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auncerra · 5 months ago

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thoughts on the state of US affairs

1/13/2025 I

realistically, how does depriving constitutional rights bode in honoring constitutional roots?

if you take away free speech fundamentals, in a climate already plagued with corrupt rent spiking, displacement whether from natural disasters - hurricanes, fires, mudslides, climate change - economic hardship, impossible living wages - why then does it follow other structures will be followed and held up? structures that are corrosive to our interests when our communal interests aren't respected?

i've long said a new president likely isn't what this country needs.

and while i don't want to be flagged as a 'terrorist' for having a perspective on US nationalism decline - i can sympathize with the growing trend in american culture.

and that is to bridge away from what was supposedly upheld by the revolutionary ideology of that time.

what's been upheld in the last two decades - police brutality? avid racism? repealing trans rights and rights to gay marriage in an attempt from conservative leadership? mass deportation and heavy ICE policing? children in cages?

the fact that community efforts alone raised from apps like TikTok, viable and essential news sources for multiple generations, should say something. should indicate that to deprive us of vital resources is *actively working against community and American interests - for example: let's take the Rose Bowl donation drive/community fire relief efforts in light of the Eaton fire ravaging Altadena/North Pasadena and still uncontained - volunteer efforts publicized and spread through TikTok, through the app you and elite are actively lobbying to ban - including providing food, donated clothing, water, sanctuary and security to those affected.

i only learned about the fire tracking app through TikTok - i only ultimately downloaded it because i use it invariably more than i would cable or news networks, which don't typically have the insights to even recommend those resources. because TikTok users were supplying that information, circulating those resources.

do you think the people are blinded to the fact that president elect has likely hoisted 'saving TikTok' as a political/social strategy? that the threat presents itself only to be miraculously saved in the event of a 19th ban?

do you think that TikTok, and affiliate company ByteDance, have failed in creating an invaluable resource, not only in terms of independent income, news outlet, community resource, but pilot of free speech?

you fail to regard temu, fail to regard similar apps that are *actively mining american data. you fail to regard the alleged multi-million and multi-billion corporations screening our information through installed features without our consent, facing lawsuits as we speak.

now, americans are flooding over to a Chinese-owned, China-based app, enrolling in Mandarin indie courses, all to maintain a vital resource you are failing to see is just the tip of a resentment iceberg?

houselessness - all time high. inclining.

bird/avian flu - predictably trended towards a COVID surge.

debt rates - all time high.

American banks - struggling. American banks - alleged fraudulent surcharges at ATMs.

housing - 1) unaffordable 2) landlord-manipulated 3) in most cases competitive and unattainable without a list comprising of pay-stub, employment history, credit score, references, employment record, housing record, income bracket - need to go on?

does taxation without representation mean anything, or is it a filler course?

i don't see anyone being represented aside from a fragile few, hoarding.

and even without condemning them, most of that political footprint, the conservative-leaning attitudes aren't for radical or adamant acceptance of those worldviews, it's to preserve their pockets from taxation. taxation is the root of a lot of that evil, a lot of that disparity, a lot of that antagonism.

i don't think supreme court justices weigh that adequately.

awareness without action is often persecution.

i've predicted things will inevitably get worse before they improve.

i stand behind that.

i understood what 2025 forward comprised, pluto is in aquarius and the heavens are irate.

i subconsciously chose 'mass(sedition)' as my username, and while i wouldn't label myself as a conspiracy-theorist, i see it.

BLM and protesting, picket-line efforts haven't been effective because they haven't done more than influence popular culture to be box-ticking. for media platforms to struggle to grasp the deeper issues of inclusivity, and instead honor roll to meet quotas. it exposed what we already knew about police brutality, police murders - it didn't eradicate the issue.

things are more broadened now, but the superficiality of most of it is apparent.

to be frank, as much as people are hoisting LA efforts to sustain the community right now as praiseworthy generosity, i'm reminded of jamie lee curtis' comparing the fires in a historically wealthy pacific palisades to the ongoing strife and devastation in gaza. and while i do feel that perceptions around actors/celebrities and inherently having the wealth and resources is inane, considering that these communities are full of working-class people as much as earned wealth - these pledges, these donations, these mass efforts only come about in times of urgency.

why is urgency necessary?

why does the planet have to literally be burning to acknowledge what's been said for decades?

most of this country was founded in the last century on nuclear power and weaponry.

nuclear.

let that sink in.

let that sink in that americans would rather join a widely-condemned 'foreign-adversary' app now trending in the app store then continue to offer up their energy and data to Meta. that its stock is sinking. the same foreign adversary that has essentially manufactured every import we rely on, including the tech/chips to construct iPhones, allegedly.

how many times have you entered a grocery store, a department store, and read 'Made in China' 'manufactured in China', read a clothes label to find the exact same marking.

what perplexes me is how there even is a tax system when this country is in a massive, trillion-dollar deficit.

how the country is so disorganized - i.e. an empty reservoir in the palisades region that can be refilled - fire department critically underfunded - the mayor of LA not even present in the state of crisis, refusing assistance from the NYFD when offered. *When fires are not recognized as 100 percent containment.

if this is a joke it's not funny.

do you think rioting was just forgotten, blinked away.

do you think 2020 is lost on class-consciousness?

do you not find it telling looting was resulting of the recent fire outbreaks, that there was suspected and confirmed arson. maybe the disparity hasn't shifted much, when in the last few years, there was mass looting at the glendale galleria/major shopping centers.

people are struggling. they're applying to hundreds, thousands of job listings, most of which are un-updated. they're relying on AI to draft their resumes, which is - in my opinion - grossly unethical. but what's even more so is why it's becoming necessary?

fires blazing, family generational homes burnt to the ground, in LA and billboards in Nevada advertising AI 'human-replacing' helpers?

let's not even dive into the fact that apps like shein and temu are allegedly recognized for intellectual property violations. for allegedly stealing content from small creators repeatedly and haphazardly.

what the hell is the resolution in any of this?

personally, i'd rather live in some feudal society. i'd rather native americans get land-back autonomy of this entire country.

where the land is honored.

where capital isn't the bane of existing.

where fundamentals are assured, not hinted at.

how is it multiple other countries are promised healthcare and immigrants and natives alike here are billed like no other?

claims denied and action taken, whether it's reputable in most eyes or not, did we need the performative NYPD demonstration - a city block of cops against one alleged criminal, who in my opinion was at most the fall-guy, just the face for the anger of the corruption of higher-ups paying their way by undermining the claims of i can presume thousands.

when you take away basic liberties, you are an oppressor. that's not allegation, that is fact.

why was this country made?

will we watch it be un-made as a result of not acknowledging the warnings of history? - there's no threat imbued in this, but realistically, use your eyes.

flint, michigan.

los angeles, california.

etc.

#thoughts #usa #tiktok #ban2025

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m---a---x · 1 year ago

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Can the princess not join the rebellion? Can people not change their mind?

Sometimes i think the problem with modern day leftism is that leftists read too much left wing literature. Trialing people by throwing around definitions, seeing good and evil inherently ingrained in people based on their background.

A small buissness owner who pays themselves the same as all other employees, enough for a decent life, makes big decisions by equal vote, and if the profits are enough uses the extra to help others is clearly not evil just because they are "part of the system". Everyone is part of the system, whether they want to or not, that's why it's a problem. The affordescribed small buissness owner does the best in their power to midigate capitalisms effect.

A small buissness owner who barely makes enough profits to scrape by and whose only other employee is some relative from whom they pressure labor and for whom they leave even less, who uses every opportunity to scam customers and abuse the little power that they have, is clearly vile scum.

Grouping those two together as "petite-bourgeoisie" is absolutely useless. Similarly, decrying someone who rents out an inherited apartment to poor background university students for almost nothing, eaven eating some of the maintanace or utility costs, as an "evil landlord" would be just plain stupid. Of course my mentioned "good examples" are quite out of the ordinary. Strong general tendencies are still a good tool to group into and describe classes of society, but when dealing with individuals treat them as individuals, not as representatives of whatever box you decided to put them in.

Go not read some literature. Go and think. Go and have empathy. Go and try to do good and judge others based on choices made under the power available them.

I am reading through the rulebook for "Hard Wired Island", and I have noticed two things which seem to be a little bit at odds.

Exhibit A.

and now, Exhibit B.

Now you too can be the anticapitalist petit bourgeoisie. There is no contradiction!

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pageliveblogscomics · 2 years ago

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Dude, you weren’t waiting for an opportunity. The last interaction ended with you being betrayed and working together with them, you’ve just been hanging out. You cannot pretend that the reason you’ve been spending your time sitting at home watching TV is because you are an evil mastermind biding your time.

Also, didn’t you hate humanity? Not just the Fantastic Four? Losing sight of the real enemy there, Namor.

Rent?! I thought they owned the building, no? Man, how did they manage to sell hollowing out space for their ROCKET which goes down to BELOW THE GROUND to a fucking landlord!? And other people do electronic work on the Fantasticar? So does everyone know how it works? Is it simple? Did Reed even make it or did he buy it from someone? Hey, maybe he’d be able to get more money if there weren’t a bunch of people who had already gotten to see how it works.

Oh look, it’s Johnny Storm. I wonder why he’s standing with three of the four members of the Fantastic Four while wearing a Fantastic Four uniform? Surely he isn’t revealing his secret identity as the Human torch!

Really? That’s it? Reed just put ALL of their money in stocks, and has nothing left? I’m not sure that’s how the stock market works. Wouldn’t every single company you invested in have to go completely bankrupt all at once? I guess the takeaway is that Reed is really bad with money.

They start thinking of ways to make money. Johnny can generate incredible amounts of heat, Sue can turn to a life of crime, but other than that she’s useless, and the Thing is almost as useless. There aren’t a lot of strength based tasks that people wouldn’t want to just use a machine for.

Oh yeah, and Reed is also a SUPER GENIUS. If only there was some way his ability to invent things like a shrinking gas could be used to somehow make money.

#Page Liveblogs Comics #Human Torch #Sub-Mariner #Fantastic Four #Fantastic Four (Comic)

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qqueenofhades · 4 years ago

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“Jealousy seems to be a great motivator for you.” for kastle and “I could listen to you all day” for dealers choice, if these haven’t been done 🤗 thank you for writing!! it’s always a joy to read your stories, and it’s been wonderful to revisit old ships 🥰

Nelson, Murdock & Page has been up to its ears in Covid-related crisis requests for what seems like the last five hundred years, and holiday season or not, today is no different. (Indeed, the holiday season has generally made it worse.) Everyone's landlord is trying to kick them out, everyone's spouse got sick and can't pay their rent, someone else lost their health insurance -- the list goes on and on. Foggy, Matt, and Karen have been working themselves into a stupor, and despite the fact that they should shut up shop and go home, they can't quite bring themselves to do so until their final backlog of requests is cleared out. Thus they're still working, hands cramped with carpal tunnel, when Foggy sticks his head in and says, "Karen? The local psycho's here to see you."

"I've told you not to call him that, you know."

"What?" Foggy shoots a shifty look over his shoulder, belying his sudden burst of courage. "It's not like he can hear me."

"Fine," Karen sighs, getting to her feet, wincing as she works at her hand, and heading out to the foyer -- where indeed, as usual, Frank resembles an escaped convict more than a loving boyfriend. At least he's shaved and put on a marginally clean sweatshirt and jacket, and as she gimps into sight, he looks indignant. Before he can start, she says, "I'm done soon. Promise."

"These two yahoos keeping you late on Christmas?" Frank shoots an evil stare at Foggy, who quails but holds his ground. "Thought, you know. We could do something nice."

"Wait," says Foggy, not quite under his breath. "Does he know how to do something nice?"

What promises to be a deeply entertaining glare-off is thus interrupted (or indeed, escalated) by the entrance of Matt, who can sense the tension (and the source of it) at once. He turns his head toward Frank and looks resigned. But his voice is more or less polite as he says, "Merry Christmas, Frank."

"Merry Christmas, Red." Frank, in contrast, sounds only slightly sarcastic. "Don't you got some church service to be scuttling off to?"

Matt looks at Foggy to tell him the time, in case he might be late for midnight mass, then sighs. "Probably. And you...?"

"Are here to get Karen." Frank folds his arms, making his muscles bulge menacingly. "Any questions?"

There are not, everyone agrees it's probably time to pack it, and Karen gets her coat. As she takes Frank's arm and permits him to escort her out into the chilly darkness, she remarks, "I didn't think you were still jealous of Matt, you know."

"I'm not." Frank shrugs. "Red's the one still jealous of me."

"Yes, well -- I don't really think so, but we're going to be working together and we are working together and I swear, if I could just knock you two's heads together -- you are so alike and just -- "

"Well," Frank interrupts. "I could listen to you all day about how great Red is, Karen, really. But it seems I'm here and he's not, so... let a local psycho buy you a hot chocolate, huh?"

Karen winces. "You heard that?"

"No," Frank says. "But I know Nelson calls me that anyway."

Karen sighs deeply, wonders if she will ever entirely sort out the three idiot men in her life, and is grateful at least that they're no longer attempting to kill each other. So she takes Frank's arm, lets him buy her a hot cocoa, and as they sit on the bench, sipping it, she settles her head on his shoulder and thinks to herself that, indeed, she is very glad to be here too.

[fic prompt list]

#kastle #kastle ff #the kastle hordes: MOAR #and thanks very much!#anonymous #ask #fic prompts

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thefinalcinderella · 4 years ago

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Kaze ga Tsuyoku Fuiteiru Chapter 5 - Summer Clouds (Part 1)

Full list of translations here

Translation Notes

1. Shiso a.k.a. perilla is a plant used a lot in Japanese cuisine

2. This is callback to Chapter 4 when Nico-chan mentions “ Don’t they say that men who are bad at driving are bad with that too?”

Previous | Next

“We can’t train in this heat.”

