#I seem to get fewer bots there

[artschoolglasses]

For the love of god, Tumblr, do something about these bots.

I swear most of my new follows are bots. And some tags I wander into are just AI nonsense spewed by bots that doesn’t make any sense. Surprised I haven't broken the block button yet. 😩

[sweet7simple]

Mech Pregnancy and Protoform Development of Gestating Sparklings

Here is what I have compiled on Cybertronian "reproduction" from More Than Meets the Eye, specifically the Holiday Special and Volume 5:

Holiday Special:

So this would be the protoform development for a forged sparkling and it lends support to that, if Cybertronians gave birth to their own Sparklings, then they would likely be an egg-like form (yes, I know it's not actually a sparkling, but can we all agree that Swerve is strangely well-informed on protoform development for forged Cybertronians?)

So what would slide out from the gestation tank has no discernable features yet and still needs hours if not days before the protoform resembles an adult Cybertronian, but I still don't have an answer for the size of this thing - at what point does it reach its full size? Cybertronians before the war went to academies, so what point does the protoform receive an education instead of having relevant information jammed into its brain module right before deployment like a MTO cold construct?

(More under cut)

But, let's be honest, I am going out of order here. Let's go to Volume 5 where we encounter a hot spot of re-ignited sparks on the moon:

So this is being constructed cold.

And this is forged - as well as the official story for how cold constructed bots were made, which apparently differs from the truth. Here is the truth for how cold constructed sparks were actually formed:

So all cold constructs were made from the matrix - but what if they did come from igniting healthy sparks to make new ones?

What if you used the energy of two sparks to create an entirely new one and that sparkling attached itself to a parent spark for some time before it dropped to a gestation tank (this is common in fanfiction and I love it so much, it makes the most sense)? As these two orbs of immense power and life resonate with one another, creating waves of energy that can be interpreted as pleasurable for the interfacing bots, excess energy could gather itself into a separate orb that borrows the life code from both parents, becomes randomized, and this creates a new life code for a separate entity. It stays in the spark chamber for a period of time - I don't know, decoding or storing energy or something, I am very bad with electronics - before dropping down to an artificial gestation tank.

And this is where the valve/plug comes into play if you so desire because now we have the issue of, where is the spark going to go? It needs a protoform. It needs the materials to make a protoform. It also needs liquids.

Cybertronians seem to live off energon and anything you can make from energon, but there have been references and images in the comics of Cybertronians have oil as a waste product, so they need a separate compartment for oil away from their energon tank and they also are said to have (in fanfiction, at least): oral solvents, lubricant, transfluid, optic fluid, etc... All those will require their own compartments and they will all have either been diluted from the energon or will have an origin in a separate liquid that isn't mentioned. Let's keep in mind that they will also need some sort of oil for their hinges and their nanites for upkeep.

So I believe these gestation tanks are where the Sparklings develop their egg-like protoform with all these liquids that they themselves can't make yet, and I think they get what they need from nanite colonies as there is no umbilical cord (not unless you want the bots to have belly buttons). I like to think of them as nannyites - nanites that, once a protoform hits the gestation tank, have latent codes that becomes active and now have protoform-related tasks versus whatever tasks they did beforehand. The nannyites will likely take these resources from the carrying parent, everything from fluids to energon stores to living metal that the nannyites will adapt or make compatible for the sparkling.

So this carrying parent suddenly has fewer nanites colonies themselves, a thinner layer of living metal, and depleted storages of fluids.

Hear me out, hear me out: Valveplug interfacing helps the carrying parent because transfluid will contain necessary materials for the protoform.

I am going to take it a step further and say that it is that first shot of transfluid into the gestation tank during spark and valveplug interfacing creates input that electronically signals to the receiving parent to gather the excess energy from the spark play via centripetal force like a satellite and that force signals the excess energy to turn on life codes it recycled from both parents and create its own life code. That transfluid inside of the gestation tank also turns on those latent codes for the nannyites to get the compartment prepared. It's that first dose of necessary materials and every dose of transfluid after that is stored in the gestation tank for the protoform.

Which brings me to the idea that I have seen on AO3 where bots go into heat:

What if a mech goes into heat as a way to store transfluid from their partner?

I am largely talking out of my ass here because I don't know anything about how machines work, but I know there are a lot of hormones and signals and work that goes into human pregnancy.

The downside of this is that, if all bots were once forged and now they are, let's say, "birthed", then these constructs would be artificial: the gestation tank and the fertile centripetal force with its satellite sparkling and the interface array with its gestational passage and the nannyites and the transfluid. These would have to be constructed cold and surgically added, and you would have to create codes that turn on these cascading or stacking protocols (I don't know the correct computer term for when one event triggers another event triggers another event and so on) and you would have to manufacture filters and tanks and lines for the creation of gestational lubricant and transfluid.

This is just me rambling because I can't stop thinking about all this, but I am not ready to write a mechpreg story.

Please talk to me about Cybertronian reproduction, I am not normal about this.

[mechncheese]

Is there any reason Nautica isn’t in your Au? Feels weird how few women seem to be around let alone in your main group.

Nautica is in my au ! I've mentioned her a few times, she's back on Cybertron with my Cybertron team and she plays a role with the main Cybertron plot ! I just haven't had the time to draw/design anyone else bc of my thesis

I kept the Team Ambition group small so I apologize that I haven't added anymore into the main group, I have the story split into 2 parts (they happen at the same time and I think they are equally as important with one another) so everyone else + the bigger cast is back on Cybertron

I'm really sorry that it does feel weird though, I don't get many asks about the bots back on Cybertron (mostly/likely because I haven't drawn the lineup + haven't elaborated on what anyone is doing) Arguably, they have the bigger role and my Ambition team is.. more like a sitcom, so I've been trying to figure out plot related stuff. I promise that I don't have anything against women though, TF just has fewer women characters but I really tried to include whoever I could ! I'll do better about shifting my focus and bringing more spotlight onto them though

[nothing-leave-me-alone]

Transformers one swap au

Character posts

Main 4 first and next post will be the others.

Sentinel

Has chronic back pain due to his wings being cramped inside his backplate. Without a cog they are stored there causing back ache and hip pain.

Sentinel is smart, very smart but can't sit still or listen for long. His charisma makes up for it somewhat. So he wants to prove himself useful. (my adhd king just like me fr)

Regarded as wasted potential. Bumblebee is slightly sweet on him due to seeing himself in him. "I can do it, I swear I can. Just... Just let me show you what I can do"

Made a golden hover board with scrap metal as a mobility aid since he can't wear a jetpack like the other due to his wings making bumps in his back

So good at slipping into hard to reach places and manouvering around the factories ever moving components

Wants to participate in the kaon 5000. Unlike OG Orion he dosent do it for the other cogless, but for himself, to prove he can help

He feels he needs to make up for his inability to do as much as others.

Breaks into the kaon collyseum repeatedly to use their training rooms and take scrap metal for his own use

Arachnid

Has horrible optic sight but very very capable with her hands none the less

Perfect hard working arachnid, the model cogless Smith. Yet so so alone for her 'unusual' behavior and body

Projecting my body dysmorphia and bad eyesight onto her

Feels responsible for sentinel. Both out of worry for his delicate constitution and for being the only bot who seems to like her

Respects starscream as her superior and they have a mutual understanding of sentinels unruly behavior.

Cannot for the life of her get into bees good graces. She does things too well and still fumbles social interactions with her supervisors

Starscream

Starscream, or screamer, as everyone calls him, or Star as fewer (only sentinel) call him is the head cogless bot of sentinels smithing team.

Perfectionis, to the extreme

He's specifically good at spotting any fault in a blade or blaster with a single sweep of the optics.

Very, Very critical of quality control.

has no trine but he still feels the loss of it. He feels an enhanced sense of responsibility over the bots under him.

Deep need for control. Things must be done his way and done right. He feels something deeply missing in him and he can't quite tell what.

Feels a horrid sense that something is missing and out of his control and it scares him. So maybe if he can micromanaged everything and everyone around him, this deep hole in his spark will just stop

Annoyed by sentinels disregard for his perfectly planned life yet so so worried over his weakest member. Why can't he just stay still and do his part.

Darkwing

Resides in sublevel 50, it's not a smitting level..... It's a weapon testing facility...

Darkwing lives in a constant battle, drones come at random intervals to quality test the weapons the smiths make in here.

Darkwing proved no good at forging weapons, or making ammo, or smiting armor or even shipping them out.

Too feral, too dumb, too much, his only use was deemed as a weapon himself but without a cog he wouldn't last in the arene

His job? survive.

He's not as alone as bee as many cogged bots come here willingly when they are deemed unfit for the front lines and they can't cope with the failure

They don't last long so he hasn't had permanent friends in a while.

VERY excited when other cogless joined him down there in level 50, these guys must be real tough stuff to make it down there without cogs. Looks up to sentinel for persevering despite it all

Thinks arachnid is cool

Starscream please stop yelling at him he just dumb like that

[sturns-mermaid]

SUBMITTING TO AUTHORITY 4

other parts here | not proofread | chris ver | chai bot

I'm not responsible for what you consume on the internet, read at your own risk!

🖤 wc: 1.6k | got carried away | divider: @/inklore, @/aquazero

Previously on submitting to authority...

“I’m sorry,” you whispered as he sat on your desk and you stood between his legs, your thumb stroking his cheek. “I’m sorry too,” he whispered, hands moving to your waist. “You’re such a good boy for me, I’m just not used to affection, is all” you whisper kissing his pouty lips. “Come here baby,” you coo pulling him into a hug. “Don’t pull that shit again, got it?” you say pulling back and fixing his tie. He smiles at you, his cheeks still red as he quickly presses a kiss to your lips, pulling away and meeting your gaze.

WARNINGS: sub matt x dom reader, shy matt, pet names, teasing, matt standing up for reader

The sun crept in through your bedroom window, casting a golden glow on your features as you slept. Your alarm soon interrupted the peaceful moment going off, showing you would have to get ready for work. Every morning you dreaded waking up and having to go to the office. Being the CEO, of course, you had the worst of it, having to answer countless emails and file paperwork. Thankfully, this was the time of the year when everything slowed down. There was less paperwork to file, fewer meetings to attend, and less corrupt sniffing around the headquarters. You sit up stretching and rubbing your tired eyes, your phone dings, grabbing your attention as you grab it off the charger and see a message from Matt.

‘Good morning miss, did you sleep well?’ smiling to yourself, you clutch your phone to your chest, and thank goddess you were home alone so no one could see this side of you. How you let out a happy squeal every morning when you got a good morning text from him. Of course, you would never admit it out loud. ‘Good morning, my favorite employee, I slept fine. What about you sweet boy?’ to say the least, Matt was giggling and kicking his feet every time you replied to his message. It had become a daily occurrence for him to text you every morning. He would always send you a picture of him getting your morning coffee. 

You walk into the doors of the office building being greeted by all the wandering employees and the front desk person who you forgot the name of, your head held high as you walk to your office. Passing by Matt’s cubicle every morning like clockwork, he smiles at you spinning around in his chair as you hold out your coffee to you. “Mmm, so good” You moan as you take a sip, teasing him as you see his cheeks redden. He clears his throat, dragging his chair back to his desk as he tries to keep his composure. It was always so hard around you to keep his thoughts and reactions underway. Half the time he was sure just looking at you could make him come in his pants, but he tried so hard not to be pathetic and be good for you. It got so bad he always kept an extra pair of work slacks in the trunk of his chair just in case. It’s not like he meant to but you always looked so good.

His eyes snapped up to your face as he noticed you had made your way to sit on his desk, heels slipping off, leaving you in your black tights. Your foot toying with the growing bulge in his pants. “You seem distracted, everything okay?” you ask, playing innocent as your foot presses harder down on his clothed member. He lets out a whine at the touch, his body on fire as you continue your movements. “Gotta stay quiet baby, don’t want things to end like last time.” you tease knowing that last time people gave him judgemental looks for your last encounter in his cubicle. You lean forward your hand making its way to cover his mouth as your other hand works on unbuckling his belt. “Are you going to be a good boy for me?” you whisper watching as he frantically nods. 

The moment ended too soon as you heard the elevator ding from the front entrance and the loud clicking of heels. “Fuck…” you muttered as you moved your hands away from his face and his half-undone belt. Matt, being utterly confused, fumbled with his hands as he adjusted himself. “What is it?” he questioned, moving closer to you, his hands traveling up your thighs as you covered your face with your hands. Your business rival, your number one enemy. Her company had been number one on the charts for years and every year you are so close to beating her, a smidge percentage off. The results were coming in a few weeks, which business would be the top seller and which one would be the winning company.

She always showed up to ‘wish you luck’ which was her making sure you knew she was going to win. “Well, well, if it isn’t Ms. Second Place.” She stood in the doorway, her voice laced with mockery, echoing as you rose from Matt’s desk, adjusting your skirt. “What do you want?” you asked coolly, slipping your heels back on. Her eyes raked over you, then briefly flicked to Matt, who stood awkwardly, holding his hand out in a stiff, uncertain gesture. “So this is how you spend your time on the job? Are you the office pet now, instead of the boss?” she sneered, dismissing Matt’s hand with a casual flick before stepping toward you, closing the distance.

