himself. Jason pants as he claws the wall a little. He wouldn't believe that someone like Gin would have an effect on him like that.

Seeing that feminine face teasing him like that made him stunned. He doesn't know what to think.

"Should I....report this?"

No! If he did, Warden Osamu would not let it die! Jason groans. No, no! This is fine! He can handle one little human lady! Even if she is pretty and deadly! Wait! What is he saying?!

Then the radio is on and Charlie calls,

"Jason! We need you!"

"R-right! Coming!" Jason gets dressed and goes back out.

---- Cell -----

Gin is relaxing at her cell for now. She closes her eyes and lays there, thinking. She wonders how her brother is doing. He must be fine. After all, nobody would mess with him if they tried. Though, she is concerned about that guard. What was his name? Officer Knack.

Those eyes of his are otherworldly. Like a demon's.

She hopes Ryunosuke is alright.

In the meantime, she thinks back to the officer taking charge over her. Officer Woofhees or rather Jason. She never thought a strong man like that would be so weak to her touch.

---- Area A ----

"Hm?" Shrika looks at her phone.

"Shrika?" Asked Willie as both of them were in a bed. Willie has Shrika at his side with an arm wrapped around her. "Sorry." Shrika apologizes, "It seems like a major fight went down in Area E. Of course, Matt managed to take care of it."

"That's not uncommon," Willie said.

"It's just the usual. I feel bad for the guy who fought him." Shrika sighs. "Anyway...let's rest. I don't think we're needed there."

----- Area F -----

"Ugh...." Chuuya is still in his own solitary cell. He was supposed to get out but he heard there is some commotion outside. Something about a fight going down in Area E?

"Hold on...isn't Ryunosuke there?" Chuuya recalled as Ryunosuke was sent there with that dangerous guard. 'Ryunosuke...I hope you're not doing anything stupid."

------ Area C ------

"Hm?" Pete blinks. '

"Pete? Something wrong?" It's Yumeno who is holding his tablet, watching over the prisoners in their killer game. Some of the prisoners were already traumatized enough while a handful of them are killed. It's just another day for them.

"Nothing. Someone fought Matt."

"Oh! Who won?"

"Matt." Pete asked. Yumeno laughs, "He's always winning! Matt is so cool!"

"He is." Pete said.

---- Medical Ward -----

"So how is he, doc?" Matt asked. Cobin Razor, the doctor in charge of the medical ward sighs. "Good news, he only has a concussion, some broken bones, and a few bruises. What the hell did you do this time?" The doctor pushes up his round glasses as he asks.

"Oh the usual. But Ryunosuke here is really strong. You should of seen him, Cobin!"

"Riiiight." Cobin makes a face. "He would be here for two days while I have my machines patch him up."

"Nice! Also, careful! He bites!"

"Noted." Cobin sighs.

And thus, it's a normal day for Northern State Penitentiary.

------ T Prison ------

Things have been calm at T Prison run by Warden Kinie. Kinie updates Sukuna on Itadori and such. Just a usual update.

As for Ink, she helps encourage the Six Claws to get into classes however..it's a challenge of its own. That would be delved into later.

Kali is checking in on Rex if there's anything she needs to know.

"Nothing unusual. Although...if you're curious. The Six Claws managed to help out by keeping order around here. It seems that little brawl of yours during lunch made them mad. They don't like when the guard assigned to them is considered prey by another person. It seems like that prisoner is made example of." Rex smiles.

"Why am I not surprised?" Kali said. Should she tell Ink?

"I advised not to worry about it. Use that to advantage for the meantime." Rex advises. "Ink can handle them although...a few of them are resistant in taking the class but nothing too major."

"Okay? What about Itadori?"

Now this is Rex wonders if he should cover for Itadori since he is Sukuna's little brother or tell the truth. "It seems like the incident got him upset as well. You see Itadori has standards and he doesn't like how that man...refer you to degtoary words, you see. By the way! I heard he was moved to another cell with his friends."

"Yes. After that incident before this one. Jinx told us that Itadori requested it because he doesn't want his friends to get hurt as he fears retaliation. But you already know that. Since he's near your cell, what's he doing."

"Nothing much." Rex said. "He's not planning anything in case you're wondering..." He said. Kali sighs, "Fine. Fine. Just let me know if anything happens. I'm going to head up."

"Of course." Rex smiles. Right now, he rather avoids what Itadori and his friends are doing right now at this moment. They're doing something that is considered a 'pastime' like the other night after the fight against the guards. He wonders what Sukuna is doing.

----- At Sukuna's Penthouse ----

"Yes. Thank you for informing me, Warden Ger." He smiles as he has a cup of coffee in his hand. He loves hearing Kinie's voice as she talks to him. She seems less guarded than usual. What does that mean? They formed some kind of relationship. This is good, right?

Then he hears a beep on his phone.

He frowns. He looks at Caller ID that says Doctor Mori. Mori? What does he want?

"My apologies, Kinie. There's a matter I need to attend to. How about we schedule for another dinner?"

"Of course. That would be fine, Mr. Ryomen. Talk to you soon." Right away, Kinie hangs up leaving Sukuna to take this call.

"Doctor Mori. This is a surprise."

"Hello Mr. Ryomen. How are you?"

"Doing something until you call it. What is it?" He asked, leaning back in his chair.

Mori chuckles, "Always straight to the point, hm?"

"Knowing you, it's usual business with you," Sukuna replied calmly. Mori hums, "Yes it's always is. So let me get to the point, are you aware that my men are arrested and are sent to a dangerous prison right now?"

"Huh? Busted for what?" Sukuna said, lowering his coffee on the desk.

"Drugs apparently." He said. Sukuna blinks, "Hold on, I know you and your company don't do drugs. How did this happen?"

"Someone snuck some in and placed it right next to our product," Mori answered. "So I wondering if you know who is responsible for this."

"If you want to know, it wasn't me besides...am I the kind of person who screws people over for no reason and with their business? I don't do this to people such as yourself since you handle my merchandise. If anything, I'm here for family matters. So you can take me off your list of suspects, Doctor.." Sukuna said firmly.

"I know it wasn't you. Sorry if I am implying that, Ryomen. That said, I need your help in hiring some lawyers to represent my men. Three of them are my most valuable members." Mori informs them. Sukuna nods, "Alright. Let me see what I can do for them. Is there anything else?"

"Not at a moment. Right now, I need to deal with other matters."

"Like?"

"A pro-hero student who was kidnapped and drugged months ago. She was recovered yet sent to a facility for treatment but some rumors surfaced, saying that Port Mafia is behind this. Since the place she was confined is in Yokohama?"

"Are they?" Sukuna raised a brow. Mori and his organization kidnapped a girl. A pro-hero student, no less. That isn't their style.

"Of course not. There is no reason and this student is from UA., one of the top hero schools where All Might teaches. It's risky for Port Mafia to do something like that and they're against drugs. So I'm trying to see if these two cases are related."

"I see. Well...you know when to call me if you need anything, Doctor Mori." Said Sukuna.

"Of course, thank you. I will be in touch, soon." Said Mori before hanging up. Sukuna sighs. "Great. Now I need to deal with this problem." He hopes this favor won't get in the way of dinner with Kinie Ger.

To be continued....

[longitudinalwaveme]

Longitudinalwaveme Reviews Some More Old Comics (and One New One), Part 3

 Batman #353, “Last Laugh”

The Joker walks into his hideout at the abandoned Tatch Hotel, where his goons are gambling. He promptly kills one of them by snakebite for disrespecting him. 

Batman scares a corrupt city council member into revealing that the doctored photos that “revealed” Batman as a crime boss came from real crime boss Rupert Thorne. Apparently, Thorne ensured that Reeves would lose the election...meaning that he wanted Hamilton Hill to be mayor for some reason. 

Also, Gordon is currently not the Commissioner---someone named Commissioner Pauling is, and Batman suspects both he and the new mayor are corrupt. 

The next day, as Bruce Wayne, he accompanies Vicki Vale to the destruction of Gotham Central Station. Apparently, Vicki was witness to an interaction between Rupert Thorne and Morton Monroe that culminated in the latter’s suicide. 

The computer being used to manage the explosions that will preserve the landmark while still clearing space for new development malfunctions has been stolen...by the Joker! 

Because Batman and the new police commissioner are on the outs, Batman hadn’t known about the Joker’s escape from Arkham, and he’s not happy about that. He does, however, quickly work out that the Joker has bought some land in the Palisades under the pseudonym of Mr. Harlan Quinn. (No...seriously!) 

Batman heads to the location in question...only to be caught off-guard by the Joker, who shoots a drugged arrow at him. When he wakes up, he’s tied to some rocks and surrounded by dynamite. 

Joker is upset that Gotham is constructing a statue for a Broadway star and not for him, so he’s going to use the dynamite and the computer he stole to create a monument of himself (and kill Batman). 