“But if we don’t train, we won’t have a place to live…”

Kakeru listened to the conversation going on behind him while he was boiling somen noodles for lunch. Jouta and Jouji were sprawled out in the hallway by the front door, cooling off.

Ever since Kiyose collapsed, the residents of Chikusei-sou had been more careful about their health: they had all decided to get anemia tests done once a month by the neighborhood physician who had made the house call, there was a range of supplements stocked in the kitchen, and, before going to bed, there were massage battles going on in various rooms.

Even so, there was nothing to be done about the heat.

Now that the midyear exams for university were over and summer vacation was upon them, the air temperature was boiling to an almost violent degree. Chikusei-sou—of course—didn’t have air conditioning, so the front door and the doors of each room were left open. The residents, seeking a place where they could pass the time even just a bit more comfortably, crawled around the hallways like slugs.

The heat and vapor rising from the big pot instantly stuck to Kakeru’s skin and changed into sweat. He nimbly transferred the somen to a colander and ran it under running water, then put the noodle soup base, mineral water, and ice on the dining table.

“It’s done!” he called out while wiping his sweat with the shoulder of his T-shirt. The twins slowly got up.

Jouta took a look at the table and complained, “It’s so bare. Tell me there’s condiments, at least.”

“Haiji-san is picking shiso (1) in the yard right now.”

Placing the colander heaped with somen noodles in the center of the table, Kakeru struck the bottom of the empty pot with a ladle. The residents, looking like snakes on the verge of death, appeared from here and there and gathered in the kitchen.

“How much shiso is Haiji getting?”

“Shindou is not here either. I wonder what happened.”

“In any case, the landlord’s heartless. He didn’t have to get so angry.”

“I guess we deserved it, though.”

The residents sighed as they dexterously slurped their somen.

The night Kiyose collapsed, the worried landlord had tried to enter Chikusei-sou. Shindou and Musa desperately tried to keep him out, not letting him cross the threshold.

The next day, the landlord, suspicious, entered Chikusei-sou while the residents were at school. Immediately at the front door he discovered the hole in the twins’ room. The landlord’s sadness deepened at the sight of the hole in the rundown apartment he treasured like his own child, so gathering the residents, he made an announcement.

“I need money for repairs for Chikusei-sou. In order to save up money, I’m raising the rent.”

“What!”

“Don’t ‘what’ me! Didn’t you say something along the lines of ‘We’re going to do well in the Hakone Ekiden and get a powerful sponsor to set up a new training camp’?!”

“No sponsor’s gonna go that far,” Jouta, the one responsible for making the hole, grumbled, but he fell silent at the landlord’s glare.

“You all seem to have more than enough energy, so Hakone should be a walk in the park for you. If you don’t want the rent to increase, do whatever it takes to get to Hakone.”

If they provoked him any further, the elderly landlord might suddenly die from too much rage, so they could only obediently say in unison, “Understood.”

“There’s absolutely no way I can move. I want to train for the sake of leaving the rent where it is as well, but…” Prince, who was hoarding manga in his room, said. “Running in the summer is, to put it bluntly, an act of suicide, isn’t it? What do other track teams do?”

“Most of them hold training camps somewhere cool. Like in Hokkaido,” Kakeru answered.

“Hokkaido!”

Jouji became spellbound with just that word. Crabs, sea urchins, ramen…it was so easy to see what he was thinking about that it was practically reflected in the soup. Kakeru coughed, deciding that the sooner he brought him back to reality, the less painful it would be.

“It’s impossible for us. We don’t have the money.”

Right when a disappointed Jouji was gulping down his somen along with the melted ice, Kiyose and Shindou ran into the kitchen.

“You’re late, Haiji. We’re finished eating,” said Nico-chan as Kiyose pushed the shiso leaves onto him.

“Let’s escape this scorching hell called Tokyo. We’re going on a training camp.”

The twins stood. “Hokkaido?!”

“No, Lake Shirakaba.”

It lacked the impact of Hokkaido, but Lake Shirakaba, located in the Tateshina highlands, was also a famous summer retreat.

“But, what are we going to do for the lodging fees?” Kakeru asked.

“A supporter from the shopping district is going to help us,” Kiyose said. “We’re staying at a vacation home near Lake Shirakaba that belongs to the owner of ‘Batting Center Okai.’ The food for the training camp will be provided by Yaokatsu and some others, and we’ll use the Aotake van to make the roundtrip, so it won’t cost that much.”

“Don’t worry about fundraising,” Shindou assured. “We’re advertising to the shopping district and the university staff that we’re aiming for Hakone, so our sponsors will surely increase. Besides, Nico-chan-senpai’s wire dolls are selling better than expected.”

“What?” Nico-chan said, stunned. His hands stopped plucking the shiso and dividing them among the bowls of unfinished somen. “You’re selling them? Where in the world would anyone buy something like that and for what reason?”

“I had them put in the general store, and they’re popular with girls. They’re calling them things like dolls for warding off evil spirits and ‘disgustingly cute!’ and stuff like that.” Shindou smiled. “Please keep making more from now on.”

“Hooray! Training camp, training camp!”

Jouta and Jouji took each other’s hands and rejoiced. Prince had already disappeared from the kitchen; it seemed that he had gone to his room to study what manga he was going to bring to the training camp. Everyone dreamed of a fun summer training camp.

A refreshing wind blowing across the lake shore. A beautiful girl in a white dress, riding in a swan boat with her while gnawing on roasted corn. Even when autumn finally arrives, our love will never end. We promise to meet again in Tokyo, and in the middle of a thicket of white birch trees, we shed tears over our brief parting…

“That was what I imagined, but…” Jouji got a sulky look on his face. “Why is reality like this?”

The vacation home they were borrowing from the batting center owner didn’t seem to have been used in a long time and it had half rotted away.

With Kiyose driving the white van, the group arrived at the home in the coniferous forest by Lake Shirakaba and finished the first day of camp by cleaning the rooms. With the floors scrubbed, the bath polished, and the fireplace soot swept away, the log house finally seemed to come back to life a bit.

The home built between the trees looked like a log den made by a bear at first glance. Now that they had finished fixing it up, it somewhat seemed like a dwelling for humans. Relieved, Kakeru threw the gathered branches into the fireplace.

“Jouji, your imagination is too cliché,” Jouta said, his face pitch black from the soot. “I knew it was going to turn out like this.”

As far as they could see during the day, it seemed to be mostly families and old couples that came to Lake Shirakaba to escape the heat. The swan boats were drearily swaying with the ripples on the water and music was flowing out from the small amusement park by the lake.

“It is good to feel cool, though.” Musa was wearing a hoodie over his T-shirt. “It will be almost cold when the sun sets.”

When Kakeru made a fire in the fireplace, people individually came to gather around it. It was pitch dark outside the window, and all they could hear was the rustling of the treetops.

“I’ve finished preparing for dinner; all that’s left is adding the roux,” Kiyose, who had been staring into the flames for a while, said. “Before that, let’s go for a short run.”

“Curry again?”

“No! I used up all my energy for cleaning!”

“It’s so dark, what if we get hit by a car?”

Kiyose, of course, didn’t heed their protests. As though urged forward like cattle, they put on their shoes and all went out to the unpaved forest path.

“We don’t even know the route yet.” Nico-chan scratched his head. “Which way’s the lake?”

“If we go down the slope, we’ll eventually reach the lakeside.”

With Yuki’s guidance, they formed a line and started running. Kiyose, who was at the end, gave instructions.

“One lap around the lake is 3.8 kilometers. Once everyone’s done three laps, we’ll return to the cabin and eat dinner.”

“Yes!”

When they arrived at the paved lakeside road, they started running at their own pace. The souvenir shop and small art gallery already had their shutters down, and except for a couple of large hotels, there were no other buildings with lights on. They followed this brand new route to explore it, without enjoying the scenery.

Kakeru was next to Kiyose, running along the night road that drew a gentle curve. The presence of water nearing the shore was their only reference.

Running in a different atmosphere and on a different road from usual didn’t make Kakeru feel anxious—the sense of distance was hammered into his body. If he heard beforehand that one lap was 3.8 kilometers, then he was automatically able to grasp where he was running at that moment from his speed and bodily sensations.

The elation and fun of running in an unfamiliar land filled Kakeru.

“Where’s the coach?” he asked Kiyose running next to him. “Is he still at the go parlor?”

“Who knows. He’ll join us before long.” Kiyose tilted his head to the side a little. “For some reason, the landlord doesn’t want to ride in the car when I’m driving.”

That morning, when they were departing from Chikusei-sou, the landlord saw them off in the yard. He watched with satisfaction as the food they received from the shopping district was loaded into the back of the van, but in the end did not try to get in himself.

“But Haiji-san, you’ve gotten so much better at driving.”

After he said that, Kakeru thought, Crap, that’s not a good follow-up. However, it was true that Kiyose was improving in his driving skills at a tremendous pace; some people even fell asleep on the way to Lake Shirakaba. At the time of the first TSU meet, when they were stiff in their seats or about to pass out like they were riding a space shuttle doing an acrobatic flight, they couldn’t imagine entrusting their bodies to Kiyose at the wheel and falling asleep.

“I’m a fast learner when it comes to anything,” Kiyose said matter-of-factly. “I’m fastidious, so I throw myself into studying and training wholeheartedly.”

Recalling that common saying mentioned before (2), Kakeru, feeling gloomy, said, “Eh, then, for that too...” but didn’t have the courage to ask him.

“Is that so? I see,” he said instead, nodding.

After passing the lagging members, Kakeru and Kiyose were the first to return to the house. After running three laps around the lake, the chilliness of the damp, highland night air didn’t bother them anymore. To relax his body, Kakeru filled the bath with hot water while Kiyose pressed a plastic bag filled with ice to his right calf to prevent inflammation in his burdened muscles.

“How are you feeling?”

“There’s no issue.” Kiyose smiled. “Go ahead and take a bath.”

When Kakeru got out of the bath and took Kiyose’s place in the kitchen to stir the curry pot, everyone else returned from jogging. They took off their sweat-drenched T-shirts and trudged off to the bath.

The sounds of fighting for the shower and off-key humming could be heard even in the kitchen. Kiyose was apparently thrown out of the bath. With his hair still wet, he opened the lid of the rice cooker, and Kakeru helped him arrange the dinner dishes on the huge slab of a table.

A heap of curry, rice, and salad; milk mixed with protein powder; peaches for dessert; everything was food donated by the shopping district.

After everyone had refreshed themselves in the bath, they went to the dining table. They were just about to grab a spoon to eat when…

“Wait a minute,” Kiyose said. “There’s not enough people here.”

They looked at each other. Musa and Shindou weren’t there.

“This is strange. Even Prince-san came back.”

“I don’t think there was anyone in front of me or behind me when I was running my last lap,” Prince said, tilting his head.

“You don’t think they got lost, do you?” King stood and looked outside from the dining room window.

“Did anyone happen to catch sight of Musa and Shindou on their way back here?” Kiyose asked.

No one raised their hands. Nico-chan went upstairs, and then they heard the sound of the second floor lights being turned on to mark their spot in the woods.

“Where did they go?”

“Shouldn’t we go search for them?”

The twins made worried suggestions.

“No. It’d be bad if more of us got lost. Let’s wait for a while.”

Though he said that, Kiyose was probably out of his mind with worry. They opened the door and stared at the forest path submerged in darkness. No matter how much they strained their ears, they couldn’t hear Musa and Shindou’s footsteps. The curry was getting cold, but now was not the time for dinner.

Kakeru stood at the door with Kiyose. Nico-chan, who came down from upstairs, patted Kiyose’s shoulder and said, “Don’t worry, even if they have to sleep outdoors for the night, they’ll be fine.”

Right at that moment, the kitchen door behind them burst open. When they turned around in shock, Musa and Shindou were just entering from the side of the kitchen.

There was a steep, pathless slope behind the kitchen. Kakeru was stunned, never thinking that Musa and Shindou would appear from there.

Musa and Shindou started shouting.

“This is bad, this is bad!”

“TSU has also come to Lake Shirakaba!”

Collecting themselves, everyone surrounded the table. As they ate their curry, Musa and Shindou told them that TSU’s clubhouse was apparently located just further up the mountain from the vacation home.

“It’s still a new building. There were lights on, so we approached it thinking it must be this house, but we could see the TSU guys having dinner through the window,” Shindou said.

“By the way, they’re having yakiniku. I believe it is the highest-quality wagyu beef,” Musa supplemented.

King was silent, and then gulped down his minced pork curry.

“Why did you climb up the mountain?” Kiyose asked.

“It is not as though we wanted to climb it.”

“We got lost on the path because it was dark.”

Musa and Shindou both spoke quickly.

“Shindou, aren’t you used to mountains?”

“I am, but I also have no sense of direction.”

“I am the same. To the point that even in my home country, my parents warned me not to go into the savannah, even if my friends invited me.”

Kakeru spoke to Kiyose, who was rubbing his temples, in a small voice. “What are we going to do, Haiji-san? You were planning to enter Shindou-san for the Hakone mountain climb section, weren’t you?”

“Aah,” Kiyose groaned. “We might be able to see the first real-time Hakone disaster drama in Ekiden TV broadcast history.”

“They have a leading car, so I don’t think that’ll happen,” Yuki laughed scornfully. “But if push comes to shove, we’ll have to leave it to Shindou’s wild sense of smell. We’ll have him push through Hakone’s trackless mountain paths and cut ahead to Lake Ashi first.”

“Is—is that possible?” Jouji, who overheard their conversation, brightly asked.

“Of course not. If you go off the route, you’ll be disqualified,” Kiyose chided.

“Apparently someone did it before,” King said, showing off his miscellaneous knowledge. As expected of a quiz enthusiast, he had also looked up trivia about the Hakone Ekiden.

“This was in the Taisho era, when there were only about four competing schools. Apparently, the thing all the schools were most enthusiastic about wasn’t training, but finding a shortcut through the mountains of Hakone. Well, it was an idyllic time where there were no radio relay broadcasts for the Hakone Ekiden.”

