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juju-on-that-yeet · 5 years ago

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Unravel, Chapter 11/20

Work Summary: Antisepticeye has a plan to destroy Darkiplier, steal his power, and take over everything - and he might just succeed. What starts with Yandereplier going missing evolves into a messy web of betrayal and grief, of blood and tears, of old wounds and new faces. However this ends, Ego Inc. will never be the same again. Chapter Summary: The egos get new information from an unexpected outside source, compelling Dr. Iplier to reconsider his silence. Warnings: Mild blood and violence, intense emotions ;u;

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A few days later, Yandere is well enough to be discharged from the clinic. As much as Dr. Iplier wants to keep him there, he knows Yandere has made a lot of recovery progress already, and Yandere himself is itching to leave. Dr. Iplier knows, too, that it’s mostly his own fear and concern over his boy that’s making him want to keep Yandere close, and not Yandere’s actual condition. Still, he can’t help but lecture Yandere as he’s preparing to discharge him, insisting that he be careful and take it easy until he’s fully healed.

“Oh, lay off, Doc!” chides Wilford, who poofed in a few minutes ago with the intent to hang out with Yandere for his first day out of the clinic. “He gets it, just let him go already.”

“I’ll be careful, Dad, I swear,” Yandere adds.

“Alright, alright,” Dr. Iplier sighs. “I just worry about you, kiddo.”

That’s an understatement if there ever was one. It’s not just Yandere’s physical injuries Dr. Iplier’s worried about; it’s his emotional hurt, too. After that first night, Yandere hasn’t slept for more than a few hours at a time without waking with a nightmare. Sometimes it’s about Dark, about how he must have felt to be torn apart, and Yandere will cry anew for him, weeping until he exhausts himself back to sleep. Sometimes it’s about Anti, about the mental and physical torture Yandere suffered under his control, and Yandere will wake screaming and begging for mercy, shaking in Dr. Iplier’s arms until Dr. Iplier manages to coax him back to sleep. Even now, standing before Dr. Iplier and begging to be discharged, there’s a sad, tired glaze to his eyes, a difference in the way he carries himself.

None of that has to be said. Yandere’s expression softens and he walks up to Dr. Iplier to hug him.

“I’ll be okay eventually, Dad,” Yandere murmurs, “I already feel a lot better.”

Dr. Iplier’s heart burns. He can’t help but think of the additional two weeks he let Yandere suffer as he tried to figure out what to do about Anti’s plan. Still, he hugs Yandere back, squeezing tight.

“Alright, sweet pea,” he says, kissing Yandere’s forehead, “I’ll let you go. Just–”

“Be careful, I know!” Yandere laughs, stepping out of the hug. “I got it, Dad. I promise I’ll go easy on myself.”

“Wilford!” calls a sudden new voice.

Everyone turns to see Silver Shepherd dashing into the room, skidding on the clinic tile and nearly crashing into a cart. He’s not winded thanks to his super-endurance, but he might as well be. He pants not with exertion, but with shock and urgency.

“What do you want?” Wilford asks, grumpy at his intrusion. Yandere and Dr. Iplier regard Silver much less critically.

Silver holds up a small gadget – not his phone but his communicator; about the same size as his phone but with a much stronger signal, meant only for talking to Jackie on patrols and connecting to police and fire stations and hospitals. Silver speaks before the others can intuit his reason for showing it.

“Jackieboy Man made contact. He wants to talk to us, all of us. As soon as possible.”

The quiet is stark. Dr. Iplier’s eyes go wide, as do Yandere’s. Wilford’s frown deepens.

“Come on, then,” he says brusquely, approaching Silver, “Let’s take it to the Googles, see if we can get–” He poofs himself and Silver away, presumably to the control room.

Dr. Iplier spares a moment of sympathy for Silver getting tossed through Wilford’s void with no warning, but it’s trifling, barely present under the apprehension. What news does Jackie have for the egos? Dr. Iplier can’t help but feel like things are about to get even worse than they already are. The look on Yandere’s face suggests he’s thinking the same.

“What’s Jackie-san going to tell us?” Yandere asks him, trembling just a little.

“I don’t know,” Dr. Iplier says, putting an arm around him, “But I bet we’ll find out.”