Your jaw tightened, and you felt the surge of anger rising, but you took a deep breath, forcing yourself to stay composed. “I could say the same for you,” you snapped back, knowing she’d never put in the same level of hard work. “We all know how you got to the top.” Her smile was cold, sharp. “Sometimes, you have to make... sacrifices. But you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?” She stepped closer, her eyes trailing down to your skirt. “Pathetic,” she muttered, her voice low with disdain. “You think you can beat me? Where’d you get that skirt? Marshalls?” You felt her fingers trace the edge of the fabric, and a chill ran through you.

You took a small step back, refusing to let her rattle you. “At least I’d win with honesty,” you bit back, your voice cutting through the air like a blade. “Which is more than I can say for you.” You pointed at her, an obvious jab at her plastic surgery—something she didn’t pay for with her own earnings. “Tell me, what’s your secret—how much did you invest in that?” Her eyes flashed with fury, but she held her ground. Matt, on the other hand, had been silent, caught between shock and awe. He had no idea you’d ever had a target on your back like this. He’d always been intimidated by you—he wasn’t proud of it, but it was the truth. “Look, at least she didn’t have to... sleep her way to the top,” Matt found himself blurting out before he could stop it. “What is it, collecting life insurance policies?” All eyes snapped to him, and his face drained of color.

Your mouth dropped open as you turned to him in disbelief, but before you could react, she shot him a glare so venomous it could’ve burned a hole through him. “You think that’s funny?” Her voice was ice, but her footsteps clicked sharply toward him as she closed the gap. Matt swallowed hard, taking a cautious step back. “Very cute,” she said, her tone dripping with sarcasm. “Getting your little employee to defend you.” She turned to you with a malicious grin. “But good luck—you’re going to need it.” With that, she turned on her heel and strutted out, her footsteps fading into the distance.

You stood there, her words hanging in the air, you were determined more than ever to win that first place. Her words stung but not as much as they would sting when she saw the results and saw your company on the top charts instead of hers. “Hey, are you okay?” Matt whispered from next to you as he wrapped his arms around you from behind, resting his chin on your shoulder. You nodded, your head tilting slightly to the side as he placed kisses over your soft skin.

Closing your eyes, the feeling of his plump lips on your warm skin, you relaxed some of the tension leaving your shoulders. An idea sparked in your mind, your eyes fluttering open as you smiled to yourself, you need a break. And you knew just the thing that would relieve all of this tension built up in your overworked body, you were so stressed with all the news about the company’s stock market and sales charts you just needed to let go and clear your mind.

“Matt?” you questioned, earning a hum in response as he nuzzled his face closer to your neck. “Do you want to stay with me over the weekend?” you questioned swaying your hips in his arms. “Mmm,” he mumbled against your skin, his hands moving to cup your breasts. The day flew by fast as you tried your best to not get distracted by Matt, he looked so good you had called him into your office just to stare at him while he got all shy and flustered. Finally, it was the end of the day and you were walking towards the exit of the building after clocking out, your gaze met Matt who was waiting outside for you. 

You had Matt right where you wanted him, from the moment you arrived at your condo you wanted to pounce on him but he insisted you guys cuddle and watch a movie together. And now he was in your bed at last, your hands trailing all over his body memorizing him. “So pretty baby,” you whispered as he lay sprawled out on your bed, you had already undressed him which left him a whining mess.

“Need you so bad,” he whimpered feverishly, leaning his head up to kiss you. Your hand moved to his chest to push him down onto the soft mattress. “Shh, stay still for me,” your hands working on tying him up with pretty pink ribbons. Tightening the fabric around his wrists to your bedpost, causing him to buck his hips forward. “Mama please…” he pleaded, his lips forming a pout. “Be patient sweetheart,” you cooed, kissing his forehead.

a/n: SORRY Y'ALL I GOT CARRIED AWAY SMUT PART NEXT TRUST 🤭

tags: @itsmaddielouis @oliviasthatgirl @brianna-grace12 @scorpio1205 @submattenthusiast @courta13 @mattsplaything @conspiracy-ash @anyaa2s @hazedsturns @eclipsturns @sofia-is-a-sturniolo-triplet-fan @immaqulate @t0riiiis @heartsonlyforchris @blushsturns @hearts4werka @mattsbows @sweetshuga @leoslaboratory @pair-of-pantaloons @riasturns  @lezleeferguson-120 @sturnsflirt @sturnsblogs @fratbrochrisgf

[m00nchildwrites]

pairings: female!reader (first person) x Xavier

tags: romance, eventual smut, based on storyline of game but diverges, little angst and feelings, resolved feelings, fluff, hurt/comfort, injury, these two need to just kiss already, use of her/she/you depend on the pov at the time, reader/MC/you is expressed as female and during smut times will use female-at-birth anatomy terms- she/her, first person when written from "your" pov- use of I/my/mine, referred to as y/n, will have nsfw content mdni- please read with caution, will be tagged, my smut gets ...vivid. Will have content from part of story line, myth cards, and other cards [possibly...probably].

{ch list: 1, 2 , 3, 4, 5 (here), 6}

Chapter 5: Lumiere

When I arrived in Azure Square, the scope of the situation fully sank in. There was devastation everywhere. It looked post-apocalyptic. The skyscrapers' bottom floors all had their glass blown out like from an explosion, likely the same metaflux explosion that was on set earlier that morning. Broken hologram signs were hanging or scattered on the ground below. Taxis and cars were wrecked, crushed, or on fire. It had all fallen into ruin. People ran around screaming as hordes of Wanderers attacked anything and everything that moved. Otto-bots were smashed to pieces. Explosions shook the ground. It was like when the Deepspace Tunnel first appeared when I was a child. This level of destruction had not taken place in the city since that time.

The chaotic metaflux was spreading like wildfire outwards as though it was being created and pushed further to encompass more territory. It was so thick in the air; it nearly distorted it like heat waves off of pavement in the height of summer. Hunters were already there when I arrived. More and more of my colleagues poured into the square, fighting desperately to contain the horde and their destruction. Others ushered the trapped civilians to safety. 

I immediately got to work. My guns smoked from the amount of firing. I covered countless civilians as they ran, reuniting crying children with mothers and moving so many others to safety. On and on it went, yet it seemed that as quickly as we put them down, more poured in, as though they were just endlessly respawning. Hunters began falling around me one by one, and I could feel myself growing weaker. The continued and constant use of my evol over such a period of time was draining my energy. 

After a particularly nasty fight, my vision blurred and I stumbled, catching myself on an overturned taxi and ducking behind it to catch my breath. I squeezed my eyes shut trying to recombobulate myself. My ears were ringing. But the sounds of battle seemed further away and fewer. 

Perhaps we had made a dent afterall… or maybe the Wanderers were chasing my teammates down elsewhere. I had to pull it together and see for myself. I shook my head in a feeble attempt to shake the blurriness out of my sight. My heart was pounding from the exertion. My body was burning too, from cuts, burns, bruises, and gashes. My uniform would have to be replaced.

I tsked. My head falling back against the metal of the ruined taxi. It was beginning to look like I wouldn’t make it out of here. Like none of us still here would. Surely more teams were on their way. But, would they make it? And where were these Wanderers coming from? No. My uniform was the last thing I needed to worry about. 

I reloaded my guns and, breath returned, stood from my cover and threw myself back into battle. In the distance, I saw a Hunter, a familiar figure, someone that I had worked with before- gone on that team building trip with- collapse. I rushed over- or tried- but a massive Wanderer blocked my path, forcing me to fight it. I tried to get a glimpse of the Hunter, Steve perhaps, to check on them, but by the time I finally defeated the hulking Wanderer, my energy was dangerously low. Steve was no longer on the ground. Someone else must have gotten to them. My vision swimmed.

I knew I had heavy blood loss from all my cuts and gashes. No doubt, that was not helping my light headedness and blurred vision. But it was my heart that hurt the most. With intense pain. My vitals were flashing orange on my watch: “Warning! Hunter, your energy is low! Warning! Hunter, your heart rate is irregular. Please seek out a safe-”

Beep.

“No shit,” I clicked my tongue, shutting off the annoying AI warning voice. I pushed onwards ignoring the warnings to find a safe place or to seek out medical care. People’s lives were in danger. I didn’t have that luxury.

An explosion made me duck as a burning car finally blew up. Today had quickly become a very bad, no good day. I huffed, standing from cover and firing more shots at a Wanderer. It screeched as it disintegrated into metaflux. One more down. Several dozens or more to go. I grit my teeth and pushed on through the pain.

“Y/N! Are you alright?” 

I heard Captain Jenna over my comms. No doubt my vitals were going crazy at HQ. “Captain…” My voice felt weird, garbled to my own ears. That couldn’t be good, surely. 

“It’s likely another Metaflux explosion will…. occur at your… location….Retreat. I repeat…” 

The signal cut in and out. I squinted, pressing the comm to my ear, straining to hear, “Captain? Captain? Can you repeat that?”

“You can’t…. Fighting…. Numbers too…Retreat…”

“Captain?” I hissed at the failed signal as it cut out. I needed to get somewhere where I could get through to HQ. Someone might need help. Using my watch's guidance, I mapped out the best way out. 

I was about to head out when I heard a young girl crying. “Help!” 

My head spun around searching for the crying. There is another child?! 

“Help us!” a woman’s voice called out as well.

There are still people here trapped! I couldn’t just leave them to die. I reloaded and began searching the square trying to stay covered as much as I could until I found them. My vision swam off and on, almost like the world was tilting. Maybe I damaged my inner ear? 

Finally, through smoke and dust, I saw an arm waving from the collapsed cafe at the edge of the Square. I sent the coordinates to any nearby Hunters and HQ, calling for backup to help me dig them out. They were okay, but blocked by the fallen entrance. But in the end, danger found me first.

My watch sensed them first. Three alerts popped up in quick succession as three Wanderers appeared. “Threat level: S.” Figures.

“Get back!” I yelled into the collapsed cafe, “Take cover at the back of the cafe. Can you do that?” I yelled orders to them desperately.

“Yes,” the woman called back, “There is a storage room.”

“Hide in there until backup arrives! I am going to lure them away!” I turned back to the Wanderers and jumped and yelled, waving my arms, “Hey! Hey you giant, stupid, big ugly lugs! Look at me! I’m over here!”

The three loud roars of rage signaled that they got the message.

“Oh shit,” I took off running, three giants pounding the ground in pursuit. Good. They took the bait. Unfortunately, the bait was me. 

As I ran, I felt my belt for how many bullets and clips I had left. My equipment was low. Too low. And my stamina and energy wouldn’t last much longer, but maybe if I could just draw them far enough away from the civilians in the cafe and keep these three busy until help arrived… maybe then the civilians would be safe. Maybe I’d even manage to take one down with me.

I spotted a clearing in the square. It was all the way on the opposite side, far from the civilians. The perfect place for a last stand. 

As I pushed my legs to run faster, I thought of Grandma and Caleb. Maybe I will be seeing them soon? I thought of my teammates and Tara; I hoped they were okay.

I thought of Sylus and his annoying habit of calling me kitten; I’d never admit it but he was growing on me. I’d miss his terrible singing and how he always had my back, no questions asked. I’d even miss his damn gothic chicken.

I thought of Zayne, my childhood and dearest friend currently; he would be devastated and so very mad I didn’t play it safe. I’d miss our meetups for sweets and his sarcastic dry humor and getting him to crack a smile as I sang loudly to songs in the car.

I thought of Rafayel; he would be so heartbroken to lose his favorite bodyguard and adventure buddy. I’d miss his antics and our beach walks and Reddie and trying to guess the song he was humming as he painted until he finally gave up and we’d dance around his studio singing whatever pop tune came to our heads.

Inevitably, as I spun to a stop, guns aimed at the three massive S-class Wanderers coming for me, I thought of Xavier. Of how sweet and peaceful he looked as I last saw him, curled up and sleeping, silver-blonde hair tousled in his sleep. He was gorgeous, painfully so. And I never told him. Never told him what I felt. How my heart skipped and then raced just for him. How his smile was brighter than the sunrise and made me want to spout poetry and listen to love songs. How his gentle touches made heat and longing fill my very being. I thought about how worried he got over me, how protective he was. How he seemed to naturally guard me from harm not because he thought me incapable, but because it was natural, instinctual. I thought of how his face would crumple when he learned that I hadn’t made it this time. Because I wouldn’t. I thought about him and I realized-

I love him.

“Xavier…” a tear slipped down my cheek as I took aim and fired, “I’m sorry.”

 A roar filled my ears and my head whipped sideways. When did that Wanderer get over there?!

And then darkness and pain.

My mind seemed to flicker to the past. A memory. All those years ago to before when I was a child. The smell of smoke was the same. The screams and roars of Wanderers. 

I clutched my gun and fired towards the Wanderers I knew were around me, hovering nearby, waiting to pounce again. The pain-filled roar of one told me I hit one. They were going to crush me. This was it. My mind played out the nightmare from my past like an overlay on top of the present. It was so similar, but different. This time, I wouldn’t make it, would I?