“Isn’t that cheating?” Prince said while peeling a peach. Nico-chan laughed as he took a second helping of rice.

“Sounds like something a university student would think of.”

Kakeru conjured up Taisho-era students running along the animal trails of Hakone in his mind: rivals desperately competing against each other, but also trying to figure out a way to make things a little easier. The figures of silly and cheerful students hadn’t changed much from then til now.

“Let’s find a shortcut if we pass the qualifiers.”

“I said you can’t.”

“The problem is TSU. What should we do?” Yuki asked.

“We’ll definitely bump into them on the path along the lake,” Shindou muttered.

Kakeru was wordlessly filled with fighting spirit. Like hell he was going to be overtaken by a TSU runner, even for jogging.

“Don’t fight,” Kiyose cautioned. “There’s only one lake. Let’s compromise and run together peacefully.”

Everyone in Chikusei-sou covered themselves with blankets on the vacation home’s second floor and slept in a huddle, and rose with the twittering of small birds. The first thing they would do was to stretch and go for a jog in the clean air before breakfast. With that in mind, they all headed out to the lakeside path where they immediately ran into the runners from TSU. The TSU track team members, dressed in matching jerseys, had just finished their morning meeting in the parking lot of the souvenir store before it opened. About fifty of them were about to start jogging in ranks, grouped by level.

The head coach and several people who looked like assistant coaches rode separately in cars, accompanying each group. The well-coordinated TSU members started running in order of seniority. “Wow…” Jouji breathed in honest admiration.

The Kansei University long-distance track team only consisted of the ten people from Chikusei-sou. They didn’t hold a meeting before practice, and their coach was absent as usual. Their clothing was all over the place as well; the twins, for example, were wearing extremely colorful Hawaiian shirts that considerably spoiled the scenery of Lake Shirakaba.

The TSU first-year Sakaki seemed to have noticed them. He whispered something to the teammate he was running with. A murmur speedily spread through the TSU group, and they—especially the first-years—turned and looked back at Kakeru and the others one after another.

“This is somewhat tough,” Musa said, getting fainthearted. King, who got nervous easily, seemed like he was about to return to the vacation home.

“Let’s go.” Kakeru was as confident as could be; he never fell behind in running. To anyone.

“What’s with this morning energy…”

While grumbling, everyone at Chikusei-sou seemed to let themselves be influenced by Kakeru and started running.

Kiyose said, “Leave Kakeru alone. Keep your own pace.”

Kakeru laughed a little when he heard that. Even though he told them to leave him alone, sure enough, Kiyose immediately caught up to him. Ahead of them, Sakaki glanced back and beckoned them with his hand behind his back.

“Don’t take the bait.”

“I can take it and surpass him.”

“Don’t throw off your rhythm. This morning’s jog is at a pace of five kilometers in twenty minutes.”

Kakeru looked at Kiyose. Kiyose was running forward with a calm expression on his face. He looked like he was listening carefully to the sounds of his own body. The TSU group and the bikes that sometimes passed them didn’t seem to exist at all to Kiyose, who was beginning to concentrate on running; he was simply moving his body silently in the space between the lake and coniferous forest.

“Yes,” Kakeru said.

He followed Kiyose’s example and stopped caring about Sakaki anymore. Five kilometers in twenty minutes. When he ran at this speed, he was only conscious of the functioning of his muscles and heart. It wasn’t a painful pace; he had room to confirm that his blood was circulating around his mind and body.

The birds were singing with clear voices towards the sun that was actively beginning to rise, and the wind blowing from high up on the mountain made small waves on the lake surface.

What is strength? Kakeru suddenly thought about that again. For example, this calmness of Haiji-san’s. Without wavering, calmly, running in his own world. I can run with a better time than him, but I’m not sure I’m stronger than him. I lose my cool easily, and all I can think about is how I don’t want to lose.

Kakeru wanted to know. He wanted to know what strength was and what he was lacking. It was the first time he had ever felt that way. Until now, he had always been running as his body demanded—as though he was being urged on by something.

Kiyose didn’t restrict or coerce the idiosyncratic members, instead trying to flexibly guide them. Kakeru looked back: the residents of Chikusei-sou were running along the lakeside path. While their abilities still varied a lot, they had solid forms and were working hard on jogging. Even though they had complained so much in the spring, through their hard work these last three months, they had managed to end up looking like members of a track team.

Kakeru faced forward again and cast down his eyes. His consciousness was stretching around, from his toes that kicked at the ground to the flow of his fingertips as his arms swung through the air.

If I follow Haiji-san, then I’m sure I will be able to see something. Something sparkling that I’ve always wanted to see.

The TSU first-years, with Sakaki at the center, were messing with Kansei University.

When they were running on the lakeshore path, they spread out in a horizontal line to block their path. They would run and surround Kakeru as a group, putting pressure on him. They did these things behind the head coach’s and their upperclassmen’s backs, making fun of them repeatedly.

Kakeru didn’t care much about it; he had gotten used to such harassment during club activities and competitions throughout high school. If he got surrounded, he could just break free and move ahead, and if his way got blocked, he could just overtake them by going out into the oncoming lane.

However, almost all the residents of Chikusei-sou were little more than beginners; they didn’t have any strategies for running. They completely shrivelled up under the TSU first-years’ harassment and had their pace disturbed.

“They’re doing something immature.”

Even Kiyose, who had been watching the situation from the beginning, finally couldn’t keep quiet anymore. When they finished their evening jog, they went to speak to them.

There were about twenty TSU first-years, and they were hanging out in the souvenir store parking lot. Kiyose approached them without any sign of flinching. But they couldn’t let Kiyose be the only one to go through something risky, so Kakeru and the others hurriedly chased after him.

The sound of the cicadas resounded miserably in the lakeshore air. “I’d say each of us beating up two people is a good rate,” Nico-chan said, cracking his fingers, and Musa rolled his ankles to loosen them. The TSU first-years stopped chatting and turned towards them. The runners from the two schools stood facing each other in the middle of the parking lot.

“I would like you all to stop interfering with our training.” Kiyose broke the ice quietly. Sakaki stepped out from the TSU group.

“And we would like you to stop with the false accusations. Do you have any proof that we interfered with you?”

“We do,” Yuki said, then took his phone out and thrust it at them. On the standby screen, they could clearly see the TSU students running spread out across the entire path, and Kakeru running cramped behind them.

“I wanted to be able to check my form later. And when I did that, I got some interesting shots.”

“I understand how you feel, but leave your phone behind,” Kiyose cautioned Yuki. “If you run with unnecessary stuff in your pockets, it will ruin the balance of your form.”

Is that actually the problem here? Kakeru thought. He didn’t like Yuki’s actions because he was being too studious, but he was also afraid of Kiyose, who was unfazed by this and only thought about running. Even Sakaki looked astounded and uncomfortable.

Kiyose turned back to the TSU first-years.

“That’s all I have to say. I don’t want to show this out-of-focus photo to your head coach or captain if I can help it. I hope you understand.”

“Of course I do.” Sakaki smiled thinly. “TSU is seriously training to go to Hakone. We can’t be bothered with people who are running on a whim.”

“We’re on the same page, then.” Kakeru saw a vein appear on Kiyose’s temple. “It’s really annoying when people interrupt your serious practice with childish harassment.”

Kiyose and Sakaki glared at each other furiously. Haiji-san, Kakeru whispered, gently putting his hand on his arm to calm him.

“I think we have different definitions of serious,” Sakaki said in a harsh tone. “Why don’t we have a match? You ten and ten first-years from our school will run along the lakeside and compete for time.”

Kakeru’s brain seethed at the blatant challenge. He turned to Sakaki and yelled, “Let’s do this!”

He understood that Sakaki was devoted to running, but he still couldn’t forgive him for looking down on the residents of Chikusei-sou. Sakaki’s attitude was like seeing himself as he was until recently, and he felt unbearably displeased. This time it was Kiyose who grabbed Kakeru by the arm in order to hold him back, but he shook him off and continued to say, “You have something you want to say to me? If that’s the case, you and I should compete instead. Just because you can’t beat me doesn’t mean that you can drag other people into it!”

“You never change, Kurahara, you’re as overconfident as ever.”

Sakaki also accepted the challenge without faltering. People from both schools cut in between the two, who seemed like they were about to start exchanging blows at any minute. Kakeru, with his arms pinned behind his back by Nico-chan, glared at Sakaki who was still breathing hard, flapping his legs and trying to kick Kakeru with his arms also held down by his teammate.

“Is this the time for a match?” Kiyose said quietly, as if to admonish Kakeru and Sakaki. “Focus all your attention on training.”

Sakaki’s teammate released his arms, and he straightened his dishevelled jersey. He looked at Kakeru and everyone from Chikusei-sou in order.

“Is it fun?” Sakaki asked in a low voice. “Is it fun to run with the comrades you finally made, Kurahara?”

“Enough,” Kiyose interrupted and then turned his back to Sakaki. “Let’s go back,” Kiyose prompted, but Kakeru didn’t move.

Don’t you dare use words like “comrade.” He was so angry and frustrated that the core of his head hurt. Kakeru escaped from Nico-chan’s arm bind and stood still while still glaring at Sakaki. Sakaki continued.

“Are you satisfied running around happily with a bunch of guys who sing your praises to the skies?”

“No!”

Weren’t you guys the ones who were always praising my speed? And yet, there was a bunch of jealousy and feelings of rivalry behind the scenes. I hated that high school track team. Pretending to be friendly on the surface and sabotaging each other behind the scenes, I hate you guys so much I wanna throw up.

Kakeru wanted to say that, but he was so angry that he couldn’t form the words. In a corner of his mind, he knew that there was nothing he could do no matter what Sakaki said.

Sakaki can’t forgive what I did. Endure it. Chanting that in his mind, Kakeru clenched his fists. It’s my fault he wasn’t able to take part in the last high school meet, so it’s natural he’s angry. If I just imagine it’s Nira barking, I can endure it.

“Even though you’re running around so happily now, why couldn’t you do it before? Why would you do something that invalidated all our hard work? All you had to do was endure it a little.”

I can’t, I can’t endure it anymore. Nira is cute, but Sakaki isn’t at all! Grilled by Sakaki, Kakeru easily threw away his endurance.

“I’m not much good at enduring, you know!” he hit back with a force that would make even a lion run away. I’m the one who wants to know “why”. Why did you guys just stay silent and endure that suffocating team atmosphere? The words flooded his chest, but it always took Kakeru a long time before he could say them. Kakeru’s counterattack was abruptly trampled upon by Sakaki’s vigor, which was like a marching elephant.

“You’re pretty full of yourself Kurahara!” Sakaki said in one breath with a low tone. “I’m guessing you thought you would be the only one who’d get an invitation from the university even if you weren’t in the meet, but too bad. You, at the end of the day, are selfish and egotistical…”

“I thought I told you that’s enough.”

Kiyose’s chilly voice froze the two who had the appearance of beasts battling in the savannah. Kakeru came to his senses and stealthily peeked at Kiyose, who was standing right behind him. Kiyose was expressionless as ice. Behind him, the twins were frantically warning him with body and hand gestures: “Stop it already” and “Haiji-san’s about to explode.”

When he perceived that Kakeru had lost his will to fight, Kiyose turned his penetratingly cold gaze to Sakaki.

“I understand your own grievances. But Kakeru’s a runner for Kansei University now. I want you to stop hurting and upsetting people so excessively.”

We’re going back now, Kiyose announced, and pushed Kakeru towards the forest path. Pulled by the hem of his shirt, Kakeru started walking with him.

“What did Kakeru do to Sakaki-kun?”

“Who knows? But I kinda get the feeling he’s pretty popular?”

King and Jouta sneakily let their imaginations run wild. Come now, Kiyose said, and the residents of Chikusei-sou started leaving the parking lot.

“The rest of you better be careful, he might betray you at the last minute.”

Kiyose turned slightly and smiled at the words Sakaki cast their way.

“We’ll show you how happily and seriously we’re running in the qualifiers. Oh, but you guys have your hands full with chores and odd jobs, so you might not have the time to watch us. Well, do your best to earn a regular position.”

“Who’s the immature one here?”

“Haiji’s getting pretty nasty.”

Nico-chan’s and Yuki’s shoulders were shaking. The fight for a regular position was irrelevant to the Kansei track club, so they were carefree and at ease.

“It means that even a small club with only ten people has its good points.” Musa looked at the frustrated TSU first-years with pity.

Kakeru peeked at Kiyose, walking next to him. The vein had disappeared, but he still had a grim expression on his face, and it seemed he was deep in thought about something. He had caused trouble again. He desperately swallowed down the sigh that was about to spill out of him.

“I’m sorry, Haiji-san.”

“You don’t need to apologize.”

Thinking that he really was angry, Kakeru hesitated before rechoosing his words.

“Thank you, Haiji-san.”

“You’re welcome,” Kiyose said. The curve of his cheek was softer than before. I see, I should say thank you in times like these, Kakeru realized for the first time. Because Haiji-san stood up for me. His anger and frustration cleared away. With his feelings lightened, Kakeru started running.

“Get the bath running,” Kiyose told him, and he raised a hand in response.

Even in the highland wind that blew in from the night, Kakeru’s body remained warm.

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#Kaze ga tsuyoku fuiteiru #kazetsuyo #kazetsuyo translations #run with the wind

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king-of-men · 9 months ago

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"Private violence has the advantage of not being directed by majority vote" sounds distinctly not like an advantage!

You prefer your violence to be a monopoly of whoever gets 50 percent of the vote, plus one? Great fun as long as you're in the 50%, no doubt. Less so if you happen to be a minority.

it would play out as a death sentence for me and all of my friends!

I do not believe that is true, but suppose so for the sake of argument. That means that you are being kept alive by violence exerted by other people on your behalf. In other words, from the options "work, beg, steal, starve", you have chosen "steal". I understand the difficulty of choosing "starve" and the reluctance to choose "beg", but do you really intend to assert that this is a moral position? And aside from the morality, do you think you have a convincing argument for the people being stolen from?