Sure enough, only a few minutes later the pair each get a ping on their phones for an urgent, immediate meeting.

~~~

Dr. Iplier and Yandere take their now-usual seats at the conference table, and the room fills quickly. People are talking amongst each other, but much more quietly and subdued than normal. One could choose a conversation to eavesdrop on if they so desired, as the other noise in the room is minimal. The wall past the end of the table has a flat-screen TV attached there, similar to the end of Markiplier TV, from what Dr. Iplier remembers. They don’t really use the TV much, but right now, the Googles are working on it via the panel next to it on the wall, fiddling with AV cables. At the other end of the cables is Silver’s communicator. Silver himself is standing close by, nervously wringing his hands. Yandere looks over and catches Chrome’s eye as he works, and Chrome only frowns deeper, something desperate in his eyes.

“Alright,” Wilford says, loud over the whispers of the others, in lieu of the usual gunshot, “The reason we’re all here is that Silver–” Silver lifts a hand in a slight wave, “–received a message from Jackie on his communicator.” The whispers quiet as the other egos absorb the knowledge. “The Googles are trying to connect the communicator to the TV so we can speak to Jackie as a group. Jackie himself has news he wants to share with all of us.”

“Got it,” Google says, just as the TV flickers to life. The screen is still mostly black, but with white around the edge, just as the face cam feed on Silver’s communicator currently is. Google nods to Silver, who presses a button on his communicator.

A loading circle appears in the center of the blackness. The room is so silent that Dr. Iplier can just barely hear Silver murmuring “C’mon Jackie, pick up, please pick up,” under his breath.

After what feels like days but is only twenty or so seconds, Jackie appears on the TV.

Nearly everyone gasps, and no wonder: Jackie looks awful. One eye is nearly swollen shut, the other is open but ringed black and purple. His nose is crooked like it’s been broken recently, his nostrils are crusted with blood. His lip is split, his neck is lined as red as his suit, like someone tried to garrote him. His hood is down revealing his green hair, messy and dull. His suit covers the bruises and cuts that must be on his shoulders and upper chest, but there are some tears that reveal jagged gashes underneath. The worst of it, though, is Jackie’s expression: Normally bright, happy, optimistic, now tired, worn, hollow. His injuries remind Dr. Iplier of Yandere’s before he healed, and his expression is far too close to the look in Yandere’s eyes now, the look of someone haunted.

Yandere must see it too, because Dr. Iplier feels him hide his face in Dr. Iplier’s shoulder. Dr. Iplier lets him, and takes his hand to squeeze comfortingly as Yandere starts to shiver.

“Hey, glad I could get a hold of Silver,” Jackie says, trying for a smile and wave. His accent is there, but the bounce and volume are gone. He doesn’t sound like the same person.

“I could say the same about you!” Silver exclaims. No one looks more upset by the sight of Jackie than Silver; even through his mask his distress is tangible. “I’ve been trying to reach you for days, and the others have been trying to talk to your brothers.”

“I suppose,” Wilford cuts in from the head of the table, putting both his hands on the tabletop, “That you’re here to give explanations to that?”

“Yeah,” Jackie says, sighing. “I needed to tell all of you, it’s too important for just Silver and Dark – well, Wilford.”

Damien is at the table, too, and his jaw tenses at the stumble.

“Look, I’ll just come out and say it.” Jackie heaves a shuddering breath, then seems to steel himself. “Anti’s taken the others.”

The whole room gasps again.

“What??” Bim is the one to shout, “Even–”

“He took Marvin first.” Jackie cuts him off. His eyes are full of pain. “I guess he knew Marvin would be the hardest to defeat, so he wanted to get him first while he had the element of surprise. He took JJ and Schneep next. He probably figured they’d go down easier since he’s puppeted them before. I mean, I guess he was right. He got them, too.” Jackie looks away then, starting to tremble. “I tried to keep Chase and Robbie safe, but Anti took them too before long.” He looks back at the others. There are tears in his eyes. “It only took him a few days to take them all from me. He didn’t need to recharge or recover from attacks. We’d break our backs driving him away and he’d be back a few hours later, fighting us just as hard as before. And the more of us he took, the less we could fight, because we can’t just hurt our brothers.” Jackie breathes in, rough. “I know Anti’s not done. He’s leaving me for last. He’s attacked a few times, as you can tell–” He gestures to his face, “–but I think he’s going easy on me. I think he wanted me to get in contact with you guys. He didn’t let us before, god knows we tried. He jammed our signals, even for my communicator.” His eyes glint. “It’s not luck that I’m talking to you guys now. Anti’s letting me. He wants me to talk to you, let you know about all the havoc he’s caused.”

“He’s sending a message,” Wilford muses.

“Exactly,” Jackie sighs. “And the thing about all this is…” Jackie shakes his head again, like he barely trusts his own memory. “Anti’s not normally this strong. If he always had the ability to do something like this, he wouldn’t have waited so long. But I know he didn’t. The way he controlled the others, how he made them fight…they weren’t mindless, but they didn’t have the normal level of free will his puppets have. They were somewhere weird in between. And I swear they were stronger. The thing that made Anti stronger made the others stronger, too.” His eyes go distant. “Chase was always scrappy, but he was never so fast. Schneep never had the knack for fighting at all, but he threw a scalpel from across the room and gave me this.” He points to a hole in his suit, a hole deep in his skin. “Robbie’s never really been able to control his strength or channel it into aggression, but he was like an animal with Anti controlling him. And Marvin’s magic is stronger, and I don’t know how many times JJ was able to reverse and fast-forward time as we fought…” He sighs again against the memories. “Point is, this isn’t typical. I had a hunch as to how Anti got so strong, and I think I’m right, considering Dark isn’t here.”

“Dark’s aura,” Wilford growls.

Jackie nods.

Everyone in the room is frozen with fear just imagining it all. The ones with a friend or two among the Septics are in tears. Dr. Iplier is horrified. Everything he feared about Anti using Dark’s power is coming to life and then some. Beside him, Yandere hasn’t lifted his head from Dr. Iplier’s shoulder, and his trembling has only increased. Dr. Iplier pulls Yandere into his lap and starts to quietly soothe him, trying to distract them both. Yandere whimpers into Dr. Iplier’s neck. His tears are warm on Dr. Iplier’s skin.

“Do you have any idea about what Anti’s plan is, or was?” Bim asks, crying but fighting to keep his voice steady. “We know he used a potion he stole from Marvin, and he took Yandere and kept him as a puppet for a long time. But he let Yandere go after he got Dark’s aura. It doesn’t make sense.”

“Of course it was a potion from Marvin,” Jackie mutters, suddenly bitter. “I told him a hundred times to stop making shit he didn’t need, but he always said he hid them–” The anger falls out of him in a sigh. “Of course Anti found it. He probably always knew where they were. As for Yandere…”

Jackie glances at Yandere, who doesn’t look up from Dr. Iplier’s neck. His gaze softens as he thinks. He probably remembers weeks ago, when Dark and Wilford questioned him about Yandere’s disappearance, before they knew for certain it was Anti’s doing.

“I can’t say why Anti took Yandere like that, but…” Jackie considers. “If he was able to get into Ego Inc. and kidnap Yandere, logic says that he should’ve been able to sneak in and use the potion on Dark himself without all that preamble. Anti’s just reckless enough to try it, but he’s smart, too. He probably knew that if he failed even once, he’d never get another chance. He had to be absolutely sure he could do it. And it couldn’t have been easy to get the drop on someone like Dark.”

“Dark was hurt when Anti took his aura,” Wilford says, subdued and sad. “He’d gotten in a fight with Infelix and got badly burned.”

“He must’ve been waiting for an opening like that,” Jackie continues. He pauses. “But wait, if Dark was hurt, he would’ve been in the clinic, right?”

“Dr. Iplier was there,” Host pipes up, “And The Host arrived soon after. The Host came too late to know exactly what happened, and Dr. Iplier was in shock and had no memory of what he saw. He still does not know what happened.”

Jackie looks toward Dr. Iplier. Even through the TV screen, Dr. Iplier can feel the burn of Jackie’s intense gaze.

“Really?” he asks, somewhere between desperation and disbelief.

“Really,” Dr. Iplier lies. It’s not the first time he’s told that lie, but it’s the hardest, speaking it to the face of someone who’s lost so much to Dr. Iplier’s decisions.

For only a moment, Jackie’s eyes narrow, and then he sighs and shakes his head. But Dr. Iplier’s heart pounds.

“He knows I’m lying.”

“The piece that doesn’t fit is Yandere,” Jackie muses, “There’s no reason to kidnap him unless he wanted a distraction, or…”

“Or…?” Wilford prompts.

“Or leverage.” Jackie finishes. “Leverage against Dark, or you, or someone else. With a plan this big, where one little slip-up would mean failure, Anti would’ve done whatever he had to do to increase his chance of success. Yandere has to fit somewhere in there. But I can’t say how, I don’t know enough.” Pain filters back into his expression. “All I know is that Anti has more power than he ever dreamed. He’s collecting puppets. He got all my brothers, and I know he won’t stop after he gets me. I’ve gotten some communication from other figments he’s attacked. I think he’s looking for the stronger ones, ones he can turn into puppets, and killing the weaker ones so they can’t band together and stop him.” He stares out at all of the egos. “You guys are the strongest figments around. Anti will come after you, and you have to be ready to face him. If you can’t stop him then nobody can.” He sighs, resigned. “I’m not strong enough to stop him, especially not when he has my brothers to use against me. I won’t hurt them. I can’t. They’ll defeat me and Anti will make me a puppet just like the rest of them. It has to be you.”

“Oh, we’ll stop him alright,” Wilford growls, eyes bright pink. “We’ll rip him to shreds.”

Jackie grins, bitter.

“Good.” His grin falls. “That’s all I have. I hope it was helpful, at least.”

“Very,” Wilford says with a nod.

“I’m so sorry, Jackie,” Silver says, quiet and somber. He’s probably crying under his mask. “We’ll stop him, and you’ll get your brothers back.”

Jackie smiles, sad and tired but genuine. His eyes shine with tears.

“Thanks, Silver,” Jackie whispers, as though suddenly too choked up to speak any louder. “Good luck, all of you.” His smile shakes and falls. “You’re going to need it.”

The call ends.

The TV screen goes black again.

“New rule,” Wilford says, eyes still pink with rage, “No one leaves this building. If Anti’s coming we absolutely cannot risk anyone getting hurt out there. We stay here and stay alert. The Googles–” He nods to them, “–will be monitoring the city through cameras, looking for any sign of Anti. If any of you see something, me or Host has to know.” He sighs, running a hand through his hair. “We still don’t have all the answers, but that doesn’t matter anymore. What’s important is stopping Anti. You’re all dismissed.”

The room bursts into flurries of muttering as the egos talk amongst themselves, but quietly, still in shock. Wilford storms away with Host following behind, leaving Dr. Iplier sitting in his chair with Yandere still in his lap.

“Did Anti just take me for fun?” Yandere whimpers. “Did he kidnap me and torture me just because he felt like it?? Was it just – just fucking set dressing for his actual plan!?”

“Oh, sweetheart,” Dr. Iplier murmurs, stroking his hair.

“I know why Anti took him, I know everything,” he can’t stop himself from thinking.

Dr. Iplier’s phone buzzes. He’s surprised, but he gets it out of his pocket – a feat with Yandere still in his lap – in case it’s important. And it must be, because it’s Jackie’s name that pops up on Dr. Iplier’s screen. He’s had Jackie’s number for a while, in case something happened to Silver while the pair were working together. He opens the message:

You know something they don’t. Whatever it is, you have to tell them. It could help them stop Anti, and even if it doesn’t, they deserve to know the truth.

Dr. Iplier’s heart sinks, because Jackie’s right. Knowing the truth may not help them fight Anti; knowing how Anti got Dark’s aura doesn’t matter for that. But it still matters to the egos. It matters to Yandere, to his recovery. It matters to Host, to the blind spot – in every sense of the phrase – in his visions. It matters to anyone who cares about either of them, anyone who fears being taken in the night and puppeted next. After all the secrecy and hiding, all the paranoia and guilt, it seems inevitable that Dr. Iplier would end up here.

“The question is, will you admit to what you’ve done, or will you hide the truth like a coward?” Anti had asked.

Dr. Iplier cannot be a coward any longer.

But it still takes him a few hours to gather up the strength to go to Wilford, to tell him that he has something important to say.

“Well, go ahead,” Wilford says.

“It…it has to be a meeting,” Dr. Iplier answers, voice shaking. “Everyone has to know.”

It must be the look on Dr. Iplier’s face, or the way he’s carrying himself, or something else about him that makes Wilford nod and send out the notification instead of scoffing at the idea of two meetings in a single day. Ordinarily that’d be strange, but nothing is strange anymore.

Well, not nothing.

The meeting room fills up, again. Wilford sits at the head, again. But Dr. Iplier doesn’t take up his usual seat between Yandere and Host. Instead, he stands at the end, and the other egos are bewildered by it. Dr. Iplier tries not to meet anyone’s eyes, but he can’t help but glance at his loved ones. Yandere is utterly confused, and Host is surprised not to sense Dr. Iplier beside him. Dr. Iplier’s heart is pounding harder than it ever has, he struggles not to hyperventilate. He has to stay in control. He has to turn on his doctor side. He has to be clinical, he has to speak simply, he cannot let emotion get in the way of this.

“We’re here again,” Wilford begins, addressing the room’s obvious question, “Because Doc has something we need to know.” He gestures to him.

Every eye in the room zeroes in on Dr. Iplier.

“Okay,” Dr. Iplier says, trying to keep his voice steady, “I just want to ask before I start that…that no one say anything until I’m done. Alright?”

Wilford shrugs.

“Sure,” he says. Some other egos nod, all continue to stare. Yandere and Host’s brows furrow.

It’s now or never.

Dr. Iplier takes a deep breath and begins.

“I should start from the beginning,” he says, quiet and slow. “A couple weeks after Yandere disappeared, Anti…Anti snuck into the clinic and grabbed me.” The others gasp. Dr. Iplier continues. “He teleported me to his cabin, the place where he was keeping Yan.” Dr. Iplier closes his eyes, remembering. “He showed Yan to me, but he put so much static in Yan’s head that he didn’t register anything around him, except for Anti’s voice. He told me how he could get into Ego Inc. just enough to condition Yandere, and during that storm, he came into the building through a lightning bolt and took Yan away. Anti taunted me, and told me everything. He showed me the same potion Yan saw, told me how he stole it from Marvin, told me how he planned to kill Dark and take his aura with it, and…and…” Dr. Iplier takes in a shaky breath. He can’t go back from this. He opens his eyes, but looks down at the table, unable to look the others in the eye. “And how he wanted me to be the one to use it.”

The room gasps again, and some start to murmur, until Wilford smacks a hand on the table to silence them. Dr. Iplier looks at him, avoiding the gaze of the others. Wilford gestures for him to continue. His expression is dangerous. Dr. Iplier shivers and directs his eyes to the table once more.

“He knew he only had one chance to give Dark the potion,” Dr. Iplier explains, “And Yandere was his means to that end. He knew he wouldn’t be able to sneak up on Dark. At first he thought he could make Yandere do it, but it seemed too risky. He knew no amount of brainwashing or possession could make Yandere hurt Dark, and he doubted he’d be able to hide Yandere’s brainwashing if he sent him back to us. So instead, he used Yan to get to me.” He tightens his fists against his sides, one beat, then relaxes. His hands start shaking. “He told me to take the potion and use it on Dark when I got an opportunity. If I refused, he’d kill Yan, as many times as it took for him to fade. If I told anyone, he’d do the same. If I got an opportunity and hesitated, he’d come and kill Dark himself, and then he’d kill Yan. But if I did it, he’d give Yan back. So he sent me back with the potion. For another two weeks I tried to think of a way out. I…I reasoned that Anti didn’t know for sure what the potion would do, he’d admitted that. I thought maybe it wouldn’t do what he wanted it to do to Dark. And that even if it worked, Anti could never take something as powerful as Dark’s aura for himself. And I didn’t–” His breath hitches, he struggles not to sob. “–I didn’t want to lose Yandere. I couldn’t forgive myself if I let him die. And I knew that even if we somehow managed to find that cabin and get him back, we wouldn’t be able to do it before Anti killed him, and we might’ve lost him forever.” Dr. Iplier shudders, tries to look up but can’t. “So I did it. After Dark got hurt in that fight with Infelix, I…I…injected him with the potion.”

The room gasps a third time, people start to shout, and this time, Wilford fires a round into the ceiling to quiet them. Dr. Iplier dares not look at him.

“It split him apart into Damien, Celine, the DA’s body, and his aura,” Dr. Iplier continues, remembering how Dark fell apart in front of him. “After it happened, Anti came with Yandere. He kept his promise, he released his control of him. Dark’s aura went right to him, he didn’t even have to take it by force. He said…” Dr. Iplier struggles to keep speaking. “He said I didn’t have to keep anything a secret anymore. That it didn’t matter now that he had what he wanted. But when Host came in I just…I froze. I couldn’t admit it. I thought, I feared, but I hoped he’d find out the whole thing by narrating, but he didn’t. And I just couldn’t make myself tell the truth. Not then, not after, not until now. Jackie took one look at me today and figured out I was lying. He didn’t know what I did, but he knew I was hiding something. He texted me after he signed off, he told me you all needed to know. And he’s right. You have to know. All of you. I’m sorry.” He still cannot lift his head, still cannot face what he’s done. Tears start falling, hitting the table one at a time. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

There’s a long beat of silence.

Then the room explodes.

Shouting, crying, screaming out, chairs tossed back, hands slammed on the table. Dr. Iplier finally, finally forces his gaze up to see chaos. Half the egos are arguing with each other, the other half are yelling at Dr. Iplier, all of them talking over each other.

“Dr. Iplier, why on earth did you–”

“You heard him, it was to protect Yandere!”

“But he killed Dark!”

“If it were my kid, I woulda done the same!”

“Letting Yandere die would have been regrettable; however, letting Dark die is already causing much more harm.”

“He should’ve told us, maybe we could’ve found Yandere!”

“Anti would have known, he would’ve killed him!”

“Would that have been any worse than this?”

“He killed one of us! How are we supposed to trust him now!?”

Their arguments go in circles, and they soon get too caught up in them to yell at Dr. Iplier anymore. Every ego is a part of it, even Eric and Oliver are raising their voices with the others, even the Jims are arguing furiously; CJ’s wide, angry signing just as volatile as his brother’s shouting. But Dr. Iplier can’t focus on any of them, there’s other people whose reactions matter more to him.

Wilford has his head buried in his hands, and Dr. Iplier can’t tell if he’s heaving with sobs or if he’s struggling not to completely lose his temper. Damien is making his way through the crowd to help him, his own face white, now that he knows for sure what happened in that blank spot of Dark’s memory, now that he knows what was happening right under Dark’s nose. Host is sitting ramrod straight in his chair, mouth open in shock, staring straight ahead of himself across the table, bandages darkening with blood, hands curled in tight fists. Worst of all, though, is Yandere, sitting hunched in his seat, staring into the middle distance, confused tears spilling down his cheeks, eyes redder than his hair. After a few moments, Dr. Iplier and Yandere’s eyes meet, and Yandere’s expression twists. He gets up and storms out of the room. Dr. Iplier follows him without a second thought, pushing through the crowd to the doorway. Most are so absorbed in their arguments that they barely notice.

“Yan!” he calls, making his way to the hall. “Yan, please!” He sees Yandere stop where he is, still facing away. Dr. Iplier runs to him, gasping with exertion or emotion or both. “Yan please, just hear–”

Yandere turns around and punches Dr. Iplier across the face in one smooth motion. Dr. Iplier is suddenly staring at the floor, struggling to stay upright. His jaw rattles with the force. His mouth fills with pain and something else. He spits a glob of blood and a tooth onto the floor.

“Yan,” he gasps.