Dazzling light suddenly surged through the dark haze of my failed vision and in my memory. A shockwave of light blasted through the area. The Wanderers had no place to hide. They dissipate into metaflux dust leaving only the echo of their shrill screeches in the air. Even the distant sounds of fighting stopped.

Just how big was that blast of light? My mind felt woozy as my vision came through as dark shadows and shapes. Another slash of light slashed through the darkness of my vision. Golden light filled the air and poured down like rain, washing away filth. I could hear the pops and screeches of more Wanderers further away.

I blinked trying to focus. I struggled, trying to sit up. I saw a beam of light flashing through the golden speckles of light dancing in the air like fireflies. It is headed towards me like a meteor. Space and time itself appeared to distort around the radiant light. I should likely feel worried. The intense beam was headed for me, but I felt only serenity. My arms gave out and I fell backwards. As I fell, my memory flashed back through my mind– my memory of the past event like this one– suddenly it came through clear and vivid.

Arms caught me; Hands cradled my head just before it hit the concrete. I heard voices exclaiming surprise and shock. People no doubt were drawn out by the spectacle of light that sent the Wanderers away. But all I could see was him.

Dazed, I looked up into the face of the one who caught me and held me embraced into their chest. Something about him was familiar. His energy or perhaps his scent? I blinked away the haze, trying to focus. I saw silvery blonde hair… I think?

“Xa-Xavier?” my voice is barely a whisper.

The figure didn’t answer but merely wiped at blood on my face and at the corner of my mouth. Wishful thinking. He isn’t here. Through my blurry vision, all I could see was a warm gaze, profound as a lake but deep and intense with urgency. Then, I saw it. The mask.

“You!” I gasped.

He swept me off my feet as he carried me up into his arms, then we were in the air. The wind blowing past my face. In my exhaustion, my vision started to blur and darken at the edges again. 

“Close your eyes if you're tired,” a soft and warm voice drifted to me through the haze. He cradled my head to his neck as more flashes of radiant light rain down from his blade. I heard cheering from below as the last of the Wanderers were cleared and metaflux fluctuations righted. A glowing moon signalling the user. Lumiere. He had returned, and like 14 years ago, he saved me again.

Sharpness cut through the haze and I gasped in pain. The arm around me tightened. I leaned back to reassure him, but my voice caught in my throat. The pain had cleared my vision. The face before me was crystal clear.

“Xavier?” The pain hit again and I clenched my eyes shut with a hiss. My words cut off and stuck in my throat in exchange for a groan of pain. 

“Sleep,” he spoke, cradling my head back into his neck, “Don’t force yourself to stay awake.” His gloved hand brushed over my eyes, and they closed, heavy, as I relaxed in his arms, my guard relinquished at last. And I slipped into a world of sweet darkness.

-

I came to sometime later. The moon was in the sky. 

“Does it hurt?”

I turned my head and saw Xavier bandaging my hand. 

“I did some first aid,” he continued softly, concern sitting heavy on his brow. “The roads are still a wreck right now. I will take you to the hospital for a thorough examination later when I can get through.”

I turned my head the other way towards the sounds of people talking and crying. They sounded far but close at the same time. It was then I realized that we were on a rooftop. Down below, Azure Square was reduced to ruble. Rescue workers ran around searching for who needed immediate help. People were looking for loved ones. It was a mess. Camera crews and journalists had also arrived, trying to get the latest updates.

Xavier’s small huff of a laugh drew my attention back. His grin was tiny as he looked at me softly in amusement, “Don’t worry. The people in the cafe are safe.” 

My brows smoothed. He knew me so well. I had been wondering about them.

“And there aren’t any other casualties,” his face fell slightly, his hand brushed away a strand of hair from my face, “You’re the only one who is severely injured.”

I studied his face. The contours of it etched into my heart, but now that I am seeing them again, they seem shrouded in unfamiliar shadows. Secrets.

“Why are you here?” I asked at last.

He looked down, away from my gaze, “Who else were you expecting to see?” He deflected my question as he busied himself with my wounds again.

I was tired. Tired of the secrets. I pressed, likely for the first time, I truly pressed, “But how did you get here?” The image of him curled up asleep in that pod flashed in my mind. “Are you okay now?”

“I slept well, so I am fully recovered.”

“How? You practically shut down in the no-hunt zone… Then there was that pod and those syringes-”

He sighed, “You’re the one who needs to be cared for right now.” He gently pushed my shoulder, forcing me to lay back again.

I obeyed with a huff and then winced in pain.

He tsked, a small sigh leaving his mouth as he worried over the bandages he had placed over various wounds. My side seemed to worry him in particular.

I felt the urge to explain how I got so bad, “It was urgent. I had to–”

“I only know that if I had been even a second later, I would’ve lost you. Forever.” Though his tone was flat.

“...No,” I tried to relieve that heaviness that settled on his shoulders, “that’s not- Don’t underestimate me. I’ve always been lucky.” I gently took his hand in mine, “14 years ago, Lumiere saved my life. And this time…” I looked into Xavier’s eyes. “Lumiere saved me again. I must be the luckiest person alive.”

His eyes studied my face, his expression calm aside from the storm of emotions swirling in his gaze. “You might just feel lucky…” he spoke, as his hand reached out to brush dirt from my face, gently, fingers lingering, “But for me, it’s a wonderful blessing.” 

The sounds of the news screens below reach our ears. Lumiere is declared the savior of the day's events and the one who vanquished the Wanderers. It is also suggested that he was the one who cleared up the odd anomaly from a few days ago with the apocalyptic storm. 

I glanced over to Xavier to see his brow furrowed and his mouth turned down. I hated seeing him troubled. And the news wasn’t exactly a good thing. I remembered the wanted posters in the Nest. Lumiere- Xavier could be in danger if anyone found out.

I reached out and placed my hand on his arm, “I am sure that news of Lumiere’s return will be all anyone talks about in the morning.” I smiled at him teasingly. He was lost in thought for a moment, then suddenly scooped me up into his lap. I squeaked in alarm and scrambled to wrap my arms around his neck, “Xavier, what the hell?”

He chuckled, holding me to his chest. “We should hurry.”

I blinked, “Why?”

“We need to get to the hospital. Otherwise, everyone will be rushing over after dawn to catch a glimpse of Lumiere.” He hesitated, glancing down at me, “Your doctor…”

“Dr. Zayne?”

He nodded, “You trust him?”

“I’ve known him since we were children.”

“But you trust him.”

“With my life… quite literally,” I grinned, but he wasn’t in the mood for jokes. Xavier’s tense expression didn’t shift as he held my gaze before looking down to the fray below us. His eyes were troubled, and I realized what he was getting at. I held his face between my palms, “Hey, look at me.” I smiled softly as his blue-blue gaze fell back on mine, “Zayne is a good person. He wouldn’t put anyone at risk.”

He frowned, lower lip pouting slightly, “Zayne?”

“Doctor Zayne,” I squished his cheeks slightly grinning at his pout, “but I would never want you to feel uncomfortable. If you can get me close enough, somewhere secret and hidden nearby, I can make it into the hospital myself.”

His pout fell into a flat look, “You’re wheezing.”

“What?”

He leaned his cheek slightly more into my palms, “Your breathing has a slight wheeze to it. I’m not letting you walk anywhere.”

“Xavier, Lumiere is wanted. You can’t be see-”

He shook his head resolutely, “You likely have a broken rib pressing into your lung. Your heart is also erratic.”

“The heart part is nothing.” His gaze darkened deeper into worry at that, but I waved it off trying to ease his stress, “I’m used to that. And I can breathe fine, see?” I tried to take a deep breath and gasped as a sharp pain tore through my rib cage and chest, “F-fuck!” 

Xavier’s eyes went wide, frantic. He called my name, standing. His arms tightened around me, “If you trust your doctor… then I will too.”

“Wha-”

“I will never leave you all alone. Ever,” His voice was soft but firm, leaving no room for debate. Pressing me closer, his lips brushed my forehead, “You might get dizzy. Hold on tight.”

I pressed my face into his neck and let my eyes close, taking in his scent. For a while back there, in the fighting, I was sure that I would never see him again. My arms tightened around him slightly at the thought. Now, though, he had come and saved me. My masked hero, Lumiere. My knight, my prince charming, Xavier. 

I smiled into his neck. Xavier, Thank you. Before I could react, the world around me started to spin again, “Ugh.” 

His chuckle reached my ear, raising goose bumps along my arms as his breath tickled at my ear, “I warned you.”

“Menace,” I hissed, earning another chuckle. 

The world stabilized and we were in a familiar office. I blinked, lifting my head from Xavier’s neck. My bewildered eyes met equally bewildered green eyes from his spot behind his desk. He appeared to have stopped in his movements to collect something. His hair was slightly a mess, showing how busy the hospital was with the attack. He looked frazzled, or as frazzled as Zayne ever looked.

Zayne looked from me to Xavier who still held me. His sharp, analytical eyes taking in Xavier’s clothing and widening just barely as recognition hit him. His eyes narrowed as he looked over my form. His hands clenched at his sides, the temperature dropping in the room as he made to step forward.

Xavier’s voice level but firm cut through the tension, “You are her doctor, yes? Dr. Zayne, correct?”

Zayne gave a slight nod. He looked to me, uncertain, seeking a question with his eyes. When I smiled slightly and waved my fingers in the air, the tension drained out of his stance and he sighed, sounding over my antics already. I couldn’t help but chuckle quietly. “And you are her partner, the Hunter…” He looked Xavier up and down, “or should I call you Lumi-”

“Xavier is his name.” My voice cut in, drawing two pairs of eyes. “Just Xavier, Dr. Zayne,” I repeated. The message clear. This knowledge wouldn’t leave this room. 

Zayne gave a slight shake of his head as he pinched the bridge of his nose, “Very well.” Zayne appeared not entirely happy with the situation. 

Xavier looked down at me with his brows raised, from surprise or what, I wasn’t certain. I gave his shoulder a small squeeze in an awkward hug, I was, afterall, still being held in his arms. It was sort of hard to hug him like this, but my reassurance worked because his face softened as he looked at me.

Zayne let out a sigh and moved to us, “I can take it from here… Xavier. Let me see her.” He reached out to take from Xavier’s arms, who took a half step back. Zayne rose a singular black brow.

I huffed, “Guys, I can walk.”

“Not on my watch.” “I think not.”

I frowned at both of them as they frowned at each other.

“I’m not leaving her,” Xavier declared.

“Xavier…” I sighed, annoyance at the lack of independence leaving me and concern for Xavier taking its place, “You can’t be seen. Lumiere buzz is everywhere and you very obviously,” I flicked his earring, “Are wearing his clothes.”

“No one has ever connected the dots before,” he argued even as he relaxed his hold slightly. I knew I was getting through to him.

“Yes, well, people are stupid,” I scoffed.

“Y/N,” Zayne chidded.

“What! It is true! What is this? A Superman movie? Take off the mask and POOF where’d Lumiere go?” I squeezed Xavier’s face between my palms and turned it towards Zayne, “Look at him and tell me it is not obvious!”

Zayne did in fact eye Xavier before tilting his head slightly and begrudgingly admitting, “Point made.”

I turned back to Xavier’s face, “See?”

Xavier’s eyes wavered. Something deep in those pools of azure rippled with some unknown fear and pain, “I can’t lose you. Not again.” 

The breath in my chest froze as he pinned me with those eyes. I felt the strangest sense of panic, desperation, and longing fill my chest; my arms tightened around his neck slightly, as though afraid if I didn’t hold on, he’d slip away into the stars and be gone from me forever.

“I think,” Zayne’s voice made me jolt suddenly pulling from that odd magnetic pull I had felt, “It would be best for all parties if I took it from here.” He looked to Xavier, who looked solemn. Zayne seemed to regard him differently than he had mere moments before. “Unless, of course, you wish to have all of the hospital and soon the media aware that Lumiere is here and just who he brought… single handedly… personally.” His eyes flicked to me pointedly.

Zayne was right, of course. If anyone found out that the legendary hero Lumiere had brought a woman to the hospital himself, the media would be in a frenzy spinning love stories, and I would be the target for their attention. I knew from Rafayel how much of a nightmare that could be. 

And Xavier knew it too from the way his shoulders slumped as his eyes averted briefly before fixing onto Zayne firmly. His eyes narrowed as he tilted his chin up briefly. His tone was firm, a slight sharp edge to it, “Do you want to get that under control then, Doctor?”

Zayne’s eyes fell to his hands where crystalline shapes had creeped up from his wrists. He looked slightly surprised and chagrined about it. As he shook them slightly, tiny snowflakes fell to the ground, the ice of his evol receding.

“Really, guys,” I interrupted, “I can walk.”

“You have a punctured lung,” Xavier stated matter-of-factly. “And you’ve lost a lot of blood. You’ll likely need an infusion.”

Zayne tsked, sweeping in, clearly over my ‘nonsense’ as he called my stubbornness, and gently took me from Xavier’s arms. The crystals were gone, but in their place, he looked absolutely unamused, “How did you manage this?”

I opened my mouth to retort that it was my job when Xavier spoke up.

“She was holding down the Square… single handedly.”

Zayne’s gaze fell to me sharply as mine snapped to Xavier, “Traitor.”