Do you think it's impossible to leverage agreements to be maximally in your favour, or to maximally screw over someone you don't like?

Yes, actually, in a genuinely free market those are both impossible. For the good and simple reason that a free market has what we technic'ly call competition, that is to say, other people to contract with.

If Morlock is unable to live in a home that he's just been priced out of, what makes you think that any other family will be enabled to move into that home instead?

Er, what? So the sequence of events is, the landlord raises the rent; Morlock can't pay and moves out; and... the landlord, twirling his mustache from sheer gleeful evilness, lets the unit stand empty? I don't understand your model here; please elucidate.

If a landlord would benefit from a sudden increase in rent prices, what will happen to the poorer renters as a result?

They will move to cheaper, less convenient homes; or they will pay a higher proportion of their incomes in rent, depending on where they have slack.

Speaking of which, why is the government regulating things 'state violence' (the bad kind) but a swathe of landlords deciding en masse to increase their rental prices is assumed to be 'private violence' (the advantageous, undemocratic kind)?

You conflate two different things I said. Raising the rent is not violence of any kind, whether state or private. The state uses violence, or its threat, to prevent people from raising the rent. Private violence entered the discussion when Morlock asked how property rights are enforced.

At the very least, even in your most uncharitable reading of Morlock as saying "I want stuff and I want it cheap, freedoms be damned", the benefits of that stuff being cheap(er) would also extend to you.

No it wouldn't! That's the whole point, that's exactly why people who have a theory of mind oppose rent control! If Morlock gets a cheap rent-controlled apartment that helps me exactly zero! In fact it helps me negatively by suppressing construction and raising every other rental price in the area. In the long run it helps Morlock negatively because now he's stuck in the "cheap" apartment that might not be his best location anymore, plus the landlord has to cut down the amenities including maintenance. Getting cheaper stuff through free-market competition would indeed help everyone. When the few lucky people who happened to get a lease at exactly the right time have lower-than-market rent increases, that's negative sum: It hurts everyone else.

If you shoplift, you're getting stuff cheap; would you like to explain how that's helping anyone else? Same thing.

Why do you assume a housing boom would have happened 20 years ago?

Because I understand the first thing about markets? To wit, that they clear, that is to say, supply meets demand, when not violently prevented from doing so. In particular, every time rent control (and zoning more generally) is loosened the slightest bit we get an immediate housing boom; so if it hadn't been imposed in the first place, well then. "Boom" may not be the right word since there wouldn't be the pent-up demand for more housing; rather we'd get a smooth expansion of new housing fairly exactly matching new people who want it.

In what sense do you think Morlock has been 'screwed over' by rent control?

Rent control is the second-fastest way known to destroy housing; the fastest is strategic bombing - and that's much easier to recover from. Evidently nobody benefits from having their local housing destroyed, even if their specific place by some miracle escaped the bombs got rent-controlled while they were in it; it makes it very difficult to move. Morlock has been screwed over by being trapped: Sure, he can afford to stay in that one apartment - but if he moves he has to go outside the city. He's gotten cheaper rent at the expense of a drastically damaged housing market; a classic case of the seen and the unseen.

What benefit did you receive from the freedom of being forced to move out of your home 3 months ago?

You will please notice I did not argue this was a benefit to me. It is indeed a cost. I find it rather odd to be on this side of the argument, but sometimes you have to be willing to take one for the team. That lease nonrenewal did not benefit me, but it did (and this is what I actually argued; please read my words again) benefit the landlord, her relatives who moved into the place, and society in general. And I benefit from living in a society where that's possible; if it weren't, people would be much more reluctant to rent out their houses in the first place, and I'd have to pay more or move elsewhere.

... are you getting cognitive dissonance from being told by a libertarian that you should be less selfish, and adjust your policies to benefit society more and yourself less? Because I sure am.

I am all for market based solutions, but markets are complicated and I always want to know what the back-up is if something unknown causes the market to behave in a way that we don't expect.

#economics #libertarianism #the world will not be safe for liberty until the last purblind rentseeker is strangled with the guts of the last blankface bureaucrat #what is it with leftists and being seemingly unable to imagine that second-order consequences could even exist?#bro do you even theory of mind

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purplerose244 · 5 years ago

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Belonging

Here again for the @toa-secret-santa of this year! So happy to participate again, I love these events! 😍😍 Hello @spellcasterdouxie, I’m your secret santa! Merry Christmas and festivities, hope you like my present! ❤

Summary: In which being stuck in New York to protect a magical being and save the world in the process is no excuse for not celebrating Christmas with your friends.

Also on AO3

So… Nari was a terrible liar.

Extremely powerful being, the purest pretty soul, but horrible at lying.

Douxie didn’t have the slightest idea of what she was plotting, granted that she used to be part of an evil congregation of wizards that wanted to take over using an ancient artifact – meh, like that was the weirdest coming from his friends –, but he was fairly sure that her claim regarding the leaking sink of the bathroom was some sort of decoy.

Did that convince him to ignore those big adorable puppy eyes?

“It looks good to me, but I’m gonna give it a double check just in case!”

“Thank you Douxie, much appreciated! Please make sure everything is working, do not overlook a single thing!” Absolutely not. He was a master wizard, not a beast.

Their little apartment was neither pretty nor particularly clean. Which considering the little money he accumulated over the years with all of his jobs back in Arcadia and given the fact that they were in New York City, was kind of a given. But it had a perfectly functional bathroom, basically a gift from above, or some kind of karma retribution from putting up with three different apocalypses in the same summer – and he had all suspicions that another one was coming, but possibly another season. That being said, he wasn’t sure why with her plant like appearance, Nari with all people was so interested into their sink. Besides maybe for spraying a bit of water over her head – one very curious and endearing scene really, like a pot plant watering itself.

Then again, he wasn’t completely sure why he was going along with it instead of asking directly what was this all about. Maybe he liked to study whatever thought somehow as peculiar as her could come up with. Maybe there was nothing else of particular interest to do while waiting for his mac and cheese to be ready… maybe that little nightmare of his from last night got him a little too down, and doing anything but think about it was a better solution than most. And it was a pretty annoying maybe, because dreams about his master were as common as breathing lately.

He thought he was over it. It was probably too soon… hopefully he was at least getting closer to the not too soon part of it.

One long silence followed, from which he was fairly sure he had heard a few whispers a little lower than Nari’s light tone. Great, what now? Was she actually plotting something?

“Is everything okay over there? Arch? Nari?”

“Fine, everything is fine! Keep checking please!”

“Are you serious?” Okay now it was ridiculous. “Nope, I’m getting over there, and you two better not be up to no good!” They were a surprisingly compatible pair, especially since his familiar had made it his mission to teach her the marvel of pranks – she wasn’t even malicious about it, that made it all even more devious somehow. Douxie left the wrench on the ground, getting out of the bathroom and towards the living room. “You all keep forgetting that I’m the master wizards here, so technically I’m in charge, so if you’re scheming something- Whoa, Mordrax’s miracles!”

The last thing he had expected, after leaving their lonely living room that was made of four faded walls with a random kitchen connected to it, was to get back to it completely transformed into a messy, happy Christmas themed little chamber.

Filled with very familiar faces.

“Merry Christmas, Teach!” Claire almost knocked him off his feet with that hug. She looked radiant, all wrapped up in one big purple sweater with ‘Feeling Wicked Sassy’ written on it – appropriate. Behind her Steve, Toby and Archie were all smiling.

“Sorry, you would not leave the house,” Nari looked all cozy and a little guilty in that big mint green sweater – with ‘Every Day is Green Day’ written on it, where did she get that? –, waving at him. “And it felt like claiming we were being attacked by Skrael and Bellroc was a bit excessive.” Thank goodness his roommate and protegee had some common sense – considering his latest adventure, more than him for sure.

Claire giggled, shrugging innocently.

“We honestly hoped you were that bad of a plumber and would give us more time…”

Douxie snickered, because this was ridiculously endearing and he loved it all already.

“Too bad I’m not completely hopeless.”

“Could’ve fooled me!” Steve, it was Steve, not even worth turning around to recognize him. But a random fist bump, that much he could concede – especially with that massive blue sweater ‘Silent Knight, Holey Knight’ he had on, like really what was even that. “Ready to have the best time of your life?”

The master wizard arched an eyebrow.

“Said from you? Should we call the firefighter in advance? Or the police?” The blonde pouted very dramatically, Claire snickered. He had really missed these two. “Wow, this place looks amazing! The landlord can’t see this or she will force me to pay more for the rent.” His wallet was already gasping enough for breath and money. “All this stuff, all the decorations… is this beef?” Ah, that was why it all felt like such a sudden change, this paradisiac scent had definitely not been here before. “It smells delicious!”

“Thank you!” Second shock of the day, but Douxie could hardly blame himself considering the most time he had spent around Jim had been during his huge troll moments – he kinda looked like a twig now in comparison. “I’m pretty well known for my festive feasts.”

“Also known as festeasts!” Toby showed one enthusiastic victory sign, pulling off his orange ‘Rockin’ This Christmas’ with plenty of little gems and stones all around – the forever geologist.

Jim rolled his eyes with a grin.

“Tobes we’re not calling them that.” The Warhammer holder frowned, only to beam when he got handed a spoon for a taste. “I made most of this from home so it’s all ready and warm, but I wanted to make something on the place while I was at it. Freshly made food tastes way better on Christmas.” Toby hummed around the spoon, smacking his lips, then he rubbed his fingers together towards the chef, who caught it as to add more salt.

Douxie couldn’t help but scoot closer, peaking inside. That looked like food. That looked like real, delicious, extremely well-made food.

“What in the world, how did you make that?” Jim snorted.

“You moved on without much of a comment from me turning into a half-troll, a full troll and then back to a human, and this surprises you?”

“My friend, there were Thai leftovers, one instant ramen, an onion and an egg left in the fridge so yes, this surprises me!” All speculations died when he was offered a taste too. “… so it turns out I know nothing of magic. I must bow to the real master wizard here.” If happiness had a flavor it had to be this one. The former trollhunter snickered, giving him a little elbow before going back over his creations. And if the most classic ‘kiss the chef’ apron on him wasn’t already extremely fitting, the cyan sweater underneath reciting ‘I’m In The…’ on the back barely left to the imagination what list was written on the front.

A very well-deserved sign, really.

“Buttsnack’s managed to make these too, take a look!” Steve waved at the little counter that was the only thing remotely looking like a table in this place. And smelling just as heavenly as everything else, there they were, mince pies, just like the ones from Camelot. “But I don’t know if they’re as good because someone slaps my hand every time I- OUCH!! I didn’t even try this time!”

Archie’s tail could be surprisingly useful as a whip, in fact.

“You were thinking about it! So don’t, these are for later.” And wow, if his most loyal companion wasn’t absolutely adorable wearing that little red sweater – ‘Santa Paws’, he was going to complain about it all day long. Douxie wished he hadn’t left his phone in the bathroom. “We’re still waiting for the tree, the last decorations and the music. But we’re almost ready.” So apparently his familiar had been behind all of this. That actually made perfect sense.

Of course this little wizard associate had known this was going to do him good. It was the kind of bond that came with being around each other for over 900 years.

Archie smiled at him, and Douxie couldn’t not grin in return.

“Can’t wait for them! Even thought I did have some when we had that travel… well technically ages ago, we were actually in Camelot, but it wasn’t- Ah forget it, time loops are too confusing.” There was a consensual groan including all of them but Toby and Nari, who just looked at each other and shrugged. “Well, this is awesome, how did you even get everything here so fast?” On second thought, that was more than just bizarre. His eyes crossed Claire’s right away. “You get so tired with transportations through the Shadow Realm usually, and you got to bring along all of these people and decorations?” The thing was, this wasn’t supposed to be possible. Another thing was, Lady Claire of house Nunez was so insanely talented it would had not surprised him.

The girl waved her hand in denial.

“I wish I was at that level, but no. Still, we did travel back and forth pretty quickly.”

“Without magic? How?”

“I should take offense from that highly questioning tone.” Third shock, his poor heart – he came back from the grave once, and he really didn’t recommend it. He was fairly sure the apartment he had rented didn’t include interdimensional portals opening in the middle of the living room. “And from the fact that you humans keep forgetting I invented a perfectly functioning wormhole generator. But please, continue with your predicaments, ignore the scientific feat I’ve accomplished!” For an alien that barely understood human sarcasm, Krel Tarron was made a whole half of it.

As he walked in from the portal, holding one edge of a box filled with Christmas balls, on the other side Zoe stepped in carrying along the rest. And between a black ‘I’m Back, Witches’ sweater and a gray ‘DJ Kleb’ one with four sleeves, it was one curious and fantastic view.

“Yeah yeah, you bent the rules of physics, congratulations!” Zoe’s tense tone implied that she must had heard that complain already. “Stop talking and get working, I’m going the extra mile here!”

“This doesn’t sound like a good time to have a walk.”

“For the love of…!” The pink haired girl let out a muffled scream, let go of her edge of the box – lucky for Krel to have four arms to catch it – and jumped over the master wizard to grab his shoulders. “I hate you so much, you left me alone dealing with all of these new knuckleheads! Like the local dummies weren’t enough!” The collective offended ‘Hey!’ coming from both the Akiridion and the village’s idiot – a marvel that Steve actually responded, fully aware of his status as knucklehead – was somehow even more endearing than funny.

Meanwhile Zoe was still wrinkling his favorite jacket, frowning aggressively at him like the fact that he was out there saving the world was unforgivable – you could say anything about this pink head, but not that she didn’t have priorities.

Douxie snickered, easing the hold onto him.

“Sorry for trying to give my friends a place to live in this crazy wild world, then!”

“… apologies accepted.” Zoe narrowed her eyes. “But only if we finally hunt for niffins and get those forsaken burgers after you did the deed. I’m calling dibs on you.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Besides, you owe me. I didn’t snitch and told that Hex Tech got annihilated and we’re in need of new personnel because someone needed to hide from the big bad villains.” Those blue gems were screaming not to mess this offer up, because it was certainly not going to come back.