“How could you??” Yandere cries, voice strained with tears. “You killed Yami! You killed my senpai! This whole time you held me and comforted me and you were the one who took him from me!!”

“I’m sorry I lied,” Dr. Iplier whispers, still in shock. His jaw throbs with pain, his chest throbs with hurt. “I’m so sorry I lied to you. And I’m sorry for what I did to Dark, you don’t know how sorry I am.”

“You’re still fucking lying!” Yandere screams, “If you were really fucking sorry you wouldn’t have killed him!!”

“I had no choice, don’t you see that!?” Dr. Iplier sobs, “If I didn’t do what Anti wanted he would’ve killed you!!”

“Then you should’ve let him!!” Yandere howls. “I’d rather be dead than live without Yami! How could you do this to me??”

“Son, please–” Dr. Iplier murmurs, aching, reaching out to wipe away Yandere’s tears.

“Stop,” Yandere chokes out, stepping back, away from Dr. Iplier’s hand, “Don’t say that now, just – not now, not now.” He turns and runs, crying the whole way down the hall.

Dr. Iplier stays rooted where he is, frozen, mouth open as every unsaid word congeals in his throat, burning as keen as his jaw. His heart was already broken after days of missing Yandere, days of watching him wake with nightmares, days of holding him as he cried, days of watching Yandere in pain, but now it’s positively shattered watching his – his – well, his nothing anymore, right? – run away from him.

As he stands there, two people – Chrome and Yancy – brush past him, running down the hall after Yandere to comfort him. They don’t give Dr. Iplier so much as a backwards glance. He has nothing left to do but turn and go back to the conference room, trudging through the doors. He can barely feel the tears still running down his face, his neck, off the end of his chin onto the door handle.

The room is still just as chaotic, but the chaos has shifted. On one side of the table, Wilford is storming up and down the length of it, one hand waving his gun in the air, the other buried in his hair, tight, almost pulling. His eyes are wild and pink, his face is stretched in an unnatural grin as he mutters to himself. Damien and Bim are following him as he goes, trying to talk to him, and the Jims are following Bim, watching silently with owlish eyes, unsure of what to do other than hold tight to each other’s hand. On the other side of the table, most of the other egos are giving Wilford a wide berth and gathered around something…someone else.

Dr. Iplier approaches to see The Host, and the pieces of his heart lurch in his chest. Host is curled over himself, hands tangled in his hair. Blood soaks through his bandages, runs down his cheek, dampens the front of his trench coat, puddles on the table, drips onto the floor. He’s already gone pale. He’s muttering so low and so fast that he’s impossible to understand, and he seems unable to stop.

“The blocks in his visions are gone,” Dr. Iplier realizes, “He can see all the futures he couldn’t before.”

Host mutters and mutters until his words catch and he coughs, pulling his hands out of his hair to brace against the table. The puddle on the table sloshes into his hands, into the cuffs of his trench coat, off the table and onto his pants, but Host doesn’t seem to notice. When the cough leaves him, he bows his head, trembling, panting. His teeth are red. When he speaks again, he’s finally audible, voice dark with premonition.

“The egos have hundreds of futures laid ahead of them now,” Host gasps, “All are suffering. Many are death. Reality is flayed open, no one is safe.”

He lifts his head and, even without eyes, stares straight at Dr. Iplier through the crowd of egos.

“Nothing will ever be the same.”

#dr. iplier #yandereplier #wilford warfstache #jackieboy man #markiplier fanfiction #markiplier #kristin says stuff #my writing #unravel #oof

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notalwaysthevillian · 6 years ago

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Into the Deep

Warnings: Gagging, food mention, swearing

Word Count: ~1.1k

Pairings: Platonic LAMP, Brotherly Logicality

Masterlist

Ch. 4

The next morning, after Roman had speared and cooked their breakfast with his thermoblade, the four of them sat down and made a plan.

“Getting the base built is our number one priority,” Logan said, biting into a fish. He made a face immediately, swallowing hard. “The second is creating a stable source of food.”

“What, you’re not a fan of the fish?” There was a teasing look in Roman’s eye.

Holding back a gag, Logan nodded toward the fabricator. “The ingredient I was missing is something called table coral.”

“Oh, I saw some of that yesterday! I tried to grab some, but it’s really stuck on there. We’re going to need Roman’s knife.” Making a slashing motion with his hand, Patton grinned at the mercenary.

“Very well then.” Logan pushed the rest of the fish away, making another face as Roman eagerly grabbed it. “Once we’ve finished...breakfast...we’ll all head off. Once we have the table coral, we can get settled and have power, as well as a place of refuge. I can’t imagine the weather will stay this tame forever.”

As if on cue, the sun was blocked as clouds moved across the sky.

Roman gulped down the rest of Logan’s fish, grabbing his freshly made oxygen tank. “Let’s go.”

The four of them suited up, Virgil helping Patton with his tank, before ducking into the water.

The sheer drop under the island made Virgil uneasy, but he made sure to stay behind Patton. Roman insisted at being at the back in case something came at them, despite Virgil’s protests.

With Virgil there to speed Patton up, they made it to the spot in half the time, though the storm may have had some influence.

Logan stopped close to where they’d picked up the supplies the previous day. “Where did you see the coral?”

Patton ducked his head underwater for a second. When he surfaced, he pointed. “Around there.”

“Roman, go with him and collect as much as you can. I suspect we’ll need more than one computer chip.” Logan glared at the water, mad at himself. “Virgil, if you’ll come with me and help me gather quartz. I’d like to build a few observatories at the mountaintops if possible.”

Virgil nodded stiffly, making sure that the other two knew to surface in about five minutes. He and Logan dove down, easily navigating the brightly lit shallow water.

They’d just passed a cave when Logan heard a familiar sound. He swam away as fast as he could upon hearing it, seeing Virgil in his peripheral. A sigh of relief left him as the creature exploded far enough away that he wasn’t injured.

Virgil fixed him with a look, but didn’t force them to surface. Instead, he filled his pack with as much as he could carry before kicking up for air.

“What the fuck was that?” He asked as Logan popped up next to him.

Logan sighed, knowing this was inevitable. “It was a creature I bumped into last time. This time I was fortunate enough to recognize the sound and get away.”

“This time?!” Virgil yelled, splashing the water around as he moved his hands. “You mean that thing exploded next to you?”

“Affirmative.”

“As soon as our base is built I’m taking a look at any possible wounds you might have. “ Without thinking, Virgil was already running his hands over Logan’s side. “If you’re injured, we need to know as soon as possible. I know you want to take full responsibility for us getting stuck here, but the only one who isn’t at fault is Roman. Patton could’ve denied your orders and I could’ve fought harder. So don’t blame yourself, it only makes you feel worse. Trust me, I’d know.”

Logan winced slightly as Virgil’s fingers ran over a tender spot. “Thanks, V.”

Virgil nodded and the conversation died as Roman surfaced and called their names.

They swam over, reaching him just as Patton came up for air. A large grin spread across his face as he patted Roman’s pack. “We’ve got enough table coral to last us a long time. You should’ve seen the way he was slicing and dicing!”

“Well, I hope they aren’t sliced too much or it may not register in the fabricator,” Logan said bluntly.

Rolling his eyes, Roman shook his head. “Relax, Captain, I only sliced them enough to be able to pick them up. And I left enough so that it can grow back. On Patton’s insistence.”

A low rumble sounded overhead.

Virgil looked up, seeing the clouds starting to darken. “We should get back. The sooner we can make shelter the better.”

Once they arrived back on the island, Logan took no time in making the habitat builder. Loading his pack up with titanium pieces and quartz, he headed for the clearing.

By the time the others had packed up some of the excess materials and headed over, Logan had already built a multipurpose room and a hatch.

“I’m assuming we’d all like our own rooms?” He asked as he heard the others.

“If we can’t spare the materials, I can share.” Virgil offered.

Looking in his bag, Logan winced. “We don’t have much titanium to spare, despite the amount of wreckage Roman managed to grab. I saw that some of the outcrops gave titanium, but I thought that we had enough.”

“It’s okay, we can share!” Patton turned to Virgil and Roman. “Would you two be okay with sharing?”

The two shared a look before Virgil nodded. “Yeah, I guess that’s fine.”

“If you don’t-”

“We’re good, Pat, I promise.”

Logan coughed, his face slightly red. “I don’t suppose you gathered some of those vines? We’ll need a mesh for beds.”

“Don’t worry, we got you covered.” Limp vines were pulled out of Roman’s pack. “If you want power though, we should make some solar panels. It’s gonna get dark soon and we’ll want all the power we can get.”

Holding up the habitat builder, Logan started on creating the room. He was beyond thankful that the technology was a breeze to use - after all, he’d created the fabricator and the habitat builder with the same technology.

The lasers whirred, finishing up the room. Logan inserted the ingredients for the solar panels, watching the titanium and quartz be rearranged into the panels.

Once the solar panels were in place, Logan created two more multipurpose rooms and placed two beds in each. Virgil immediately curled up and was out like a light. Roman was right behind him, leaving the two brothers awake in their own room.

“Hey Lo?”

Logan rolled over, seeing the blurry figure across the room. “Yes, Patton?”

“There’s no one I’d rather be stranded with.”

Logan could feel Patton’s smile, which generated one on his own face. “Thank you, Patton.”

“Good night.”

#Into the Deep #sanders sides #sanders sides fic #logan sanders #roman sanders #patton sanders #virgil sanders #food mention #swearing #unhappy ending

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brainfoodgp · 6 years ago

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Spring/2019

“If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere.”-Vincent Van Gogh-

Today is Earth Day and spring has finally sprung here in New York. We have been experiencing warmer weather and April showers have been falling steadily, a sign that bodes well for May’s flowers. NY’s Cherry Blossoms are in full eruption and the Tulips and Daffodils are poking their tiny heads out from the earth, reaching for the sun, and ready to explode into a full array of colors. After the cold frigid winter the prospects of spring always brings me such hope and a feeling that anything I set my full attention to can and will come to fruition, as long as my intention is equally powerful.

The winter was no time for hibernation for me, I’ve often admired and envied the bear for its ability to hunker down for the colder months. For me, there just don’t seem to be enough hours of daylight. Which is probably why the conclusion of daylight savings time, for me, is as much a day to be celebrated as Earth Day itself. One more hour of daylight means one more hour I have to get things done! Self-care is one of those items on my list that I am still working hard to achieve and unfortunately it often gets shuffled to the next days, and the next days “to do”list.

I am still working hard on the Brain Food Garden Project cookbook 33 Delicious Recipes for the Brain. Chef Annette Tomei’s recipe collection is shaping up nicely. And the peer community that have already shared their food and garden related stories of recovery with us are divine. They will enhance the powerful message of the project immensely. We are pushing the publication of the book back to 2020 so that I am allowed time to collect more of these gems of lived experience for its pages.

BioCities founder Kate Bakewell and I finally signed our fiscal partnership agreement at the offices of the Urban Justice Center in February and I look forward to sharing more on our new relationship in the coming months. It is an exciting step in the evolution of BFGP’s development. To learn more about BioCities click here.

I am equally excited to share an interview I gave over the winter to Community Access’s C Magazine for their Spring/Summer Issue recently published. To read the new issue click here. Also, I am happy to announce that I have been developing and scheduling guests for the new season of The Candor Report podcast. To be the first to learn of our first guests, our second season series premiere, and to keep up with all the doings of my co host Sharon Simon and me, like our TCR podcast Facebook page by clicking here.

And finally, in May I have been invited to be a panelist at the May 29th PWC Working Peer Summit. This year’s theme is “Envisioning the Future of the Peer Workforce”. To secure a reservation for this year’s summit check out the flyer advertisement at the end of this issue for more information.

Which leads me to the spring issue of the Seeds For Wellness Journal. In my BFGP Feature for this issue I discuss two of the amazing organizations that I am a part of and their missions. The first, the NYC Peer Workforce Coalition (NYC-PWC), and the second is the NYC Trauma Informed Approaches Learning Community (NYC-TIALC), both of which have been keeping me extremely busy over the winter, and appears that they will be doing the same well into spring! You’ll want to check out What I’m Reading this month, the one recovery tool I’ve been utilizing more than any of my others lately is reading...and I’ve been gorging myself on book after book. I am as always sharing some of my favorite resistance articles in Notes from the Resistance. And in Delicious Recipes for the Brain I’m sharing one of my favorite Chicken and Cauliflower recipes that I’ve eaten all winter and trust me when I say it caries beautifully over into spring.

And on this Earth Day promise to yourself that wherever you are right now that when you walk out your door you will look up, out, and around you, and take a minute to appreciate all of the beautiful nature surrounding you. It is the least we can all do to honor our earth on this day and everyday. It may even inspire you to get into a garden, work to prevent food waste, stop using plastic bags and straws or find some other way to make a difference in healing our planet. The Great Mother needs us...all of us.

Now...read on an enjoy!

BFGP Feature:

My Way Of Working To Make The Peer Workforce More Equitable

The quote above that I’ve chosen to illustrate this month’s feature is from a talk I gave recently to a group of peers in the workforce. As I discussed in the Seeds for Wellness Journal Winter/2019 feature “My Thoughts on Avoiding the Status Quo Vortex.” I have been thinking and talking a lot recently about how to advance the peer movement. And what I am consistently hearing from working peers out in the workforce is that they continually feel that their voices go unheard and that they often feel unsafe and abused in their work environment. When I speak to peers in the workforce their concerns often reflects more not on their own conflicts and misery but how the peers they serve, our community, are often treated with little decency or respect by the very agencies tasked with enhancing and making their lives better, and this above all else seems to be what challenges and affects working peers more than anything else. It speaks to the collective and empathetic powers of the Peer Workforce and gets to the heart of why most of us chose to enter the human services field to begin with.

Just as I stated in my feature story in the winter issue. There is no one right or wrong path in navigating these pitfalls that the medical model continues to put in our path. However, I am able, like I did in that issue, to share with you one of the ways I have combated toxic work environments and that I have utilized to empower myself as I have worked in these diminishing environments. I will also say that having worked for two such organizations, one a housing program, and the other a program run by a city government agency, that the lessons they have taught have helped me immensely in avoiding such abusive behavior in the crafting of the model and mission I’m building for Brain Food Garden Project. I say this, simply to share, that I truly believe every unsettling event in life is a possible tool for learning. And if one chooses to look at it that way, traumatic events may be used as a powerful source for enlightenment.

Getting involved in committee work, learning communities, and other organizations outside of the medical model structure has become one of my greatest sources for resistance. Being in a room full of other peers, sharing our stories, and believing in a better system of care than we currently have available for each other, and working hard to build a system that amplifies our voices instead of constantly trying to silence us has literally transformed my neural pathways. I have been able to clearly envision for myself what a world might look like where government agencies had to answer to us instead of the other way around. A world where peers hold agencies, hospitals, and government officials accountable for their poor decisions that affects our lives and our health. A world where that old horrible saying that people use without even knowing how disrespectful it is “The lunatics are running the asylum”, actually comes true, becomes a statement of empowerment, and bites them all in the ass. My envisioning of the “asylum” and taking it over has never looked so good!

Getting involved. I can’t speak enough to its healing and powerful vibrations! I’d like to share with you two of the organizations I am currently working with. I’ve mentioned IDHA in this journal before. If you’d like more information on their incredible work and mission click here. For this issue I would like to focus on the NYC Peer Workforce Coalition (NYC-PWC), and the NYC Trauma Informed Approaches Learning Community (NYC-TIALC). Maybe you will get inspired by the work we are doing and join us at an upcoming meeting.

NYC-Peer Workforce Coalition

The NYC-PWC’s mission is committed to advancing the work of peer supporters employed in diverse behavior health settings. We are trained professionals who are dedicated to improving our work environments, breaking down stigma, and advancing the peer support workforce. We are guided by the principles of mutual support, empowerment, and the ongoing advancement of our workforce.

Currently, the NYC-PWC is working to secure our 501c3 status. We have several sub committees including Professional Development that works to assist and empower those looking for work. The NYC-PWC participates in conferences to expand our message within our community including recently sponsoring the Job Fair at last December’s Substance Use Mental Health Peer Conference.

I am currently chair of the ad hoc committee working to create the NYC-PWC By Laws and have recently been nominated for the Executive Committee position of Community Outreach Coordinator which, if elected, in addition to reaching out to our workforce to expand PWC membership will also work to create partnerships with other organizations that share like minded goals for our community and aligns with our mission. As Community Outreach Coordinator starting in 2020 I would also be responsible for chairing the planning committee for the PWC’s yearly NYC Working Peer Summit that takes place every May.

The NYC-PWC has so many exciting goals for our future. A perfect introduction to learn more about our work would be to attend this year’s NYC Working Peer Summit on Wednesday, May 29th. This year’s theme is “Envisioning the Future of the Peer Workforce” the objective of this year’s summit panel is to promote a unique vision of what our workforce might look like in the future. The panel discussion showcases two peers that have created their own organizations (I will be one of the panelists discussing Brain Food Garden Project), a man that has created an organization that provides resources to peers with a desire to create their own peer lead organizations and businesses, and a peer that through a paper he wrote while becoming a social worker himself, hopes to de stigmatize the idea of those in clinical settings from self disclosure. It is going to be an exciting conversation and a great evening!

To Learn more about the summit and to learn how to make a reservation to attend check out the advertisement at the end of this issue. And click here to go to their website.

NYC-Trauma Informed Approaches Learning Community

The NYC-TIALC’s mission is to learn about trauma and its informed approaches, to advocate for the creation of trauma informed environments, to use these approaches in behavioral health as well as substance use communities, and to build public awareness through community education and advocacy.

We do this by building public awareness through community education and information dissemination. We work with policy makers, recipients and providers of mental health services, and the community at large, as no segment of the population is immune to trauma.