Xavier’s mouth twitched in an almost smile. My eyes narrowed. He looked to Zayne, “You will take care of her until I get back.”

Zayne looked at him as though he was dim, “I will look after her regardless of your return.”

I frowned, Zayne was being even more blunt than usual.

Xavier ignored it and looked back to me, “I will take care of everything. Just recover. I will be here when you get out.”

“What?” He had that look on him, the one he wore on missions, “Xavier? What are you-”

Zayne let out a tired sounding sigh and made for the door, “I trust you can find your way out?” He said to Xavier, but the flash of light behind us signaled Xavier’s exit.

Prying my eyes from the spot Xavier had just left from, I opened my mouth to insist on walking again, but he cut me off as he kicked the door to his office open.

“You have any other interesting friends I should be aware of?”

I scoffed, my head lulling as the tiredness and dizziness set back in as the adrenaline drained out of me. If you only knew. 

“Nurse!” I heard him call out as he began calling out orders to his team. But I had slipped back into the black of unconsciousness. My final thought was on Xavier, and how I had gotten my wish to see him again after all. And I got to see my childhood hero as well. My partner- neighbor- crush was secretly a superhero.

What an odd day.

-

I woke up to the annoyingly familiar sounds of medical machinery beeping. My vision was blurry as I blinked my eyes open, pulling my face from the sterile smelling pillow it was stuck to. My mouth felt like cotton. I smacked slightly trying to get moisture back in. My vision cleared and all I saw was red.

Well, red roses. Lots of red roses in crystal vases with black satin ribbons tied around them dotted around my room on every surface available. Or at least, every surface not filled with bouquets of fire lilies mixed with exotic looking purple, blue and pink flowers sprinkled with white baby’s breath. Those sat in crystal vases of their own. I blinked, sitting up and grabbing a card from each. I opened the red envelope first.

(Translated: Kitten, A little birdy told me that you had gone and gotten yourself  injured playing hero. We really need to have a talk about you and your martyr complex. It is vexing. Be a good kitten and be  patient. Allow yourself to heal. I am a call away if you need me. As for the ones responsible for your injury-  I am on it. Yours Truly, S)

I scoffed out a small laugh, shaking my head as I set the card down and looked at all the roses. I had no doubt before who they came from, but now I knew for sure. His line about the ones responsible made me pause. Did Sylus know who the ones were that were causing those suped-up Wanderers to appear? What was he going to do about it? I made a note to message him when I found my phone.

With a sigh, I moved onto the purple envelope. It had a slightly iridescent sheen to it, making hints of blues and pink shine out in the light. I smiled softly, fingers tracing the shell shaped wax seal. I knew who wrote this one, even before unfolding the expensive feeling paper. The looping hand of the calligraphy inside fit the man who wrote it.

(Translated: Miss Bodyguard, The sunset has lost its magic. The fishes of the reef are complaining so loudly that I am losing sleep– their friend that walked the beaches hasn’t been by and won't be for a while! I had to tell them the news to get them to give me a moment's peace. My inspiration is all dried up like a desert. How could you get so injured like this and leave me all alone to my own defenses? How shall I survive being apart from you? I will shrivel up and die of loneliness like a starfish stranded all alone in too small a tide pool. Will you take responsibility? Who will help me find the perfect shell for my collection? I started a new one, ya know? Got a whole new crystal vase for it and everything. So… you have to get better soon and help me find more shells to keep it company, yeah? You’ve really got to learn to not face things on your own, yeah? These hands aren’t just for painting. You have me, ya know? I’ve heard whispers. Rumors. I do have connections, ya know? I know who let all of those monsters out– the ones that hurt you. The ones responsible will learn- The sea never forgets those that cast offenses against its own. Eternally Yours, Rafayel)

I frowned. What did he mean ‘These hands aren’t just for painting’? Sure, I knew that there was more to Rafayel than most realized; he did have connections to the Nest, but I couldn’t help the worry that filled my heart at his words. His words about the sea never forgetting sounded especially concerning. What in the world was that fish planning?

I needed to get out of here. I needed to get to the bottom of this mess before more people I cared about got hurt. I sat up and began peeling the tape of an I.V. off my arm.

“I highly recommend that you stop doing that.”

My head whipped to the otherside of the bed, the side not filled with flowers by the door. There in a chair looking suspiciously like he had been dozing shortly before now sat Zayne. I eyed the empty coffee cups on the bed tray next to us both and fixed him with an accusatory look, “Have you been here all day? You have to have been busy with the disaster. Go take a break. I will be fine.”

He grunted noncommittally as he stood, reaching for the stethoscope around his neck. He pressed it over my heart, green eyes narrowed with focus as he watched the monitor. It seemed he didn’t trust it to report completely; his shoe tapped on the tile of the hospital room floor along with my pulse as he counted. Satisfied, he finally met my gaze, “Mhm,” he nodded slightly, “And all that night until this morning. Your… partner was quite clear about you being left alone.” His eyes went to the tape I had begun to peel, one brow raising as he fished tape from the pocket of his white coat and fixed it. He looked at me pointedly, “It seems he knows you nearly as well as I do.”

I sat back a bit dazed, “All night and this morning…? How long have I been out?”

Zayne looked at his watch, “Well, the hunter-”

“Xavier.”

“-brought you in at around 7:47pm last night. Roughly… 1.25 hrs after the Square incident was ended-”

“By him.”

“So, that would mean you’ve been here getting the care you needed for about 41.55 hours or 1.73 days, give or take a few minutes.”

“What?” My brain hurt and I could tell he was ticked, whether it was at me or Xavier, that I didn’t know. “Zayne, talk to me like I’m dumb. How long have I been here?”

“You’re not dumb.”

“Let’s pretend I am,” I rubbed a hand over my face, “I have been here for over a day?”

“Almost 42 hours.”

“42-” I stopped and eyed him fiddling with the way my IV laid. My eyes narrowed, “You’ve been here the whole time?”

“Yes.”

“Wh- Why!?” No wonder he was tissy, “You need rest too! You have to take better care of yourself.”

The glare he leveled at me was almost icy but definitely put out. He picked up my chart and flipped through it: 

“Your rib wasn’t broken, but two were cracked. You likely coughed up blood due to the nasty bite to your tongue, which we found during examination. Your CT scan showed a mild concussion. I concluded that your main injuries were likely from a blunt and heavy force trauma hitting you from the right- something akin to but not exactly like a small compact car colliding with your person- causing the cracked ribs. You had whiplash of the neck to match this idea and a bump on the back of your head as well, likely from the impact and the subsequent landing of your skull to the concrete. You also had a slight sprain of your right ankle and wrist. Your heart was also in tachycardia and very nearly gave the whole heart team on call a very busy night indeed.”

My jaw snapped shut with an audible click and I plopped back on my bed. Pain radiated from my side and I winced, hand going over it to feel bandages.

Zayne clicked his tongue. He set the chart back down and set about fixing the pillow behind my head. He continued, though his tone was less harsh, softer, more worried. I felt awful for how scared he must've been,  “You had to have a total of 24 stitches. Try not to twist they are on your left side. Your Hunter friend, Xavier, was it?” I nodded. “He was correct. You did need an infusion...Two, in fact. One gash hit your intercostal arteries and another cut through a majority of your lumbar arteries branching below your ribs. It is a lot of blood flow, but... " He leaned back, seemingly satisfied with the pillow. His jaw ticked as he added, "Thankfully, no major artery was hit or you would have bled out during the 1.25 hrs that he delayed your care.”

“He didn’t delay my care on purpose,” I sighed feeling tired. Tired of his prickling mood, tired because I knew he was just worried and that made me feel like shit, tired from the emotions of the day before, and tired from the meds I was surely on. “I passed out, but I woke up. He had stopped the bleeding. And I honestly did not feel so bad.”

“I’m sure his… secret identity needing to remain a secret had nothing to do with it,” Zayne’s eye leveled with mine. 

I shook my head, “No. Not at all. It wasn’t until I started trying to move around that we both realized it was worse than we thought, and he immediately insisted on bringing me here, whether he was seen or not. It was me that had to convince him to be careful, otherwise he would’ve teleported us right in the middle of the Emergency Department or the OR itself.” I chuckled a bit at the thought of the nurses exclaiming as Lumiere appeared in a flash of light. I thought back to those last moments when I thought I was about to die. My voice shook slightly, “He saved my life, Zayne. I really thought I was going to die down there at the end.”

Zayne’s hand fell over mine on my blanket. He gave it a small squeeze, “If that is true... then I suppose, I owe him my thanks.”

I chuckled softly, “Whatever for? Saving your most difficult patient?”

“Hn,” he shook his head slightly, “For saving my childhood friend. My... dearest friend.”

I smiled at him at that, giving his hand a squeeze, “We’ve known each other a long time, huh?”

His mouth twitched in a near smile, as though he knew something I didn't. He glanced to the side and chuckled, “It almost feels like eternity.”

I grinned, chuckling softly as well. Curious, I asked, “Hey Zayne?”

“Hm?” He looked back. His expression back to the softer Zayne I usually knew when it was just us.

“What made you want to become a doctor?”

“My father.” His eyes darted to the side however.

“Zaaayne,” I whined playfully and wiggled his hand still in mine, “No, really. Why a heart doctor? Come on. It’s just me. I won't judge you or think it's lame. I promise.”

He sighed, “Very well… Once, when I was over playing with Caleb, I heard your Grandmother talking.” He paused, eyeing me hesitantly before continuing. “You had been sick. Very sick for a while. It was not too long after she brought you home. I’m not sure if you remember.”

“I do.” I had been terribly sick then. So much so that many of my memories were lost.

He nodded, “Well, I heard then that it was your heart making you sick. Then you got better… and I got to know you. But sometimes… sometimes you’d get sick again. Never that bad but bad. Your Grandma always tried to look brave in front of Caleb and me, but we knew. It was then that I decided.”

My eyes widened, “You became a Cardiac Surgeon because of me?”

“Of course,” the green of his eyes looked intense and vivid as he stared back, “I wanted to be the one to save you. Of course I did, for you.”

“Zayne…” I trailed off. I didn’t know what to say. What could you say to something like that?

He tore his eyes away from mine and looked around the room. “Is it really so surprising? You have a way of making me care for you.” His eyes were soft and warm as they met mine again, “It is my honor to be able to help you in this way. If I could do it over, I would do the same.”

My eyes watered and I leaned up, throwing my arms around his neck, "Well that's not lame at all! That's so impossibly sweet."

“Careful,” He said but hugged me gently back. His ears were red.

“You are amazing, Zayne, you know that? I am so, so glad that we reconnected. I wish we never lost touch at all.”

His arms tightened just slightly, “I feel the same.”

I pulled back and couldn’t help the warm smile on my face, “You are such a good friend.”

He blinked a moment and at first I thought I had said something wrong, but then he smiled back, “I will always be here for you. As long as it makes you happy.”

I grinned, “It does.”

He feigned a sigh, “It is settled then. You are stuck with me.”

“Darn it,” I teased.

He chuckled, before looking more serious, “I do have a request.”

“What is it?”

“I… I know it is your job. I understand what it is to have a career that can push you. But I must insist that you not push yourself so far. You were the only hunter to sustain this level and amount of injuries. Everyone else pulled back and allowed a replacement to go in.”

I had to look away from his searching green eyes. The pain in them made a cloud of guilt swell in my gut.

“Why do you have to take such unnecessary risks?” He leaned his elbows on the edge of the bed, “Please. Help me understand.”

“I had planned to find a safe place to go.” My mind replayed the scene. “Captain Jenna was trying to tell me something, but the signal was bad. I was heading out but then I heard them…”

“Who?”

“A Mother and child. They were trapped behind the entrance of a cafe that collapsed.” I shook my head, “I knew I needed help and sent word but then these three huge Wanderers just appeared, almost like out of thin air.”

Zayne brows furrowed, “They didn’t give off a metaflux surge?”

“They did, but it was almost instantaneous with their appearance.”

“That seems… unnatural.”

“I think… it was…” my eyes met his, “I have not made my report yet though. There will have to be an investigation…”

“But you think something or someone caused this?”

“... Yes, I do.”

He sighed, leaning back in his chair and rubbed his face. “I guess… it is a good thing then.”

“Huh?”

“That Lumiere is back. Or at least, that he came back for this. For you.”

"I don't think it was just for me," face heating, I looked into my lap deep in thought.

Zayne hummed, "Perhaps."

I thought about the odd Wanderers in the Square then earlier on set. And about those guys cornering Xavier in that alley. I frowned. What was going on?

“Promise me that you won't do anything rash,” He caught my gaze, “Let the proper channels do their work. We’ve…both of us…have already lost. Let’s not add to that list.”

My chest panged at that. It was true. Zayne lost Caleb, just as I had. I nodded, “Yeah, okay.”

He smiled a soft smile at that then stood, glancing at his watch, “Well, I suppose I should get started on your paperwork.”

My eyes lit up, “I’m going home!?”

He tutted, “You will be after 8 tonight.” I groaned at that and he shook his head, brow raised, “I only agreed to that because your partner assured me that you would not so much as lift a finger for the next two to three weeks if I released you to his care.”

“You… What?” I blinked, “Two to three weeks!”