Even with a pressure like that, in some way inside of him, Douxie felt freed of a little weight. Despite the distance and everything that had happened, some things stayed the same. So he quite happily held up his fist, smirking at the girl.

“Alright, as soon as this is over with. Deal.” Zoe glared at him a few more seconds. Then she nodded, and finally bumped their knuckles together.

With a thud Krel finally put the box down, sighing soundly.

“Thanks Seklos this is done. I believe we are only missing the dead tree that will be then covered in artificial garnishments as a form of apparent belittlement of nature.” He stayed still for a few seconds, mindlessly throwing a little sphere on the ground that divided in four pieces, generating a portal. “… I feel like I’m getting so accustomed with humans’ savageness that I’m even quite looking forwards to it. Especially for that useless invention called ‘tree’.” He snickered, getting inside the wormhole that disappeared as soon as he was in.

Luckily the impossible dimensional gateway appeared of not leaving any trace behind. And luckily the creature – or elf, demigod, Nari was still a bit of a mystery – most connected to the nature that had just been denigrated was way more interested in whatever chef wiz Jim Lake Jr. was preparing.

“You knubhead, I just told you not to!” Archie’s spiteful voice came along, as apparently Steve had managed to take advantage of the situation – a scientific miracle happening in front of them, fair enough – to finally get himself a mince piece. Only to get slapped to the ground. “That’s it, until these cool down you’re getting nowhere near! Douxie, out with me, we need to guard the treasure!” That was some attachment for one tray of soft and delicious little pastries.

Douxie shrugged and complied, picking up the meal under the jock’s renovated pout and heading to the balcony. The chilling air got to his nose right away, but he endured, appreciating just the tiniest breath. There was barely space for once person there.

Well, one person and his familiar. He placed the tray on the railing, making sure it didn’t fall.

“How did Jim even get the recipe?” Archie grinned.

“Well, apparently his troll friends did remember a certain meal very appreciated by humans from back then, but they have their own idea on how to make it. I don’t know the details, but I certainly know it involves socks. Plenty of socks.”

“… you want to see Steve’s reaction to them later.”

“I want to see Steve’s reaction to them later with all the others. Christmas is supposed to be a family festivity, right?” His grin disappeared right after. “So… it didn’t sound like you were sleeping too well last night.” Yep. He knew. Of course he knew. He would had even if he didn’t have to habit of sneaking into his bed to get warm. “Something you’d like to talk about?”

Douxie breathed out, gently buffing his fluffy ear.

“I’m fine Arch, not need to get all sensible on me. It was one of the usuals.” He tried a weak smile, not really feeling like keeping everything in. Not with so many people inside, on this particular day. “… you know, thinking it now, somehow it was easier celebrating Christmas on the streets back in Camelot. Getting something good to eat, have fun, that was enough. Considering how tense was everyone in the Pendragon castle it’s not much of a surprise, but still… I wonder if Merlin ever had a proper Christmas in there.” He sighed. “He certainly didn’t while I was around.” The noisy streets of Camelot overlapped NYC’s busy ones. He swallowed a lump into his throat.

That legendary town was such a faraway place right now, coming back from a single memory was a slap from reality. Douxie shivered, taking in a freezing breath, gasping when Archie jumped over his shoulder and curled all around his neck. His fur was nice and warm.

“We have no way of knowing. But one thing’s for sure, that old man got a surprising, unexpected present in any case.” Archie smiled, eyeing him softly. “One very sneaky, very foolish, very brave apprentice.” They had been there, the both of them. And in any possible way, in the good, the bad, and the best, he had found a life to call that way. The one Merlin had asked him about.

The master wizard smiled, snuggling his cheek against his loyal friend.

It didn’t take long, the winter air acted like a freezer over the little pies. But as they went back in, the place had already changed – and that was besides AAARRRGGHH!!, with one gigantic hat on his head, holding up the tree while Blinky, wearing a scarf, was reading a manual on how to decorate it, where did he even get that? –: there was a table, appeared again out of nowhere, with all the most delicious looking dishes placed all over between branches of holly and little bells. Jim and Nari were putting down the last dishes, Steve was clumsily getting the statue of a reindeer to balance over the tv, Toby was checking the lights to make sure they were functioning.

And Claire was suddenly in front of him, beaming, clearly hiding something from behind her back. It immediately grabbed everybody’s attention, like it was some sort of event.

Was it?

“We’ve organized the present exchange for after lunch, but this one you need to put it on now. So, her it is!” She uncovered the secret and- Oh. It was a sweater. It was a sweater. For him. “There you go, you’re officially part of the wool club, a Christmas-limited association only.”

“Founder of the association Nancy Domzalski, mostly because it was Nana who made them all!” Toby caressed the front of his sweater, smiling softly. “She’s that kind of grandma that thinks that everything that’s made with love can bring warmth, and I’m kind of a believer too.” He shrugged, crossing his fingers behind the back of his head. “I know this isn’t your cool punk rock wizardy style, but Nana had her midlife crisis in her own time and I’m not exactly looking forward to one before my very own eyes!” That was probably not a sight a grandchild wanted of their grandma, that was understandable.

It was. It was, right? It was getting a little hard to focus on something, anything that wasn’t a soft bundle of black and navy blue stripes, welcoming and warm, with ‘Fuzzbuckets’ written on it. It was getting weird. A little unsettling even, because he just got out in the cold but his bones weren’t freezing anymore and he felt all fuzzy inside and now his eyes were warm and-

“… oh, curse me, not the waterfalls…!” Centuries spent transitioning from hopeless bard to punk rock guitarist, only to tear up at a random surprise Christmas party.

From there, he didn’t understand much. Only Claire’s probable ‘Aww Douxie!’, Toby’s sudden ‘There’s no Christmas without the sad moment’, Steve’s surprising ‘I know what to do, come on everybody, let’s all hug it out!’. And all of the sudden he was enveloped with so many arms, so many different people he had gotten to know and had managed to befriend and appreciate. That were part of his world, his life, and what was coming for the future.

So when he managed to open his eyes, there was so much to uncover, between a pink head, a scarred eyebrow, a lock of leaves and a paw still so close to his cheek. And it hit him that perhaps there was a reason why Camelot had always felt so far away lately.

That age was over. But this, it felt like it had only begun. Douxie smiled, closing his eyes again.

Embracing how good it felt to belong again.

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hitandrunduorp-a · 3 years ago

Text

Matthew’s Logs

@chaoticxgays mention

The old laptop couldn’t seem to connect to any sort of WIFI, and had no real programs on it. What filled the hard drive instead though, were videos; hundreds of them, all with varying dates, not just on the files themselves, but the folders they were all in, meticulously arranged by months, within folders that were dated over many years. Peter and Harry looked at one another, worried; the blond was nowhere to be seen, his apartment looking like it had been raided, or at least attacked… So taking a breath, Peter looked through the files, before choosing one. The date; about a week before he and the blond met.

The video booted up, and there sat the blond, no contacts or mask on, showing the fangs he sported, as well as the violet eyes that a certain vulpine villain sported.

“Log 1; Welp, I’m here. I’m back in the ‘Big Apple’ after… God, how many years has it been? Ugh, I never wanted to return but… I have no choice. My research has been basically at a standstill, and even with the bit of testing on rats and… and myself, I just… Ugh! The outcomes are too similar to that failure, Professor Warren… or I suppose he’s going by ‘Jackal’ now? Doesn’t matter, what does is that I can’t rest.”

“All this, all I’m doing, it’ll surpass that fuck, and erase the Henderson line for good. But the last piece of the puzzle I need to make this all work, I’ll be lucky if it still exists! I doubt Norman would risk losing all that hard work dear old dad did, but at the same time, Edmond was a paranoid fucker, breaking it all into four pieces, so that Norman couldn’t just kick him out and take all the research for himself. Won’t lie; at least that dead fuck wasn’t a total idiot. But because he did that, Norman could have burned it, seeing it as useless, since one part was hidden, and the other two had belonged to ghosts… If it still exists though, I have to try and find it...”

“Problem is, how do I get to it? It’s somewhere in Oscorp, but even with my skills, getting into there would be like trying to get into Stark’s place or something… sigh, I suppose for now, I’ll keep making these logs, and get myself settled in… at least the rent is cheap enough, and the landlord’s seedy enough to not ask where the cash comes from… Going to have to add some more locks on the door though, to be safe.”

“Log 12; It’s been a few days since my last log, and… well, things have taken a… turn? Not for the worse, actually, possibly for the better! I met someone when I was out buying some new biology and genetic theory books, among other things to read. Peter…Parkson, was it? Oh, Parker! He helped me when I dropped some books, and somehow… I’m now possibly going to be attending a University? These last few days have just been a whirlwind! I’m still trying to figure out if I’m dreaming or not! University, wow… I- I really don’t know how to process all this…”

“Sadly, that does mean I’m going to have to… sigh, work more as ‘Vixen’ at night- it’s still such a stupid name, god damn tabloids!- but to make the money I need to both attend, AND afford this shit hole? I mean, it’ll be a bit difficult, seeing as I’ll have to work with a bank, and slowly funnel money into my account without raising suspicion… but I mean, if this works, I might not need that last bit of research if I can get a lab, or something to work on everything with! And if I make that breakthrough, then I can kiss that damn ‘night job’ goodbye for good!”

“Finally… I can put this work, this evil work Edmond started… I can turn it into something good… I can help the world! The applications this could bring, while Norman wanted to use it for super soldiers I think, now it could help those with compromised immune systems, or sight and hearing problems, or general weakness! So many people can live better lives if I can get this to work! I wasn’t expecting so much to happen from one nice, and, haha, kinda cute guy from helping me after I dropped my books… but I’m thankful. I’m thankful that I met Peter… I just hope I don’t have to work as Vixen for long, and I don’t disappoint him…”

“...Log 39. Things have been going good at school; met Anya, Gwen, Miles… they’re really interesting themselves! But things have become… what would be a good word be? Tense?”

“...Peter mentioned a friend named ‘Harry’ who worked at Oscorp. He just forgot to mention that his friend doesn’t just work there, but he now runs Oscorp! Shit, I thought Norman was still in control, but it turns out something happened, and now his son has taken the mantle. It’s been, what, 8 years, if not more since he would have last saw me? Well, ‘me’; that broken child who everyone was taking bets on if I was a damned android or not… Most people would have forgotten about someone who he’s never interacted with before, outside of maybe once?”

“...but he remembers me. The mask and contacts throw him off enough to not tell instantly, but a part of him somehow remembers me… I’m not sure if I’m flattered or not, haha. My first… crush, I suppose? Still remembers me. Of course, I mean… he was the only person I ever saw who was both my age, not to mention wasn’t some stuck up researcher, or creepy money grabber… No wonder poor little Matthew weirdly had eyes for the son of his fathers boss. I must have read too many fantasy books back then…”

“...he grew to be handsome though, I won’t deny that. I wonder what it would have been like, if I got to be friends with him all those years ago, instead of being forced as an apprentice…? Ugh, it- it doesn’t matter. I can easily tell that here and now, he doesn’t like me. I’m just not sure if it’s just cause he recognizes me, or if it’s cause of how possessive of Peter he is? When Pete asked me to join them, I saw through Harry like a open door; the idea of me joining pissed him off.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter. It’s not like he’s got anything to worry about; with how much Peter talks about him like he’s the sun or something, I’m surprised they’re not dating already. Or are they both just that blind to one another? Eh, not my business… Though might ask the others, just in case… Regardless, this… makes things difficult. I just hope I make my breakthrough… and I hope he’s at least nothing like the monster before him.”

“Log 45; I need a way into OsCorp. I need to see if the files still exist, but I don’t know how to get in. I considered stealing someone else’s ID and getting in that way… but I don’t want to ruin someone's livelihood over this. Peter says that Harry’s been working hard at turning the place around from the mess that Norman had built, so I’m glad that he… that he doesn’t seem to be like his father. I’m glad. I wonder if mine or dad’s old passcodes are still weirdly in the systems? I wish I could check, but if I did, I risk raising alarms if I don’t do it all in one go… and that’s if they work! I can’t let wind blow and for Harry to figure out that Vixen’s planning on targeting OsCorp. Spider-Man, HobGoblin, and the other spider heroes would come and swarm the area long before I could even try to get in and close to that research. Dammit! I’m so close, and yet there’s still an ocean blocking my path!”

“...I wish I could just… tell Peter the truth. He’s… he’s been amazing to me, and I… I wish I could pay him back. But hiding my truth, both my past, and about being ‘Vixen’... would he understand? Would he try and see it through my eyes? Would he help me convince Harry?...I can’t. I can’t take that risk, and I… I don’t want to hurt him. Not him.”

“...Why does he matter so much? I mean, yes, he’s my friend, but so are the others and I… I don’t feel as comfortable and happy as I am with him. Is...this what a real crush feels like? No, that can’t be right; he loves Harry. I know this. I know this! ...so why does knowing that hurt? Ugh, I have to stop thinking like this. I’m not- he’s too good for someone like me. Just being friends, just seeing him happy… That’ll be enough for me. But that’s also why I… why I can’t tell him the truth. I don’t want him to lose that handsome smile of his… Ugh, I’m going to bed-”

“Log 67; Well, today was… stressful? Pete was kicked out of his lab by the girls, and they threatened to do the same to me, so he and I went to OsCorp to see Harry… I only went cause I wanted to hang out with Peter more, honestly… and to make sure he actually visited Harry. And now I… I have an application to try and get a job as Harry’s new secretary. He definitely didn’t like the idea; if he wasn’t so in love with Pete, I’m pretty sure he would have laughed the very idea off, or something. I almost don’t want to take the chance for the job… I don’t like how his eyes are, how cold they are… all I see is Edmond and… Norman in his gaze. Not that I would ever tell him that; I may be reckless, but I’m not suicidal!”