Batman manages to break free and jams the computer signal by way of a device he brought with him for that purpose. 

The story is then interrupted for a weird He-Man comic! Hi there, He-Man, Teela, Man-at-Arms, Battle Cat, Sorceress, Mer-man, Beast Man, and Skeletor! And, uh, Superman, too, I guess! Why not? 

I can honestly say I did not expect this Batman comic to contain a Superman/Masters of the Universe crossover where Superman fought Skeletor. 

And now back to Batman, who’s fighting Joker’s goons. While this is going on, the Joker shoots at Batman while his back is turned-only for the explosions to go off. It temporarily creates Joker’s memorial of himself, but it lasts for only a few seconds before collapsing. The issue ends with Joker frowning and Batman smiling in a really unsettling manner. 

The issue also has a backup story, starring Robin and Batman, the latter of whom is undercover as Matches Malone. They work together to defeat some con-men, and Dick uses an inflatable suit to dress up as Batman. It’s pretty amusing. 

Batman #355, “Never Scratch a Cat” 

Why does Catwoman own what appears to be a pet panther? 

Apparently, she’s not happy abut the fact that Vicky Vale is also romantically interested in Bruce Wayne. We then cut to the latter two on a date. 

Their date is suddenly interrupted when Catwoman uses her car to send their car off a cliff and into a river. She immediately regrets it and dives into the water after them to save them.

Bruce fights her off and makes it to the surface with Vicki himself. Two days later, she wakes up in the hospital. 

The police have been staking out Selina’s house, but so far, there hasn’t been any sign of her. 

That night, Batman leaves to track down Catwoman, telling Dick not to come with him as Robin. They have a fairly heartwarming conversation, and then Batman zooms off, leaving Dick and Alfred worried about how angry he seems. 

Batman breaks into Selina’s house...and is promptly attacked by her pet panther. They fight, and he defeats the panther. He then discovers that Selina hasn’t been home for at least 2 days. 

Batman looks through her bills and discovers that she’s rented an apartment somewhere. 

Ex-Commissioner Gordon talks politics with Mayor Hamilton Hill. There’s a petition to remove the latter from his position, since he’s connected to Thorne and Thorne was arrested for murdering his own appointee for police commissioner. Also, Hill makes him commissioner again. 

Batman tracks Catwoman to her new apartment and the two fight, verbally and physically. Eventually, though, they make up and hug each other. It’s kind of weird, but I guess it works.

Flash #324, “The Slayer and the Slain” 

The Reverse-Flash is dead! But the real horror of this issue isn’t that he’s dead or that he died attempting to murder Fiona Webb...it’s the fact that this issue will kick off the Trial of the Flash arc; otherwise known as the Arc That Never Ends! 

Some really weird nurse tells a baby the story of her favorite soap opera...only to lose her grip on the carriage, which goes hurtling towards a pane of glass! Kid Flash manages to save the baby, but not the glass. 

Kid Flash then rushes to what he believes will be the wedding of his uncle to Fiona Webb, changing into a tuxedo along the way. 

Unfortunately, when Wally arrives at the church, there’s no sign of Barry. Dexter Miles, Barry’s friend Mack Nathan, Mack’s son Troy, and Ralph Dibney, the Elongated Man, are at the church, though, as are Barry’s parents and Fiona herself. 

Before Barry’s first name was Bartholomew, it was Barrence. No, seriously. 

Fiona is naturally very upset, believing Barry stood her up at the alter. Henry Allen is less than sympathetic. “Nora and I aren’t ready to give up on our boy just yet, Fiona. And if you really love him...you’re not about to either!” Way to guilt-trip her, Henry. No wonder Barry got along better with Roscoe-pretending-to-be-you than he did with you. 

Barry and the Reverse-Flash have a fight/race around the world, Eobard yelling about how mad he is about Barry trapping him at the end of time for four years. 

Officer Frye and Frank Curtis are also at the wedding. 

Apparently the Guardians of the Universe stopped Wally from helping Barry fight Eobard for some reason. Okay...

Eobard, being Eobard, makes a giant ice sculpture of Iris in the Himalayas just so he can troll Barry. Then they fight some more as all the wedding guests wonder where the bridegroom is. 

While the two are fighting/racing, Eobard creates a big wave at Miami Beach, which Barry has to stop to rescue some swimmers from. 

Captain Frye is starting to believe that Barry’s been murdered. 

Eobard and Barry end up in Cape Carneval and take a rocket into outer space. After they return to Earth, Eobard taunts Barry by writing “Guess who’s going to kill your wife again” in the sand. This naturally makes Barry very, very unhappy. 

Equally unhappy is Fiona, who is now completely convinced she’s been stood up and is leaving the church. 

The wedding photographer pops up over thirty-five minutes after the wedding is supposed to start; conveniently already filming with his camera.

Eobard runs towards Fiona, murder on his mind...only for Barry to grab him from behind by the neck as he shouts “NO! Not again!” 

Barry tries to comfort Fiona to no avail as Frye discovers that Eobard is dead. 

And on that grim note, the issue ends. 

Batman #362, “When Riddled By the Riddler...” 

Why was Riddler working at a winery? Is it just because one of the processes involved in making wine is called riddling it? Whatever the reason, the appearance of a film crew at the winery apparently gives Riddler an idea for his next crime spree.

Batman is summoned to police headquarters, where Harvey Bullock is arguing with Commissoner Gordon. Apparently, Bullock’s working with Mayor Hill, and the Riddler has been sending Gordon puzzle boxes.

This puzzle box prompts Bullock to ask about the Riddler, which in turn prompts Gordon to tell Bullock and the reader about the Riddler’s M.O. and backstory. 

When he finishes the story, Batman finally arrives and kicks Bullock out. He and Gordon proceed to try to solve Riddler’s latest riddle as Bullock eavesdrops on them both from outside the door. The riddle seems to point in the direction of the Mother Goose Amusement Park, but Batman tells Gordon to keep thinking of other possible meanings just in case. 

Bullock plans to outwit Gordon, Batman, and the Riddler, showing an impressive degree of self-confidence (or self-delusion). 

Batman goes to the park and is promptly ambushed by a machine-gun wielding Riddler. 

Then they fight, Riddler escapes, and Batman learns that the amusement park has been closed all season, so it would have no money around to steal. 

Gordon, Bullock, and Batman reconvene to do some Bat Deducting in order to figure out the Riddler’s real plan. Because Batman’s true superpower is his ability to understand the insane ways in which the Riddler uses riddles to plot his crimes. 

Apparently, Riddler is going to steal the loot of a game show being filmed in Paradise Theater. The show in question is called “Enigma”, which is a terrible name for a show filmed in Gotham. It’s beggining the Riddler to show up. 

The Riddler actually wears a suit in this issue! That’s unusual for Riddler at this point, and it looks really good. Of course, he immediately takes it off a few panels later, but still. 

Apparently, the game show consists of getting contestants to answer riddles and...seriously, who decided it was a good idea to film this in Gotham? 

Then the Riddler pops himself out of the riddle drum used in the game show. It’s hilarious. He steals the money and walks out the door, gloating. 

Batman then appears and starts chasing Riddler, who hijacks a bus. Batman follows him and uses gas to force the bus to stop. 

Then Batman literally kicks him off the bus and captures him. 

The issue ends with Bullock deciding to drop the charges he’s managed to get raised against Gordon (after Gordon uses a riddle to threaten him). Hill is not happy about this. 

Batman #373, “The Frequency of Fear” 

The issue opens with Jason Todd having a freaky nightmare about his parents’ deaths (since this is pre-Crisis, the deaths happened at the hands of Killer Croc). 

A really stupid psychologist wants to meet Jonathan Crane so that he can analyze the effects of fear on the human mind. Unfortunately for him, Crane has been released from Arkham, because everyone in Gotham is stupid. Even the stupid psychologist thinks so! 

Meanwhile, a couple of people at Gotham University wonder if they really did see the Scarecrow heading for the old Marston House where Crane once lived. 

Julia Pennyworth, Alfred’s daughter, asks Vicki Vale for a position at Picture News (is this different than the Picture News where Iris West-Allen works?) Vicki is opposed to the idea until Julia insists she’s not interested in Bruce Wayne. 

Apparently, in an earlier issue a number of Batman’s Rogues dragged Scarecrow around while he was mostly incapacitated by fear. He’s not happy about the fact that they did this and is plotting revenge against all of them. 

A guard at the courthouse demands to know why he’s there. In response, Scarecrow uses a skull to emit his fear frequency, and the guard predictably starts hallucinating. He then continues to use the frequency to get the location of the lock-up. He’s then lead the the solitary cell of the Joker.....and then Batman shows up. 