“Cracked ribs, Y/N. You Association will determine the exact length, but I have submitted my suggestions as your Doctor,” he reminded me, “Now then, he will be here after 8. Since you are being released I figured that it wouldn’t be too bad if I brought you something to eat.”

“You mean I don’t have to eat hospital food!” I laughed at his huff, “Even you have to admit it is awful.”

“The choices can be… limited.”

I scoffed, “The food tastes like cardboard or salt cakes and there is no in-between.”

That earned a chuckle. He was trying not to grin as he suggested, “Your favorite from the nearby cafe?”

“YES.”

A snort.

I grinned, “You just snorted.”

“... You’re high. It’s the meds.”

“Zayne!”

“Oh look, I’m being paged…”

“Zayne! You are off duty! You’re not even wearing a badge!” I laughed at his retreating figure, “Wait, Zayne! Come back I wont tease you about it! Snorting when you laugh is cute!”

“Just for that, no dessert.”

“You’re evil.”

“Just petty.”

“Zayne!”

This one took me a WHILE. I think it is the longest chapter so far and I almost chopped it in half AGAIN (originally this was part of chapter 4!)

The guys letters gave me trouble. I couldn't figure out how to include their handwriting and really wanted to. IDK how the heck to do code in tumblr, so I just made the letters into images and included translations for those that have a hard time with loopy fonts or that use accommodations. If you still had an issue, let me know and I will help you out by sending the letter text in a different way or something. I want to be inclusive and am open to tips!

I personally loved this chapter. I loved adding more intimate moments between Xavier and "Us". I let "Y/N" have more of a voice and I think I am having more fun with this than I even was before. Hopefully, you all are liking how she is coming across.

This chapter was also a bit of a love letter to Zayne. While he is not my main now, he was way I started playing and will always have a special place in my heart just for him. I hope he wasn't too ooc. Poor Zayne was *stressed* and suspicious for a lot of this. Still, I am comfortable (I think) with how it came out in the end.

Let me know what you all thought of this one! Did you like Sylus and Rafayel's letters? Anything you didn't like? Give me the DEETS.

Tag list:

@xxfaithlynxx @moonsavior @2kyute2poot @yournextdoorhousewitch @sapphoslostkid @ivohex @cherimoyatea @sandy2848582 @adorezhi @animecrazy76

As always, thank you for your support and for reading! Please comment to be added to the list!

[originalaowrytheian]

Ok, so I've been doing a ton of research lately because I've been planning to open an Etsy shop, but yesterday I discovered this other platform called Goimagine and I NEED to tell y'all about it! I haven't actually joined yet (still working on getting my stuff together) but here's the info I've gotten from their website and a YouTube video I found interviewing the founder.

Goimagine is a 100% handmade marketplace. They don't allow vintage, print on demand, or drop shipping

They're completely human run (no pesky bots causing problems and taking your stuff down with no explanation)

A portion of all the sales made through their website goes to charities supporting children (you can see the specific ones on their website)

Whether or not you offer free shipping doesn't effect your search visibility

There are three membership tiers that include a monthly flat rate and a transaction fee. That's it. No other fees

All of your products are listed on Google so people don't even have to be on the site to see your stuff

They seem to be really focused on giving their sellers the best experience possible and the one video I watched talked about them having an election to vote two of their sellers onto the board of directors

They remit sales tax and calculate shipping for you (I'm not sure if you can print labels from their website or not)

They only operate in the US and there's an option on their website to shop by state so you can buy from local vendors

Really the only complaint I was able to find is that people weren't getting as much sales traffic on there as on Etsy. The company has only been around since 2020 though, so it's a much newer platform than Etsy and still in the developing phase. This means there are a lot fewer sellers and therefore a lot fewer customers, but it also means you have less competition. I found people who did really well on the platform and people who didn't make any sales at all, but I feel like that's probably just as true for Etsy, there are just so many more Etsy success stories because they've been around longer and had more time to build.

Also they don't seem to be trying to compete with Etsy so much as fill a gap they feel Etsy has left open. There's even an option to import your Etsy listings onto their site.

Anyway I think what they're doing is super cool and I hope to open a shop there either instead of or in addition to an Etsy very soon. I highly recommend checking them out!

[staticespace]

Hello this a long shot call, am a citizen of Palestine. I am here to request for your support to help get my insulin, I was diagnosised with type 1 diabetes and due to current situation in Gaza I'm unable to get my insulin injection as a result I'm here begging for little financial support to help me purchase insulin for this week.My donation link is available on my pinned post

Your phrasing seems familiar...

So, I took a look at your pinned post.

🚩🚩🚩Says it's vetted and verified, but doesn't say by whom

🚩Amount substantially lower than other Palestinian requests

🚩Link leads to a PayPal link that has fewer donation protections

🚩No Tumblr user with substantiated Gazan relations reblogged it

🚩🚩🚩And, wait a second, in some versions of the post, you use a completely different name???

So what is your actual name??

...Seriously, this phrasing seems so freaking familiar. What is...

Ah.

It's you again, from a few weeks back. Either you thought my memory was super short, or this is a bot run by some weird bastard and you forgot to keep me out of it.

People like you are why it's hard enough for Palestinians to ask for help.

Oh, and that last red flag I mentioned? I was wrong. A Tumblr user with substantiated Gazan relations did reblog it.

🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩To condemn you.

Get The Fuck Out My Inbox.

---

For anyone else still reading, I know this user is going to block me almost immediately after making this post, making me unable to see their posts or report anything, so I've been DMing some of you to spread the word first.

Here's the link to report their PayPal account for fraudulent activity:

The information you'll need:

Q: Describe the content or activity you’d like to report.

A: This person is running a continuing insulin scam on Tumblr. [or something like that.]

[Add link to this part of the report. Do not donate]

Zuhura Alfaat Kweyu - https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=UTVLBZYE4UH5U

Florence Khakasa's version has already been blocked from receiving donations, likely the reason for the name and account change.

Q: Tell us a bit more about where you saw the content or activity you’d like to report. Include at least one of the following:

Website or URL:

A: https://www.tumblr.com/staticespace/757816372061405184/hello-this-a-long-shot-call-am-a-citizen-of?source=share [Or copy the URL for this post and paste it there]

Q: Tell us about you. We’ll never share your information with another user.

A: [Email required, but not location.]

Remember to be safe online!

Stay kind and take no shit!

[ao3scrapesearch]

Thanks for making this tool. I ran my and my sister's usernames through. Both of us have two works up on Ao3: mine are fics, hers are art.

My sister has had her art up since November 2023, but only one was scraped (titled "Sacred Robed Zelda"). Both of her works are locked, but only the one was scraped.

My first published fic ever - "The Captive" - has been up since December 2024, and I'd initially locked it, but later unlocked it in order to broaden my audience. It's been scraped. My second fic (also unlocked) hasn't been scraped, probably only because it was published April 20th, or is incomplete.

I never want to post anything again, and I'm seriously considering posting my fics to a different site at the very least, although I don't know if any of the other fanfiction sites are bothering to protect their users' stories.

I never would've known my and my sister's work was stolen if you hadn't made your tool, and knowing the truth is better than being ignorant, so thank you so much!

You're welcome!

I'm sorry I can't offer better news to you, but for your sister: from what I can see, no images were scraped. Any work that had ONLY an image in the main body just looks like blank text.

As a reminder, I am not providing lookups of the work text and am absolutely not sharing any part of that online, but I do have a copy from when I was first looking up my own fics. I won't check the work text for anyone because it feels super sketch. But in this specific case, I will show you what a work text lookup looks like on this fic because it is completely blank. This work only had the metadata collected, like the author name and tags.

Where that "text" column is, normally the entire work would appear.

I can confirm your second fic wasn't scraped because it was posted too recently. I believe the newest fic we know of in this dataset was posted or updated on March 15th, 2025. Looking at my own fics, some were scraped on March 9th and March 14th for sure.

I understand the feeling. For me, it's worth the risk to be able to keep sharing my writing, so I'll keep sharing. It just sucks, and I think a lot of us need a break or better, need something to make us feel protected from the scraping.

Locking fics did seem to reduce the rate of having fics scraped for most people I've talked to, but it's not a perfect safeguard. For reference, I think the person I've talked to with the MOST locked fics scraped had 75% of their locked fics stolen. I (someone with almost everything set public) had 90% of my fics stolen. Unfortunately, most people can create an AO3 account within minutes, even scrapers. It's not hard to get an invite code in a community where a lot of us are so welcoming.

I do think everywhere you could post is going to have its problems. AO3 is so popular and prolific that it's a huge target for scrapers, and because they're a nonprofit, they rely on us donating to be able to support any anti-scraping measures they could implement. FFN is infested with bots trying to sell you AI art, and depending on your fandom, people just... don't read there except when AO3 is down. Something like the old LiveJournal communities would probably help cut down on scraping, but the way those worked was centered around having one community for one subset of a fandom, meaning you'd have a separate community for every fandom/pairing/genre of fic you write/read, which becomes hard to manage. Plus, because those are locked down, you once again have fewer readers there.

[mariacallous]

Like countless other people around the globe, I stream music, and like more than six hundred million of them I mainly use Spotify. Streaming currently accounts for about eighty per cent of the American recording industry’s revenue, and in recent years Spotify’s health is often consulted as a measure for the health of the music business over all. Last spring, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry reported global revenues of $28.6 billion, making for the ninth straight year of growth. All of this was unimaginable in the two-thousands, when the major record labels appeared poorly equipped to deal with piracy and the so-called death of physical media. On the consumer side, the story looks even rosier. Adjusted for inflation, a monthly subscription to an audio streaming service, allowing convenient access to a sizable chunk of the history of recorded music, costs much less than a single album once did. It can seem too good to be true.

Like considerably fewer people, I still buy a lot of CDs, records, and cassettes, mostly by independent artists, which is to say that I have a great deal of sympathy for how this immense reorganization in how we consume music has complicated the lives of artists trying to survive our on-demand, hyper-abundant present. Spotify divvies out some share of subscriber fees as royalties in proportion to an artist’s popularity on the platform. The service recently instituted a policy in which a track that registers fewer than a thousand streams in a twelve-month span earns no royalties at all. Some estimate that this applies to approximately two-thirds of its catalogue, or about sixty million songs. Meanwhile, during a twelve-month stretch from 2023 to 2024, Spotify announced new revenue highs, with estimates that the company is worth more than Universal and Warner combined. During the same period, its C.E.O., Daniel Ek, cashed out three hundred and forty million dollars in stock; his net worth, which fluctuates but is well into the billions, is thought to make him richer than any musician in history. Music has always been a perilous, impractical pursuit, and even sympathetic fans hope for the best value for their dollar. But if you think too deeply about what you’re paying for, and who benefits, the streaming economy can seem awfully crooked.

Although artists such as Taylor Swift and Neil Young have temporarily removed their music from Spotify—Swift pressed the company over its paltry royalty rates, while Young was protesting its nine-figure deal with the divisive podcaster Joe Rogan—defying the streamer comes with enormous risks. Spotify is a library, but it’s also a recommendation service, and its growth is fuelled by this second function, and by the company’s strategies for soundtracking the entirety of our days and nights. As a former Spotify employee once observed, the platform’s only real competitor is silence. In recent years, its attempts at studying and then adapting to our behavior have invited more than casual scrutiny among users: gripes about the constant tweaks and adjustments that make the interface more coldly opaque, stories about A.I.-generated songs and bots preying on the company’s algorithms, fatigue over “Spotify-core,” the shorthand for the limp, unobtrusive pop music that appears to be the service’s default aesthetic. Even Spotify’s popular Wrapped day, when users are given social-media-ready graphics detailing their listening habits from the past year, recently took its lumps. Where the previous year’s version assigned listeners a part of the world that most aligned with their favorites, the 2024 edition was highlighted by the introduction of personalized, A.I.-voiced recaps, striking some as the Spotify problem in a nutshell—a good thing that gets a little worse with all the desperate fine-tuning.

Just as we train Spotify’s algorithm with our likes and dislikes, the platform seems to be training us to become round-the-clock listeners. Most people don’t take issue with this—in fact, a major Spotify selling point is that it can offer you more of what you like. Liz Pelly’s new book, “Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist,” is a comprehensive look at how the company’s dominance has profoundly changed the way we listen and what we listen to. A contributing editor to The Baffler, Pelly has covered the ascent of Spotify for years, and she was an early critic of how the streaming economy relies less on delivering hit tunes than on keeping us within a narrow gradient of chill vibes. Her approach is aggressively moralistic: she is strongly influenced, she explains, by D.I.Y. spaces that attempt to bring about alternate forms of “collective culture,” rather than accept the world’s inequities as a given. She sympathizes with the plight of artists who feel adrift in the winner-take-all world of the Internet, contending with superstars like Adele or Coldplay for placement on career-making playlists and, consequently, a share of streaming revenue. But her greatest concerns are for listeners, with our expectations for newness and convenience. Pelly is a romantic, but her book isn’t an exercise in nostalgia. It’s about how we have come to view art and creativity, what it means to be an individual, and what we learn when we first hum along to a beloved pop song.