“...but this job, if Harry pays well… I might be able to look for a better apartment. And better yet; I’ll be in OsCorp. I can start trying to track down that old file, and see if it still exists! Then my research will be complete, I can dedicate my time to it properly! I have to take this chance, as slim as it is… and it’ll make Peter happy too.” The blond in the video paused as a hand raised up to his cheek, gently touching a spot which caused the brunette to flush beside Harry… not that the two weren’t already, with the blond’s admittance to his own attraction to them, as well as outing one anothers crush. “...Yeah, he’ll be happy too…”

"Log 72; Having fucked with my genes has its perks; I’ve got a lot more stamina than I used to, I’ve found I’m more flexible too... but my senses also have sharpened as well.

...though I’ve only fought them a couple times, I have a theory on who most of the members of the spider team are. While the scent of people can be similar, I’m basing this on their personalities, as well as the tech they use too...

Miles is Spy-D, Gwen is Ghost-Spider, and Anya is Spider-Girl. They all act quite similar in and out of costume, but to someone who hasn’t seen both, as well as notice their scents are the same, no one would make the connection...

...

...but this poses a problem, cause I... think I know who Spider-Man is as well. He's more like me; while goofy still, he seems to act differently in and out of costume, but... I hope I'm wrong. I hope I’m wrong about them all... cause I cant-

...if Peters him, then how could I ever ask him for help? Sure, spiderman offered to help, but that would mean me in jail most likely... and him hurt, seeing as I’ve been lying to him.

I don’t want that.

...fuck, but it makes sense though. And more so if you put Harry, another technological genius, as HobGoblin! With how possessive he sounded about Spidy when we first met- oh fuck."

He shakes his head and lays on the desk, just barely out of the camera’s view.

"... I hope I’m wrong. Please, let me be wrong..."

“Log whatever; it was hell. these last few days? God, first Harry catching me in the middle of jacking in my office, then stuck under his desk? Fuck, I mean, it's not like I can do that in this dump, with the paper-thin walls, but at work... god, I'm so sorry Harry... and his scent! God, I almost broke! and his tight pants showing him off~ ACK- no, stop that! He's Peter's best friend! His fuckin crush!! He's your boss! UUUUUGH! I am NEVER bringing this up again after this entry! I just wanted an afternoon to not deal with that damned crafty creep at work, and now I’ve probably ruined a ton of progress I’ve made in trying to make friends with Harry… Great job, Matthew; way to fuck everything up! Ugh, why did I panic? Why did I do that?! Please, just kill me now… and with how angry he was…

Note to self; keep your problems to yourself… things never turn out for the better when you ask for help… they never do…”

“Log 82; I have to say it, if to just get it off my chest. Maybe if I get it out, I can try and move on…?

…I love them. I’m in love with Harry and Peter. Stupid, isn’t it? Falling for two people who love one another, even if they hadn’t accepted it or confessed to one another… but I do. So this is ‘unrequited love’? Fuck is it hell. A special hell of my own making… and no matter how hard I try to ignore it, to deny it and live my life… the pain in my chest won’t go away. It’s fine though. I’ll be fine. So long as I can be their friend, so long as I can help make them happy… I’ll be fine.

…but they won’t be if they find out the truth. Everything is set up for the final show. After that night, I’ll never have to wear that mask again. I’ll burn the outfit, so it won’t ever be found… may keep the scarf though; it’s warm and nice for the cold seasons… but soon, I won’t have to dance this tightrope anymore. I can just live my life, move on with my life. Harry, Peter… I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I’ve lied to you both, even if I can never truly confess it. I’m sorry for developing feelings, where I have no place to do so in your lives…”

#off the clock #ooc #chaoticxgays #v; marvel

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laundryandtaxes · 4 years ago

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Hi Julia, I'm gonna push back on your post re: nyc. I grew up in another city in New York State and moved to the city at 17 for work, never going to college. I've lived in three different boroughs, and never held a lease, just for context. I think the divide of "native New Yorker" vs "transplant" is in many ways created as a way of sewing division and doesn't reflect that in every strongly-rooted ethnic group, immigrant or otherwise, there is a certain amount of coming and going. For me, every generation of my fam has come here to live for a time since immigrating, despite moving to the south or Midwest. That's super common for my ethnicity and common in many other groups here.

Many if not most of my friends who grew up here have nuanced views on this, and when it gets down to it see it beyond a binary of "native vs nonnative". I think that viewing it as a binary isn't particularly useful. There are definitely alienated internal migrants and people who move to join elite communties, but most of my friends who grew up here have lived elsewhere for a time, and if there have family or ethnic community here aren't weird about it.

This model of discourse doesnt usually talk about the strongly rooted elite/borgeiouse here, and many people who migrate to NYC internally do it for social and economic reasons. Particularly pre-pandemic, the gay and ballroom scenes were massive draws, and jobs in certain industries are concentrated here. Wealthy residents are catered to, and certain type of internal migrant/wealthy expat/wealthy immigrant is definitely catered to by legislation that favors gentrification and has made the city a playground for the rich. The city has intentionally eroded public housing, but it remains that a higher percentage of residents live in public housing, rent controlled apartments well-below market value or recieve housing subsidies here than nearly any other city in the country. People will get on public housing and section 8 waiting lists and leave the city or even country. To be here and to stay here is very tenuous for many multigenerational residents. Regardless, migration and immigrantion have been part of NYC since it began having a distinct culture towards the 1820's. Culture and social creation has never been the exclusive domain of people born here, and NYC is what it is because of born-residents, immigrants, internal migrants and being a center of cultural and social community that draws people from around the world. If it was just one of these things it wouldn't be NYC.

NYC is a place that feels disconnected from the (rest of) the USA and I think that the politicization of desire to be here will have implications exacerbated by the pandemic.

Re: nyc again:

Many wealthy people leave nyc because there isn't a great bang for your buck in the same way as other parts of the country. It's honestly a shitty and expensive place for the rich lmao.

And many poor/working class people come here bc of enviable renters protections, higher wages, and special education for disabled kids. In particular people come from within the eastern seaboard, New England and south for all of these things.

Thank you for another perspective! I am not from New York myself, so my perception of the city comes largely from the accounts of friends who are from NYC, and media, but just like with anywhere you can’t get a complete picture of what a place is like based on those two things.

I will say that a lot of what you’ve said here strongly contradicts my idea of what the city is like, some of which is based on personal experience. I considered a move to NYC at some point with an ex girlfriend (which, holy shit thank goodness that didn’t work out) and I have to say that in particular the idea of NYC as a place with “enviable renters protections [and] higher wages” specifically doesn’t square with what I saw when I researched those two things. Wages in NYC for work that doesn’t require degrees didn’t look good at all, and as far as renter’s protections go, my current understanding is that rent control is awesome but that landlords regularly engage in tenant harassment to pressure rent controlled tenants out of units and the city does almost nothing about it. The second is based more on recent articles I read and news pieces I watched about NYC, but the last time I looked at wages in NYC I was extremely unimpressed given the cost of housing alone, and when I was running the numbers for myself (this was maybe 2015ish) I came away not understanding how anyone could possibly afford to live in the city unless they 1) made a ton of money, in order to afford the outstanding rents, or 2) got into a rent-controlled apartment, which it seemed it was not easy to do unless you knew someone, like I did at the time, who was basically going to tell their landlord to hand you the lease. Obviously I’m not saying you’re wrong, just that I am very surprised to hear that anyone thinks of NYC as a place with genuinely solid rent protections and good wages, because the last time I looked it really did not seem like either of those was the case. If that is the case, that’s awesome and I am very glad to hear it. The story I was told by friends was largely one of intense, almost unbearable pressure from gentrification and jobs not paying nearly enough for the cost of living and being actively displaced by people who came to the city with an absurd amount of money to spend. So if that isn’t actually the case, that’s very very good news because I kind of had what I THINK of as contemporary NYC built up in my head as this horror story of the worst things that could happen to a city.

I also am not intimately familiar with the culture of NYC, but I have to say that I don’t think I agree with the idea that ‘ "native New Yorker" vs "transplant" is in many ways created as a way of sewing division’ because I don’t think that concept is unique at all to NYC- I certainly have a lot of a specific kind of pride in having been born and raised in Chicago, I and most other Chicagoans consider it genuinely offensive and rude when people who grew up in suburbs nearby tell people they are from Chicago, I and most other Chicagoans see ourselves, I would say, as a particular breed of people who share a particular kind of roots in this place, and I don’t think that pride is harmful or bad in any way. I would never tell someone that moving here is an evil thing to do- I consider roughly 10 years of residency to grant you the right to refer to yourself as a Chicagoan and not just a Chicago resident lol- or say that transplants to Chicago are categorically bad people. Half of that is just stupid cultural stuff, really, and shouldn’t be taken very seriously. But I don’t think the concept itself is bad. I have a fundamentally different relationship to Chicago than someone who grew up anywhere else and moved here, no matter how long they moved here, and I don’t think it is harmful at all to be open about and proud of that. I would never make the claim that transplants haven’t made massive contributions to the city, and I would assume most native New Yorkers wouldn’t make that claim about transplants to NYC.

Thank you for sharing your personal understanding of the situation there, and I am very surprised to hear that the proportion of residents in NYC who live in public or rent controlled housing is quite high, and glad to hear it. As needlessly aggressive as Chicagoans (myself included) can be when “New York” is even uttered aloud, I obviously have a lot of real respect for the city and I am glad to hear that it hasn’t just been mostly ruined in the way I had imagined it. This is a good lesson in taking any media you see about a place whose name will get clicks/engagement just by virtue of the aura of the place (New York, Chicago, San Francisco, etc) with several grains of salt. If I was only familiar with Chicago through media I’d think it was some super dangerous place when it definitely isn’t categorically.

#Anonymous

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skinfeeler · 4 years ago

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on the internet, there are accusations which are so grave that as a result of their charged nature are hard to even publicly denounce because even doing so makes them stick to the person accused — sometimes they are made up out of whole cloth for sordid and hateful reasons exactly because of this — something i'm sure something most tfem people will be familiar with. in light of that, all that can be asked of me is that i list the circumstances as i know them which i think may have given rise to these.

around mid-2019, shortly after i had been raped, there was a huge debate going on across multiple of my friend groups after i made the mistake of reblogging a theory post about the fate of coltan mining 'after the revolution' that my landlords didn't like. it was upsetting for me as i was rather dependent on my limited contacts at the time, who now all looked to be up in arms with each other. while under the influence of various drugs to cope and self-harming in other ways i liked a few posts in the discourse that seemed reasonable to me given my politic and in terms of people most of whom i understood at the time as people who were friends with others i found reasonable, which generally corresponded to a skepticism that we could extract enough coltan ethically to maintain the current technological status quo and all that entails. this was taken in the moment to be an insult to them as apparently, those people in question whose posts i liked in a haze were their enemies (for being too post-colonial for their tastes?). in that moment, while my blood had not yet dried, the choice they saw fit to make on dealing with this perceived slight was to harass me and force me to apologise for, apparently, personally betraying them as such after extended diatribes about how what i did was evil and how i did not deserve to give my own explanations for it in any way while hurling extended abuse at me. this after they had used my blog as a springboard to cause a situation that was incredibly stressful to me— and sordid in general, the genocide accusations all around were completely unwarranted and served no actual purpose, but i digress.

this set a precedent of harassment and abuse where over the course of the years, even before i started renting from them after they bought a house — they did this because their current situation was no longer tenable — they would consistently, at every imagined or real slight choose to resolve the situation by mobbing me and not giving me anywhere near enough room to construct a narrative of my actions for myself, let alone to assert my standpoint to them, no matter the scale or scope of the situation. too often took this easy way out, and justified it to each other and me by speaking about well, they're married so 'of course' they're going to 'stand up for each other', because of trauma, because of whatever mental illness, the language changed but the message was the same— this is to not be beholden to further context or negotiation, or even juxtaposition with my own mental problems and needs. this extended not just to fights but also to even negotiating any sort of vaguely consistent and regular house cleaning regimen, insisting that it was not possible 'right now' in any way to keep the house to a decent standard of cleanliness, with new reasons being constructed as old ones became irrelevant. to them there was no such thing as a different frame of thought, in fact, they seemed to deny the concept of a frame of thought altogether: to them if you opposed them in thought, behavior, opinion, or behavior, it was either out of ignorance or out of personal malice, or at least, they felt entitled to treat specifically me this way, while they knew i had no other options— as they admit to when they speak in their own crude terms about my former social isolation. for all the good they might have done to me and at times actually did — honesty demands i acknowledge this — they did not fulfill their responsibility to manage the living environment in which these good deeds were placed prevent it from being coercive and harmful. that it is everyone's duty to make not just a token or symbolic but an adequate attempt at not being violent to those who the world has placed you in a position of power over and that this is what ultimately is the determinative factor of moral character as opposed to 'the sum of good things you do' is, i believe, understood in ample contexts by most people.

from domestic to ideological to interpersonal, this was their modus operandii, thereby right down to monitoring my internet usage. you may understand that when this became so blatant as the parable of the scorpion and the frog being recited to me — a noxiously essentialist story which apparently they didn't grasp was very telling of them to kin as the scorpion in, but which is surprisingly common and i've encountered before and since — i no longer had any grounds to keep faith that any of this was ever going to meaningfully change, and i sought out a new place to live, as me returning to my parents permanently or elsewhere was not an option. i did find one, in the end, and the day where i... refused to apologise for blocking them on tumblr (???) which was apparently existentially upsetting to them, which i did because i couldn't bear these two engaging with me in the established way and was anticipating that they would again — as they persistently have, and immediately did — was the same day i exited the house for temporary shelter because apparently laying down a boundary that simple or like, digital wasn't viable. at the end of the day, with three bags over my shoulders and in my arms, i fumbled the door closed behind me which apparently made some loud kind of noise (i was preoccupied with other things entirely, so i didn't notice), and for the first time in that day nicole came out of her room after me, running after me screaming at me and hurling insults at me and family who had come to pick me up, this is what is being referred to as ‘slamming doors’. as far as i am concerned, her response to that then and as well as her response now was and is more intelligible as abject rage at me refusing to play along with the rules of engagement that she had grown to believe were immutable and sacred — to defy or question them, supposedly ableism or whatever was convenient at the time, now apparently 'social darwinism' — than any real and actual violence on my part.