Scarecrow proceeds to use the fear frequency on both him and on Robin, when the latter shows up. Batman manages to fight off the worst of it, but when Jason chases the Scarecrow out of the building and onto the rope Scarecrow was using to escape, the frequency overcomes him, he loses his balance, and he starts falling. 

Batman manages to rescue him, though. 

On an unrelated note, Child Services are worried about the fact that Jason keeps falling asleep in class. 

Gordon and Bullock go out for dinner and have a little chat; Mayor Hill hires a hit out on Bullock.

Meanwhile, Batman tells Crane’s backstory to Robin, who suggests that Crane might be hanging out at his old house. Batman dismisses this, which is unfortunate, since Crane is, in fact, hanging out there. 

Crane is reading his psychology textbook to his little skull head. The man is really weird. I’ll also note that his textbook does actually contain a few words I’m not familiar with, which is impressive. 

Crane then determines that he’ll have to get rid of Batman first if he wants to kill off all the other villains, and goes out to do just that. 

Commissioner Gordon calls in Batman and Robin and tells them that the Scarecrow is attacking a zoo. Batman tells Robin to go home; he thinks the case is too dangerous for Jason. 

Batman goes to the zoo, and is increasingly affected by fear. When he reaches the crocodile pit, the fear is so overwhelming that he loses his balance and starts to fall in. 

Meanwhile, Jason has disobeyed orders and gone to Crane’s old house. The Scarecrow promptly attacks him as Batman falls into the crocodile exhibit....and the issue ends on a cliffhanger. Ooof. 

Flash 2021 Annual 

SPOILERS!

Man, Wally West makes the weirdest faces in this confessional. 

Barry, Ollie, and Mr. Terrific talk technobabble. 

Good news! It turns out Wally’s not a murderer anymore! HURRAH! 

Roy is alive again! YAY! 

Barry and Ollie are also making weird faces. 

Ollie really wants to save Roy from the speed force explosion that will kill everybody at Sanctuary, but Barry says there’s nothing they can do. Ollie doesn’t like this explanation.

Also, Barry’s powers suddenly start fading. 

Wally makes another weird face as he and Roy talk. 

Hey, Savitar’s back! And looking a lot more attractive than the last time I saw him. 

Turns out that he’s been causing all the weird problems with the Speed Force in this arc. It’s appropriate for him, I think. 

Roy and Wally team up to fight Savitar, who goes on a villainous monologue about how he’s going to eat the speed force so he can become it. 

There’s some more technobabble about the Speed Force. Apparently, if they don’t cause the explosion that kills everyone at Sanctuary, Savitar’s plan to eat the Speed Force will destroy the Omniverse. 

Roy ends up setting up the necessary explosion to save the Omniverse. Good work, Roy! 

Aww, Roy and all the heroes are dead again....:(

Oh, well. At least Wally still isn’t a murderer now. 

Wally and Savitar arrive in the present, Wally decides to continue being the Flash, he and Savitar have a fight/race, Wally wins, and Savitar disappears. 

After Wally takes a nap, he and Barry have a cute talk, and Barry gives poor Ollie, who’s been through a lot, a hug. 

Wally goes home and reunites with his family. HURRAH!!!!

Heat Wave’s going to be in the next arc. It’ll be interesting to see how that goes. 

[timeless-hollywood-classics]

Robert Charles Durman Mitchum (August 6, 1917 – July 1, 1997) was an American actor, director, author, poet, composer, and singer. Mitchum rose to prominence for starring roles in several classic films noirs, and his acting is generally considered a forerunner of the antiheroes prevalent in film during the 1950s and 1960s. His best-known films include Out of the Past (1947), The Night of the Hunter (1955), Cape Fear (1962), and El Dorado (1966). Mitchum was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for The Story of G.I. Joe (1945). He is also known for his television role as U.S. Navy Captain Victor “Pug” Henry in the epic miniseries The Winds of War (1983) and sequel War and Remembrance (1988).

Mitchum is rated number 23 on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest male stars of Classic American Cinema.

Robert Mitchum was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, on August 6, 1917, into a Norwegian-Irish Methodist family. His mother, Ann Harriet Gunderson, was a Norwegian immigrant and sea captain's daughter; his father, James Thomas Mitchum, was a shipyard and railroad worker of Irish descent.[3] His older sister, Annette (known as Julie Mitchum during her acting career), was born in 1914. Their father, James Mitchum, was crushed to death in a railyard accident in Charleston, South Carolina, in February 1919. Robert was one year old, and Annette was not yet five. Their mother was awarded a government pension, and soon realized she was pregnant. Her third child, John, was born in September of that year. Ann married again to Major Hugh Cunningham Morris, a former Royal Naval Reserve officer. Ann and Morris had a daughter together, Carol Morris, born July 1927, on the family farm in Delaware. When all of the children were old enough to attend school, Ann found employment as a linotype operator for the Bridgeport Post.

As a child, Mitchum was known as a prankster, often involved in fistfights and mischief. When he was 12, his mother sent him to live with her parents in Felton, Delaware; the boy was promptly expelled from middle school for scuffling with the principal. A year later, in 1930, he moved in with his older sister Annette, in New York's Hell's Kitchen. After being expelled from Haaren High School, he left his sister and traveled throughout the country, hopping on railroad cars, taking a number of jobs, including ditch-digging for the Civilian Conservation Corps and professional boxing. At age 14 in Savannah, Georgia, he said he was arrested for vagrancy and put on a local chain gang. By Mitchum's own account, he escaped and returned to his family in Delaware. During this time, while recovering from injuries that nearly cost him a leg, he met Dorothy Spence, whom he would later marry. He soon went back on the road, eventually "riding the rails" to California.

Mitchum arrived in Long Beach, California, in 1936, staying again with his sister, now going by the name of Julie. She had moved to the West Coast in the hope of acting in movies, and the rest of the Mitchum family soon joined them. During this time, Mitchum worked as a ghostwriter for astrologer Carroll Righter. Julie convinced him to join the local theater guild with her. At The Players Guild of Long Beach, Mitchum worked as a stagehand and occasional bit-player in company productions. He also wrote several short pieces which were performed by the guild. According to Lee Server's biography (Robert Mitchum: Baby, I Don't Care), Mitchum put his talent for poetry to work writing song lyrics and monologues for Julie's nightclub performances.

In 1940, he returned to Delaware to marry Dorothy Spence, and they moved back to California. He gave up his artistic pursuits at the birth of their first child James, nicknamed Josh, and two more children, Chris and Petrine, followed. Mitchum found steady employment as a machine operator during wartime era WWII, with the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, but the noise of the machinery damaged his hearing. He also suffered a nervous breakdown (which resulted in temporary blindness), due to job-related stress. He then sought work as a film actor, performing initially as an extra and in small speaking parts. His agent got him an interview with Harry Sherman, the producer of Paramount's Hopalong Cassidy western film series, which starred William Boyd; Mitchum was hired to play minor villainous roles in several films in the series during 1942 and 1943. He went uncredited as a soldier in the Mickey Rooney 1943 film The Human Comedy. Also in 1943 he and Randolph Scott were soldiers in the Pacific Island war film Gung Ho.

Mitchum continued to find work as an extra and supporting actor in numerous productions for various studios. After impressing director Mervyn LeRoy during the making of Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, Mitchum signed a seven-year contract with RKO Radio Pictures. He was groomed for B-Western stardom in a series of Zane Grey adaptations.

Following the moderately successful Western Nevada, RKO lent Mitchum to United Artists for The Story of G.I. Joe (1945). In the film, he portrayed war-weary officer Bill Walker (based on Captain Henry T. Waskow), who remains resolute despite the troubles he faces. The film, which followed the life of an ordinary soldier through the eyes of journalist Ernie Pyle (played by Burgess Meredith), became an instant critical and commercial success. Shortly after filming, Mitchum was drafted into the United States Army, serving at Fort MacArthur, California, as a medic. At the 1946 Academy Awards, The Story of G.I. Joe was nominated for four Oscars, including Mitchum's only nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He finished the year with a Western (West of the Pecos) and a story of returning Marine veterans (Till the End of Time), before filming in a genre that came to define Mitchum's career and screen persona: film noir.

Mitchum was initially known for his work in film noir. His first foray into the genre was a supporting role in the 1944 B-movie When Strangers Marry, about newlyweds and a New York City serial killer. Undercurrent, another of Mitchum's early noir films, featured him as a troubled, sensitive man entangled in the affairs of his brother (Robert Taylor) and his brother's suspicious wife (Katharine Hepburn). John Brahm's The Locket (1946) featured Mitchum as bitter ex-boyfriend to Laraine Day's femme fatale. Raoul Walsh's Pursued (1947) combined Western and noir styles, with Mitchum's character attempting to recall his past and find those responsible for killing his family. Crossfire (also 1947) featured Mitchum as a member of a group of World War II soldiers, one of whom kills a Jewish man. It featured themes of anti-Semitism and the failings of military training. The film, directed by Edward Dmytryk, earned five Academy Award nominations.