A great many people over forty retain some memory of the first time they witnessed the awesome possibilities of Internet piracy—the sense of wonder that you could go to class and return a couple of hours later to a Paul Oakenfold track playing from somewhere inside your computer. In 1999, two teen-agers named Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker launched the file-sharing application Napster, effectively torching the music industry as it had existed for nearly a century. There had always been piracy and bootlegging, but Napster introduced the free exchange of music at a global scale. Rather than maintain a publicly accessible archive of recordings—which was clearly illegal—Napster provided a peer-to-peer service that essentially allowed users to pool their music libraries. After a year, Fanning and Parker’s app had twenty million users.

At first, anti-Napster sentiment echoed the hysteria of the nineteen-seventies and eighties around the prospect of home taping killing the record industry. Yet online piracy was far more serious, moving at unprecedented speed. One label executive argued that Fanning and Parker belonged in jail, but there was no uniform response. For example, the media conglomerate Bertelsmann made plans to invest in Napster even as it was suing the company for copyright infringement. Some artists embraced Napster as a promotional tool. Chuck D, of Public Enemy, published a Times Op-Ed in which he praised Napster as “a new kind of radio.” The punk band the Offspring expressed its admiration by selling bootleg merchandise with the company’s logo. On the other side was the heavy-metal band Metallica, which sued the platform for “trafficking in stolen goods,” and thereby became seen—by many of their fellow-musicians as well as by listeners—as an establishment villain. Faced with too many legal challenges, Napster shut down in July, 2001. But the desire to break from traditional means of disseminating culture remained, as casual consumers began imagining an alternative to brick-and-mortar shopping and, with it, physical media. Just four months after Napster’s closure, Apple came out with the iPod.

In Sweden, where citizens had enjoyed high-speed Internet since the late nineties, piracy took on a political edge. In 2001, after a major anti-globalization protest in Gothenburg was violently put down by the police, activists formed online communities. In 2003, Rasmus Fleischer helped found Piratbyrån, or the Pirate Bureau, a group committed to flouting copyright laws. “We were trying to make something political from the already existing practice of file-sharing,” Fleischer explained to Pelly. “What are the alternative ways to think about power over networks? What counts as art and what counts as legitimate ways of using it? Or distributing money?” That year, a group of programmers associated with Piratbyrån launched the Pirate Bay, a file-sharing site that felt like a more evolved version of Napster, allowing users to swap not only music but movies, software, and video games.

Alongside Pirate Bay, file-sharing applications like LimeWire, Kazaa, and Grokster emerged to fill Napster’s void and were summarily targeted by the recording industry. Meanwhile, the music business marched forward, absorbing losses and deferring any hard decisions. So long as fans still thought of music in terms of ownership, there were still things to sell them—if not physical media, at least song files meant to be downloaded onto your hard drive. The most common model in the United States was the highly successful iTunes Store, which allowed listeners to purchase both albums and single tracks, abiding by a rough dollar-per-song value inherited from the age of LPs and CDs. “People want to own their music,” Steve Jobs said, in 2007, claiming he’d seen no evidence that consumers wanted a subscription model. “There’s definitely a hurdle with subscription because it’s not an exact replica of the model people are used to in the physical world,” Rob Williams, an executive at Rhapsody, one of the largest early-two-thousands music-subscription services, observed, in 2008.

Daniel Ek, Spotify’s C.E.O., taught himself programming as a teen-ager in Stockholm and was financially secure by his mid-twenties, when he began looking for a new project to work on. Like many, he credits Napster for providing him with a musical education. While some of his countrymen saw piracy as anarchist, a strike against big business, Ek sensed a more moderate path. He and Martin Lorentzon, both well versed in search engines and online advertising, founded Spotify, in 2006, in the hope of working with the music industry, not against it. Ek explained to a reporter, in 2010, that it was impossible to “legislate away from piracy.” The solution was making an alternative that was just as convenient, if not more. The year he and Lorentzon launched Spotify, the census showed that thirteen per cent of Sweden’s citizens already participated in file-sharing. “I’m just interested in building a company that doesn’t necessarily change lives but adapts people’s behavior,” Ek said.

Spotify benefitted from the emergence of smartphones and cheap data plans. When we are basically never offline, it no longer matters where our files are situated. “We’re punks,” Ek said. “Not the punks that are up to no good. The punks that are against the establishment. We want to bring music to every person on the face of the planet.” (Olof Dreijer, of the Swedish electronic pop group the Knife, griped to Pelly that the involvement of tech companies in music streaming represented the “gentrification” of piracy.)

Spotify made headway in Europe in the twenty-tens, capitalizing on the major labels’ seeming apathy toward committing to an online presence. It began offering plans to U.S. users in 2011—two paid tiers with no ads and a free one that, as an analyst told the Times that year, was “solidifying a perception that music should be free.” Ek sought partnerships with major labels, some of which still own Spotify stock. Around this time, a source who was then close to the company told Pelly, Spotify commissioned a study tracking the listening habits of a small subset of users and concluded that it could offer a qualitatively different experience than a marketplace like iTunes. By tracking what people wanted to hear at certain hours—from an aggro morning-workout mix to mellow soundscapes for the evening—the service began understanding how listeners used music throughout the day. People even streamed music while they were sleeping.

With all this information, Spotify might be able to guess your mood based on what time it was and what you had been listening to. Pelly argues, in fact, that its greatest innovation has been its grasp of affect, how we turned to music to hype us up or calm us down, help us focus on our homework or simply dissociate. Unlike a record label, a tech company doesn’t care whether we’re hooked on the same hit on repeat or lost in a three-hour ambient loop, so long as we’re listening to something. (This helps explain its ambitious entry into the world of podcasting, lavishing nine-figure deals on Joe Rogan and on the Ringer, Bill Simmons’s media company, as well as its recent investment in audiobooks.) Spotify just wants as much of our time and attention as possible, and a steady stream of melodic, unobtrusive sounds could be the best way to appeal to a passive listener. You get tired of the hit song after a while, whereas you might stop noticing the ambient background music altogether.

Last spring, a Swedish newspaper published a story about a little-known hitmaker named Johan Röhr, a specialist in tepid, soothing soundscapes. As of March, Röhr had used six hundred and fifty aliases (including Adelmar Borrego and Mingmei Hsueh) to release more than twenty-seven hundred songs on Spotify, where they had been streamed more than fifteen billion times. These numbers make him one of the most popular musicians in the world, even though he is not popular in any meaningful sense—it’s doubtful that many people who stream his music have any idea who he is. Spotify’s officially curated playlists seem to be a shortcut to success, akin to songs getting into heavy rotation on the radio or television. Röhr has benefitted from being featured on more than a hundred of them, with names like “Peaceful Piano” or “Stress Relief.” His ascent has raised a philosophical question about music in the streaming age: Does it even matter who is making this stuff? At least Röhr’s a real person. What about A.I.-generated music, which is increasingly popular on YouTube?

It’s tricky to make the argument that any of this is inherently bad for music fans; in our anti-élitist times, all taste is regarded as relative. Maybe Johan Röhr does, indeed, lower your stress levels. Who’s to say that A.I. Oasis is that much better or worse than the real thing? If you harbor no dreams of making money off your music, it’s never been easier to put your art out into the world. And even if we are constructing our playlists for friends under “data-tuned, ultra-surveilled” circumstances, feeding a machine data to more effectively sell things back to us, it’s a trade that most users don’t mind making. We’ve been conditioned to want hyper-personalization from our digital surroundings, with convenience and customizable environments the spoils of our age. For Pelly, it’s a problem less of taste than of autonomy—the question she asks is if we’re making actual decisions or simply letting the platform shape our behaviors. Decades ago, when you were listening to the radio or watching MTV, you might encounter something different and unknown, prompting some judgment as to whether you liked or loathed it. The collection of so much personalized data—around what time of day we turn to Sade or how many seconds of a NewJeans song we play—suggests a future without risk, one in which we will never be exposed to anything we may not want to hear.

Spotify recently projected that 2024 would be its first full year of profitability; one investment analyst told Axios that the company had “reached a level of scale and importance that we think the labels would be engaging in mutually-assured devastation if they tried to drive too hard a bargain.” Its success seems to have derived partly from cost-cutting measures: in December, 2023, it eliminated seventeen per cent of its employees, or about fifteen hundred jobs. Some music-industry groups also say that Spotify has found a way to pay less to rights holders by capitalizing on a 2022 ruling by the Copyright Royalty Board which allows services bundling different forms of content to pay lower rates.

I wonder if any of Pelly’s arguments will inspire readers to cancel their subscriptions. I remain on my family’s Spotify plan; it’s a necessary evil when part of your job involves listening to music. For all the service’s conveniences, one of my frustrations has always been the meagre amount of information displayed on each artist’s page, and Pelly’s criticisms made me think this might be by design—a way of rendering the labor of music-making invisible. Except for a brief biographical sketch, sounds float largely free of context or lineage. It’s harder than it should be to locate a piece of music in its original setting. Instead of a connection to history, we’re offered recommendations based on what other people listened to next. I’ve never heard so much music online as I have over the past few years yet felt so disconnected from its sources.

In 2020, Ek warned that “some artists that used to do well in the past may not do well in this future landscape where you can’t record music once every three to four years and think that’s going to be enough.” Rather, he suggested, artists would have to adapt to the relentless rhythms of the streaming age. I’ve long been fascinated by musicians who explore the creative tension between their own vision and the demands of their corporate overlords, making music in playful, mocking resistance of the business. A personal favorite is R.A. the Rugged Man’s “Every Record Label Sucks Dick,” which has been streamed about a quarter of a million times. Although I’ve heard many artists lament Spotify’s effect on their livelihoods, it’s hard to imagine someone channelling that animosity into a diss track. For that matter, it’s a conversation I rarely hear on podcasts—the chances of finding an audience without being present on the world’s largest distributor are slim. Instead, artists make music about the constant pressures of fame, as Tyler, the Creator, did with 2024’s “Chromakopia.” Or they try in vain to protect themselves from it, as the singer Chappell Roan, known for her theatrical take on dance pop, did this past summer. One of the breakout stars of 2024, Roan had difficulty coping with the unyielding demands of her sudden superstardom, eventually posting a TikTok begging her fans to respect her personal boundaries. The targets within the industry were once varied and diffuse, but they were identifiable. Now the pressure comes from everywhere, leaving artists to exploit themselves.

Reading “Mood Machine,” I began to regard Spotify as an allegory for life this year—this feeling that everything has never been so convenient, or so utterly precarious. I’d seldom considered the speed at which food or merchandise is delivered to my house to be a problem that required a solution. But we acclimate to the new normal very quickly; that is why it’s hard to imagine an alternative to Spotify. Rival streaming services like Apple Music deliver slightly better royalties to artists, yet decamping from Spotify feels a bit like leaving Twitter for Bluesky in that you haven’t fully removed yourself from the problem. Digital marketplaces such as Bandcamp and Nina offer models for directly supporting artists, but their catalogues seem niche by comparison.

In the past few years, artists have been using the occasion of Spotify’s Wrapped to share how little they were paid for the year’s streams. The United Musicians and Allied Workers, a music-industry trade union, was formed in 2020 in part to lobby on behalf of those most affected by the large-scale changes of the past decade. Four years later, Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Jamaal Bowman introduced the Living Wage for Musicians Act, which would create a fund to pay artists a minimum of a penny per stream. With a royalty rate at around half a cent—slightly more than Spotify pays—it would take more than four hundred and eighty thousand streams per month to make the equivalent of a fifteen-dollar-an-hour job. But the bill hasn’t made any legislative playlists.

Earlier this year, responding to questions about Spotify’s effect on working musicians, Ek compared the music industry to professional sports: “If you take football, it’s played by hundreds of millions of people around the world. But there’s a very, very small number of people that can live off playing soccer full time.” The Internet was supposed to free artists from the monoculture, providing the conditions for music to circulate in a democratic, decentralized way. To some extent, this has happened: we have easy access to more novelty and obscure sounds than ever before. But we also have data-verified imperatives around song structure and how to keep listeners hooked, and that has created more pressure to craft aggressively catchy intros and to make songs with maximum “replay value.” Before, it was impossible to know how many times you listened to your favorite song; what mattered was that you’d chosen to buy it and bring it into your home. What we have now is a perverse, frictionless vision for art, where a song stays on repeat not because it’s our new favorite but because it’s just pleasant enough to ignore. The most meaningful songs of my life, though, aren’t always ones I can listen to over and over. They’re there when I need them.

Pelly writes of some artists, in search of viral fame, who surreptitiously use social media to effectively beta test melodies and motifs, basically putting together songs via crowdsourcing. Artists have always fretted about the pressure to conform, but the data-driven, music-as-content era feels different. “You are a Spotify employee at that point,” Daniel Lopatin, who makes abstract electronic music as Oneohtrix Point Never, told Pelly. “If your art practice is so ingrained in the brutal reality that Spotify has outlined for all of us, then what is the music that you’re not making? What does the music you’re not making sound like?” Listeners might wonder something similar. What does the music we’re not hearing sound like? 

[buckcluckhater]

New video game hot take: Halo, the whole series.

It's weird, but I'm one of a number of fans who seem to just be unable to put down this series despite constantly criticizing the games and frequently feeling either disappointment or nuisance at its mechanics, and the community is generally quite awful, always has been tbh.