#this is purely so my friends have a credible alternative to those haranguing them and they are at liberty to disseminate this

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dadzawa-adopt-dabi · 5 years ago

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secret baby ch11

Dabi never plans on actually using the number. He has no need to go and get involved with crime. Him and Kiyoko are doing fine with his small business, or they will be, eventually. He doesn't want to use his quirk at all, much less to harm anyone else. Besides being an excellent way to get Enji’s attention, it's painful for him to use. His body just isn’t meant for his quirk, that’s what happens when you try to mix fire and ice but Enji had just kept forcing him to use it and trying to make a perfect ‘legacy’. Kiyoko at 4 months hasn’t shown signs of having the same issues yet, something Dabi is beyond grateful for, along with the fact that she can’t fly yet.

He had been horrified at first. Horrified at the fact he could kill someone. If he hadn’t been so exhausted he would have had trouble sleeping for sure, as it was Dabi could barely keep his eyes open at the end of the day.

It had been a momentary decision and the man had been about to slap his girlfriend for leaving him. It doesn't take Dabi long as he thinks it should to stop thinking about the crime he commited. He worried at first that there might be something wrong with his emotional responses but one look at Kiyoko had fixed that,overwhelming him with limitless love for her. The world is down one more abusing asshole and Dabi may be okay with being the cause for it but he doesn't know if he can do that again, or whatever else someone who calls themselves ‘the broker’ can think up. The extra income that he and Kiyoko need is tempting, however the whole thing is sketchy as fuck so it’s not worth the risk.

He’s got Kiyoko to raise and villains don’t exactly have babysitting in their secret evil layers.

Kiyoko’s first feathers, the soft ones she was born with ,that were more fluff than actual feathers, are coming out and Kiyoko has taken to shaking her wings to watch the feathers fall while she gums on her fist. The small twitches Kiyoko can manage with her wings shake feathers out of her wings and she smiles up at him as they litter the floor of their apartment.

Dabi had been worried when they had started falling out but it had turned out to be just a molt. The baby feathers coming in had looked almost bloody and Dabi feared that Kiyoko had inherited a quirk disorder from him, a quirk that didn’t fit her, and would cause her nothing but pain. He had been plauged by thoughts of how stupid and useless him and Hawks had been. Fire and feathers didn’t mix what if she started burning up from the inside out or had wings that could never fly, they hadnt thought things through at all having sex without protection and expecting there not to be a consequence.

“I've got something better than your hand for you to eat. Come here.” Gently tugging Kiyoko’s fist out of her mouth and replacing it with a bottle. Dabi swayed with her while standing in the kitchen and typing furiously on his phone.

One of his clients was dropping him, due to an earring having disappeared. Dabi hadn’t even set foot in her house that day and had text messages from her detailing when he had been in and out of the house. The client didn’t believe him and said they had no idea when the earring went missing, Dabi had no idea how this client was even coming up with this.

What would someone even want only a single earring for? It's not like you could sell it, the bitch had probably just lost it and was blaming him because it was convenient. Still no matter whether she blamed him for her missing jewelry or not he needed to keep this client. Rent was due in a few days and he had been counting on her payment to make it, that wasn’t even thinking about utilities or his empty fridge. All that his cupboards have is a pitiful amount of rice, a nearly empty box of cereal and baby formula. The visit to Kiyoko’s doctor to look into her first molting had pushed him over his very thin budget and there just wasn’t a way for him to make it up this month. Backing out of the conversation for the moment Dabi hit the contact labeled ‘broker’ and held his breath as the phone dialed then rang.

“Hello, you’ve reached the broker, what can I do for you today?” an older man's voice drawls from the other end of the line.

“...” Dabi is already regretting this. What is he even going to do for this man? Is this going to be safe for him or Kiyoko? Dabi takes strength from Kiyoko’s chubby smile as he struggles to get his voice to work properly, or at all because it feels like someone stole his ability to make sound and his chest is so tight it hurts to breath.

“Hey, you okay? Do you need help or someone to come get you, sweetie?” The man's voice is suddenly very gentle. Although he calls Dabi sweetie it's so affectionate that it's obvious he’s not hitting on Dabi, the genuine concern bleeding through the phone.

“Um, I'm not going to make rent this month and- sorry- this is ridicu-” Dabi took a deep breath to steady himself. “Look, I was given this number after I murdered a man in a parking lot and told you could give me a job. Which i need. Can you help me? I'll do whatever you’ve got.” Kiyoko whimpers in discomfort with how tight he’s holding her to his chest.

“Take a breath, kid. Let's talk some limits first, find out what you are comfortable with before we start throwing words like ‘whatever or anything’ around, alright? I've got several options.” There’s some shuffling around on the other end. “I'm going to send this number a text with a place and time. Then you're going to send me your bank information or whatever so I can send you the payment, okay? There’s a starter wage and I'm just going to forward you a couple days worth of work so you can pay whatever shit landlord you've got. We can work out the details later.”

“I- thank you. Thank-” ‘The broker’ hangs up on Dabi’s sobbing thanks and seconds later a ping follows signifying he did indeed get a text. Dabi sends back his paypal with his fingers crossed. Kiyoko starts crying as well, not sure what she is upset about but upset all the same. When Dabi has both himself and Kiyoko calmed down and fed he checks his phone again and nearly starts sobbing all over again. Taking large hiccuping breaths as Kiyoko sleeps and he stares at the very generous amount forwarded to his paypal. He can afford rent and groceries, even some new toys for Kiyoko with this much. The babysitting cost will aberly put a dent in the amount sent and Dabi had been expecting babysitting to take almost all of it. The stress from the past few months leaves Dabi almost all at once and he sleeps better than he ever has. Whatever this costs him will be worth it, he can even pick how much he’s willing to dirty his hands and ‘the broker’ sounds kind. Fuck, he wishes he had called sooner but at least he’s called now, the other option isn’t one he wants to think about.

@ruelukas22 @i-like-to-shruggy @xxsnowchildxx

#omegaverse #omegadabi #alphakeigo #dabihawks #hotwings as dads #hotwings #secretbabyfic #thedarkonewrites #im so happy to be writing this #early peak

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twilightbimbo · 5 years ago

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Solstice pt 1: Twilight AU

This is an expansion of the Twilight universe with my OC characters!

home is where the heart is

and i’m afraid

i’ve lost my way

Samson

“Why do you think you’ll win? I know when you’re bluffing,” I chided, laughing. Esther rolled her eyes with mild amusement. Esther is the most competitive one in our family and she always tries to best me in poker, despite the fact that I have the gift for sniffing out inauthenticity.

“‘Cus you suck at poker,” Esther pulled up the corner of her lips in a slight smirk and laid out her winning hand.

“Har har,” I huffed in frustration. I felt my eyebrows furrow as I realized what was happening. “You assholes!” I exclaimed. Suddenly, the cards of Esther’s winning hand became fuzzy and resembled a glitching computer monitor and then smoothed out into her true, losing hand. I looked up at Esther who was nearly hysterical, tears in her golden eyes from laughing and clutching Chip’s arm.

“Sorry, brother,” Chip smiled softly and brushed a lock that fell out of Esther’s bun and brushed it behind her ear. I booed loudly and pushed the deck of cards off the dining table between Esther and me in mock anger.

“Clean that up, Sam,” Sunny said to me without even looking in my direction as she walked past with a basket of laundry. Sunny liked to blend in more than the rest of us. “Keeps us humble,” is one of her favorite phrases. Sunny is the matriarch of our family, even though she is the youngest of us. Technically.

“Sam, if you couldn’t cheat, you would be terrible at poker,” Stella yelled from her upstairs bedroom. Stella didn’t need to yell, she could even whisper it and we would be able to hear her. But, Sunny forces us to act human at all times, even in our own house. Where no one can see us. Or hear us. Sunny’s word is law.

Nathalia

If I was human, I would be panting from running this hard and far. Actually, if I was human I couldn’t run like this at all. I still let air rush in and out of my lungs naturally, tasting the forest around me. I had been feeling the urge to see the ocean lately. I miss home. But, I can’t go back there for a lot of reasons. Mainly because it’s always sunny down there. So, the Oregon coast is perfect for my needs, it’s overcast here the majority of the time. And it felt familiar here, the beach was always a constant for me until I died.

I have been on the run for three years. That is so dramatic to say, but it’s true. I’ve been through nearly all of California, eastern Oregon, and about every rural area in Washington. I haven’t been around the general public in what seems like forever. If forever means three years and three hundred and sixty-two days. I’ve missed normalcy. I’ve missed being able to call a place my own. I miss belonging to something.

The trees began to clear as the river widened and gray light bled between the branches above as they became more sparse. I slowed down into a more relaxed jog, my damp hair starting to cling from my shoulders all the way to the small of my back. I relaxed my pace completely as I could see the river desperately reaching the ocean, letting my bare feet sink into the mossy and wet forest floor. I walked slowly until the ground turned into sand. I tilted my face up towards the sky and let the gentle rain kiss my face.

The waves crashing is familiar and it eased some of my longing. Longing? God, I’ve become so pretentious. In my human life, I couldn’t stand being alone for longer than hours and now I’ve gone years. I guess loneliness changes you.

While I was roaming in Washington, I heard there were vampires who tried to pretend to be humans and go to school and stuff. I was transformed only a year after I graduated high school and I didn’t get the chance to go to college. I had my eyes on the University of California, Los Angeles. But, here I am. Not alive, but also alive. On a beach. In the middle of fucking nowhere.

“Hey! Aren’t you cold?” A voice called out to me from down the beach. I’ve been practicing for this. I turned my head slowly, trying to be careful of the speed of my movements. I looked down at myself briefly. I was wearing a thin, gray sweater with jeans. And barefoot. It’s probably in the low forties right now and getting colder. So much for attempting to blend in. I looked back at their direction and while I was definitely too far away, I smiled tentatively at them.

“Got thick skin!” I yelled back, shrugging. The person behind the voice was an older man, the wind carried his scent towards me. I could smell the warm blood and as he slowly approached me, I could hear his faint heartbeat. It would be too easy. In half a second I would be right in front of him, pushing his head back to expose his neck. His red cap would fall off and in my frenzy, I would probably tear apart his windbreaker. Blood on the sand. My eyes red.

Nope, nope, nope. I’ve gone three years without tasting human blood. I’m not going to fuck this up now. I turned on my heel and went back to the forest, as soon as I was certain I was covered by the thick swarm of trees I took off sprinting.

Where am I supposed to go now? I need to get better clothes to blend in. I need to find a place to live. “Live”. To be frank, I had it pretty easy. I never had to worry about this kind of stuff. In the distance, I can hear cars sporadically driving on the wet pavement. If there are cars, there are people and if there are people, there are clothing stores and libraries. I changed my direction in order to run parallel to the highway giving myself about a half a mile distance between me and the road.

It wasn’t much longer, maybe twenty miles or so before I saw neon light tinge the fog and the smell of car exhaust got stronger. Smelled disgusting. I thought about how I would be able to wander into some random mom and pop shop to get clothes without sticking out. I’ve been practicing my self control but it’s much easier when I hold my breath. How can I go without talking to the small town locals without seeming like a bitch? I guess the only thing I can do is hope what they say about first impressions isn’t true.

Luckily enough for me, the river, which had dwindled down to a creek, ran close enough to the highway so I could wash my feet and legs so I could look less dirty and homely. Unfortunately, about every person I passed stared at me. Everyone has dressed appropriately for the wintery beach weather. Except for me.

The first clothing shop that looked like it could have clothes for people “my age” and nearly completely empty was the first one I walked into. I bought nearly everything. Well, bought is a loose term. It was about four days after my transformation that I realized I had an ability. A “super talent” he called it. If I want someone to do something I want, they do it. It’s never something intense like falling in love with me or giving me their kidney or anything like that. It’s small stuff like if I want their approval I got it. If I want their coffee, they hand it over. Small stuff like that.

The shopkeeper handed over around six hundred dollars in merchandise with a bright smile on her face. I made a mental note to make an anonymous donation as soon as possible. Sometimes I felt bad about swindling people, sometimes I felt like it was a necessary evil. A girl’s gotta do what she’s gotta do.

It wasn’t that hard finding the library after the shops, and lucky for me, the librarian allowed me to stash my shopping bags behind her desk. The public computer whirred to life slowly, I could practically hear the viruses worming around. I wasn’t quite sure what I was looking for, or even where. I tried local listings, Craigslist, even some dark web shit. It wasn’t until I caved and made a fake Facebook account that I was able to find a single bedroom apartment to rent.

The man who owned the place was rather kind. I hardly had to use my ability to sway him to let me live rent free for the next foreseeable future. His name was Ernie and he had quite the beer belly and a bald spot on the back of his head, reminding me vaguely of a freshly cracked egg. I assume that he felt quite flattered that I was flirting with him. Actually, it could have been the innate human experience of being my prey who is inevitably lured to his death by my inhuman womanly charm. Who could say?

The apartment was painfully small but fully furnished. I couldn’t say if it was fully furnished as a part of the lease, which I did not have, or my newfound landlord was just too caught up in our conversation. I’ve been told I dazzle people. Whatever that means. A large full length mirror hung in the bedroom and I took a full look at myself for the first time in a long time.