Following Crossfire, Mitchum starred in Out of the Past (also called Build My Gallows High), directed by Jacques Tourneur and featuring the cinematography of Nicholas Musuraca. Mitchum played Jeff Markham, a small-town gas-station owner and former investigator, whose unfinished business with gambler Whit Sterling (Kirk Douglas) and femme fatale Kathie Moffett (Jane Greer) comes back to haunt him.

On September 1, 1948, after a string of successful films for RKO, Mitchum and actress Lila Leeds were arrested for possession of marijuana.[10] The arrest was the result of a sting operation designed to capture other Hollywood partiers as well, but Mitchum and Leeds did not receive the tipoff. After serving a week at the county jail (he described the experience to a reporter as being "like Palm Springs, but without the riff-raff"), Mitchum spent 43 days (February 16 to March 30) at a Castaic, California, prison farm. Life photographers were permitted to take photos of him mopping up in his prison uniform. The arrest inspired the exploitation film She Shoulda Said No! (1949), which starred Leeds. The conviction was later overturned by the Los Angeles court and district attorney's office on January 31, 1951, after being exposed as a setup.

Despite, or because of, Mitchum's troubles with the law and his studio, his films released immediately after his arrest were box-office hits. Rachel and the Stranger (1948) featured Mitchum in a supporting role as a mountain man competing for the hand of Loretta Young, the indentured servant and wife of William Holden. In the film adaptation of John Steinbeck's novella The Red Pony (1949), he appeared as a trusted cowhand to a ranching family. He returned to film noir in The Big Steal (also 1949), where he reunited with Jane Greer in an early Don Siegel film.

In Where Danger Lives (1950), Mitchum played a doctor who comes between a mentally unbalanced Faith Domergue and cuckolded Claude Rains. The Racket was a noir remake of the early crime drama of the same name and featured Mitchum as a police captain fighting corruption in his precinct. The Josef von Sternberg film, Macao (1952), had Mitchum as a victim of mistaken identity at an exotic resort casino, playing opposite Jane Russell. Otto Preminger's Angel Face was the first of three collaborations between Mitchum and British stage actress Jean Simmons. In this film, she played an insane heiress who plans to use young ambulance driver Mitchum to kill for her.

Mitchum was fired from Blood Alley (1955), due to his conduct, reportedly having thrown the film's transportation manager into San Francisco Bay. According to Sam O'Steen's memoir Cut to the Chase, Mitchum showed up on-set after a night of drinking and tore apart a studio office when they did not have a car ready for him. Mitchum walked off the set of the third day of filming Blood Alley, claiming he could not work with the director. Because Mitchum was showing up late and behaving erratically, producer John Wayne, after failing to obtain Humphrey Bogart as a replacement, took over the role himself.

Following a series of conventional Westerns and films noirs, as well as the Marilyn Monroe vehicle River of No Return (1954), Mitchum appeared in Charles Laughton's only film as director: The Night of the Hunter (1955). Based on a novel by Davis Grubb, the thriller starred Mitchum as a monstrous criminal posing as a preacher to find money hidden by his cellmate in the cellmate's home. His performance as Reverend Harry Powell is considered by many to be one of the best of his career.[15][16] Stanley Kramer's melodrama Not as a Stranger, also released in 1955, was a box-office hit. The film starred Mitchum against type, as an idealistic young doctor, who marries an older nurse (Olivia de Havilland), only to question his morality many years later. However, the film was not well received, with most critics pointing out that Mitchum, Frank Sinatra, and Lee Marvin were all too old for their characters. Olivia de Havilland received top billing over Mitchum and Sinatra.

On March 8, 1955, Mitchum formed DRM (Dorothy and Robert Mitchum) Productions to produce five films for United Artists; four films were produced. The first film was Bandido (1956). Following a succession of average Westerns and the poorly received Foreign Intrigue (1956), Mitchum starred in the first of three films with Deborah Kerr. The John Huston war drama Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, starred Mitchum as a Marine corporal shipwrecked on a Pacific Island with a nun, Sister Angela (Deborah Kerr), as his sole companion. In this character study, they struggle to resist the elements and the invading Japanese army. The film was nominated for two Academy Awards, including Best Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay. For his role, Mitchum was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actor. In the WWII submarine classic The Enemy Below (1956), Mitchum gave a strong performance as U.S. Naval Lieutenant Commander Murrell, the captain of a U.S. Navy destroyer who matches wits with a German U-boat captain Curt Jurgens, who starred with Mitchum again in the legendary 1962 movie The Longest Day. The film won an Oscar for Special Effects.

Thunder Road (1958), the second DRM Production, was loosely based on an incident in which a driver transporting moonshine was said to have fatally crashed on Kingston Pike in Knoxville, Tennessee, somewhere between Bearden Hill and Morrell Road. According to Metro Pulse writer Jack Renfro, the incident occurred in 1952 and may have been witnessed by James Agee, who passed the story on to Mitchum. He starred in the movie, produced, co-wrote the screenplay, and is rumored to have directed much of the film. It costars his son James, as his on screen brother, in a role originally intended for Elvis Presley. Mitchum also co-wrote (with Don Raye) the theme song, "The Ballad of Thunder Road".

He returned to Mexico for The Wonderful Country (1959) and Ireland for A Terrible Beauty/The Night Fighters for the last of his DRM Productions.

Mitchum and Kerr reunited for the Fred Zinnemann film, The Sundowners (1960), where they played husband and wife struggling in Depression-era Australia. Opposite Mitchum, Kerr was nominated for yet another Academy Award for Best Actress, while the film was nominated for a total of five Oscars. Mitchum was awarded that year's National Board of Review award for Best Actor for his performance. The award also recognized his superior performance in the Vincente Minnelli Western drama Home from the Hill (also 1960). He was teamed with former leading ladies Kerr and Simmons, as well as Cary Grant, for the Stanley Donen comedy The Grass Is Greener the same year.

Mitchum's performance as the menacing rapist Max Cady in Cape Fear (1962) brought him further renown for playing cold, predatory characters. The 1960s were marked by a number of lesser films and missed opportunities. Among the films Mitchum passed on during the decade were John Huston's The Misfits (the last film of its stars Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe), the Academy Award–winning Patton, and Dirty Harry. The most notable of his films in the decade included the war epics The Longest Day (1962) and Anzio (1968), the Shirley MacLaine comedy-musical What a Way to Go! (1964), and the Howard Hawks Western El Dorado (1967), a remake of Rio Bravo (1959), in which Mitchum took over Dean Martin's role of the drunk who comes to the aid of John Wayne. He teamed with Martin for the 1968 Western 5 Card Stud, playing a homicidal preacher.

One of the lesser-known aspects of Mitchum's career was his foray into music as a singer. Critic Greg Adams writes, "Unlike most celebrity vocalists, Robert Mitchum actually had musical talent." Mitchum's voice was often used instead of that of a professional singer when his character sang in his films. Notable productions featuring Mitchum's own singing voice included Rachel and the Stranger, River of No Return, and The Night of the Hunter. After hearing traditional calypso music and meeting artists such as Mighty Sparrow and Lord Invader while filming Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison in the Caribbean islands of Tobago, he recorded Calypso – is like so ... in March 1957. On the album, released through Capitol Records, he emulated the calypso sound and style, even adopting the style's unique pronunciations and slang. A year later, he recorded a song he had written for Thunder Road, titled "The Ballad of Thunder Road". The country-style song became a modest hit for Mitchum, reaching number 69 on the Billboard Pop Singles chart. The song was included as a bonus track on a successful reissue of Calypso ... and helped market the film to a wider audience.

Although Mitchum continued to use his singing voice in his film work, he waited until 1967 to record his follow-up record, That Man, Robert Mitchum, Sings. The album, released by Nashville-based Monument Records, took him further into country music, and featured songs similar to "The Ballad of Thunder Road". "Little Old Wine Drinker Me", the first single, was a top-10 hit at country radio, reaching number nine there, and crossed over onto mainstream radio, where it peaked at number 96. Its follow-up, "You Deserve Each Other", also charted on the Billboard Country Singles chart. He sang the title song to the Western Young Billy Young, made in 1969.

Mitchum made a departure from his typical screen persona with the 1970 David Lean film Ryan's Daughter, in which he starred as Charles Shaughnessy, a mild-mannered schoolmaster in World War I–era Ireland. At the time of filming, Mitchum was going through a personal crisis and planned to commit suicide. Aside from a personal crisis, his recent films had been critical and commercial flops. Screenwriter Robert Bolt told him that he could commit suicide after the film was finished and that he would personally pay for his burial. Though the film was nominated for four Academy Awards (winning two) and Mitchum was much publicized as a contender for a Best Actor nomination, he was not nominated. George C. Scott won the award for his performance in Patton, a project Mitchum had rejected for Ryan's Daughter.