That said, I cannot stand how much hate Infinite gets from casual audiences. The Halo Cycle is real, and you see it firsthand when people start going back to what was previously considered the black sheep, 5, and start dropping compliments. I have seen people claim it has better weapons, a better art direction, better multiplayer release, even better campaign experience. When you apply this even further back, it starts to make sense why there're so many zealots of the original trilogy who will desperately try to convince you that those games are near flawless and surpass anything released today. One need only play 30 minutes of multiplayer or the first two missions on Legendary for any of these games to see that just isn't true. It is 100% nostalgia, and I bought into the hype around Halo 3 for a while myself, despite not growing up with it (I actually played it third to last).

Back to Infinite, this game did not launch well, there were a lot of bugs in multiplayer, playlists were scarce, major expected features were missing for a year or longer, the campaign was bundled as a $60 dlc, and there still has not been, and appears to be no continuation planned, despite the game's ending. The disappointment was so extreme that many were calling for a complete company makeover and/or complete series reboot. While the first slowly but surely did happen, it mercifully looks like the second won't, which is good because randomly rebooting to boost sales is a terrible idea (New 52 lol), and it stems almost entirely from dead franchises like God of War suddenly coming back to the mainstream.

I played this game a lot on my own time, especially because the social features being so barren made it hard to get anyone else to play it with me, so my experience has been solo campaign and Randoms or bots in multiplayer. In the game's current state, it's a lot of fun. I play as my disabled spartan and sometimes take Sativa before running Legendary Firefight or running a couple missions.

I do wish it released at a later date with less news before it dropped so that there would be less hype, fewer demands, and less comparison. But if I had to guess it was a moment of poorly calculated "brand synergy" to tie in with the release of the Halo TV show, whose reputation can only be described as apocalyptic.

I genuinely wish they keep this game updated, because the mechanics and presentation are just that good in my opinion. Also, Halo 4 isn't as bad as I thought.

[dross-the-fish]

Have you ever run into issues with AI keeping you from finding work? I'm seeing a lot of artist complain about AI stealing their jobs, does that affect you?

I haven't run into this problem yet. The people making AI avatars and such weren't going to buy from me anyway and the people who hire me to illustrate for them can't use AI because it can't be relied upon to get consistent results in terms of style and quality.

Also AI falls into a weird legal grey area. Some programs like Midjourny will only let you copyright a generated image if you use their subscription plan. So you still have to pay for the generator and then probably pay someone to put in the time it takes to get it to generate the image you want by "prompt engineering" or whatever they call it. It is not, at this time, practical for commercial use. It is becoming an issue with my regular day job where they're starting to use AI prompts to handle chats as a way to hire fewer workers and downsize on labor. So that's my main concern with how AI is going to affect me. Except even there the AI bot doesn't always know what the fuck it's talking about and we still have to come in and take over for complex or multi-faceted issues. I also just generally don't think AI artists and writers are as much a threat as people make them out to be. Most of what is produced by AI is very derivative and lacks stylistic integrity, even when the "quality" seems decent. I don't think I've seen an AI image yet that wasn't made for quick consumption and most people who consistently use gen AI go for quantity over quality anyway. It's content to be quickly consumed and discarded and unfortunately we live in consumerist climate where that's everyone and their grandma's hustle for now. Even so, In it's current state, AI is not a good tool to learn art or writing and someone who wants to be an artist or writer isn't going to be able to accomplish that with AI. Between the legal grey area of being able to copyright their work and the inconsistent quality of output it's not a practical or sustainable way to make a living and it's not going to teach you how to draw or write for yourself. I've seen some attempts made at producing iterative work with gen AI and the machine can't do it. It takes more time, money and effort to try and get images that look consistent without weird glitches than it does to just hire an artist. Half the time anyone I've seen try that they've still had to have an artist anyway go in and paint over the AI images to make them look cohesive.

[ninja-muse]

2024 Year-End Reading Wrap-Up

Reading-wise, I think 2024 was about diligence. I kept reading even when I felt slumpy. I managed my goals of minimum one book off my physical TBR per month, minimum 20 non-fiction titles, and 75 of the books I wanted to get to. I didn’t do so great at keeping my book acquisition down, but at least I got rid of as many as I took in (and a lot of the books I bought were used or cheap). I even took in fewer reading copies and managed to pass on a fair number of them! I didn’t quite get to my 2023 total of 128 books and I didn’t quite manage 45,000 pages, only 44,865, but that’s okay. They’re kind of wild goals and I got darn close. Of the 126 books I did read, 29 were off my TBR and 38 were reading copies. That means that 59 were library books, which, thank goodness for libraries! This is why I donate to mine every year.

What I didn’t do so well on were most of my other goals. (2023 for comparison.) I’m still steadyish on Canadian and female authors, steadyish on classics, up on authors of colour (!), but sadly way down on gender-diverse authors. I’m going to have to find more enbies and genderqueer folks I want to read, but that’s hard as it still seems like most non-binary fiction goes towards the dark and grim and realistic and most of my reading choices goes towards the light and hopeful. I will happily take suggestions.

I’m most bummed, though, about breaking my StoryGraph reading streak of 567 days. I went home for Christmas on a late-night flight and the next day, I was just not awake enough to read dense non-fiction. I am looking forward to outdoing myself on this new round.

Yearly total: 126, excluding rereads and picture books Queer books: 37 (29%) Authors of colour: 19.5 (15.4%) Books by women: 77.5 (61.5%) Authors outside the binary: 3 (2%) Canadian authors: 12 (9.5%) Classics: 7 (5.5%) Off the TBR shelves: 29 (23%) Books hauled: 47 Books unhauled: 47 ARCs acquired: 40 ARCs unhauled: 46.5 DNFs: 10 Rereads: 3 Picture Books: 11

Outside of the stats and goals, I think my choice to mostly leave Tumblr was a good one. I’m feeling a lot less pressure to read The Right Things or whatever everyone else is, and less pressure to be constantly posting, though I do miss seeing what you all are reading. Please, please, feel free to tag me in reading wrap-ups and reviews, especially if you think it’s a book I’d be interested in. I do check my mentions regularly. (Friendly reminder that I’m ninjamuse on Storygraph and LibraryThing, if you’d like to follow me there.) And not posting as much as helped me get more writing done. I’m not quite finished the first draft of the cozy fantasy WIP, but I’m within sight of it, if I manage to get my mojo back after Extreme Retail Season.

My goals are 2025 are fairly reasonable and predictable. 126 books and 40,000 pages, and I've set up StoryGraph challenges to encourage myself to read 50 new releases and 50 backlist titles. I'm going to try for 20 non-fiction again too, though this year that was very much by the skin of my teeth. And of course, the enby author thing. And I'm going to finish the dang WIP and restart an old one. Wish me luck?

Click through for more book recs and breakdowns:

Books Reviewed Eve - Cat Bohannon I Love Russia - Elena Kostyuchenko The Briar Club - Kate Quinn Evelina - Frances Burney How to Become a Dark Lord (and Die Trying) - Django Wexler The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport - Amit Basu The Disenchantment - Celia Bell The Dollmakers - Lynn Buchanan Submerged - Hillel Levin A History of Ancient Egypt - John Romer

And if anyone’s interested, here are the rest of my year’s highlights: Top Five Fiction (not ranked) Rose/House - Arkady Martine How to Become a Dark Lord and Die Trying - Django Wexler The Briar Club - Kate Quinn Navola - Paolo Bacigalupi The Disenchantment - Celia Bell Top Five Non-Fiction (not ranked) History of Ancient Egypt, Volume 3 - John Romer Malady of the Mind - Jeffrey A. Lieberman Sociopath - Patric Gagne I Love Russia - Elena Kostyuchenko The Demon of Unrest - Erik Larson Most Impressed By: I Love Russia - Elena Kostyuchenko The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport - Amit Basu Evelina - Frances Burney Nicked - M.T. Anderson

Most Disappointing: Wordhunter - Stella Sands Bad Glass - Richard E. Gropp The Black Bird of Chernobyl - Ann McMan The Dishonest Miss Take - Faye Murphy The Voyage of the Damned - Frances White Longest Book: A History of Ancient Egypt, Volume 3 - John Romer Best Queer Book: A Desolation Called Peace - Arkady Martine

Did I beat 2023? No, but 126 is really close to 128. Did I beat my Best Year Ever? No. That would be 2021. Did I read more classics? Yes Did I read more Canadians? No Did I whittle my TBR shelves down any? No. Was it a good reading year? Average. Breakdowns by month:

January February March April May June July August September October November December

[noffy96]

wrote another Sun/Moon fic again!

Another fic, for the Sun/Moon stories I keep writing. This one a little peek into their relationship before they became an item. This part is gonna be more Angst heavy and chapter 2 will be more Fluff heavy promise

The last straw

Word count: 2,368

Chapter 1/2 ( in progress)

Summary

The switchback was sudden. He landed on the patted floor with a loud thud. Had he been on the wire? With groans and tired squeaks, he felt around his face.

His fingers hurt. One of his lower rays got bent a little in his fall. He looked at his arms more dents and scratches than the last time he was awake.

How long had he been out? The generators should keep Moon from showing up. He stood on wobbly legs as his gyroscope had finally reset itself. And took a look around the daycare.

Or

Sun wakes up after an unknown amount of time. Their body aching, and Moon still spouting hurtful nonsense. The stress, the pain, the insults. It's all becoming a bit too much. Can he still be there for his friend?

--link here to AO3--

or continue below the read more line

The switchback was sudden. He landed on the patted floor with a loud thud. Had he been on the wire? With groans and tired squeaks, he felt around his face.

His fingers hurt. One of his lower rays got bent a little in his fall. He looked at his arms more dents and scratches than the last time he was awake.

How long had he been out? The generators should keep Moon from showing up. He stood on wobbly legs as his gyroscope had finally reset itself. And took a look around the daycare.

And he let out a tired sigh. Toys and balls were lying everywhere. There seemed to be some new holes in the netting around the daycare.

He turned on his communication with a mix of anger and trepidation.

‘Moon!? what did you do!?’

He screamed through his inner communication system, and a familiar cackle reached him.

‘Punished the naughty Children, it was past their bedtime’

He sighed harder. There weren't any children around. His clock told him it was three o'clock at night. No way a child had sneaked in. They had already scrapped naptime. If things kept going as they were. The daycare might get closed down for good.

Another high cackle echoed in his head.

‘Is the stupid Sun trying to think? He should stop before he hurts himself ‘

He shut down the internal Communication without a word to his counterpart. The personal digs had increased the longer Moon wasn't allowed out. Especially with naptime now gone.

He missed his friend. The one that he had just started to get to know. The gentle snarky bot. That had sung the lullabies to the younger kids. The one that kept the older kids entertained with his snark and humour. The one that asked him about his day. And did his best to clean up to his standards.

Now the only thing left ‘clean’ were the stacked barrels. Whatever was wrong with Moon. It was taking him away a bit at the time. He wanted to believe his friend was still there. But it was getting harder and harder each day.

Cause every time he woke back up. Or even tried to talk there would be another insult. Or nonsensical statements with the early cackle. Their body hurt and dented as if Moon had thrown them against every surface image able. Trying to switch out when the lights even as much as dimmed.

Fighting for control and putting him back into a forced sleep.

He made so many requests for someone, anyone to help his counterpart. But instead of getting upgraded. Generators were being placed in the play structures to keep the lights on. The daycare hours were reduced. And fewer children came to visit. As they grew afraid of Moon and by extension him.

He shuffled around the daycare, his protocols not letting him go and rest before the mess was dealt with. So he slowly put the toys back in the cubicles. Put the balls back into the ballpit. Crawled through the structures to check for any damages or swears of marker or pen. Cleaned the tables of stains.

It took a little over an hour. And by then he was just left at twenty percent charge. And called the cable to fly up to their room.

His back ached when the wire attached. He was ready to fall into the nest they called their bed and call it a day. But stopped once he stepped past the curtain.

The room was an absolute mess. There were deep gashes in the walls. A string of fairy lights broken and shattered on the floor. Several pillows and blankets were torn to shreds. But what really made his processor throb were the torn-down drawings. Some had been slashed. Others crumbled. A few even ripped to pieces. All that hard work of their little stars lay on the floor in broken pieces

And a new stab of pain filled him as he noticed that if the ones destroyed and slashed contained himself.

He felt so very numb as he jumped down the ladder and peered through the tunnel further into their room. More drawings, more scratches. Also there seemed to be a broken staff bot shoved all the way in the back.

He started shaking as anger began to overwhelm him. It hadn't been the first time Moon destroyed their space. But he had left the drawings alone. It mostly looked like he had found something, dragged it up here then destroyed it.

Not this utter destruction of their space. They had so little already and now he was actively destroying it. The pain, the exhaustion, the stress. It was all too much and he had enough.

He turned the connection back on with a snarl. Barking out loud into the empty room knowing his counterpart would hear it

“What the actual hell Moon, what is this?”

His question only got an evil laugh in response. He had never been able to see his counterpart in his mindscape. But he could always feel it. It used to feel warm and present.

Now it felt looming and taunting. Like Moon was high up on the wire floating in front of his face with a large grin.