The NYC-TIALC are currently working with NY Assemblywoman Solange on drafting a NYS declaration for a Trauma Informed Approaches Awareness Day. We have convened a conference call with stakeholders state wide to discuss ways to advance NYS in becoming a trauma informed state. And I recently completed the creation of a briefing book on behalf of the learning community that compiles trauma-informed data from the federal government and states all across the country creating trauma Informed approaches for their communities. The briefing book is currently being edited and will be delivered to stakeholders by the end of May. I also created and currently administer the NYC-TIALC’s Facebook presence. The NYC-TIALC is a small but wonderful community and we would love to have more peers join us! So much more is coming in 2019 for the NYC-TIALC and I am proud to be a member of this amazing group of peers. If you would like to learn more about the learning community or attend one of our meetings held the first Monday of each month join our Facebook page by clicking here.

Brain Food Garden Project keeps me very busy. However, being a part of organizations that compliment the work I’m doing only makes me more connected. And I love being with like minded people working together to make our community stronger.

What I’m Reading:

I love reading books that inspire me and feed my soul in some way. These past few months I’ve been attending so many meetings that subway time has been reading time. It also helps my anxiety on overcrowded rides and channels that energy into something more positive. I’ve been consuming about a book a week and it truly brings me great joy! So with that being said, picking just one book for this issue was next to impossible, so I’ll be sharing two. One that was a brand new read, and that I use as a wellness tool every morning when I first wake up. And the second a re-read that I’ve used in my work and have read many times, with an even more exciting reason behind picking it up again to read recently.

First, The Path Made Clear: Discovering Your Life’s Direction and Purpose by Oprah. Does the queen of Super Soul Sunday really even need to add the Winfrey? It is the second companion book to that wonderful show. And like the first book The Wisdom Of Sundays it sits on my bedside table for me to randomly select a passage to read at the start of each day. Like daily affirmations it lifts me up and gets me out of bed on even my worst mornings. And with extraordinary passages like, “I have a number of different callings. and I think it’s possible to be called away from things I have been called to in the past. There are goodbyes as well as hellos in our callings. Because a calling doesn’t have to be for a lifetime.” One of the many delicious quotes, this one for example by Barbara Brown Taylor that keeps me inspired all day, is there any wonder why this new book sings to me just as much as the first one?

I am excited to announce that the author of my second book selection Fran Sorin will be Sharon Simon’s and my guest on the second episode of the new season of The Candor Report podcast kicking off in June. A beat up copy of Fran’s book Digging Deep: Unearthing Your Creative Roots Through Gardening came into my life during my second hospitalization for manic depression. The Metropolitan Community Hospital where I was hospitalized had a library of donated books that patients were allowed to visit and borrow. At the time I had been in the psych ward for about four months and I was getting better. I was starting to lay out my plan for creating Brain Food Garden Project when I found Fran’s beautiful book, and the two days in which it took me to read it, I believed it to be a sign from the universe that the seeds of my idea for BFGP were destined to grow into something powerful. As I reread it recently, I was astonished by how many peer principles the book encapsulates that I absorbed in school and that today are the roadmap for my life and life’s work. I bought my own copy after getting out of the hospital and years later would use many of the books exercises in my first peer garden that I created for an affordable housing program in Queens. I’m looking so forward to interviewing one of my personal sheroes and having a conversation with her about her transformational work.

Notes From The Resistance:

If you are anything like me you’ve had to limit your news intake. Some days I don’t even recognize this country I call home. However, that hasn’t kept me from staying informed and reading through the Mueller Report just to fully understand how Russia interfered with our elections and just what role the authoritarian fascist vulgarian played in it. It is so important for all of us as Americans to be informed that this report is number 1 on my Resistance list for the spring issue.

1. Americans are getting our first look at the Mueller Report give it a read here

2. The fascist regime is making sure that all the progress we made ensuring our kids were eating healthier in schools is being demolished. However, we aren’t going to take it read here

3. A NJ Congressman wants the world to know that right wing extremism is one of the greatest threats to America read here

4. The USDA continues to weaken under the fascist regime. Hormel lawsuit reveals some scary facts read here

5. Let’s end on a positive shall we...the 2020 Democratic hopefuls seem to be taking agricultural issues seriously read here

Delicious Recipes for the Brain:

Chicken with Cauliflower and Apples

Ingredients:

bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs (about 2 pounds total)

1/2 head green cabbage (about 1/2 pound), cut into 1 1/2-inch pieces

4 sprigs thyme

1 head cauliflower (2 pounds), cut into medium florets

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

Coarse salt and ground pepper

2 apples, cored and cut into 1/2-inch-thick wedges

Directions:

Preheat oven to 450 degrees, with racks in upper and lower thirds. Place chicken, cabbage, thyme, and half the cauliflower on a rimmed baking sheet and place remaining cauliflower on another sheet. Drizzle each with 1 tablespoon oil and season with salt and pepper. Place sheet with chicken on top rack and cauliflower on bottom. Cook until cauliflower is tender, 20 minutes, stirring twice.

 Remove both sheets from oven. Let sheet of cauliflower cool, then transfer cauliflower to an airtight container and reserve for Pasta with Cauliflower and Collards. Add apples to sheet with chicken and remaining cauliflower and return to oven. Cook until chicken is cooked through and apples are tender, about 20 minutes, stirring twice. Serve immediately.

This Year’s NYC- Peer Workforce Coalition’s annual Working Peer Summit is scheduled for Wednesday, May 29, 2019 from 6-8 pm. This year’s theme is: “Envisioning the Future of the Peer Workforce”. There will be resource tables with job opportunities, a Q & A with peer innovators, raffle items, and dinner will be served! To make your reservation to attend email. [email protected] Attn: Willie Flora Gaines or call 347-396-7194 and leave a message. Mention Brain Food Garden Project when you book your reservation!

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waraupiero · 7 years ago

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the same goes for you.

earlier i had made a post about uta’s perspective of his relationship with yomo (more or less), and i thought that with this chapter it’d be nice to say something about yomo’s perspective of his relationship with uta. yes, i do have an obsessive need to bookend everything nicely, but i also think that it’s important to consider both sides of a narrative.

but before that i’m going to elaborate a bit on what uta thinks in chapter 171. just to set the scene and also because i’m really really really really emo about it

uta believes that it’s finished. to him, their friendship has been bookended by a fight. the fight that brings them together; now it’s the fight that’s tearing them apart. for uta, he and yomo are irreconcilable as they are inseparable -- i cannot live with you, nor without you. yomo has chosen to stand and fight for something that is decidedly against what uta is willing to more or less show up for (i doubt he buys much into what furuta is seeking to do), and therefore this fight decides what will happen to their relationship. either uta wins and consumes yomo, and they’ll be together forever, or yomo will win, and he’ll leave uta.

uta counts yomo as someone he could lose. he tells yomo to stand back and not fight loss, because he’s afraid that he’s going to lose yomo if yomo ends up dying, and he goes through great pains to save yomo. he wants to absorb yomo and have him be a part of him, because he doesn’t want to lose their friendship, and he feels like he is going to -- yomo’s stance with goat probably makes uta feel that between their friendship and yomo’s family, yomo is going to choose his family for sure ...

this panel is heartrending. i’ve briefly glossed over this before, but yomo leaving for the twentieth ward not only physically removes him from the fourth ward, but also places him far away in less tangible senses -- he belongs to a different kind of society, his family are now other people ... he’s left his old friends behind. yomo’s permanent residence in the twentieth ward must have felt like he was choosing the twentieth ward over the fourth ward, where uta and itori were ... like he left them to go somewhere faraway.

and of course, this is rather the root of uta’s loneliness and intense insecurity surrounding this friendship. he couldn’t hold onto yomo. he couldn’t protect him. he couldn’t deliver his promise. and when yomo left and changed, uta was left behind and remained the same. the distance just keeps getting farther and farther, and he’s left feeling cold, lonely.

and everything is gone.

‘no.’

yomo’s ‘no’ is an incredible affirmative; because as much as uta wants to wallow in his loneliness, loss, self-pity, and mourning, he’s wrong. he hasn’t lost everything. he still has his friend; he still has yomo.

now’s the time i’m going to beat my fist against my desk and cry, because yomo is truly wonderful and amazing and the best thing to ever happen. anyone who disagrees can meet me in the pit, where i will beat the truth into you with my ‘No. 1 Yomo Renji Fan’ foam finger. uta, after finally being decisively defeated by yomo, decides that he has nothing to lose in confiding all his deepest, saddest emotions to his best friend before he loses him too. but yomo, the man who understands loss perhaps more than he understands some of the people close to him, is able to understand and relate to uta’s circumstance, and tell him that he’s wrong.

yomo knows how it feels to be all alone, with all the people in his life dead or gone, and no one to left to give a shit about him. he knows how it feels to live like a stray, roaming through a city full of mostly hostile strangers. he knows how it feels to have to steal food to stay alive, even from the mouths of other hungry ghouls. they don’t give a damn about him either. or, rather, they do give a damn that he’s eating their food, but they don’t care for him.

until uta comes along with a crazy proposition: hey, mr. raven, who is always trespassing into my home and stealing food from my fridge, insulting my amazing fashion sense, and occasionally beating the shit out of me even though i’d never admit it, do you want to be friends?

the person who yomo’s done nothing but bad things to willingly offered to be his friend. he’s willing to care about him. he’s willing to give a shit. that’s really significant. and what’s better is that it’s not an empty offer. uta takes yomo in, shares his food and resources, respects him as an individual, and is willing to listen to his story, and offer to take on yomo’s own personal revenge, and support him through thick and thin.

uta is such a paradox of a friend. as much as he is selfish and desperate in his friendship with yomo, he’s also been incredibly generous to him. he’s willing to do whatever yomo asks of him -- heck, he’s willing to do whatever yomo needs of him, whether he asks it or not. he’s willing to follow through with his promises to yomo. but at the same time he is self-indulgent in his freedom, and although it’s not personal, his actions to negatively impact people yomo care about. and because of this uta thinks that yomo is going to choose them over him, and finish him.

but you know something interesting about ravens? they never forget a friend. if you help one out, feed it or be nice to it, it will remember you, and it will always come back to you. it will always come back for you.

in a certain way, this conflict has been yomo coming back for uta, and fighting him in order to save him.

he can’t keep both uta and anteiku/:re/goat in his life unless he reconciles the conflict between the two. he has to face uta and where uta stands in order to save everyone in his life. he needs to fight uta and stop him; and so he does. he’s been letting uta do whatever he wants for the past few years, but now yomo’s realised that he has to stand against uta and fight him this time, if he wants to keep him as well.

meanwhile uta is incredibly lost. he doesn’t have anyone to anchor him down, so he teeters along the edges of things, hoping that a switch is going to tip him over, perhaps towards some character development change, and incite some sort of direction in him.

which is in a sense incredibly ??? poetic?? in a hilarious way?? because yomo’s name is written as thus: 四方. ‘four directions’. he’s ... basically a compass? he can give uta a direction. maybe he can even give uta more than one direction. their friendship has always been based on giving each other another chance, helping each other to their feet, and unconditionally supporting one another. there’s many directions they could go in, if they like. it doesn’t end here.

and this is a direction, if uta’ll take it. if the only thing for uta that is worth fighting for, worth putting his full effort into, is eating yomo, then yomo accepts that. he accepts that wholeheartedly, and he allows uta to do it. he’s letting himself be uta’s compass, no matter what it’s going to cost him. because if it’s within his ability he’ll give it to uta. if it’s going to endanger other people, he’ll fight back. either way, uta gets something worth fighting and living for.

in a sense, yomo is repaying uta the favour that uta did him in the fourth ward. back then, even when uta was giving him a solid ass-kicking, he offered to be there for yomo, to feed him, to help him fight for revenge -- which was what yomo had been living for. here, yomo is doing the same thing. he’s coming back to help uta to his feet literally, and to let him achieve his purpose, if that really is his purpose. if not, they’re still friends, and yomo will still be with him.

yomo’s here for him, even after everything that has happened. because yomo renji never leaves a friend. it’s not over yet.

yomo knows that he’s not good with words. it’s hard for him to express his appreciation, his devotion, his affection for the people around him. he feels very self-conscious about this and sees it as a fault. but goddammit if he’s not going to at least be there for them. he sees hope in the people around him, and he wants to hold on to that. he's not a man of grand gestures, long declarations, or elaborate promises. his friendship is manifested in a cup of coffee, a presence in the seat next to you, strong hands to silently support you.

maybe that’s not enough for uta. maybe that’s why all these years he’s felt lonely and cold. yomo does not reach out to other people; and neither does uta. they’ve just stood next to each other, with nothing to say in between them. they know that the other person is right there, but the words don’t come. what is there to say when you don’t know what the other person is feeling? and what is there know if the other person doesn’t say anything?

but now uta has spoken. he’s spoken about all these terrible feelings and thoughts he’s carried over the past ten years. they’ve weighed him down and he fell from the edge.

so yomo listens. yomo listens, and this time yomo reaches out to uta. uta doesn’t say what he needs, because he doesn’t think it matters anymore. to him, none of it should matter to him or to yomo anymore. it was all pointless. and from that yomo understands what uta needs, and he is willing to give it to him. he is willing to give him hope. he shows uta that yes there is loss in the world, but not all is lost; there is still hope out there, and still something to be gained. there is still happiness to be found. if the only hope uta holds onto is eating yomo, if that’s the only thing that will make him truly happy, then he can have that too. because yomo is his friend. it’s okay if uta bothers him, he doesn’t mind. because he’s special to yomo; he’s his friend.

i thought that this was an interesting caption to use here. i’ve thought a bit about what it could mean. i guess for uta, yomo has always been the biggest source of his strength; but also an incredible weakness. he feels pain because he feels so far away from yomo; and loneliness truly is a terrible, painful thing. it’s like a knot that twists within you, pinching you always, leaving you feeling hollow with the echo of its touch. it’s a door that comes knocking but once you open it, there’s no one standing behind it. it’s cold and it drips down your ribs like ice water. it hurts, it hurts a lot, especially when you see that person all the time, and you’re reminded of how far you are, how alone you are.

you cannot live with this kind of loneliness, because it eats you away from the inside; but without this person in your life, you cannot find a reason to live at all.

so at the end, you receive a paradox. this person becomes your greatest weakness, a crippling point that will bring you down to your knees; but this person can also be your greatest strength, a beacon of hope that you can hold onto; a direction to strive for. something worth fighting for. something worth protecting. something worth living for.

difficilis facilis iucundus acerbus es idem; difficult and easy-going, bitter and sweet, you are the same you. i accept that, i welcome that fact; it’s okay. i won’t leave you. because, at the end of the day, you are still the same -- you are my friend, and i am yours.

yomo’s perspective on their friendship is infinitely generous, unconditionally supportive, completely devoted, utterly willing, and even sacrificial. as he’s said before, he finds hope in the connections he has with other people, and what comes out of those connections. he’s not willing to lose any of them, no matter what it’ll cost him. so he’ll stick through and fight for them -- even if it means fighting against them. ‘i swear, this time i will protect you.’

and really, the star card referenced in chapter 170 was the perfect preview for this conversation. the star is letting go of your memories of struggle, your feelings of pain, to find a new potential for happiness. to find a new hope, something to place your faith in. if you add up the digits of the star (1+7), the result is VIII -- the number of the strength card. and is that not what is happening here? a reaffirmation of hope, an offer of a new potential, and a strengthening of friendships and persons.

‘you’ve become strong, renji.’ yes. he is no longer the person that needs to be picked up by other people and supported; he no longer has to search for strong people to follow and learn from. it’s his turn to be the strong person and support the people around him now. it’s his turn to give back to his friends in their time of need. it’s his turn to become their strength.

#ren.txt #yomo renji #renji yomo #uta #tokyo ghoul #tg meta #四方 #ウタ #グール #damn ok here are all my feels i think i should have covered them all #but watch me forget some Big thing and have to come in and add it later #but right now my brain is like 'no you hit all the right points good job ren now go do your homework'#but ok i loVE THEM!!! FUCK THIS CHAPTER KILLED ME IT WAS TOO GOOD #SENSEI!!!! FRIENDSHIP IS INCREDIBLE!!!!! I LOVE FRIENDSHIP!!!!!! THANK YOU!!!!!!!#I'M GOING TO CARRY THIS EMOTION FOREVER IT'S TOO WHOLESOME

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maxhoemo · 7 years ago

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Creature From Another World! pt 3

When Max awoke, he wasn’t sure how long it had been. He looked around warily. His body tense, remembering what had happened. The room he was in was huge. Dimly lit, with slick and shiny dark purple walls and floor. He was rested on top some type of raised platform, not exactly the most comfortable thing in the world. But that was the least of his problems.

He squinted at something in the shadows. An outline of...The creature! He let out another scream, covering his face with his arms.

“Please, please. There is no need to be scared.” A strange voice said.

Max looked around for the source of it, just as a green tinted light came on. Revealing more of the room. The metal man stood entirely still. He moved his gaze over, seeing what must have been the source of the other-worldly accent. It really was an alien. At least, that was what it looked like. He had shining, silver skin. Long arms and legs. His spindly fingers delicately pushed a button on a control pad. He had a big head, shaped like a hot air balloon. His eyes were also big. But he had two eyes, a nose, a mouth, two arms and two legs like a person. He didn’t look like he had any hair, but Max couldn’t be certain. He was dressed in some kind of tight green leotard that covered everything but his face and hands. When he stepped out from behind the control panel, Max saw he had what looked like red underwear, and matching red space boots to go with it.

His heartbeat began to increase as he was approached by the thing. Breath hitching, and eyes going wide with fear as it walked over, reaching out a hand towards him. “Don’t touch me!” Max snapped, but the thing didn’t listen. He felt it’s fingers touch his face. Lightly running down his cheek and then over his chest. Max trembled. “Please, don’t hurt me...” he begged.

The creature looked at Max with his big eyes, blinking a few times and retracting his hand. “I will nawt hurt you,” it assured. “I do nawt want to harm you.”

“Then... Why did you bring me here?” Max asked, still very cautious.

“I want to learn aboutchu.”

“Learn about me, what are you?” he asked, sitting up. “Are you an alien?”