The 1970s featured Mitchum in a number of well-received crime dramas. The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) had the actor playing an aging Boston hoodlum caught between the Feds and his criminal friends. Sydney Pollack's The Yakuza (1974) transplanted the typical film noir story arc to the Japanese underworld. He also appeared in 1976's Midway about an epic 1942 World War II battle. Mitchum's stint as an aging Philip Marlowe in the Raymond Chandler adaptation Farewell, My Lovely (1975) was sufficiently well received by audiences and critics for him to reprise the role in 1978's The Big Sleep.

In 1982, Mitchum played Coach Delaney in the film adaptation of playwright/actor Jason Miller's 1973 Pulitzer Prize-winning play That Championship Season.

At the premiere for That Championship Season, Mitchum, while intoxicated, assaulted a female reporter and threw a basketball that he was holding (a prop from the film) at a female photographer from Time magazine, injuring her neck and knocking out two of her teeth. She sued him for $30 million for damages. The suit eventually "cost him his salary from the film."

That Championship Season may have indirectly led to another debacle for Mitchum several months later. In a February 1983 Esquire interview, he made several racist, anti-Semitic and sexist statements, including, when asked if the Holocaust occurred, responded "so the Jews say." Following the widespread negative response, he apologized a month later, saying that his statements were "prankish" and "foreign to my principle." He claimed that the problem had begun when he recited a racist monologue from his role in That Championship Season, the writer believing the words to be his own. Mitchum, who claimed that he had only reluctantly agreed to the interview, then decided to "string... along" the writer with even more incendiary statements.

Mitchum expanded to television work with the 1983 miniseries The Winds of War. The big-budget Herman Wouk story aired on ABC, starring Mitchum as naval officer "Pug" Henry and Victoria Tennant as Pamela Tudsbury, and examined the events leading up to America's involvement in World War II. He returned to the role in 1988's War and Remembrance, which continued the story through the end of the war.

In 1984, Mitchum entered the Betty Ford Center in Palm Springs, California for treatment of a drinking problem.

He played George Hazard's father-in-law in the 1985 miniseries North and South, which also aired on ABC.

Mitchum starred opposite Wilford Brimley in the 1986 made-for-TV movie Thompson's Run. A hardened con (Mitchum), being transferred from a federal penitentiary to a Texas institution to finish a life sentence as a habitual criminal, is freed at gunpoint by his niece (played by Kathleen York). The cop (Brimley) who was transferring him, and has been the con's lifelong friend and adversary for over 30 years, vows to catch the twosome.

In 1987, Mitchum was the guest-host on Saturday Night Live, where he played private eye Philip Marlowe for the last time in the parody sketch, "Death Be Not Deadly". The show ran a short comedy film he made (written and directed by his daughter, Trina) called Out of Gas, a mock sequel to Out of the Past. (Jane Greer reprised her role from the original film.) He also was in Bill Murray's 1988 comedy film, Scrooged.

In 1991, Mitchum was given a lifetime achievement award from the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures, in the same year he received the Telegatto award and in 1992 the Cecil B. DeMille Award from the Golden Globe Awards.

Mitchum continued to act in films until the mid-1990s, such as in Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man, and he narrated the Western Tombstone. He also appeared, in contrast to his role as the antagonist in the original, as a protagonist police detective in Martin Scorsese's remake of Cape Fear, but the actor gradually slowed his workload. His last film appearance was a small but pivotal role in the television biopic, James Dean: Race with Destiny, playing Giant director George Stevens. His last starring role was in the 1995 Norwegian movie Pakten.

A lifelong heavy smoker, Mitchum died on July 1, 1997, in Santa Barbara, California, due to complications of lung cancer and emphysema. He was about five weeks shy of his 80th birthday. His body was cremated and his ashes scattered at sea, though there is a plot marker in the Odd Fellows Cemetery in Delaware. He was survived by his wife of 57 years, Dorothy Mitchum (May 2, 1919 – April 12, 2014, Santa Barbara, California, aged 94); his sons, actors James Mitchum and Christopher Mitchum; and his daughter, writer Petrine Day Mitchum. His grandchildren, Bentley Mitchum and Carrie Mitchum, are actors, as was his younger brother, John, who died in 2001. Another grandson, Kian, is a successful model.

Mitchum is regarded by some critics as one of the finest actors of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Roger Ebert called him "the soul of film noir." Mitchum, however, was self-effacing; in an interview with Barry Norman for the BBC about his contribution to cinema, Mitchum stopped Norman in mid flow and in his typical nonchalant style, said, "Look, I have two kinds of acting. One on a horse and one off a horse. That's it." He had also succeeded in annoying some of his fellow actors by voicing his puzzlement at those who viewed the profession as challenging and hard work. He is quoted as having said in the Barry Norman interview that acting was actually very simple and that his job was to "show up on time, know his lines, hit his marks, and go home". Mitchum had a habit of marking most of his appearances in the script with the letters "n.a.r.", which meant "no action required", which critic Dirk Baecker has construed as Mitchum's way of reminding himself to experience the world of the story without acting upon it.

AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars lists Mitchum as the 23rd-greatest male star of classic Hollywood cinema. AFI also recognized his performance as the menacing rapist Max Cady and Reverend Harry Powell as the 28th and 29th greatest screen villains, respectively, of all time as part of AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains. He provided the voice of the famous American Beef Council commercials that touted "Beef ... it's what's for dinner", from 1992 until his death.

A "Mitchum's Steakhouse" is in Trappe, Maryland, where Mitchum and his family lived from 1959 to 1965.

[fleckcmscott]

Things Past

Summary: Arthur shares a childhood memory with Y/N. She sees it differently than he does.

Warnings: Mild angst

Words: 2,645

A/N: This was an anonymous request! Thank you for sending it to me - it was a real challenge. A big thanks to Karen, too. Not just for beta-ing, but for helping with the basis of the memory in question. (I had an idea but hers was much better.) 

If you have any thoughts or questions, please comment, feel free to message me, or send me an ask. Requests for Arthur and WWH are open!

Y/N was clad in her robe and brushing her teeth when Arthur entered the bathroom, flashed her a half-smile, and sat on the side of the tub. A mix of nicotine and cologne hung in the air. He must have smoked half a pack if he was trying to cover up the scent. The flexing of his bare toes on the dark tile floor, and the nibbling of his thumbnail caught her eye in the mirror. Once she rinsed, she grabbed a piece of floss and sat next to him, situating herself so they were hip to hip.

They were fast approaching five years together. Arthur and she still found respite in each other's presence. In shared warmth, not only in the familiarity of their affection, but also in the meeting of lips and bodies during lovemaking and otherwise. And in their companionable silences, which continued to hold a tacit acknowledgment that he could tell her whatever he needed, whether he uttered a simple word or two, or the rare paragraph.

Arthur appeared to be somewhere in the middle of that range of need now. It was evident in the tightness of his back as she put her palm on it. Rubbing gently, fingertips tracing his spine, she sought to bring him out. Like she had back when he'd sat on her sofa with his journal, a stand-up fresh off his first performance. The morning she'd realized she'd fallen in love with him.

His sigh let her know her attention was working. "Dr. Ludlow wants to talk about when I was a kid," he murmured. "I won't know what to say. I barely remember anything."

The subject of his childhood was seldom discussed. Even after his mother had passed away last spring; he'd been silent when they'd picked-up her belongings at the home. (He'd thrown out everything besides the periodic letters and photos Y/N had sent, stating "I like reading I make you happy.") They had never gone over the details in the Arkham file. He'd told her he hadn't and wouldn't look at all of it. He'd seen the headlines, scanned the psychiatric interview, touched the adoption certificate. That had been enough.

While he'd guessed she'd looked at Penny's records, she hadn't disclosed that she'd eventually read all it contained. Had learned the details of his neglect and abuse. Had seen the photos of his emaciated, bruised body. Her throat constricted as they flashed in her mind's eye. It was a mercy he wasn't aware of everything that had occurred. Even if his unconscious knew.

Of course, if he asked her, she'd answer any questions he had. Tell him all of it. But she didn't want to burden him. Or for him to feel shame, an unwarranted reaction her experience reading family cases had taught her was common. The two of them would keep doing what they always had: deal with the residual effects of his past, the symptoms of his illnesses together, as best they could. And for what she couldn't help with, he had his doctor and his journal.

"You can say whatever you want." Y/N bunched up the floss and tossed it towards the trash can under the sink, groaning as it bounced off the rim and back at them. "You could bring back some classic parts of your act. The one about how you hated school," she said, nudging his side. "And how the other kids were too unsophisticated to see what a sweet, funny boy you were."

He retrieved the plastic thread and stood up, threw it away. At his scoff, she realized her attempt to lighten his load hadn't worked. "That was, what? Over thirty years ago?" Then he turned to her, his thumb stuck in the waistband of his pajamas. "We have our life now. Why should it matter?"