“Don’t like my little present~?”

His rays shook in their frames

“Present?! You destroyed our room! Our stuff, our gifts. Why would you do that!”

His rays rattled trying to shove back inside as his faceplate spun. Moon trying to take over their body again. He struggled back getting more into the light and accidentally slammed into the wall as he stepped on a light bulb.

“Our gifts?! Your gifts! It’s always you! Always keeping me in the dark! If I get nothing. Then so do you!”

He shook his head. Still fighting with Moon. Falling to the floor landing awkwardly on his skyhook. Sending a shock of pain through their frame. And both of them let out a loud screech. He scrambled up.

He wasn’t able to cry. But if he could he was sure the tears would be dripping down his face. He had enough.

“That’s it! No more nights! We are gonna keep the lights ON. I NEVER wanna hear you again. You are not my Moon anymore”

He shut down the communication. His frame was still rattling as they kept fighting. He struggled for a couple of minutes twitching and scrambling against the floor. Until he got to the centre of the room where the light from the main daycare shined through the open door. Making Moon finally still.

He sat up heaving against the wall. Tired fingers grabbing the loose cord near the outlet. One of his charging cables. That above all luck wasn’t broken, and he plucked himself in. As the fight with his counterpart had dropped him to below ten percent.

At first, he just let out heaving breaths, but eventually, he brought his knees up and buried his head in them. His whole body ached, but it didn’t hurt as much as his emotional matrix burned. He sobbed without tears. His face was still stuck in its eternal grin. Rays retracted as he continued to heave and sob.

He hadn’t wanted to accept it. But he must have lost his friend long ago. He had held out hope, but this was the last straw. Never would he hear that soothing voice again. Just the high statics growls and laughter. Never hearing him sing, never feel his happiness again as he cared for the kids. Never feel safe again with the lights off.

He never even got to see him. Really see him. He sat there for several long minutes crying. Making the already slow charging even slower. Eventually, he gathered himself enough to look over his knees and saw the papers everywhere.

He checked his percentage and decided to temporarily unplug so he could gather the drawings. And then look for a place to hide them. Somewhere Moon wouldn’t get to hopefully. First, he just collected what was right in front of him. Then he slowly went to the dimmer-lit areas but Moon didn’t fight for control again.

Eventually, he had everything in a pile. He sat back against the wall, plugging back in and began to sort the papers Into salvageable and unsalvageable piles. It half took his mind off everything. The aches, the loss of his friend.

But it always quickly came back with a stab, with drawings of both of them. Playing with kids, hearts all around them. Starry nights, and clear skies. He remembered joking with Moon once about getting outside. Now he doesn’t think he’ll ever be allowed to leave the daycare anymore.

Suddenly he came across a paper that surprised him. It had no drawings, just text. His name was at the top. And with a start, he realised that it was Moon’s handwriting, if not a bit shakier than he was used to.

The anger came back, and he angrily shoved the paper on top of the discard pile. Not looking at it. Looking at the next few papers. And as he went to put another one on top. To put it out of his mind for good. He noticed another word

‘Sorry’

It made him freeze. He shouldn’t look.

He really shouldn’t.

Moon was gone. The fact that this had happened was proof of it. But even as he kept telling himself he shouldn’t. He picked it back up, straightening out the wrinkles. And read it.

‘Sun,

I know I am hurting you, and I am sorry. I seem to have contracted a virus and I am doing all I can to fight it. Please, I beg of you to keep the little stars safe from me. I can feel your pain, it feels like it has been years since I last talked to you. And I might never be able to again

So just in case.

Thank you for being my best friend. I couldn’t have asked for a better person to share my body with. And I will keep fighting this thing inside us so it never touches you and you stay safe- ‘

The writing seemed to get shakier as the letter moved on, his own hands trembling.

‘Tell the little stars that I loved them. You will always be my most Treasured friend. And I wish I could have told you that in person.

I’m sorry again. Good luck Sun, I’ll miss you, Moon

He stared at the letter. Reading the words over and over again. A virus…Moony had a virus. He was hurting and fighting and Fazzbear was doing nothing. They should know he has it right, They have gone to parts and servers a lot since this started.

Were they really just letting Moon suffer like that?! His fingers trembled, right now he was a little glad he couldn’t cry. So no tears were dripping on the page and ruining it. He hugged it close to his chest.

Moon was still here…somewhere. Still fighting. Otherwise, he would be feeling the effects of the virus. Moon was still keeping him safe ... .Moon was…

His head shot up. He just told Moon that he never wanted to talk to him again. But what if…what if Moon had heard?! What if he was losing faith because he had given up? But he hadn’t known. He had been so so so tired. And…

He looked around in a frenzy. And shoved the pile of drawings under a loose floorboard for now together with Moon’s letter. And stood up opening the connection

“Moon!”

He heard a high-pitched crackle

“I know you couldn’t keep your word, Always such a weak-willed Bot.”

He ignored him, trying to stare at the space he could feel him and said evenly

“You are my best friend. And I’ll always be here for you!”

It was quiet for a few seconds and it seemed like he had taken Moon by surprise. But then cackling and laughing started again. Mocking him, saying he didn’t care. That he was nothing. But he knew it wasn’t true. Moon’s letter is a shining beacon of hope.

His body was still tired. And with some difficulty, he got himself up to the platform of the daycare. He didn’t wanna risk the lights turning off as he sat down. He placed his hand against his chest. Trying to stir the music box that wasn’t his to use. But he didn’t manage.

He hoped that under the virus, under the sneering and name-calling. Moon could still hear him. So he began to sing. A song that he had heard from one of the kids. A soft lullaby-like song, about how the moon rises, and summer is ending.

All the while Moon kept berating his singing, That he could never get the kids to sleep. But he kept going. Until the song was done. And then went to a sad ballad. One of the parents had shared it after her husband had died.

It was a guy who kept talking to the moon. Like the person wasn’t gone. Maybe it was more literal in his sense. Moon didn’t stop his taunting. But he kept going, singing those two songs over and over. Until his voice box burned from overuse.

He sends a request to parts and serves for the damages caused by Moon to their body as he kept singing. Deciding to keep going until either his battery went out. Or one of the maintenance workers came to get him.

He heard Moon calling his name, sneeringly, with increasing volume as he kept going. But he wouldn't stop. He tried not to think of how lonely Moon was. How far out of reach of him. It would cause him to cry more

Moon was calling his name again. But it sounded different, he ignored it and kept singing. Even as his systems started to slow.

“Sun!”

His eyes shot open. And he looked up into two worried scarlet eyes. Holding him by the shoulders. As he realised there were tears streaming down his face.

“Sun…”

He shot forward hugging his Moony, and burst out crying.

[moviesludge]

once in a while I look through my recent followers and check out peoples blogs. I do this with the intention of finding blogs to follow. it seems like every time I look through them, theyre always different types. but one type of blog that i get are these porn blogs that look like theyre genuinely run by people. I think of that because I've seen other blogs that are really obviously bot porn blogs. but i always suspect that the formerly mentioned blogs might be bots anyway because they always have their likes public, and there arent usually too many likes there, and everything in their likes is porn. i feel like if they are a person that follows me, they would probably have liked something i posted, so I started blocking these blogs.

And then there will be niche porn types of blogs that will follow me in close succession. It makes me wonder how many blogs that look human-run to me aren't. What is the turing test for a blog that is definitely run by a human, short of like, making a bunch of personal posts that don't sound like AI?

There was another type of blog I saw that kept posting their "tumblr milestone" posts over and over. I wouldn't have thought anything about it, but I saw like 3 blogs that all followed me in reasonable succession to each other that did this exact thing.

i was surprised to see that there were fewer blank - no avatar - no header blogs than there usually are. I don't know if thats because people are catching onto popular posts I made a while ago and I'm getting actual human run blog followers or not.

[tarklesbehindthescenes]

Idk if you've already gotten a request like this, but maybe something very wholesome from either the Build Team or Autobot Brothers? It can be something like them on a mission and joking around? Or even something wholesome between both groups?? (Wedge and X-Brawn are my favorites from RID 2001)

Thank you so much for being patient while I sort of silently went through some health issues. I wanted to write a whole new cake for you, so here you are!

Requests | AO3

“We’ve got ‘em on the run, boys!” X-Brawn called out to his teammates.

The Predacons were up to their usual antics and schemes, trying to acquire some form of energy that Dr. Onishi knew about. The Autobot Brothers had been dispatched to intercept, but since the Build Team had been closer, they arrived on scene first and had done a fairly good job holding them up until the Brothers could join the fray. And color X-Brawn surprised, but when they arrived, they found that Wedge hadn’t gone and gotten himself stuck in the clutches of their enemies! He seemed to be getting better about that lately. Still got caught now and again, but it was happening less and less, for sure.

The Autobot Brothers quickly split and teamed up with a Build Team member of their choosing to beat back their foes; X-Brawn rushing to assist Wedge and Heavy Load against Gas Skunk and Sky-Byte, while Prowl helped Grimlock with Slapper, and Side Burn fought Dark Scream beside Hightower. At that point, it obviously wasn’t a fair fight. The Predacons were getting their tails beat so bad that after some traded blows and firefights, they turned tail and began to flee with the McGuffin they had obtained this time.

“But we need to get that stolen energy back!” Wedge exclaimed in response to X-Brawn’s declaration. “We can catch up, right?”

“Right you are, little bud,” X-Brawn confirmed. “And I got just the thing.” He promptly transformed into his vehicle mode and exclaimed, “Hop on the hood there and hang on, Wedge!”

The orange bot blinked with shock and cast a glance at Heavy Load, either nonverbally asking for some sort of permission or wondering if this was really happening. Whatever it was, his spell was quickly broken by Heavy Load urging him on and the sounds of Prowl and Side Burn racing ahead. At which point, he practically scrambled onto X-Brawn’s roof and clung to it. “Ready!” he announced with an almost delighted tone.

“Yeeeeehaw!” X-Brawn hollered as he revved up his engine and tore after his brothers to join the chase. He most certainly did his usual hooting and whooping as he bounced over the rough terrain, but what gave him an extra bit of go was his passenger’s vocalizations joining his own.

Wedge was having the time of his life on X-Brawn’s roof, laughing and cheering as they not only caught up to Prowl, but passed right by him to start gaining on Side Burn.

Prowl shouted after them to remind them that this wasn’t a game, but really now, at this point? It absolutely was. They had the fight in the bag, and now was the time for fun! It took X-Brawn a moment, but his ability to expertly traverse the rocky terrain made it so that he was able to catch up to his sports car of a brother struggling with each rock he hit.

“Havin’ some trouble there, li’l brother?” X-Brawn teased. “Yer usually way faster than this.”

“Ugh! I need to get me some axles built like yours!” Side Burn complained loudly.

“Maybe you should just sit back, then!” Wedge goaded with a cocky grin as he drew his blaster. “Me and X-Brawn have this!”

“Hey! Don’t count me out!” the blue Autobot protested, but X-Brawn was already pulling away and getting to some ground with fewer rocks littering the path.

“Catch ya later, Side Burn!” his brother called back merrily as he got themselves closer to the Predacons. “Alright, Wedge! Think you got a shot?”

“Yep! No problem!” the orange bot chirped back. There was a second’s pause as the young mech took aim at Sky-Byte, the one clutching the stolen energy, and then a bolt fired from his blaster, hitting the shark’s lower jaw and forcing him to drop it as he yelped. “Just that easy!” Wedge bragged after landing the hit.

The Predacons yelled to each other over their loss, but still didn’t turn back, leaving their bounty behind in shame and allowing the Autobots to recover the stolen energy. Once the two teams had regrouped, Wedge erupted into a giddy recollection of his ride for his teammates to enjoy.

“I thought the rule was ‘brothers first’,” Side Burn griped, fixing X-Brawn with a childish pout.

“As long as the job got done with little to no incidents, I don’t really care,” Prowl stated decidedly. “X-Brawn and Wedge got the job done effectively. That’s all that matters.”

“We always get to be heroes, Side Burn,” X-Brawn pointed out with amusement. “Letting the kid have a turn won’t do you any harm.”

“And it really means a lot to me, X-Brawn,” Wedge put in now that he had finished recounting the exciting details to his team, a broad smile decorating his faceplate. “That was a ton of fun! Do you think we can maybe do that again some other time? It doesn’t even have to be in the middle of battle! Going for a joy ride like that was exhilarating!”

The oldest Autobot Brother felt his chest puff out a bit with gleeful pride. “Hey, I’d be more than happy to take you along for another ride sometime! Just let me know when you’ve got some time and we’ll make it work,” he promised.

“Like right now??” Wedge checked hopefully, the look of utter delight on the kid’s faceplate nothing less than infectious.

It was enough to get X-Brawn in the mood for it… not that it was ever that difficult anyway. The oldest Autobot Brother promptly transformed. “Hop on, pardner!” he urged, revving his engine to encourage the young bot on.

As if Wedge needed any more encouragement. The orange mech practically jumped on and locked his fingers on X-Brawn’s roof. “Let’s go, let’s go!” he cheered, getting a laugh out of the older Autobot before they rode off again, leaving their teams behind to finish up and report back to Prime.