It nodded. “Yes! Want to learn of Earth creatures! Want to halp!” he seemed very excited.

“Help...? So... Your people aren’t going to... Invade and kill us?”

“No! No! Want to help kape Earthlings safe!” It assured. “Must learn to halp.”

“Why me?”

“Averyone run away. You look very....Umm.... This hard....Not easy...”

“Well, you learned English. That is impressive....”

“Yes....Umm....” The creature opened up a compartment below the platform Max was seated on, rummaging around for something.

“Do you have a name?” Max asked.

“Yas. I cawlled Eeen.”

“Huh...Simple enough I suppose...”

“Sapposse?” he seemed confused by the word. “What they call you, Earth Crature?”

“Max...”

The alien smiled up at him at that. “Makkssss! Makkssss!” He dragged out the sounds as he spoke. “Yas! I like this word! Makss!”

Max couldn’t help but laugh at that. It was a funny little creature. Max believed him when he said he didn’t want to hurt anyone.

When it found what it was looking for, it pulled it out. Some kind of...box... It looked like maybe a car radio, was Max’s best approximation. Only, it had wires sticking out. The creature stuck the disc on the end of one wire to his head, and then moved to stick the other on Max’s.

“Wait, what is that thing?”

“To halp me...Halp me undarstand. Will put brain dictionary of you into me,” he explained. Max’s eyebrow rose at the explanation but he guessed he understood enough. He allowed Eeen to attach the disc, feeling a slight tingling sensation when the machine was switched on. After a moment, Eeen smiled looking satisfied and switched it off, putting it away.

“Yes, I know the word now...” His weird accent was still present, but the pronunciation was better. He also clearly knew more words now. “You looked very beautiful. I wanted to meet you and learn.”

“Me?” Max asked. What did ‘beautiful’ even mean to an alien?

“Yes. Can I learn from you please, Max?”

“Well...Alright... But next time, just ask.”

Eeen nodded with a wide grin.

“What would you like to know?”

“Hmm...” It thought.

Max covered his mouth, laughing again. His exaggerated movements were so funny. Maybe even a little cute.

“What is...The purpose of your species?”

“Whoa. That’s.... That’s a big one....” The meaning of life? There wasn’t really an answer for that. But he supposed people could make their own purpose. And he certainly knew which purpose the people he knew had made. “To get married and have kids,” he answered.

“Procreation?”

“Yeah. I guess. Pretty dull, huh?”

“Max, do you not share this purpose?”

Max shook his head. “I don’t really fit in... Maybe I’m not the best person to be asking about these things. I don’t even know what I want to do with my life. What about you? What’s your purpose?”

“I travel the galaxy. Learning about species, so I can help them be safe,” he smiled.

“Wow. That’s very...Nobel. You remind me of my dad.”

“Dad. Father. Caregiver who has created you with his DNA.”

“That’s right,” Max nodded.

“Yes! Your dictionary, you call your father daddy.”

Max blushed. “Yeah...” He mumbled. It was childish, but he never grew out of it. “Anyways.... He’s in the military. He wants to protect everyone, just like you. But I think Earth goes about it the wrong way...”

“Yes!” Eeen seemed excited. Perhaps because he knew what Max was talking about. “I was watching military the other day! I saw them. They have primitive computers.”

“Yeah. They also have bombs and guns....”

“Oh? These are... Used to kill...?” he looked up as he said this, like he was going over the words he’d transferred from Max.

Max nodded. “I wish we could stay safe without killing. The problem is, the people they’re protecting us from? They would kill us just as fast.”

“This is very sad.” Max could tell by his expression he wasn’t just saying that. He felt it. “I will make a note of this. I must learn how to teach Earth a better way...”

Max nodded. “It’s hard to imagine. But if you could... Just imagine if everyone on Earth was peaceful.”

“Yes. Peace. I will help with this,” Eeen assured. But Max wondered if the little guy wasn’t in way over his big head. “Will you show me also good things of Earth?” he asked.

“Sure. I’ll bring you some things.”

“Thank you, Max! Will you show me around to some of your favourite Earth places?”

“Well...That might be a little risky... Do you have a disguise or something?”

“Yes!” he grinned, pointing behind him at his metal suite.

“No, no! Not that thing!” Max shook his head. “If you want to go out again, you’ll have to try and blend in... Look, I promise I’ll come back and see you. I don’t want to go to class anyways. But, I need to get home right now.” He stood. He couldn’t believe what a liking he had taken to the quirky alien. “Just, stay in here, alright?”

“Why?”

“I don’t want anyone to get scared and hurt you.”

“Earthlings hurt when they’re scared?”

Max nodded. “Sometimes. Just promise me, alright Eeen?”

“Yes. I promise. If you promise to come back tomorrow.”

“I promise. I will,” he smiled.

#maxian #writing

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ranger-of-estel · 8 years ago

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A Merry Birthday Indeed

With everyone going home for the holidays, Leonard stays behind with Sara on the Waverider. And Sara learns that her birthday may not have been so forgotten after all.

*Note: This has not been looked over and you will likely find some typos/grammatical errors. I will come back and fix it later, but I wanted to get the story uploaded tonight.

Read it on AO3

Sara Lance is not used to being spoiled. So when Leonard tells her he’d like to have her join him for a Christmas outing she expects a night fighting in bars and causing mischief; not a pic-nick at the actual North Pole while wrapped in a parka Leonard had Gideon make with a special lining to keep warm. She’s also pretty sure the thermos cups with their hot cocoa is future tech, 2017 didn’t have something this efficient.

“So,” she looks to where Leonard is reclining back on his arms beside her. “What’s the occasion?”

He offers a half smile, “Lisa is out of town, and you volunteered to stay behind, which mean you don’t want to spend the holiday with your family.” He shrugged, “I figure Gideon can take care of herself for a few hours.”

She hums in agreement, giving him an amused smile. “And you thought sub-zero temperatures would be a good way to spend our evening?”

He offers a wry smirk in response, “Not exactly,” he shifts, pulling her down next to him before motioning up to where lights are beginning to dance across the arctic sky.

She released a quiet gasp, “Len, it’s beautiful.”

He smiled, thought he was to caught up in the way the lights danced across her eyes to look up. “It is.” He shrugs slightly, drawl returning his voice. “Always wanted to see them in person; but Mick was never agreeable.”

She laughs, “No, I’d say not.” She turns, giving him a bright smile. “Thank you for sharing it with me.” She presses a soft kiss to his nose. “Merry Christmas.”

He tilts his head so his lips brush hers. “Thank you for coming.” He kisses her, quickly banishing the slight chill seeping into his skin.

As they pulled away she tucked into his side once more, the pair watching natures stunning light show in comfortable silence. Eventually Sara lets out a slow breath, forming a cloud before her. “I think the cold is finally stronger than my coat.”

He hums his agreement; his joints and old fractures had already begun aching, but he couldn’t bring himself to move when she was so relaxed at his side. Soon they are back on the Waverider, shedding layers as they move toward the Captain’s quarters. “I forget how much a chill settles into your bones.” She sighs once all the excess layers are gone.

He steps up behind her, pulling her back against his chest as his arms settle around her. He bends his head, breath dancing across her ear and neck. “I can think of a few ways to get warmed up.”

She hums, turning in his arms so her body molds to his. “I like the sound of that,” she kisses him, and he returns it easily.

“But,” he pulls away, putting the smallest distance between them. “Warm shower first.” She frowns and he smirks, leaning in to press a kiss against the sensitive skin below her ear. “I intend to take my time with you tonight Assassin.”

When he pulls away he’s pleased to see her eyes are darker, “Is that a promise Crook?”

He motions toward the bathroom, “I’ll be right behind you.”

She pulls her bottom lip playfully between her teeth, “Don’t take too long, I might have to start without you.”

He chuckles as she turns, hips swaying as she goes to get the water running. He takes a couple minutes to turn down their bed, folding the various pieces of clothing from the floor so that they don’t get in the way. By the time he steps into the bathroom she’s already in the shower, both of their towels hanging in arms reach. He strips, stepping into the shower, hissing as the hot water runs over his cool skin.

“To hot?” she asks, turning to look at him. Arms settling around his neck as she presses kisses to the exposed skin of his neck.

He shakes his head; easily maneuvering them so they are both under the spray. “It’s fine,” he catches her mouth with his, and quickly forgets the temperature around him altogether.

Sara wakes the next morning, Leonard’s arm draped over her waist and her back pressed against his warm chest. She stretches slowly, enjoying the pleasant ache of muscles before snuggling back into him once more.

She feels his lips press to the top of her head, arm loosening enough for her to turn in his embrace. “Morning,” he drawls, pushing hair away from her face with the hand that had been propping up his head.

“Merry Christmas,” she smiles, leaning up to press a lazy kiss against his lips.

The hand resting over her slides under the oversized shirt she slipped on, rubbing gentle circles at the small of her back. “Happy Birthday Birdie.” She grins, and he watches her with that gentle adoration.

The two remain in bed a while longer, enjoying the rare quiet aboard the ship. Eventually Sara’s stomach growls, “Guess it’s time to go find food.” She sighs.

He nods, moving his arm so she can get up. He shifts closer to the edge of the bed, watching the way his shirt falls around her. “Probably want to put clothes on.”

“Why?” she offers him a suggestive glance, “We’re the only ones here.”

He hums, “As tempting as that is,” he motions toward the door, “I know Lisa and Mick intend to celebrate on board since we didn’t come with them.”

She gives an exaggerated sigh, “Fine, I guess I’ll get dressed.” She rummages around for a pair of sweats and one of his smaller shirts. Tossing clean clothes at him as she goes.

Once dressed they make their way toward the galley, “Gideon, oatmeal please.” Sara makes her way over to turn on the coffee while Leonard carries their simple breakfasts over to the table.

It’s a quiet meal, socked feet battling playfully beneath the table as they eat. “Captain Lance,” Gideon’s voice breaks in, “I’m sorry to interrupt, but there is a message waiting for you.”

“A message?” she offers the celling panel a puzzled glance before glancing at Len who just shrugs his shoulders. “From who?”

“It appears to be sent from S.T.A.R. labs, though as far as I can tell the message itself has multiple sources.” There’s a moments pause before she adds, “Due to the multimedia format I recommend you come to bridge for viewing.”

She sighs, “Alright, I’ll be right there.” She pushes away from the table, attention returning to the man across form her. “It’s Christmas…Don’t villains have people to spend holidays with?”

He chuckles, “I’ll be right behind you.” Grabbing both coffee mugs as he gets to his feet. He makes his way over to refill their mugs as she makes her way through the ship.

When Sara reaches the bridge she approaches the holo-table. “Alright Gideon, display message.”

To her surprise it is Raymond’s face that first appears, a huge grin in place. “Morning Captain! Since we are all away from the ship we wanted to let you know that we didn’t forget you today. Happy Birthday!”

Next it’s Amaya, “Happy Birthday Sara, I would have stayed aboard to celebrate.” She gives that knowing smile, “But Mick assures me that Leonard will keep you busy while we are away.”

“Hey Blondie,” Mick’s gruff voice and once insult turned playful name makes her smile. “Happy Birthday.”

“Sara,” Oliver’s image surprises her, but the gentle smile doesn’t. “Enjoy your day, god knows you’ve earned it.”

“Happy Birthday Sara!” Felicity’s almost squeal comes next. “Whenever you are next in town we’ll have to properly celebrate…though you may have to let me know when the next time for you actually is, what with time travel and-”

“Felicity,” She hears Thea laughing off camera.

“Sorry…Babbling, my bad.” She grins, “Anyway, have fun today!”

“Hey Baby girl,” Her father smiles, “Not sure which birthday this is for, but it doesn’t matter. You’ll always be my baby, and you deserve the whole world.”

One after another friends appear on the screen; Thea, Sin, Diggle, then it’s the members of Team Flash, Harry, Lily, Joe, Iris, the rest of her crew interspersed throughout. Some it’s only happy birthday, others talk a little longer.

She feels Len at her side part of the way through, but doesn’t bother to turn, simply reaching out until her hand finds his. Lisa is one of the last ones to come up, offering the same bright smile she’d been greeted with so many times before. “Sara! Happy Birthday to one of the most amazing girlfriends I could ask for.” Even on film Sara can see the glint of mischief in her eyes. “Now if my idiot brother will just give you that ring we can be sisters.”

“Lisa,” she hears Leonard groan at her side, turning to raise a brow at him.

He motions back to the screen, “Couple left,”

She’s puzzled, unsure who else they could have found. “Hello love,” Sara’s eyes are instantly pulled back by Nyssa’s familiar voice, a sad almost smile on the woman’s lips. “Your partner tells me this will be shown on your birthday.” Sara sees the almost tears in the woman’s eyes. “I do hope you have found happiness my love, and that you may celebrate many years yet to come.”

Sara feels the lump in her throat, wants so badly to reach out and touch the other woman. Some part of her will always love Nyssa, and the fact that Leonard had found her, evening knowing this, makes it so much more special.

But her mind cannot dwell on this as it switches once more. Though for the moment the camera seems to be pointed at the floor, “It doesn’t have to be long,” Leonard’s familiar drawl as the camera shifts. “Like I said, the crew wants something for her from the people here.”

“Alright,” Her heart constricts, Laurel’s smile and gentle eyes filling the screen. “Hey sis.” She laughs, “This time travel thing is so weird…” she shakes her head, “Your teammate told me some of what you are up to,” She’s got that hope in her eyes, that life Sara so misses. “And I want you to know how proud I am of you, that you’ve found your place in the light.” Sara grips Len’s hand tighter, tears beginning to blur her vision. “Happy Birthday Baby sister, don’t ever let the world take your fire.” Laurel’s gaze changes from looking directly at the camera to a place on the side, “How’s that?”

“Perfect,” she can hear the catch in Len’s voice, his drawl nearly gone. “This will mean a lot to her.”

The screen goes black, “Message complete,” Gideon states quietly.

Sara turns to Leonard, tears having escaped down her cheeks as buries her face into his neck. “Hey,” he presses a kiss to her hair, speaking softly. “I’m sorry,”

“No!” she pulls away, reaching up to swipe at her cheeks with the back of one hand. “Don’t apologize…” She’s looking at him, the man who’s captured her heart. “That was,” she pauses, sniffling slightly. “It was perfect. Thank you.”

He reaches up to cradle her face, gently wiping tear trails with his thumbs. “I wish I could have done more…but-“

She shakes her head, “That’s more than I ever expected to get.” She smiles, small but genuine. “And I’m glad the two of you got to meet, at least once.”

He smiles, “So am I.” He rests his forehead to hers, “Happy Birthday Birdie,”

She smiles, leaning up so her lips ghost over his. “Merry Christmas Len.” She closes the distance, hoping to convey exactly how much she loves both him and the gift.

#Captain Canary #Sara Lance #Leonard Snart #Birthday fic #Christmas Fic #My fic

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letitrainathousandflames-archive · 8 years ago

Note

Hello! I just read your post and I'm so sorry! I can't think of anything for you to draw, but do you mind maybe writing me a minific like the star wars ones you've been making? I just donated some cash for your ko-fi account (sorry for not being able to donate more than that! ;-;) and I wanted you to write me something with "that’s it, that’s it. get it all out. shh" and Codex? Thank you, and I hope everything gets better soon!

(Hey there! Thank you! I haven’t even thought of comissioning fanfics, but I’m glad you did! :D I hope you like it, I made this with all my heart despite being new to the ship. More after the cut.)

When they came back to Coruscantfrom Umbara, both Rex’s and Cody’s men were much quieter than usual. It had hitthem hard, the whole deal. Being betrayed by their general, by a jedi, and bytheir own obedience to the hierarchy. None of them was to blame, that was whatRex would think most of the time, but at the same time, they were all to blame,and that particular thought would hit him late at night while he struggled toclose his eyes and go to sleep.

Cody didn’t seem to be muchaffected. He kept doing his job, taking care of his duties and answering togeneral Kenobi’s calls to new missions. Thisis how it was, Rex had thought, therewas no time to sit and wallow in guilt. There was a job to be done, a war to bewon, orders to follow. Move on, you kriffing sod, even Fives seems to be backto his old self. It was a lie and he knew it, but it had to be enough.

One particular night, Rex woke up tothe sound of low voices whispering in the dorms. He was about to groan anannoyed “shuddup”, for this had been one of his few successful attempts atsleeping when he recognized Jesse’s voice.

“C’mon, Kix, snap out of it.”

Then he heard Kix’s out-of-breathmurmuring in the pitch-black room.

“All that blood… Was like I was backthere again… Trying to fix what was left of him… Trying to stop the bleeding…”

“C’mon, man, it was a nightmare… Goback to sleep, you’ll wake up the captain.”

Rex got up silently, climbing down his top bunkbed. As he got his feet on the ground, he heard Five’s voice in the dark, fromthe lower bed.

“Don’t go too hard on Kix, sir. I’m sure he didn’t mean to wake you up.”

Rex frowned. So Fives wasn’tsleeping either.

“I won’t. Just need some fresh air.Go to sleep, soldier, we have assignments in the early morning.”

“Yessir.”, Fives had answered in atired voice, and only he could make the phrase sound like a fuck off so effortlessly.

Rex waked softly between the bunkbeds, listening to the sounds he knew so well and noticing the absence of somehe knew he’d never hear again. Hardcase’s snoring was amiss, as well as Dogma’ssoft sleep-talking. Rex had had a request placed for Dogma’s release fromCoruscant’s custody, and general Skywalker’s personal friend, senator Amidalahad promised to aid in his trial. Despite the whole thing looking like treason,Dogma had killed an enemy, not a jedi general. That… that sleemo, Krell, he wasa separatist or a Sith, or whatever the kriff the Jedi would address theirdark counterparts. Dogma merely had the guts to do what Rex couldn’t, and Rex was proud of him in the same measure that he was ashamed of himself.

By the time Rex snapped out of hisconjectures, he noticed that his legs had carried him to the 212th quarters, more precisely totheir break room, where he’d occasionally meet up with Cody and even Bly – theyall agreed that the only decent coffee in the whole Coruscant base was the212th, and Bly himself suspected that maybe general Kenobi was the one behind the mysterious brew. Apparently, the jedi were fond of brewing hot drinks and had the whole patienceit demanded. General Skywalker had made coffee for Rex once. Only once. Tookhim a month to get the taste off his mouth, so strong it was. Hardcase was almost vibrating in the same spot after he drank the thing.

The break room is as it should beat… Rex checks his wrist screen. Kriff, almost three in the morning. No wonderall the lights are out, except… he squinted at the pale blue light coming fromthe corner table, which source was a holo-vid being watched by a clone dressedin the plain black undergarments they would wear under their armors, the sameones Rex was wearing. He recognized his scar.

“Cody?”

Cody clamped his hand over theholo-projector on the table, muffling the voice that came out of it and clearing his throat.

“Rex?”

Rex flicked just one of the lightswitches, enough to turn only two light panels and bathe Cody in the softyellow light. He walked inside.

“Still up?”

Cody still had his hand on the tableblocking the holo-projector.

“Yeah. Looks like you are too.”

“Yeah.” Rex nodded at theholo-projector “Late night assignment?”

Cody looked at his own hand beforepressing it against the object, turning it off.

“Something like that.” he pulled hishand away and looked at the thing as if it was a bomb about to go off “And whatbrings you to the 212th building? Did general Skywalker brew your coffeeagain?”

Rex let a soft laugh out of hisnose.

“I wish bad coffee was the thing keeping me up.”

Cody nodded grimly.

“Me too.”

Rex walked to Cody, sitting besidehim instead of in front of him across the table. Sometimes you just don’t wantanybody looking at your face while you were wrestling your demons, but having awarm shoulder against your own could help. Rex could do that. Sometimes he feltlike he could do anything for Cody, and that very thought scared the kriff outof him most of the time.

Cody, however supported his elbowson the table and cradled his head in his hands, letting out a sigh. Rex kepthis eyes straight ahead in order to allow him some space and not make thingsawkward.