Reluctance to admit one's past affected the present was understandable. She'd denied it to herself when she'd first moved to Gotham. Burying herself in her work had been enjoyable. And it had had the convenient side effect of allowing her to avoid processing the ways caretaking had changed her. Starting a relationship with Arthur had forced her to stop and take a breath, to examine its impact. It had done her good. She was certain it would him, too.

"Arthur." He took her proffered hand without pause and stepped to her automatically. She pressed her mouth above his navel, laid her cheek against the warm skin of his belly. "I'll be right here for you." The caress to her hair was featherlight and her hold on him tightened. "You've put so much work into yourself. This is difficult but you can do it."

Bending to her, he kissed the top of her head. "Go to bed. I don't wanna keep you up."

"It's all right if you do. I happen to like your company." At last, she succeeded in getting a chuckle out of him and a playful swat to her thigh. But he withdrew and wished her good night. Heading into their bedroom, she heard the click of the lamp in the living room, the opening of the door to the fire escape. He'd be outside for some time, she assumed. Quickly, she got one of his sweaters and brought it out to him. Though he raised a brow at her, his eyes were full of fondness. She slung the wool shirt over his shoulder and pecked his jaw before taking her leave.

~~~~~

Occasionally, Arthur would call her office before leaving for an appointment. He'd never say he was thinking of skipping a session. That he was having doubts they were working at all. That tough days were infrequent yet harsh. His flat tone and pauses clued her in, though. He'd been calm when he called today, and she'd kidded with him until his mood had buoyed and he'd said he was going. Promising a date night, if he felt up to it, had helped.

Currently, Y/N was in line at Marchetti's waiting for take-out. Wanting to catch-up on the evening news, she grabbed a Gotham Journal from the newsstand. Since the murders of Thomas and Martha Wayne in a robbery six months ago, Gotham's malfeasance appeared to have gotten worse. Reports of small businesses being cited for minor code violations, while establishments run by people with the right name and enough money were left to their own devices, flourished. Construction strikes had become more frequent, which she would normally support. But they had a way of ending as soon as the city placed a higher bid. The chief of police had been photographed hobnobbing with a crime boss, but the mayor had taken no action.

On top of it all, the Wayne Foundation, that thorn in her side, was drawing back many of the initiatives it had begun after increasingly austere program cuts. Including services at that damned medical center in Otisburg. They couldn't run out of funds, the board claimed. With the continuously sluggish economy, returns on their investments weren't what they used to be. The organization needed to ensure the Wayne's son would be taken care of.

Y/N didn't buy those excuses. She had nothing against the boy - she couldn't imagine losing her parents at such a young age. But how many mansions, gazebos, and toys did a child need? The skeptical part of her, the one that always suspected an angle, wondered if the increase in the city's corruption and the Wayne Foundations machinations were related...

Stop it, Y/N. Quickly, she shoved the paper back in its spinning rack. If she thought about it too much, she'd find a way to stumble into an investigation she couldn't ignore. While she'd be ready for one and relish it, she didn't want to focus on that tonight.

Their order was ready in about twenty minutes. Arthur and she had gotten into the habit of getting two individual pizzas, borne of his limited willingness to experiment with toppings. Normally, he was happy to take her recommendations, but he insisted cheese was just as good as any other kind and liked to have it to fall back on. She'd gotten Hawaiian for herself. If he was in the mood to eat, she was sure they'd split them.

Happy notes from the Sinatra live album she'd gifted him for his most recent birthday hit her as she opened the apartment door.  It was a pleasant surprise. Arthur only listened to the LP when he was doing all right. (It had prompted him to tell her of his wish to go see him in concert together, and he didn't want to taint that with negative thoughts.)

Upon peeking around the corner from the kitchen, she spotted Arthur in his writing nook, scribbling hurriedly and tapping his feet to the beat. He was obviously engrossed, but she didn't think he'd mind if she interrupted. Soon she approached his desk, plates in hand. "Knock, knock."

A gentle snort as he put down his pen, "Who's there?"

"Delivery service." She propped her hip against the edge of his desk, and placed the food next to his journal, along with a paper towel. "You owe me a tip."

"I do, don't I?" He angled his head up and pulled her in for a quick kiss. "Thanks. I've only had coffee since this morning. Just been working on my material." Swallowing, he flipped back a page in his notebook. "How did the little boy learn to get home?" His green eyes met hers, a hiccup of laughter in his throat. He allowed about three seconds before giving her the punchline. "Step by step by step by step."

Her features softened and her grin drifted away as she absorbed what he'd jotted. In the past, his act had contained references to his childhood. References which could have been based on recollections, figments, or both. This was an observation in joke form, as his jests tended to be. "That's clever." She reached to brush a chestnut wave from his forehead, deciding to ask what she'd been curious about since she got in. "I'm glad you're doing so well. I take it therapy went better than expected?"

Nodding, he gave her a tight-lipped smiled, dimples on display. "Mhm." She moved to sit more fully on his desk, straightening as she secured her paper towel to the neckline of her blouse. They munched quietly, glancing between their slices and each other. It was clear he wanted to tell her more. After he finished his first bites, he shifted in his chair. "I remembered something nice."

A weight rolled off her shoulders, and the corners of her mouth turned up. "That's wonderful."

"Yeah." His teeth worried his thin bottom lip, his gaze going to his plate. "I was at school late - maybe I got in trouble for laughing. Penny was supposed to get me. But I think she forgot, so I had to walk home... It was dark. I hadn't gone that far by myself."

With every word he spoke, Y/N's elation ebbed, replaced by sympathy. But she didn't stop him. "The next day was the same. My mother wasn't there." He still switched back and forth between her name and that title, though he used the latter less and less. "I buttoned my coat and tied my shoes on my own." The satisfaction reflected in his expression contrasted with the pain welling in her. "The steps were icy, but I didn't fall once."

A hitched chuckle left him. "Penny stared at me when she finally answered the door. She couldn't believe I remembered the way home. Then she picked me up." His eyelids fluttered. And the beam on his face was blinding. "She said I was a good boy and told me I was big enough to walk home from then on. She gave me a quarter for a movie." His voice became small, as small as the boy in the story. "I think she was proud of me."

Y/N kept her stare fixed to the floor. Her chewing had slowed, then halted completely. A question nagged at her, even as she assumed the answer would hurt. "How old were you?"

A slight shrug in the corner of her eye. "Six? Seven?"

It shouldn't have stunned her that what he'd introduced as "nice" was to the contrary. But she was gutted. The implications behind it tightened her chest. Was it the last time his mother had held him? Had he gone to the damned movie theater alone, too? Why the hell had the city given him back to Penny?

She'd spent a lot of effort helping him learn that it was okay to be angry and upset sometimes. That he didn't have to lie to her about how he felt. That he didn't have to hide if things were too much for him or he had a bad day. And here she was, doing her best to paste on a smile for him. The difference, she supposed, was that it was to protect him. Not to lie to herself.

She didn't want him to have an inkling regarding the tumult she'd experienced in the last five minutes. That this memory wasn't ideal. Telling him how to feel about it would be crossing the line from honesty into cruelty. There had to be a truth in this she could be happy about. And following some pondering, she found one. He had so few memories from his youth. She supposed he'd been fortunate to retrieve one he considered positive, even though it broke her heart.

She permitted herself to sniff once, blinked a few times at the carpet, and looked to him. "I'm glad you have that to hold onto." Thank god she'd managed to keep her voice from wavering. She distracted herself by squeezing his hand, then brought his knuckles to her lips. "You deserve it."

After a sharp exhale, Arthur moved his palm to hold her shoulder and drew her to him. "You know how you needed me to get into NCB studios? To do your job?"

Twisting to put her plate on the desk, she couldn't stop her giggle. It hadn't been her job - it had been the opposite, frankly. "Of course."

"You're like that for me when it's hard." It was a simple comparison, but she thought it was one of the most beautiful she'd ever heard. She pushed her lips to his, titling her head to deepen the connection and cup his cheeks.

He loosened himself from her grip and grabbed the paper towel she'd tucked into her shirt. Laughing, he tried to wipe away the grease she'd gotten on his face. Y/N plucked the napkin from him and weaved her fingers into his silky hair, imploring him not to care. She looked down at him, unable to stop a smile from forming.

Damn, she was a lucky woman. How did he manage to cheer her, even with the ache lingering in her breast? She'd have to be extra sweet to him in the upcoming days. Hug him tighter, longer, until he pushed her off and shook his head with a smirk before pulling her back in again. It would soothe her, allow her to deal with the mixed emotions she felt at his recollection. Ensure his joyful mood stuck around and make him happy.

She'd start tonight. "We can skip Gotham News and watch whatever you want." She tapped his chest. "You pick."  

"I like watching the news with you." He grinned, then. "But I rented a movie. A comedy from the thirties. There's dancing."

Comedies were much more his cup of tea than hers. But she'd watch anything to sit next to him, to see joy in his eyes, to hold and be held by him. She nuzzled at him and kissed his cheek. "I'm sure we'll love it."