My dirty blonde hair was a mess. I think I can see a dread forming in the curly mess. My black eyes peered back at me in disbelief, how could I let myself go like this? Dark circles clung around my eyes covering the splatter of freckles on my face, I looked like I hadn’t slept in weeks. More like years, I chuckled to myself. I need to feed soon. An uncommitted corner of my mind thought aimlessly about what animals are in my vicinity. The other portion of my mind looked back in the mirror. I still was pale as before, still more beautiful than I ever was as a human. It’s weird, feeling this conceited but it was true. My very nature was to lure humans in, even more so with my ability. I can get humans to literally lay before me, neck exposed. But, I promised myself a while ago to never feed on humans again.

This place was definitely not intended to be left fully furnished, a laptop laid on the desk in my new bedroom. I realized I never learned about this town before I decided on it. The ocean picked me. I wiped the laptop and set it up under my preferences. This time, password protected. My google search reminded me I’m currently in Brookings, Oregon. I had made a mental note earlier when I saw the welcome sign out of the corner of my eye on my way into town.

Oh, perfect! I exclaimed internally. There is a local community college that happened to offer marine biology courses. Marine biology was my intended major before this happened to me. Maybe this is a sign. Maybe I’m being an idiot and making stupid choices by surrounding myself with humans. But, honestly, I’m lonely and I don’t think I can take this punishment much longer.

Part 2

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sebastianshaw · 5 years ago

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@sammysdewysensitiveeyes - I felt bad you weren’t getting a lot of Pyro content in canon, so I wrote you some!

The next member of their team was meant to be arriving today. She was going to be a...most unusual addition. She was human. Pyro didn’t like it. The entire POINT of Krakoa was to keep away from humans who would hurt them. And sure this human allegedly very much did NOT want that, it was why Xavier handpicked her to be involved, and Xavier could vet a person inside and out...but Pyro couldn’t help WORRYING. Maybe she wasn’t a conscious plant, but what if someone was using her without her knowing? How was Xavier checking for THAT? Maybe the rest of Krakoa was happy to put their fate in the hands of men like him and Magneto and Sebastian Shaw, but Pyro was of the firm opinion that the guys on top never really had the best interest of the bottom at heart. But that didn’t mean he’d pass up a chance to roast some Verendi pigs, which was what had just been provided---the ship of their new ally had been attacked en route, big surprise, and thus the current crew of the Marauder---Sebastian, Shinobi, and Pyro---had been deployed to intervene. Shinobi kept their own boat safe while Pyro and Sebastian boarded the other---just in time to witness one of the Verendi hurling a sari-clad woman off the deck by her throat. “Allerdyce, take care of the rest,” said Shaw, tearing his shirt and jacket off with his bear---er, bare---hands. Not taking it off, literally TEARING. “Are you kidding?!” Pyro asked, shocked both at Shaw’s apparent intentions and at how beefed up the old bastard was under those tailored suits. Like he had eyes, he could tell the guy was huge, but JEEZUS. “I’m not having my team fail this early,” Shaw said, “And besides--” The rest came out mid-air as he dove into the drink, “--you’re hardly in swimming shape.” Secretly hoping he ‘teammate’ drowned, Pyro returned to the fray, gleefully keeping the Verendi at bay with his flames. That was the easy part. The hard part was not blowing them up in their stupid suits, or boiling them alive, or--- “ALLERDYCE!” he heard the oh-so-charming shout of his new ‘boss’ barking for him, just as the fun was over. “What, did you--” Pyro started to ask as he hustled over, admittedly not as fast as he could have. “Do the damn chest compressions!” Shaw cut him off. The woman, soaking wet and unconscious--or worse--was laid out on the deck. “Why--” “Because at my current strength I will pulverize her bones!” Shaw bellowed. Pyro didn’t like taking orders from Shaw, but he wasn’t about to let this lady die right in front of him either if half of what he’d heard about her was true, no matter what his misgivings might be about involving her in the Marauders. So he duly obeyed with the compressions, as well as mouth to mouth just so Shaw couldn’t. Because f this woman was an ally to mutantkind she deserved better than that. It worked. She gasped, her body jolting. “Alright, there she is” said Shaw, “You keep her conscious, Allerdyce---someone has to steer this ship.” With that, he departed to find the helm and radio Shinobi to let him know all was well, and knock out any remaining hostiles. Pyro glared at his back as he went, but then quickly turned his attention back to the semi-conscious woman, who was moving slightly now, her eyes glazed. She said something unsteadily in a foreign language. Well, in a language that wasn’t English; Pyro had been a foreigner in Southeast Asia and learned it really a matter of perspective. Speaking of that... “That Gujarati, love?” he asked gently. He couldn’t speak it nor understand it, but he thought he recognized it. He’d never got as far as India in his travels as a journalist, but he’d encountered this language in Singapore, Indonesia, and Malayasia. Sounded a bit different from her though, maybe because she was from India directly. Or just because she was terribly waterlogged. She mumbled something else weakly in the same tongue, putting one of her hands to her head. “I’m sorry, I don’t speak it,” he said, truly apologetic. The was woman silent for a moment, and her eyes closed. Oh no. Had he lost her? God, Shaw was never going to let him hear the end of it! Then she opened them, and said, “I apologize, I do speak English, I just...needed a moment.” “Take two, you earned ‘em,” Pyro smiled relieved. She began sitting up slowly, and Pyro helped her. “I...assume you saved me?” “Well, I helped,” he said, then amended, “Someone else go you out from the drink but I did the rest, getting you breathing again and all.” “Thank you, so much, I really have no idea what to say,” she sounded rather awed. Oh man, he’d forgotten what it was like to be a superhero! He’d never much cared for that life in general, the idea of just DOING things for people for nothing in return, especially people who HATED you for EXISTING as a mutant, but there had been a few times in Freedom Force like this where he felt really GOOD when people were actually grateful. “Aw it’s---it’s nothing, all in a day’s work really,” he said, puffing his chest as best he could, which was nigh-imperceptible given how skinny he was. “You have my deepest gratitude all the same. You also have a good ear---that was indeed Parsi Gujarati. “Ohhh!” Pyro was pleased he’d been right, “Is that why it sounded a bit off from what I heard ‘round Jakarta?” “You do indeed have a good ear! Yes, it’s very distinct. For instance, we use much softer consonants-- They were interrupted by Shaw’s sardonic tone over the intercom, “ I can see our guest is conscious, Mr. Allerdyce, so if you’re quite done flirting, send her to the helm for briefing before we get to the portal. At your leisure, of course.” Pyro did not say ass aloud but it was very, very much written on his face. *** Pyro was waking up waaay to early at Blackstone, specifically in Shinobi’s ridiculously oversized bed, Shinobi himself beside him. Pyro could tell his companion was going to be out cold for a long time yet, and probably wish he’d slept longer when he did wake up. Pyro would have preferred to just stay in bed himself, but nature called. And after a good long piss into the en suite bathroom---kind of surprised that the toilet wasn’t solid gold, although it did have more features than Shinobi’s phone---Pyro himself had yet to adjust to fancy celluars---found himself restless, and undergoing his typical post-drinking cravings for something salty. Kind of weird since wasn’t booze supposed to dehydrate you, but whatever, old man Shaw surely had some kind of super-fancy dried unicorn meat from a lost continent or whatever hanging around somewhere. He just needed to find it. But the place was a maze. Gilded maze, he made a mental note of that for one of his novels as he wandered the huge halls, intending to use it in the internal monologue of the heroine lost in the Marquis’s opulent mansion that nonetheless held an overbearing evil in its walls as potent and palpable in the air as that in his black heart. Actually shit, some of the decor in this place would make for great--- “Wider than a highway, huh?” Pyro had been so lost in cataloguing the fancy bric-a-brac along the way that he’d not noticed it had been joined by a flesh and blood person. Well, maybe flesh and blood, they looked silver. Certainly all the skin he could see was, which was a lot given their short little black robe, though he in his boxers certainly wasn’t about to be scandalized. Wait, silver skin? “Mindmeld, right?” “Shinobi tell you about me?” she was smirking a little. “Yeah, something like that,” he replied. It was suddenly really hard not to say something rude, given WHAT Shinobi had told him, but reminded himself if this woman was fucking Shaw, she deserved PITY more than anything. Plus it wouldn’t do to piss off her off before she told him where she got that coffee cup in her hand. “He didn’t tell me where to find the kitchen though.” “Which one?” Oh god of course there’d be more than one, Shaw probably didn’t want his food prepared in the same area as Shinobi’s guests since they were all people like Pyro. He groaned, lowering his head and burying his long bony fingers in his dandelion puff blond curls, “Just whichever one has some eggs and espresso.” “Come on,” she gestured lightly and turned, leading the way. Damn tall drink of water, might have been taller than Shaw, though far less broad than he was, but more so than Pyro...admittedly, that range probably covered almost everyone on the planet. She didn’t ask his name, so he offered his with some pride, “I’m Pyro, I’m one of the Marauders.” “Neat.” “‘Spect Mr. Shaw has a few things to say about me.” She looked mildly thoughtful a moment, “Uh...no, never mentioned you. I think I’ve heard the Marauders, but not Pyro.” “How about Mr. Allerdyce?” “Definitely not.” Ok, he was kind of insulted now, not by Mindmeld but he took it out on her anyway with a snippy, “Well he hasn’t mentioned you either.” She just gave him a funny look.” “Sorry,” he said abashed at how stupid and spiteful he sounded, “We just don’t get on too well, me and Sebastian.” “What a surprise.” “So you know he’s a pompous asshole.” “Oh yeah, it’s hilarious,” she said, “Like the other day, these two like, total Eurotrash blonds come in, and he told them they were living proof of how inbreeding ruined the royal Austrian family tree or something, I don’t know, and I just told the guy he shouldn’t wear black if he’s not going to clean the semen stains off it first. The girl, her outfit was great, but nothing I could say was going to be worse than that Basic Bitch haircut.” “So what, you two just hang around talking shit about everyone else like we’re dirt on your shoes?!” Any regret he had about being snippy was suddenly gone. “Yeah, pretty much,” she said, her blase tone not changing. He started to say something else but she turned her head to him and said, tone still the same, “Look, if you’re gonna get precious, I can leave you right here. Next person to find you will probably be him, you know. He’s always up crazy early.” It was a potent threat. Normally Pyro was not afraid at all to deal with that hirsute egomaniac, but in his current state, he was not fit for the battle of barbs. “No, no, lead the way,” he sighed. “Cool,” Mindmeld turned her gaze front again and added, “Sorry you’re mad I’m his dick puppet.” If Pyro had a liquid in his mouth he would have spit it out. He must have made some kind of sound, because she asked, “What, Shinobi not mention that?” “He uh...he mentioned it a lot, yeah. “Good,” she smiled at him, and turned away. Weird. They got to small kitchen, very normal looking. So much so that it felt almost surreally out of place. “Drip’s over there,” Mindmeld pointed. Okay, nice, Shaw had a proper espresso machine. No surprise, he probably kept a full roasting machine and French press and other fancy barista shit in HIS kitchen---he was obviously not using THIS one. While he put on the drip, Mindmeld sat down and started playing idly with a phone left on table, obviously hers. Pyro was sure the bowl of Lucky Charms next to it surely wasn’t Sebastian Shaw’s. “You uh, live here?” “Yeah basically,” she did not look up from her phone, “Beats public housing.” Pyro realized he hadn’t thought about how everyone on Krakoa was living; he’d been basically on a boat the whole time himself. “What, is it bad?” he asked, imagining the crowded slums he’d seen in some of his travels, as well as the crappier apartments he’d stayed in, which was most. “Nah, but this is better.” “Yeah well, the rent seems high to me.” “You just have a different landlord.” “Hey, I’m nobody’s kept--” The espresso shot was ready, and it going off gave him a moment to cool down again. “Sorry, there’s nothing wrong with...with you,” he said, after taking his cup and sitting down across from her, “I just feel bad for Shinobi, he says you two used to be..” . “Together? Kinda, yeah. He tell you the part where he left me to die? or before that, where I was stuck in somebody else’s body and he was still ready to put the guy through a depowering machine while I was inside him?” “I, uh...no.” Was there some kind of mistake? He’d thought Shinobi was harmless. He knew the guy was selfish and spoiled, but it was hard to imagine him that cold. “Yeah, I bet not,” she said, her tone still the same, “He doesn’t seem like he has it in him, does he?” “Uh...no.” “Well, even a rat will bite if it’s back is against the wall,” her eyes rose from her phone and met his intensely, “So if you’re in deep shit, don’t count on him to pull you out.” They went back to her phone, “He’s beautiful though so, you know, keep doing what you’re doing, I’m not judging.” “Uh...” Pyro had no idea what to say to this, “So is that why...” He had thought it had been money, since anything Shinobi had was actually coming from Sebastian, but now he wondered if it was for... “Vengeance? Pyro nodded. “Could you think of a BETTER way?” Pyro admitted he could not. “You must be pretty dedicated,” he said, still not able to get the ‘ick’ feeling quite out. It wasn’t the idea of sex for benefits his skin was crawling at, it was sex with SHAW. He supposed he could see the physical appeal if that man wasn’t so personally repulsive, but... “I mean, I just came back to life like this month” she shrugged idly, “I’ve got nothing from before to go back to, I’ve got nothing else going on.” “I don’t know, you look like you got it going on to me,” Pyro gave an exaggerated wink. That made her snort-laugh. Okay, he felt they were good now. And he felt suddenly a lot warmer to her. Not from knowing she had better reasons than he thought---the reasons unsettled him actually---but because of how similar their situations were. A situation doubtless shared by many Krakoans but he hadn’t had a real chance yet to talk to many Krakoans. He had planned to spend today fixing that actually, going and finding out if what few friends he’d had in his life before were here now. Like Dom. Wondered if Mindmeld had any, a Dom or a Mort or a Fred. Kinda doubted it, somehow. “Hey, uh, listen,” he began. She looked up from her phone. “Do you wanna go...check out the island with me? I been at sea since I came back, I don’t know what’s on it, but there’s got to be SOMETHING people been doing all day for fun, right?” She regarded him a long moment. “Yeah,” she finally said, “I’d like that."

#fic #writing #alt marauders #pyro

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