“You okay, Cody?”

“Fine.” Cody groaned “Perfect. Justkriffin’ peachy.”

Rex didn’t say anything. They allshared the same snarky sarcasm, some of them more then others. Kamino knows howmuch Dogma likes his witty remarks. Sometimes Rex thinks about how it would probably be better for them ifthey had someone to talk to. The senators had their advisors, the jedi hadtheir masters, their council. But the clones had no one to talk to. No one toask for advice or guidance in dark times like this one. They had to get up andmake it on their own. Everyone wanted advice from commanders like Cody, Bly,Fox, Wolffe or even Rex himself, and they were happy to provide guidance totheir men, from the highest ARCs to the lowest shinies. But nobody would giveadvice to Rex and the others. They were expected to just know everything. Rexglanced at Cody without turning his head to him. Well, maybe if they could helpone another…

“What happened? Can I help?”

“No.” Cody answered sharply

“Maybe General Kenobi could…”

“There’s nothing the general can doabout this.”

“Well, there must be something…”

“Will you shut the hell up already?”

Cody had lifted his face up again,closing his hands in fists. Rex try to act unimpressed, despite his knowledgeof how difficult it was to get on Cody’s bad side, so his short temper at thismoment was odd at best. He lowered his voice.

“Look, I know you must be feelingbad over what happened in Umbara.”

Cody slammed his fists on the table,not too hard to give out anger, but a calculated nuisance.

“I told you I’m okay.”

“As okay as I am.” Rex replied,finally turning to face him “Talk to me, Cody, tell me what’s going on.”

Cody turned to look at Rex, baringhis gritted teeth and snarling.

“That kriffin seppie, that… that…” it waslike Cody couldn’t find a cursing bad enough to describe who Rex already knewhe referred to “Krell. What he did. I can’t understand it.”

Rex looked deep into Cody’s browneyes that were filled with anger and sighed.

“I can’t either. I don’t think weever will.”

Cody half-shook his head, his facetwisting in revulsion.

“We use to joke about how many of ourmen would survive if we ever were to have them fight against each other.”

Rex closed his eyes and it was as ifhe had been punched in the gut.

“Cody…”

“We used to joke about it, Rex.”

Therewas a raw horror in Cody’s voice that made Rex feel like cradling the commander in his arms, but he tried to keep his tone cool and even.

“We never meant it. Huh?” Rex saidas he placed his arm on the table “We never did. It was a joke. It’s not ourfault.”

Cody grabbed Rex’s arm in a tightgrip, speaking between clenched teeth:

“Then whose fault it was?! We ledour men there, Rex. We let it happen. I… I got Krell’s orders for shooting tokill at men with the 501st armor and I just sent my men out there to blasttheir brothers dead. I… I shot some of my brothers dead. If you hadn’t found it out… It could’ve been you or me.”

Rex didn’t particularly like todwell in any thoughts regarding how close they’ve gotten to killing each otherin Umbara. He didn’t know how Cody would feel about killing him, but Rexthought that if he were to find Cody dead by his blaster fire, he’d shoothimself dead right then and there.

“Cody…”

“And then” Cody let go of Rex’s arm,reaching for the holo-projector “then I get this…!”

He clicked the thing and a blue-huedprojection of Cham Syndulla showed up in front of them. It was clearly arecording, playing on loop. The general’s voice said:

“…to thank you for your continuoussupport to the people of Ryloth. As a parting question, I must ask where is theclone trooper known as ‘Waxer’. A little girl to whom your troops provided aid during yourfirst time in Ryloth misses him terribly, and her parents yould like to see himagain too. This should be all, commander. We will speak again soon.”

The projection began repeatingitself again and Cody clicked it off. His hand was shaking on top of the table.

“My men” he said, and his breathingwas hitched “said that you witnessed his death. That you were there with him.”

“Cody…”

“How was it?”

“His death? How do you think? Likeany other kriffing casualty, quick and horrible and meaningless.”

Cody still held Rex by his arm sotight Rex thought it would bruise but he couldn’t care less about it.He reached for Cody with his free hand, grabbing his other arm as Cody now wore an anguished expression on his features.

“Meaningless. That’s what we are forthem, we don’t mean anything, we’re pawns, war fodders, disposable tools, and I’m supposed to puta smile on my face and tell my shinies to march forward to their deaths,fifteen year olds, I think Kamino is pulling them outta their tubes earlier andearlier each day.” Cody’s eyes were welling up with tears and he lowered his face “Andnow I have to tell a kid that the trooper she used to call ‘brother’ is dead, killed by hisown brothers’ blaster fire, and I’m sick of losing men, sick of training them andwatching them grow and make me proud to then be cut in half by some maniac’slightsaber or something like that, I’ve had enough, Rex, when is this nightmaregonna be over…!”

Rex pulled Cody into his arms, andCody wrestled him for a few instants before giving in and hugging the captaintight and sniffling. For a man big as he was, Cody now felt small like a young recruit.

“That’s it, that’s it. get it allout. Shh.” Rex cooed, caressing the back of Cody’s head. Cody’s shoulders werejumping very softly in small sobs, and it made Rex want to cry. It was so weirdseeing Cody allowing himself to have emotions, the mighty commander of the 212th that would never lose his temper on anything. “I’m here for you. I’ll alwaysbe here for you. I love you, Cody.”

Cody’s voice was muffled againstRex’s shoulder.

“I love you too. I’m so sorry.”

“I’m sorry too.”

Cody pulled away from Rex justenough to look at him and there, so up close to him, red-eyed and exhausted,with his eyelashes wet with tears and the arabesque scar Cody had never seemedso beautiful to Rex. Before he could understand what he was doing, Rex closedhis eyes and pulled Cody into a kiss. Cody had gone rigid for a moment to thenwrap his hands around the back of Rex’s neck, smashing his lips harder againstthe captain’s. It felt like the world was spinning around for Rex, and he onlypulled back when he was positively breathless. While still trying to catch hisbreath, he pressed his forehead to Cody’s. The commander of the 212th still hadhis eyes closed, and Rex whispered softly:

“You don’t have to endure this onyour own. We don’t have to.” He ran a thumb over Cody’s cheek “I’ll be here foryou, Cody. That’s all I want, if that’s okay with you.”

Cody opened his eyes, lifting themup and looking at Rex through his dark eyelashes.

“Yeah…” he muttered to then swallowhard “That’s okay with me.”

“We’ll be okay. We’ll find our wayout of all of this.”

Cody nodded and, for a moment right then and there in that dimly-lit room, that almost sounded true.

#thank you so much for the comission #i'm not exactly into clone shipping but hey #this works hella fine #codex #clone bois #sw #tcw #my fics

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toddlazarski · 5 years ago

Text

Last Suppers Vol. 2

Shepherd Express

In the days B.C.(Before Covid), when normal life, and more importantly, sports, proliferated and dotted the rote landscape of daily routine, I held a superstition with any of my real or fantasy teams: they wouldn’t play well if I actually watched. It was best I averted my eyes, distanced my associative bad juju. Nowadays, I do the same, except with the only statistical options: infection rates and confirmed cases and total deaths. I don’t look at virus numbers all day, then, when the house is quiet, the dishwasher humming, the lights half-off, I sit at the tiny kitchen table with a spoon and a pint of something chocolatey and my desperation and my phone and the giddy anxiety dread of a fresh-inked boxscore. It’s like I’m an immunologist with a gambling problem. Some combination of the ultimate-stakes card game scene in Casino Royale and the uncontrollable absurdity of Kramer betting on which flight lands first at Laguardia. Come the eventual loss, and then the shoulder-shrugged resigned finger-stabbing, the desperate working of the back triangle, the scrolling down, there is always a path to the only spot of hope in any news source today: an updated list of open restaurants and takeout offerings.

This is how I eventually stumbled on MobCraft, or, rather, remembered it was there, barely safely social distanced outside my once-normal morning cycle of coffee and work, just another place before, another option, yet another in a too long list of new breweries, one I didn’t know how to take seriously before all this because I have a middle-aged mistrust of anything “crowdsourced.” In my mind it suddenly began burgeoning like a lighthouse, with the irresistible notion that homemade craft beer, and nearly equally curated pizza, could be brought to my car as I idled with my Spotify playlist and the safe removal of the other half. There are plenty of places to get either, there are plenty within blocks—Fixture has better pizza, Indeed has better beer—but here is both. Two birds, one stone. Or, as the day-appropriate analogy runs: two vices, half the infection chance.

Later, as I ignored common sense to waste ever-precious paper towel squares on wiping down the rectangular boxes, I noticed the packages are ink-branded: ‘Hidden Kitchen.’ How apt. In the age of hearth-cooking and HGTV-backed open concepting, how hidden they’ve suddenly all become. Though here I wouldn’t really know, as I’ve still never set foot even on the curb outside. And, really, you’d think no one has, judging from the streets on a recent beer and pizza run evening. There was a couple with matching face masks at the corner of 5th and Bruce, and one guy on a bike, also in a mask that maybe you could convince yourself was a scarf, if you wanted to make it all seem less Cormac McCarthy, which I often struggle to do, telling myself the usual: “Well, it’s Sunday.” You could also just blame the weather—there’s still time in the season for that. Everyone just wants to be inside, sure. Or maybe he is, maybe they are—maybe we’re all—bank robbers. But getting off the Hoan at the Lakefront, circling up Clybourn and through the Third Ward, by the shell of the Public Market, a cold Colectivo, the only sign of life or movement is generally the streetcar, empty, running like a phantom reminder of how petty all our social media grievances once were. The city looks like a darkened backstage set, waiting. It feels recently completed, clean, ready, an up-and-comer, Cream City brick and Rustbelt charm and hints of the river rubbing against new development, Shake Shack and West Elm framed by turn-of-the-last-century port city industriousness. It’s an attractive potential leading man, wizened but spruced, primed for today, for a turn in the spotlight. To play part, the setting and co-star both, in the historic naming of someone—whomever!—to lead us out of this national nightmare. Now tumbleweeds blow down Water. 1st Street’s major pulse is two just-hanging-on taco trucks. Instead of simply taking the bikes away, Bublr has placed plastic bags over each individual docking station, they billow in the wind like a line of waiting ghosts, emphatic in doom declaration. Steny’s, empty, makes it feel like it’s too early. Anodyne, empty, like it’s too late. The expectation, the possibility here, is only for pizza and beer to take back to your little abode that by now feels half sanctuary, part jail.

And once you are home, hands washed, boxes washed too, psyche shaken of the jarring urban emptiness, distracted just enough by HBO or Netflix, what is there but to eat and drink and discuss said eats and drinks? Yet, first, as a collective, writers, judgers, hall monitors and such, very clearly, as a commandment or some other kind of religious term, should agree: objectivity is rightly dead. There should currently exist no pretense of criticism. Any words spent on food or drink should simply be a celebration that we are still around, have health and funds enough to still eat and drink. Every meal is worth only the comfort it brings. My recent birthday dinner selection was Pizza Shuttle, and was met not with laughs, scoffs, but gentle understanding nods. This is for your soul, not your tongue, forget your mind. None of us are seeing our doctors for normally scheduled tire-kicking and blood death panels anytime soon anyways. In that spirit, Mobcraft might be the greatest restaurant in the world right now.

Opening the boxes reveals a sort of paradigm of the flat bread-y, happy hour shareable brewpub pizza. It is in some way reminiscent of those things we are all missing the most: where you don’t feel like going out after a long day, then you go out anyways, and have something hoppy and local and loosen up, and unexpected alliances are formed by ABV, and there are ‘nother ones, and excuses made to selves and to significant others, and the coming weekend seems suddenly endless, eternal, what, in hindsight, feels almost, yes, maybe, blessed. And there is the realm of “one more” and somebody orders something from the bar to share, and everybody gets a wedge and pulls without cootie and corona paranoia, and the collective cheese pull is beautiful, pizza delivery commercial Instagrammable. The soft, deep, focaccia-like layers house typically creative topping combos: mac n’ cheese with pulled pork, a pungent gyro number with shaved lamb, a reuben pie with sauerkraut for those that prefer to sleep alone. Or there are more standard takes—pleasing marinara and pepperoni, with stretchy, blankety mozz, pleasant dusty crust flour fallout that snows softly down on the sweat pants and couch, lovingly sprinkled oregano flecks, cheese and edges just going brown toward crisp, but everything immeasurably pillowy, like a salty, saucy padding to smooth life’s edges just a bit. The “Pollo” has become an overnight favorite, featuring chicken chunks, the underutilized brotherly punch-in-the-arm of poblanos, bacon bits, velvety, guilt-inducing Alfredo sauce. It’s neither Italian or Mexican, craft or common. It is simply a feel, that of comfort pizza done with deft touch, a happy taste experience, now especially, arriving on the nostalgia spectrum somewhere between a Grandma slice from a Brooklyn street corner, whatever doughy carb-and-sauce bomb you used to get way too late at night in college, and elementary school cafeteria pizza day square.

But you also can’t leave a palate sodium-parched. So there is the accompanying, expected microbrew tome of types and tastes—a cranberry farmhouse ale, a coffee brown brew, things fermented in barrels, limited offerings of ideas pitched by the public and then voted on by any Joe Six Pack with the internet, the flavor winner then brewed in house—most any to be jogged to your car in the ultimate “this is more like it” lesson we can take away from pandemic times. But it is mostly the distinct, pungent mouthfeel of a hazy IPA—”Squeezin’ Juice,” dry-hopped and 6.7% potent—that acts as total counterpoint to the state of existence right now. There is something of a citrus dance, a zest, a subsequent scrunched-up-face of bitterness showing reaction, any kind of reaction really indicating a defiant act of living. Even if it comes from a sip taken sitting on the couch, in the basement, solo cheersing another year gone by, alone, knowing everyone in the world is mostly doing the same, is in some state of either worrying, or sleeping, or dying. This is probably why even the fizzy astringency of kombucha tastes good to me right now. And probably why the thought of a crowdsourced brewery, whatever that really means, is totally fine.

By the time the pizza is done and the ice cream too, once the music and news of the day has been faced, when the blindfold is ready for donning, it’s like the next year wish all sports fans know too well. Tomorrow, for sure. The numbers will tumble with lead boots-weight in the right direction, a vax will appear imminent, a treatment will truly show promise. If not, there will be some leftover pizza. And maybe one juicy IPA to sink down with.

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aion-rsa · 5 years ago

Text

How A Creepshow Animated Special Pays Tribute to Series Legacy

https://ift.tt/2HzBlCf

The 37 years between the release of Creepshow in 1982 and the debut of Shudder’s Creepshow TV series weren’t exactly kind to the franchise. 1987’s Creepshow 2 just couldn’t quite replicate the magic of its predecessor (despite its best intentions) and 2006’s Creepshow 3 was bad enough to raise the question: “What was it that made the original Creepshow so special?” What was that magical quality the 1982 classic found that’s proven to be so difficult to replicate? When you get down to it, what even defines a Creepshow story?

“Well, they have to be fun,” says Greg Nicotero, special effects legend, co-executive producer of The Walking Dead, and showrunner of Shudder’s Creepshow series. “My criteria is, when the episode is over, I want the viewer to be like, ‘Oh my God, that was so much fun. I didn’t expect that. I didn’t see it coming, but I had a great time.’”

Fortunately for Creepshow fans everywhere, that is exactly what the first season of Shudder’s revival offered. It was a wild, unpredictable, and deliciously twisted anthology series that established itself as a true work of horror without compromising that sense of “fun.”

Unfortunately for Creepshow fans everywhere, the fun of Creepshow’s promising second season was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. It was a necessary response to an incredible situation, but it also seemingly meant that we wouldn’t have any new Creepshow stories to enjoy in time for Halloween.

That is until recently when Nicotero and the Creepshow team revealed that they had teamed up with animation studio Octopie to produce an animated Creepshow special. While the special was partially prompted by circumstance, its origin story is really based on that horror heavyweight team-up idea that inspired the 1982 film.

“We started talking at the end of June or the beginning of July, about an animated special,” Nicotero recalls. “I said, ‘Guys, why don’t we do a double feature? Why don’t we do a Stephen King/Joe Hill double feature with father and son together?’”

Actually, Nicotero knew exactly which Stephen King story he wanted to bring to life in the animated series as it was the first King story that he’d hoped to feature in Creepshow’s first season.

Survivor Type

“When Creepshow was greenlit for season one, Steve was like, ‘I’ve got the perfect story for you,’ and he sent Survivor Type,” Nicotero explains. “I was like, ‘Oh, my God.’”

If you’ve never read it, Survivor Type is arguably the most gruesome story King has ever written. Then again, as the story of a surgeon who slowly starts to eat himself in order to survive, Survivor Type does feel like a natural fit for the world of Creepshow. As Nicotero looked deeper at the framework of the story, though, he found that adapting it was more complicated than it originally appeared to be.

“I realized that as simple as it sounds to go to a little desert island and film, that was not within the means of our project,” Nicotero recalls. “We didn’t have a ton of money, and I didn’t want to shoot the whole thing on a green-screen…So we put Survivor Type aside and said, ‘Well, listen, maybe we’ll find a way to do it for season two.’”

As it turned out, the animated format of the Creepshow special offered the team the chance to revisit Survivor Type even sooner than Nicotero anticipated. Interestingly, it also allowed the team to take a stab at a Joe Hill story that also presented unique challenges for the constraints of the series’ live-action format.

Twittering From the Circus of the Dead

“Joe Hill sent a whole bunch of stories to us, and one of them was called Twittering From the Circus of the Dead,” Nicotero explains. “The entire story is told via tweets by this girl, Blake, who’s stuck in a car with her family. And the short story is literally reading tweets. I love the story, but I was like, ‘Man, how do you adapt that and make a story that is interesting if you’re just reading a bunch of tweets on somebody’s phone?’”

Thankfully, adapting the story into an animated short not only solved the logistical hurdles that Twittering From the Circus of the Dead presented but proved to be the perfect venue for one of Hill’s most intriguing works.

Comics

13 Essential Horror Comics

By Marc Buxton

“It allows us to maintain the spirit of Joe’s story and still get in some great visuals of what the world looked like and what the Twittering would look like,” Nicotero says of the animated format. “I sent it to Joe the other day to look at, and he said that he thought that it was probably the most faithful adaptation of one of his stories yet. That was a massive compliment, because all you want to do is pay tribute to the source material.”

That’s not the only source material that A Creepshow Animated Special lovingly pays tribute to. As you may know, the original Creepshow’s production was heavily influenced by Stephen King and George Romero’s shared love of horror comics largely popularized by EC Comics publications such as Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, and The Haunt of Fear. The original Creepshow even featured comic-book style shots and animated segments designed to evoke the spirit of those classic comics.

Yet, for their tribute to the legacy of EC Comics and its influence on Creepshow, the Shudder Creepshow team and Octopie decided to step away from the entirely animated style featured in previous Creepshow stories in favor of a style that better replicates the experience of reading the comics.

“We didn’t want it to be fully animated, like a Scooby Doo episode,” Nicotero explains. “It’s going to have elements that will feel like comic panels come to life by using artwork and drawings that aren’t fully rendered, but you’re telling the story with panels and frames that have iconic imagery, very much like they would do with the comic book… I think that the animated episode is a really good meld of maintaining some of the aesthetic of the spirit of the series that we established last year.”