~~~~~

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[redevenir]

living alike (pt. i)

joshua x reader

wc : ~ 3800

a/n : It all started with @tearsofsyrup ‘s suggestion for the made-up title fic game and here i am... So thank you! I took the liberty to use the title again, hopefully it’s ok with you? Otherwise just tell me! I have said it before, but I think  shua and dark au... it is the thing, you know. Which is why I strongly encourage you to read paradigm shift (apocalypse au) as well as you hide; i’ll seek (both sexy titles by the way) and to check on these two writers’ other work because they’re excellent.

« I feel entirely dehumanised by the sun now and wish for fog, snow, rain, humanity. » from a letter to Edward Sackville-West, Virginia Woolf.

The soft clunks of water droping from the leaking sink behind you make your hair stand on end. You should be used to it by now, but you aren’t. Like everything else, it makes you uncomfortable. You wanted nothing more than to be buried deep in the swamps of the Administration. Hidden. Except you were a little frog on a desert, except everyone has seen you, and will remember your face. Hiding is no longer an option for you, the only way out is to disappear.

You take one last look at your ransacked room. You break a window for good measure, and head out, living the door open.

The soft thuds of rain against the cars’ glasses. Tight heart, empty lungs, he is the silent audience of an artificial show. A shadow wandering around the streets, the ghost of a ghost. Counting his footsteps. Counting the people on the sidewalk. Counting the cars. Counting the officials around the Prefecture. Thirty more steps to go. Joshua takes a deep breathe into his scarf. It seems no one is paying attention to him. Grey car, blue car. His hands are soaked, buried deep inside the pockets of his rain coat. Nothing can protect him from the summer rains. He takes a brief look above the ground, checks out the position of the sun, goes back to his feet. He needs to move faster. He cannot afford to be out during office hours. Twenty steps. He spots the door to his place and restrains himself from going faster. One excruciating step at a time. All around him, people move, people go from places to places. They listen to the speeches, they read the speeches, they learn the speeches, they believe the speeches. It is already hard for Joshua to breathe, let alone act. A small field mouse trapped in a gigantic machine. There is no room here for him, he feels it, fears because of it. Knows that in an instant everything could spin around him. Field mice are preys. There are so many predators around him, it is only a matter of time. Light turns green, the cars stop. He goes his way. Unsure, uneasy. Five steps. He reaches his door, doesn’t look back, and goes down the stair to his tiny underground studio.

Once he’s inside, finally, he lets out an exhale he didn’t notice he was holding. Double locks his door, puts the chair against it, and turns the light on. Here, underground, there is no sun light to warm up the air. He crosses the only room as he gets undressed, leaving his soggy coat for the clamminess of his quarter, and rummages through his clothes to find a change, replaying his stroll of the day. Nothing new. They are still agitated. Until they calm down there is no need to contact anyone, he decides. He reheats some unsavory stew for the fifth time this week, cleans up his plate, and crashes on the single bed, hoping for time to pass quickly.

He spends an agitated day, running after sleep, running from his thoughts. Even though he never sleeps well, there is always a part of him which foolishly hopes for a good rest. Remembering the kind of sleep he relished as kid, when he didn’t have to think about falling asleep. When laying down in bed was enough to dive deep in a warm unconsciousness, full of foolproof dreams. No matter where his drowsy mind takes him, he feels overwhelmed, on the edge of being assaulted. Faceless and formless assailants gathering in the dark to slaughter him.

Rising up, he picks a bottle of drinking water, ignores the remnants of the garbage stew, plans his wandering for tonight. He never follows the same path twice, in case someone might notice him. He puts on his parka which hasn’t dried, shivers when it brushes against his neck. There is nothing to do about it. Most of the time, Joshua tries to ignore his apartment. It is a disgusting place, filthy the minute he finishes to clean up. It is never warm, nor dry, nor hot. He never sees the light of day, never feels a breeze, for there are no windows down there. It is the best he can afford this close of the Great Palace. A miserable rat hole, nothing close to a nice burrow. It is the price to pay for a night cashier to get involved in bigger schemes. His eyes are priceless now that he has sold their sight. It is the only comfort he has found in doing so. The thrill of being useful – for whom? He has no right to know. But every morning after his shift, he goes out for his stroll, looking for anything out of the ordinary, and when there is, he reports it. One of them comes to the shop every week. Usually, though, Joshua tells nothing to his contact. Things do not change that often. But recently there has been movement. Why, he does not know, but they’ve been agitated, walking faster. Even though no one, of course, will tell him why, he knows something has happened. Something bad enough to be noticeable, bad enough that there has been no announcement on TV.

This is life now, he knows. Waiting and waiting and waiting for something which might never come. Joshua hesitates, then goes out without looking back. Maybe today, he’ll see something worth reporting. It’s raining as usual, but the sun is still up, somewhere behind the gray sky. The street lamps are not lighten yet. As usual, he goes right, then waits for the traffic lights to let him cross. He could not live closer to the supermarket, yet the path still bothers him – the ugliness of the streets, the noises of the city, the sickening smell of corruption and silent violence. He goes his way to the store, spends his night registering meaningless shop lists for night owls craving sugar or salt. His curved lips draw an empty smile to every customer while his mind goes through various scenarios of what might bother the authorities. He has no clue. What could indeed bother them? He is as ignorant when his shift ends as he was when it began. It is not a life. He could find out more, if he were a bit more audacious. But any step out of his supposed way is a risk he might pay with his life. Maybe, walking around the Palace’s streets is enough for now.

He puts his hands deeper in his pockets and waits for the lights to turn green. From the corner of his eyes, he notices a figure running in his direction. They storm before him, and throw themselves on the road. The sound of the car hitting your body is horrifying.

You spend an eternity drowning. Lungs full of mud, every living minute is a suffocation. The crushing weight of an undisturbed blackwater river is grinding your bones into mush, entangled between the roots of indifferent trees. You barely see the light, on the rare moments you emerge from your drowning, vision blurred by silt burning your eyes. You fight and you fight, and every new moon, every new tide brings you a new death.

In flashes you see faces, and you try to remember who pushed you into the river. A thin string of lost rooms and half forgotten conversations torments you, sending you in every direction. You lose yourself into a labyrinth of bewildered and electrifying memories. You try to scream for help but the dark water suffocates you more.

You cease to fight.

You let yourself flow, descending quietly in the abyss, a faint contentment when you touch the ground. An unusual corpse for shellfish and crustaceans to feast on. The soft pulse of your heart clawing his way out of your defeated chest. Far above you, you feel the lazy current going its way, ignoring you. There, cocooned in a silence older than a lifetime, it is easier for memories to come back to you. Faint lights above the school’s playground, burnt smells from the overcooked plum jam, a terrifying voice on the intercom freezing you to the core. You remember the pointy hat of the master, the piles of administrative sheets in his warm office, its walls painted of a deep, ancient red. You remember his whispers in your ears, which you tried so hard to ignore. His discreet threats disguised as indecent offers. Your remember going for his grocery shopping every four days, in the late hours of the quiet city. You remember knocking one of the piles over, and reading them against your best will. A pale breeze of rage brushes your cheek, unable to harm you.

You remember taking it with you, the vivid proof of the crime, on a hasty decision. You remember destroying your dorm. You remember the streets.

The moment you wake up you immediately regret it.

Every inch of your body is aching a thousand burn. You cannot open your eyes, the throb in your head makes you nauseous. Your throat is parched, and the feeble whine you manage to cry out is a pain in itself. Miles away you feel movement, in the distance you hear a voice filled with concerned, asking you words which you can’t separate from each other. It seems a worried litany of disquiet. Suddenly you feel cold and wet on you forehead, a divine relief to the pounding. The voice comes closer and takes your hand. You feel your hand. You have a hand. Panic rushes through your body like it never felt it, you try to move away, to get out, how can it touch you, what is touching you when you can’t even feel yourself?

Weirdly the voice seems to understand. It becomes quieter, soothing almost, ushering things you don’t understand, but it appeases you nonetheless. You feel it close to your hear, you feel its breathe against you. You’re sensitive and it has you tensed immediately, but it doesn’t last for long. A few seconds, the promise of safety. You pass out again.