Animated or not, that spirit of the series goes back to the idea of something fundamentally fun. It was an idea that attracted kids to EC Comics despite the fact that many felt their visceral visuals should have scared them off, and it’s an idea that Nicotero believes is responsible for the sometimes unlikely reach of Creepshow to this day.

“When I talk to people, and they’re like, ‘Oh, I could never show that movie to my kids because it’s just disturbing,’ I say ‘The way that I taught my children to appreciate what I do for a living is I taught them that it’s all Halloween.’” Nicotero explains. “You dress up on Halloween. You put on a costume, and you become somebody else. That’s what horror movies are. Horror movies are suspending your disbelief and treating it like it’s make-believe. The most horrific things that I’ve ever seen in my life are on the 6:00 news. You know?”

In some ways, it also seems that the twisted sense of fun that Creepshow emphasizes at its best is what Nicotero and the team use as a measuring stick when staying true to the spirit of the series regardless of the format.

“I feel George’s spirit around me all the time,” Nicotero says. “I was shooting a scene a couple of weeks ago, and I was like, ‘God, George would be laughing his ass off right now, if he saw this.’ So I really do feel him, and I feel like season two is going to even do more to sort of solidify his legacy, because that’s really why I’m doing it. I’m doing it for him and for the fans.”

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

A Creepshow Animated Special is set to start streaming on Shudder on October 29.

The post How A Creepshow Animated Special Pays Tribute to Series Legacy appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2HBPGxy

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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captainbaneberry · 8 years ago

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Nautica/Firestar. Nautica is fixing a control panel in a vent and her lower end is sticking out of the vent in a hallway. Firestar comes by and sees her sticking out and decides to take the opportunity that is presented and frags Nautica silly. Nautica gets moaning and it echoes thru the ventwork.

“Solus, the wires are such a mess.”

Firestar exvented, checking her chronometer. She looked at Nautica across the room. Nautica’s top half was wedged inside an open vent as she worked on the fixing… God, Firestar couldn’t remember. She’d been repairing the damn panel for nearly an hour now, and Firestar was getting impatient.

“Just promise you’ll fix it in the next thirty minutes,” Firestar pleaded, sitting back on the bench. The room was tiny, and Nautica’s rear was… very close to Firestar’s face. Not that she minded; Nautica had a nice aft. But she had made plans with her amica endurae that evening, and wasn’t keen on breaking them.

“You can go without me, Star,” Nautica reassured, binding two shredded wires.

“You’re always trying to get out of these things,” Firestar huffed, glowering at Nautica’s behind. “Besides, it’s just a little get together. Rosanna and Glyph are throwing a party after officially becoming amica endurae. They only invited me, you, Astroscope, and Cryostase. Glyph and Astro are huge nerds, so you’ll get along with them fine.”

“I just don’t want you to feel you’re forced to stay here,” Nautica explained.

“It’s to keep you company. S'what amica endurae do.”

Nautica smiled. “Yeah, true.” Even if that also meant going to parties they had no interest in, to support their friend. Firestar was also hoping to introduce her to more friends, to get Nautica out of her shell. “Well, Firestar, got some good news,” she said, quickly reconnecting the last three wires. “I’m all done!”

Firestar bumped a fist, mouthing a wordless “yes!” “C'mon, glitch,” she said, standing, flames on her head flaring. “Let’s get you polished up then go party!”

Nautica nodded. “Yup.” She braced her hands against the walls, using them to push herself out. “Just a second…” Except… nothing happened. She pushed a little harder, but armor and kibble along her back and shoulders got in the way. Armor that could not be removed properly at this angle.

“What’re you doin’?”

“Uhh…” Nautica shoved and wiggled a few more times. “I’m… sorta… stuck.”

“Stuck?” Firestar gawped. “How’d you even get in there in the first place!”

“I just–crawled in! I don’t know!”

“Well, can we take the wall apart a little?”

“No way! We’d get into so much trouble!” Nautica disagreed, shaking her head. “Why don’t you try pulling me out? I might dent a few things, even tear my pauldrons, but… Well, the show must go on.”

Firestar nodded. She took Nautica by the legs. “Ready?”

“Ready!”

Firestar started pulling. Nautica struggled, until the pain shooting and jabbing through her torso was unbearable. “S-Stop! Stop!” she cried, dropping her fhead. Venting heavily as her spark skipped and jolted in her chest.

“Why don’t we call maintenance?” Firestar suggested.

“Maintenance isn’t here,” Nautica exvented low and long. “That’s why they asked me instead.”

Firestar stamped her foot, pouting. “Well… I’m sure one of them could come back. Or we could call an ambulance. There’s a clinic a few blocks away. So long as we’re out in forty-five minutes, we’re good.”

Nautica groaned. “I suppose. But I can’t comm anyone from inside this thing. Blocks signals.”

“Mm'on it, bot,” Firestar chuckled, opening a commlink. Nautica, ashamed with her face buried in her hands, listened to her friend explain the situation. A minute later, she closed the transmission, and now Firestar sounded grumpy. “They said it might take about thirty minutes to get here, maybe more. I don’t think she took me seriously.”

“Just go to the party without me, Star.”

Firestar rolled her optics, flopping over Nautica’s rump and resting hands on her back. “We’re stuck. You in there, me with you,” she snorted, half-grinning. “If they take any longer, I’ll ring up Rosanna and explain what’s up. The party ends before night simulation anyway, and that’s in four hours.”

“I’m really sorry.”

Firestar was about to say something, when suddenly an idea struck her. One that made the fire crackling from her helm brighter and stronger. “No need to apologize, Nautica,” she said, cupping her friend’s aft. “I think I know what we can do while we wait for help to arrive.”

Nautica’s optics flickered, twin beams of blue light in the dark shaft. “… By the, uh, hand on my aft,” she gulped, “I’m assuming…?”

“Eyup.”

“Like this?” Nautica squeaked. “B-But–”

“No, no, it’s perfect,” Firestar chuckled, tapping her fingers on Nautica’s panel. The purple bot jumped. “Unless you don’t wanna, and we just… stand here and complain.”

Nautica chewed her lip. “W-Well… I mean… I guess it’d be… interesting?” Firestar was always trying to get her try and do new things. Maybe this qualified as one of them? “Okay, but! The moment I hear someone on the other side of those doors–”

“–Right, right,” Firestar snickered, “cut me some slack. It’ll be great, trust me.”

Nautica trusted Firestar–with certain things. This… not so much. It’d be a first time for the both of them. Or, at least, Nautica figured it was. Firestar was known for having some interesting kinks, after all. She didn’t expect much out of this experience; it was probably going to be more awkward than pleasurable. Uncomfortable, given her position.

… Nautica had been wrong before. Because what did start as weird and slightly discomforting fondling and prepping turned into something too ridiculously incredible for a situation like this. Firestar was soon holding her hips, lining herself up to Nautica’s channel before sliding inside, inch by inch. Nautica gasped, slamming a fist against a wall; the vibrations rattled through the entire shaft, metal wobbling.

Firestar was much more skilled when it came to interfacing. Nautica had done her fair share of fragging, but not nearly on the same level as her amica endura. She knew what to do to have a pretty good time, but this… Interfacing with Firestar was always a wild ride. This took the cake, and Nautica wasn’t exactly sure why. It couldn’t have been her own slight exhibitionist streak; she was a mostly introverted person. But Nautica knew the sounds she was making were loud enough to travel through the shaft and out the vents into rooms, some with probably really confused people inside.

“S-S-Solus, Firestar, oh mm–” Nautica whined, panting. Firestar was fully seated inside of her; sometimes slamming half in, half out, other times pulling out to the tip then thrusting, over and over again. The pace was too fast, unpredictable, and all Nautica could do was cry and whimper and clumsily shake her bottom half in Firestar’s arms.

Nautica could just imagine Firestar’s unit–red, orange, with blue biolights along the shaft and top of the head. The heat of their light radiated against her channel walls, wet and expanding to take more of the fiery bot. Her channel, obscenely open and dripping so much lubricant; she could feel it on her thighs, down her legs, and wondered just how big a puddle she’d made so far. Fun explaining that to the EMTs when they came around. Nautica might have complained, but all that she could say was Solus and Firestar’s names, peppered with plenty of profanities and mewls.

“Y-You open s-so nicely for me,” Firestar sneered, chewing on her tongue. Bending over the purple bot, one hand still holding a hip as the other steadied itself against the wall. She snapped her hips faster, repressing laughter at the loud squeals coming from inside the shaft.

Nautica was rocking hard and fast, the armor and kibble keeping her stuck in the hole pounding against its edges. Didn’t hurt–at least, she couldn’t feel any pain. Nothing strong enough to tear her hazy, spinning mind from all the heat and sensations racing from her channel through the rest of her frame. “F-Fire-s-star,” she stammered, crossed optics lidded and tongue hanging from her mouth. Fingers digging into the walls at her sides intensely enough to dent the metal. It was getting far too humid in this shaft, making her even more dizzy. Two stories above, a Camien was peeking inside their vent, wondering about the strange muffled noises.

“Scrap, Nautica,” Firestar snarled, watching her unit move swiftly in and out of the purple bot’s channel. Never too much; the wet, clanging noises as her pelvis hit her aft not nearly as loud as Nautica’s yelping. “Could do t-this all day.”

Nautica vented out a string of oh-oh-ohs, coolant spittle flying from her lips and dangling tongue with each violent sway of her body. She grabbed her chestplates, finding a seam and probing it with two fingers. The low groan she made was fairly embarrassing, but only about three or so people heard it. No one could see her, thankfully, and she couldn’t hear anyone above or below complaining or questioning or suggesting checking the shaft for the source of the moans.

“You m-make such filthy s-sounds,” Firestar grinned, teeth clenched. She reached down, thrusting a finger beneath Nautica’s hood and stroking the node alongside her unit.

Nautica screamed, vision going white. Her visor snapped into place over her head. A second later, she heard a faint voice coming from below: “I-Is someone up there?”

“F-Firestar, Firestar,” Nautica croaked, “I’m gonna–harder, just a little–”

Firestar snarled. “Yeah, yeah, I’m just–”

The two overloaded, almost at the exact same time, give or take a few seconds. Firestar howled, tugging and yanking on her friend. Nautica cried out again, jerked just hard enough–both bots squealed as Nautica suddenly tumbled out of the hole, hitting Firestar and knocking them to the ground a few feet away.

Nautica slowly sat up, Firestar’s depressurized unit limp against her thigh. She glanced back at the red-yellow bot, blinking behind her visor.

Firestar snorted, then started laughing. “Your visor!”

“That was… What?” Nautica giggled, pushing the visor back. “How in the Forge…” She looked around, awed and baffled.

“Well,” Firestar exvented, “I think we can call off the ambulance.”

“Yeah,” Nautica agreed, wiping her optics dry. “You do that. I’m gonna… find some cleaner. And a mop.”

#valveplug

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pinkfan-gurl · 8 years ago

Text

Tall Glass of Handsome

chapter nine of an 1oo au

Clarke put on as big of a smile as she could muster without it looking totally fake.

"Hi," she stepped in front of the petite brunette heading towards the stairs. "Student Council is putting together a Quiz Bowl team to represent the school. Looks great on a college application." She held one of the flyers from the stack under her arm out to the girl.

The brunette smiled, pink tinged to her cheeks from nervousness. "Um, no thanks," she answered shortly, pushing the paper away.

Clarke took another step in front of her as she tried to make her escape. "It's a great way to make friends and, like I said, great for college applications."

The girl shook her head and dropped the smile, making her look less friendly. "I'm not interested so please leave me alone."

Clarke pursed her lips and watched as the girl walked off briskly, taking the stairs two at a time. Wheeling back around, she saw that Bellamy was sitting on the bottom most step with his stack of flyers beside him while Finn leaned against the railing. "Your method seems to be falling short, Princess," Bellamy quipped.

Clarke scowled, but didn't argue with him because she knew he was right. When no one offered any ideas on how to convince people to join the Quiz Bowl team, she decided the best course of action was to make flyers and simply spread the news about the event around the school.

She had recruited Finn and Bellamy to help pass out flyers with her that morning before school started (with much protesting from Bellamy) but it ended up being a bust and a waste of paper. At least five hundred kids had walked past them to get to the school within the half-hour they had been camped out at the steps and they still had most of the flyers Clarke had printed out the night before.

"Twenty dollars to print out two hundred copies and we've only given out six lousy flyers?" Clarke collapsed on the base step with a huff. She didn't even bother hiding her scowl when Bellamy raised an eyebrow.

"Geez, Princess," he muttered dryly, "I don't think I've ever seen you this bent out of shape before." Clarke gave him a hard look. "Over something so trivial at least," he amended.

"Think on the brightside." Finn set his stack on the ground and took a seat next to Clarke on the step. "We got six people to at least consider joining which is a start."

"Negatory," Bellamy murmured under his breath.

"Excuse me?" Finn asked, and Clarke picked up on the slight accusation in his tone.

Bellamy shrugged. "I saw one kid throw his away immediately after Spacewalker walked away and the redhead Clarke was talking too used hers as a napkin after she accidentally spilled her coffee on her skirt."

Clarke groaned, arching her back as she buried her face into her knees. "Well that's great. We're worse off than we thought." She felt someone's hand resting on the small of her back comfortingly.

"Don't waste time pitying us, Clarke," Bellamy said. The touch on Clarke's back tensed and she could imagine Finn shooting daggers at Bellamy.

"Not much luck today, huh?" Jasper's voice filled her ears.

Clarke finally looked up to see her brother and Octavia standing a little too close together for Clarke's liking. "You could say that," Bellamy grumbled, setting his face into his hands.

Octavia chuckled softly. "What's the matter, Bell? Giving up so easily?"

Bellamy rolled his eyes but said nothing. Jasper furrowed his eyebrows. "How long until your deadline again?" he asked.

"Four weeks," Finn answered. "Which is actually a lot of time when you think about it."

Clarke sat up straighter, eyeing Jasper's twitching hand. "So," she motioned between Jasper and Octavia, "are you two like a "thing" now?"

Bellamy perked up slightly, his gaze taking on a playful sneer. Jasper stepped away frantically from Octavia, giving her about a foot berth, but she just sidled up next to him again. "We're just friends," Jasper sputtered, face turning red.

Clarke shared a look with Bellamy. "But so what if we were?" Octavia said, putting her hands on her hips. "Just because you two can't stand each other doesn't mean that we can't get along. Come on, Jasper." She grabbed him by the upper arm and hauled him up the stairs with her.

Finn let off a low whistle. "Wow. So they're a thing?"

Clarke rolled her eyes. "Yeah, but I don't approve."

"Yeah. I don't either," Bellamy agreed.

"The one thing we can actually agree on." Clarke looked down at her phone for the time and a sudden jolt of panic washed through her as she realized how late it had gotten. "Oh great. I was supposed to meet up with Harper and Monroe ten minutes ago for homecoming stuff. I got to go."

Finn got to his feet and took Clarke's hand in his, helping her up. He brushed a loose strand of hair behind her ear. "I'll see you later." He cupped her cheek in his hand and kissed her softly.

Clarke smiled against his lips, and if it were up to her, she wouldn't leave. She felt safe and loved when she was with Finn, something that she had been missing ever since her dad moved across the country.

Bellamy cleared his throat, forcing Clarke to focus back on reality. She had to help Harper. She broke the kiss and smiled up at Finn who was beaming down at her. "We're still on for later, right?."

Finn poked her on the nose playfully. "Wouldn't miss it."

Scooping up her pile of flyers and slinging her messenger bag over her shoulder, Clarke bolted up the stairs in the direction of the library.

…

Solar power would be the best source of energy for their robot. The only problem now was finding a solar panel small enough and cheap enough for them to afford.

Monty tapped the butt of his pencil against his cheek. He had quickly devoured his lunch he'd brought from home before making his way to the library where he and Jasper had agreed to meet at. Their plan had been to spend every free period in school together so they could work on designing their robot.

So far, Jasper hadn't shown up yet and wasn't responding to Monty's texts, but Monty wasn't worried yet. Their lunch hour was a little over an hour and close to fifty minutes still remained. He figured Jasper was off with Octavia, romancing her near the smelly locker rooms or something.

Less than ten minutes later, Monty's phone buzzed with a text.

12:37pm.

Hey, buddy, im sorry but i won't make it to the library today.

I totally forgot that i promised Octavia that i'd watch her rehearsal for her play.

i promise that i'll make it up to you!

Jasper

"Of course." Monty rested his head on the table with a sigh. Half an hour of genius robotic designs and he doesn't even get to tell Jasper about it.

He glanced up at the clock. There was still another half hour of lunch left. He could swing by the cafeteria and see what Clarke and her new boyfriend were up too.

Monty quickly packed up his notebooks and headed for the cafeteria, hoping that no one would give him a hard time for being in the halls without a pass while classes were going on. He spotted Clarke in her usual spot right away along with Finn, Harper, Miller, Bellamy, and...Wells?

Monty did a double take. It was hard enough picturing Clarke willfully sitting with Miller and Bellamy, but his brain was doing cartwheels at the sight of Wells. What was he doing there?

He was about ready to turn around and resolve to asking Clarke about it in private at some other time, but it was too late. She had already spotted him and was giving him a welcoming grin that pulled him to the table.

"Hey, Monty," Clarke said.

Monty waved awkwardly. "Hey, Clarke. Bellamy." His eyes zeroed in on Wells. "Wells," he said, and his tone took on a colder tint. Wells shifted uncomfortably.

Clarke cleared her throat. "Monty, this is Finn," she introduced, touching Finn's shoulder gingerly. Monty noticed Wells shift again and how he kept his eyes averted.

Finn held his hand out and Monty shook it. "Hey," Finn smiled.

"Okay, introductions aside," Bellamy glanced down at Harper, "move over a smidge so he can sit."

Harper complied and before Monty knew it, he was sandwiched between Bellamy and Miller. Clarke regarded Monty suspiciously. "So what's up, Monty? I thought you and Jasper were supposed to be working on your robotics thing during lunch."

Miller raised his eyebrows, impressed. "You're doing the robotics competition?" Monty nodded. "That's pretty cool dude."

"Thanks," Monty grunted. He realized that he sounded less than enthusiastic but his frustration was overwhelming him. "And yeah, I was supposed to be working with Jasper but he skipped out on me."

"I'd say you're a little short of pleased," Finn commented.

"It's just that he signed us up for this, you know," Monty looked around the table at each individual face, "and now he's blowing me off. Jasper hasn't done one thing for this project and it's already been four days. The first competition day is in four weeks!"

Clarke shook her head, frowning. "I'll talk to him. And if he does it again, just give him a good kick in the ass for me."

Monty grinned while the rest of the people at the table chuckled. It felt good to sit with Clarke again; he'd been so wrapped up in helping Jasper win over Octavia that Monty hadn't seen her a whole lot in the last few weeks.

"I hate to be the bearer of bad news," Finn said. He chased a grape tomato around his bowl for a few seconds and then set his fork down. "But we have to figure out a way to get people to sign up for the Quiz Bowl."

"Don't remind me," Harper grumbled.

"What are you talking about?" Monty asked.

"It's the latest student council project," Wells explained. Monty regarded him curiously while trying to maintain his mild glare. "We have to put together a Quiz Bowl team otherwise we'll have to do it."