The next time you wake up, everything is much clearer. You manage to open your eyes despite the soreness of your head. What you see when you do has you freezing up again, afraid you might have lost part of your sight. It is all black and gray. Gray ceiling above your head, a worrisome pattern of cracks. Gray walls, empty of any embellishment. Even the duvet cover is a dirty white. You try to straighten yourself, leaning on your elbow. It has you wincing but it is worth it. You take in your surrounding, even in the darkness of the unlit room. Someone has put your right leg into a splint of fortune, and did the same to your right elbow. You hold your breathe a minute, until you are assured to be alone. Nothing about it is familiar. There is a strong smell of menthol ointment that might come from you – the scent is overwhelming, and you cannot be sure. Your attempt to sit properly ends up worsening the piercing pain in your brain, and you resolve to wait until someone brings you water or food. Without any indication of the passing of time, you lose all notion of it, examining each clue of the room. You have never come here, and it makes you uneasy. You are facing the door and it reassures you a bit, whoever comes here will not have you at their mercy. At last, you hear the creaking of a key into its hole, which makes your heart racing. The door opens behind you in a squeak.

The man is tall, his shoulders wide as he bends a bit to come inside. The youth of his face strikes you the most. He might not be older than you are – and you are rare. The both of you belong to the last generation of children – it is also why, now that all of you are grown-ups, the officials are monitoring each and every one of you carefully. The last trace of unpredictability in the country. And, well, looking at the current situation, maybe they are right. It takes him a while to notice you, and you quietly observe him locking the door, putting a chair against it. Breathing, eyes closed, he relaxes before you. When he turns around, you see him immediately checking on the mattress – checking on you. And his face lightens up when he sees you facing him, rushing to you.

« Oh! You’re up! Are you okay? Do you need anything? Water? Hungry? Space? He chuckles. Take your time, he adds with a smile. » He exudes relief. Your throat hurts too much, so you mimic drinking and he’s on it, handing you a full glass of water. Then you point at him.

It is not going well. Your convalescence is endless. Your are weak and shattered to unclean pieces and every morning he comes back from work wondering if you will still be in this coma or if he’ll have to dispose of your body. In retrospect, it was a mistake, but even though he thinks it over again and again he does not see any other outcome. He would never have left you there to rot. What if you weren’t doomed to die? Suicide is forbidden by law. You are suffering enough as it is, despite Joshua’s best efforts to take care of you, he cannot even imagine the tortures the officials would have given you, had they been the ones to find you.

Yet here you are, at the end of a frustrating shift and a lousy stroll. Sitting up in his bed, watching him coming back. An unmatched joy floods through his body as he comes to you, taking a good look at your conscious face. A belligerent stranger, eyes empty and circled of mauve. Clearly distressed and looking weak. Joshua thinks that you being awake is a wonder, he remembers the poor bag of raggedy bones and torn flesh you were when you arrived. When he brought you to his basement. The clothes he has given you hide most of your skin, but he knows your body looks just like your face. A battlefield of bruises and scars and a timestamp to the day you met. For weeks, he has imagined what your first words would be, were you to wake up. What you would do, what your voice would sound like. He would fall asleep to the sound of your haunting rattles next to him, praying they wouldn’t stop before his wake. Nonetheless he has outdone himself. He has brought you back to life. You look bad, but you’re looking at him and he can’ t help but smile in satisfaction. When you point your finger at him, two things hit him.

You can’t talk and you haven’t lived with him for the past week. You know nothing. You don’t know him. He feels foolish to realize it just now. He sits down by your side, filling up an another glass for you. Ponders a bit – in your place, what would be his priorities ? But you’ve thrown yourself under a car and he never has, so he has no fucking clue.

« All right then I’m Joshua. I live here, obviously. Alone. Well, not anymore, since you’ve been there for a while now – the surprise in your eyes aggrieves him. I work at a supermarket down the grand avenue. I brought you here after you… You know. Wait, do you remember what happened to you? You answer him a simple nod. Okay, then, this car hit you, and, well, I brought you back here. You forget your soar throat but he doesn’t need to hear you to read the only word on your lips.

«Well… I know, I know, we are not supposed to interfere but… His eyes roam you, looking for all the mending he has done you. His voice is only a whisper when he finishes his sentence. How could I leave you there? » You clear your throat with pain. Clearly, the water did you do good. Joshua looks up eagerly, to see what you might say first.

«Who else knows I’m here? » Your words are a cold shower. You don’t trust him one bit. He tries to reassure himself, of course you don’t, you’ve just met him.

« Only this one guy – you scoff. I’m serious! There was barely anyone that day and, the driver died, I believe. I didn’t stay to check on him. But, turns out, something else happened that day and we managed to… slip through the cracks, I guess. »

«What? What happened? » He picks his words carefully.

« Someone bombed the Blue Palace. » You remain silent at first. Eyes closed, you take a deep breathe, then another one, until you look at him again, your facial expressions are still too knew you for him to read them. So he asks you. «What? What? »

« You’re saying someone fired a bomb on the Blue Palace? Quick, the shadow of a smile crosses your face. You close your eyes once again, licking your lips as if it’ll help you collect your thoughts. A bomb. On a palace. A bomb. On the exact day I had an accident? He hums in agreement. You lay back on the wall – he hadn’t even noticed how you had bent yourself closer to him, eager for news. Who did it? »

« I don’t know. »

«Wait, you’re saying someone attacked the blues and they haven’t been caught? »

« I don’t know, that’s what I’m saying. You may have not noticed yet, he gives a brief look around him. But I have no TV here. All I know is that they haven’t made any announcement about it. But if you ask me… » He bites his lips, unsure how much he can tell you yet. You give him a short moment, expecting him to go on. You let out a sigh when he doesn’t.

« Listen, Joshua – that’s it, right? From what I see, you could be sentenced to death as much as I do. I have spent hours in the dark, waiting for someone to show up. I don’t care if you did it, I don’t care if you work for the Palace, but please give me something. I need to know. » He comes closer to you.

« I think they have no idea who did it. They’ve been on the lookout for weeks. If they knew, there is no way someone could hide from them that long. He stays quiet, letting you register the information. And I didn’t do it, I swear. »

« I’ve been there... for weeks? » There is no use in lying to you but he hears the miserable realization in your tone and his heart aches too.

« Seven, to be precise. You’ve been really sick, you know. I patched you up as good as I could, and goodness! That DK guy knows a thing or two but even he can’t put a splint on your ribs. You say nothing. You don’t have to tell me everything, but I think it’s better to tell you right now. You… Said things when you were sick, he says. You work, hm, worked for the governor. You were his maid or something. You did his groceries. I have seen you before. » He is not asking.

« That’s right. » You ignore the elephant in the room that is the question on the tip of Joshua’s tongue. Maybe it is too soon. Maybe he doesn’t need to know now. Maybe your action was self-explanatory enough, and the details don’t matter. For today, Joshua decides he won’t push you.

« Who’s that guy you mentioned? » The way you don’t miss a word he says reassures Joshua – at least your head is fine.

« DK? He’s… Well, I don’t know much about him, I give him my reports. » You frown.

« What reports? You need to make report at a grocery shop? »

« I… Joshua shifts. It is going too fast to his liking. You should take it slow, and so should he. He wished to get to know you, and to make both of your comfortable before diving into such matters. He takes a deep breathe. I… Watch the Palace. Well, no, he stutters, I, hm, well, I go for walks around the Palace. Every day. Well, I work night shifts, so, after that, I go for walks. Every morning. And, hm, once a week, more or less, someone comes to the supermarket, and if I’ve seen something interesting I tell them. Usually it’s DK but sometimes someone else comes. I asked him for help when I saw how sick you were. » You chew the inside of your lips for a while and just when you’re about to speak again you close your mouth right away. This goes on for a few minutes, until you hum in acknowledgment. The silence between the two of you is only broken when Joshua hears your stomach grumble and jumps on his feet. « You should have said something! Of course you’re hungry! » He walks the few steps separating him from the cooking area of his quarter – he decided long ago he could not give the name kitchen to it. Kitchens were warm and full of promises. This was neither, just enough to eat some tasteless soups. He swears to himself he feels you watching him as he fumbles in his cupboard. When he turns back to ask if the soup is indeed fine for you, he notices the life back on your cheeks.

You eat dinner together for the first time. It is not quite lively but it is comforting and Joshua pretends he doesn’t notice the few quiet tears on your cheeks as you savor it. You fall asleep shortly after and as usual he lies down by your side, replaying his day.

No one can ever find out about you, he realizes. Not the officials, not his contact. He is playing a wild card which could backfire in so many wrong ways. The easiest way out would be to run away from the city, but it would involve so many people just to get you out, not to mention he has no idea of what he might find there. Joshua is dubious, but even he somehow believes the Palace’s tales. Maybe it is just a desert outside. Then what? What good would it do to them, to die of ignorance on foreign lands ? How much better would it be, to make all this vain efforts, when you might as well be sentenced to a much quicker death, without the discomfort of plotting an escape? Even if it is miserable, and he has even less room that before, Joshua still finds it better to sleep in his own bed. He is good at keeping secrets anyway.

Times passes slowly.