"Oh," Monty nodded, "no wonder you're all sitting together."

Miller frowned, eyebrows scrunched together. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Monty shrugged. “This isn't really the traditional group."

Clarke nodded slowly. "True. The arrangement is a bit less than desired." Her eyes flicked to Wells, but Monty noticed that she didn't have the anger in her eyes that he was used to seeing whenever she looked at Wells. In fact, she looked mildly annoyed more than anything. It made him wonder what changed.

Then he glanced over at Clarke who was leaning into Finn and suddenly it made sense. Clarke would never have the same bond with Wells that she once had, but now that she was happy with Finn, there wasn't the same drive to constantly hate Wells. She might not be great friends with him anymore, but there was still forgiveness.

"So this Quiz Bowl thing; what're you gonna do about it?"

Bellamy looked to Clarke who sighed. "At this point," she said, "we have no idea."

…

The barista was taking forever, but Octavia didn't mind the wait.

The extra few minutes in line while she waited gave her enough time to check up on her virtual pets that she had been neglecting ever since soccer started. When she re-logged into the app, her dalmatian puppy's health bar had been on 12% and her tiger cub had had grown into an adult tiger.

She was right in the middle of giving Lorenzo, her puppy, a bath when the curly haired guy behind the counter came back with her hot chocolate. "O?" he called out uncertainly.

"That's me!" Octavia shoved her phone into her pocket and jumped up to the counter. "Thank you," she smiled at the boy.

He smiled, running a hand through his hair self-consciously. "You go by O?"

"It's just something my brother calls me. I'm Octavia."

"Atom."

"Well, it was nice talking to you."

Octavia hurried out of the café and started at a brisk pace down the cobblestone sidewalk. After school she was supposed to have meet up with Fox to study for an upcoming chemistry test, but she called and canceled almost fifteen minutes after Octavia had been waiting. In the end, she resolved to grabbing something to drink and then head over to Jasper's house to help him and Monty with their robotics.

Octavia approached a group of boys as she walked, all of which who had Trikru Union T-shirts and varsity jackets on. She didn't want to go near them, but it was the only way to her car so she kept her head down as she walked.

"Hey there, beautiful," one of them cat-called.

Octavia ignored him and kept walking, but this was exactly what she was hoping to avoid.

"Baby, come back!" a different voice pleaded.

There was a wave of footsteps and then their voices became significantly louder as they continued to call for her attention. The bastards were following her!

"Leave me alone!" she snapped, refusing to turn around.

"Oh honey, don't be like that."

Something clasped around her wrist and suddenly Octavia was facing a burly jock with a buzz cut and crooked nose, probably from being broken repeatedly. "You had better let me go," she growled. She tried to pry her arm away but his grip was strong.

The boy chuckled and his friends egged him on by laughing with him. "Look hot-stuff, I don't want to cause a scene; I'm actually a pretty decent guy once you get to know me."

"Oh good. Then you won't mind letting me go if you're such a nice guy."

"I'll let you go as soon as you agree to go out on a date with me."

"Um, let me think about that: no."

"Babe, I'm not letting you go until you agree to one date with me."

"Come on," one of the others whispered in her ear, "just one date."

"Unless you'd rather go out with me," a freckled kid in the back raised his eyebrows, probably trying to be seductive but Octavia found him goofy.

"I'm not interested," she spat. "Now let me go before I start screaming."

The boy's smirk deepened. "You're making this harder than一"

"Let her go, Eric," a new voice demanded. It was soft but stern.

Octavia turned to find an attractive African American guy standing at the back of the group of boys. They all parted like the Red Sea when they heard his voice, giving her a better look; he was tall and she could tell that he was muscular under his shirt.

The boy, Eric, stepped in front of Octavia but kept his grip on her wrist. "What are you doing here, Lincoln?"

Lincoln shrugged, nonchalantly stuffing his fists into his pockets. "I was on my way to my car when I saw you four bastards harassing this girl and decided to do something about it."

"We weren't harassing her," one of the boys said.

"Yes you are." Octavia held up her arm to show the meaty hand still firmly clasped to her wrist. "And I'd appreciate it if you would let go of me, you big oaf."

Completely ignoring Lincoln, Eric wheeled around to stared down Octavia with hard eyes and a tight-lipped frown. "You're really beginning to wear on me, sweetheart."

"Don't worry," she smiled bitterly, "my bite is way worse than my bark."

"Let her go, Eric," Lincoln warned again. "I don't feel like hurting you today."

"I'd like to see you try." Eric dropped her wrist and then suddenly he was on the ground, catching blood from his nose with Lincoln standing over him. His friends had backed up significantly, fear in their faces. "Oh my God!" he howled.

Lincoln shook his fist. "I told you to leave her alone, bro."

Octavia couldn't believe that the kid went down so easily. All it took was one punch. Her eyes fell on her savior and her heart skipped a beat. He was really hot. "Thank you."

His eyes fell to the guy on the floor and then back up to her face. "Walk you to your car?"

Octavia nodded vigorously. "Yes, please." Lincoln stepped over Eric, falling into step with Octavia as they walked. "Thanks again."

"It was no problem."

Up close, she was able to admire just how tall he was; he had to be at least a foot taller and his arms were larger than both of her hands put together. How had she been lucky enough for a handsome guy like this to come to her rescue? "I'm Octavia by the way."

"Lincoln."

"I haven't seen you around before. Are you new?"

"Nah. I go to Trikru Union with those assholes unfortunately."

"Trikru, huh? I go to West Arke. You guys have a good soccer team."

Lincoln chuckled. "That's good to hear. I wouldn't know though. I don't do sports." Octavia's eyes widened in surprise and he laughed. "What?"

"You just seem so...built. Are you sure that you're not a pro-football player or something?"

"Just some martial arts."

She regarded him with a newfound interest. "So that's how you Judo-flipped that guy."

"Karate, but yeah. Martial arts is a good way to stay in shape both mentally and physically."

"That's really cool." Octavia stopped in front of her car even though she would have prefered to keep walking with Lincoln. "This is my car."

Lincoln smiled, brushing a wisp of hair behind her ear and Octavia's heart nearly stopped. Never had a boy had such an impact on her feelings, not even Jasper. "Well, I'm glad I was able to help out, Octavia." He let his arm fall to his side. "I'll see you around, I guess."

He turned to leave, but Octavia lunged for his hand. "Wait." He stopped and his eyes met hers. "Would you maybe, I don't know, wanna grab some food with me? I'd love to talk more about martial arts."

Lincoln grinned. "Sure."

chapter ten

#the 100 #bellarke #bellarke fanfiction #bellamy blake #clarke griffin #clarke x bellamy #bellamy x clarke #the 100 fanfiction

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dill-pickled · 8 years ago

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Verne Reviews: My Little Pony Movie Prequel Issue #4

Back once again for my last review of the MLP movie prequel series with the fourth and final issue, focusing on the main villainess of the movie, Tempest Shadow.

Spoiler Warning!

Plot

The story begins with bits of Tempest’s journal telling her about how she left Equestria many moons ago while wandering through the desert near Kludgetown, her goal being to look for some way to restore her horn (which we see later on she lost as a young filly). She eventually comes upon the wreck of the Airship Chummer stole from the last issue now ablaze (and I don’t think Chummer survived since we don’t see him again, the thought of which is horrifying). She also comes upon the Misfortune Malechite not knowing what it is and like the others decides to take it. Suddenly the Storm King’s forces appear and try to take it from her, but she manages to distract them with some type of splash spell. She eventually makes her way into Kludgetown looking for a place to hide and rest. She tries to cast a spell on the gem in hopes to use its power to restore he horn. Her attempt makes the gem speak, the voice being past souls, telling her what the gem is and that others that had attempted to use it met with ruin. She realizes the storm king will be coming after her for that gem since he is aware of it’s power, another pony named Rambler catches her attention who is leaving with his caravan and she ask’s if she can join them, Rambler agrees. Later on in a snowy forest Rambler asks why Tempest is so far out from Equestria, she explains see is searching for something she lost a long time ago (that being her horn), and along with it, everything else, leaving her as nothing more than…lost. Suddenly some of the Storm King’s forces appear from the skies to ambush the Caravan looking for the Malechite Tempest possesses, Tempest and Rambler both hid nearby to try and figure out a plan to both escape, she suggests giving him her cloak to pose as her to draw the Sentries away while she finds and alternate escape route. Tempest unfortunately runs into the Storm King who is annoyed about her delaying his plans, but takes and interest in who she is and what her purpose out here is, she explains her purpose is to look for powerful magic like he is. The King is impressed by her skills she used against his army so far but is curious as to why she didn’t ask Rambler for his help, she explains she learned a long time ago to not rely on anypony else. The King is intrigued that Tempest shares a similar mindset to him about having friends, he tells her that he could use somepony like her in his army, somepony smart, talented, and driven. He makes her an offer to joint but in exchange for the Malechite she possesses, she refuses to telling him she needs a powerful source of magic to restore her horn, the King tells her that he can restore her horn once he’s finished conquering since he will have lots of powerful magic. She eventually gives up the Malechite to him, and he destroys it in his iron grip believing it to really be bad luck after all the trouble it has caused him, believing he didn’t need anymore bad luck to stop him from conquering the world. Tempest tells him where he can find another source of magic, and she tells him about Equestria, if he conquers it, he will have enough magic to repair her horn, she makes him promise that he will, and he shakes with her promising, now calling her, Commander Tempest.

Thoughts

I think this was a pretty good way to finish off the series. I find the story pretty straight forward, it has one possibly dark moment that I mentioned earlier, that being the Airship that Capper’s friend Chummer crashed, we don’t see any sign of him anywhere at the crash sight so we may possibly have had a death in thi series, and it may be possible based on how they portrayed the last moments of Chummer in the last issue making it look like this was the last we are going to see of him. I find it a little disappointing how the stuff with the Misfortune Malechite goes pretty much nowhere in this series or will have a part in the movie itself, but I think the comics make up to it being that there’s possibly an allegory in this series. What I mean by that is the Malechite brings good things to its owners at first, but then it brings misfortune to them eventually, I see the gem as a representation of wealth, that being lots of it at first seems good, but then you find that it brings bad things like say what some celebrities with tons of money have, a drug or alcohol addiction, or maybe a mortgage or debts you can’t pay cause you spent so much, or worse, no friends. I believe the Malechite represents the risk of too much wealth and what the cost is and that it will leave most of the main villains without anything in the end as three of the characters in this series have meet with a form of betrayal. Though I may be over thinking it a bit, it seems that’s the hidden message in these stories.

Once again Price’s artwork is great (I think I’m getting tired of praising it so much), I realized recently that I especially like when he draws emotions, especially the angry, stressed or intimidating expressions, that’s when he is at his best.

Tempest in this issue seems like she may be a good villain in the movie based on the way she thinks and her past, plus the way she is drawn in the issue. I’m predicting though she may possibly be reformed in the movie, but I’m hoping they a do a bit of a twist with it. I also noted that we never see her flanks fully in any of the panels, usually covered by her cloak, the environment or it's in the shadow, like they're implying she has a cutie mark or maybe she doesn't.

Verdict

I think this one is a really good issue that opened up a lot of thoughts that I had to bring to text here for you, and I think it’s a good conclusion to the series, it has only one minor problem which I can think of, but otherwise, it’s pretty good.

A -

#mlp movie #mlp:fim #mlp comic #spoiler alert #review

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itsdanystormborn · 8 years ago

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MAGI 345 Full Spoiler Translation

Disclaimer: i only to this for fun, to share it with you guys, and to practice my japanese :) which is very basic so keep in mind that i could be completely mistaken in some parts. This is just a fan translation of incomplete spoilers so: Don’t forget to support the official releases of Magi!

Source: From Tieba Baidu’s Japanese scans and from Jump-Netabare’s texts ^^

@sayakakat2012 @maumauxmau

UPDATE: I added the jump-Netabare info that was missing. I checked it while looking at the korean scans so i would be able order it as if the texts were the in word balloons ( you can read it that way if you want to, while you look at the pics on the korean scans) ^^

Page 1

Narration:

Even if he dies, he won’t give up!! How did he came back to life?

*Netabare text: Wahid, Setta and Tess are piling up stones. Lethargic people are floating around them.

Alibaba: I want to come back to life!

Wahid: Again, with that? Come do masonry too, Alibaba! Everything will be fine among us anyway!

Alibaba: Nothing will be fine!

Wahid: Since Alibaba came here, he has been investigating around and listening to everyone’s conversations nonstop.

Tess: Hey big brother Setta

Tess: What kind of feeling is “to want to be alive again”?

Setta: Who knows, but Tess was also alive a long time ago.

Tess: Hmm.

Night 345: Magical Connection

Page 2

*Netabare text: Tess is watching Alibaba desperately talking to Wahid.

Tess: “wanting to live”, what kind of feeling was it?

Tess: I don’t understand… That big brother, he is strange…

*Netabare text: Tess stares motionless at the desperate Alibaba.

Alibaba: Which reminds me, aren’t all the people in this place magicians? Please lend me your strength!

Wahid: There is no strength to lend you. We can’t even use magic in the first place.

Alibaba: Eh! Why?

Page 3

Wahid: The things that are on this place might be nothing but an illusion! Maybe even our bodies.

The rukh doesn’t dwell in this place. Naturally, there’s no Magoi either. That’s why we can’t use magic.

Alibaba: I see… there’s also no rukh in my body, right?

Setta: There’s not.

Setta: Ah! But… you see, there is rukh in this stone.

Alibaba: huh?! In the stone?!

Setta: Only these stones aren’t illusions. They were picked up by the “dimensional hole”

Alibaba: The “dimensional hole”?

Page 4

Setta: Hey! We told you during this time, right? A little before David was resurrected, in accordance with his prediction, there was a turmoil that opened the “dimensional hole”

Setta: In that moment, various things came and slipped into this side from the other side of the hole.

*Netabare text: In the background, there is a depiction of the stones falling from the dimension whole when it opened.

Setta: On the other side, there was something like a war taking place, there was a black giant who had a lot of hands growing from its head…

Alibaba: Yes, perhaps that’s the sight of Magnostadt’s war and the “medium”, so therefore, these are stones from the world I exist in?

Alibaba: Therefore, in this place there are objects that have rukh and aren’t ilusions?

Setta: That’s right.

Page 5

Alibaba: Then, this is a heavy crop*! Isn’t it? Rukh is the source of Magoi, right!? In other words, if you use these stones… doesn’t that mean that you will be able to use magic?

TN: *Sorry, it’s weird but I didn’t know this word and the dictionary says it refers to a heavy harvest but I see that it can mean “a big deal”

Wahid and Setta: Ohh!

TN: Alibaba starts to get the other people’s attention, the manuscript on the corner of the next panel says: “what’s happening?”/ “what is it?”

Wahid: Now that you mention it, that’s right. I hadn’t thought about that.

Setta: Because we don’t want to do anything in particular…

Tess: …

Tess: Big brother Alibaba! I Heard you but…

Alibaba: yeah?

Page 6

Tess: How will you live again? I don’t want to do anything in particular…

Tess: I Think that I’m okay this way, in this place, doing masonry…

Setta: Tess…

Wahid: Yes! That’s right, that’s right!

Alibaba: There are a lot of things that I want to do!

Alibaba: There’s people that i want to see, a country I want to protect, promises that I couldn’t keep, things that I have left undone… There are a lot of things that I still don’t know.

Page 7

Alibaba: oh! I have never even dated a girl!

Please!

Alibaba: Please lend me your strength!

*Netabare text: Alibaba blushed with his face down while the others stare at him blankly.

Wahid: oh, you died without knowing a woman that way? What a pitiful guy you are!

*Netabare text: Wahid starts tearing up.

People: Wahaha

Setta: However, neither this material nor the white rukh belong to Alma Torran. It is doubtful whether it can be handled by us or not.

Person 1: If this stone is from Alibaba-kun’s world, Can’t Alibaba-kun use it?

Person 2: No, first of all we have to create that Magic to revive…

Tess: How do you create magic, papa?

Wahid: eh!? How do you create it? That’s…

*Netabare text: Wahid becomes silent while he sweats

Page 8

*Netabare text: After being Silent for a while, Wahid smiles while he gently brushes Tess’s head.

Wahid: ... you do your best and you create it.

Setta: Tess’s dad is not very good at dealing with such complicated things. Since long ago, brain work was completely left up to Ugo and me…

*Netabare text: Wahid grabs Setta’s chest.

Wahid: You are so noisy! I tell you that i can make more than enough magic! Bring something to write on! I will perform a Magical formula* at a super-fast speed!

TN: i put magical ceremony before, but given tha they are developing something that looks like a formula in the later pages, i guess formula fits better the context. but this is also some kind of ritual so formula/ceremony are both correct in my opinion. The kanji can have any of those two meanings.

People: hahaha

Random Person: But, what is magic to revive? I wonder if it’s like a telepathic system?

Random Person 2: No, it might be power magic. Because, to start with, it is said that it’s beyond the dimensions…

*Netabare text: People who were lethargic are happily talking and consulting each other.

Page 9

Tess: Somehow, this place has become lively!

*Netabare text: Tess’s eyes are shining.

*Netabare text: The people are drawing smoothly the magic formula on the ground.

People: Because time is the only thing that we have more than enough of, we can research a much as we want!

People: An unknown magic invention. It’s been too long, right? … since we had this feeling!

*Netabare text: Tess is trembling and watching with excitement.

Wahid: Ah! Alibaba! There’s nothing else left but to train!*

TN: *Something like that.

Tess: !!

Page 10

*Netabare text: Alibaba is being trained by Wahid until the magic formula is completed.

Wahid: Come now! Even if the magic formula is put together, you will not come back to life if you can’t use magic!

Alibaba: Can I do this even if I’m not a magician?

*Netabare text: Tess runs to Alibaba’s side.

Tess: Should I show you the secret?

Alibaba: Yeah! Thank you, Tess!

Tess: We finally rest!

Tess: What kind of people are the people that Big brother Alibaba wants to meet again?

Alibaba: A lot of different people! The people who I grew to care are in crisis!

Tess: hmm

Tess: What about your mama big brother?

Alibaba: My mother is dead, so she’s not there.

Tess: Hmm, that’s sad, right?

Alibaba: That’s right. At the time when Tess died, Tess’s mom also seemed really sad…

Tess: Hmm... Mama…

Page 11

*Netabare text: Tess looks down at his feet and swings them.

Alibaba: Hm? What is it?

Tess: I… think I want to see my mama again…

Alibaba: ….

*Netabare text: Alibaba observes Tess silently while the people in the background become engrossed about writing the magic formula.

Tess: Such a feeling, why did I ever forget it?

Tess: I want to see my mama again!

*Netabare text: Tess blushes a little and smiles to Alibaba. Alibaba gazes at Tess’s face. After that, Tess shows Alibaba the secrets*

TN: The secret tips Tess mentioned to Alibaba on the previous page.

Page 12

*Netabare text: And, as the sun goes down, the magic formula is completed.

People: We did it! The magic formula is finished!

Page 13

Tess: What is this stone statute? It’s so cool!

Person: Because, even if Alibaba will come back to life, a body will still be necessary, so we are making a custom one with the stones!

Tess: I see, so when big brother Alibaba revives, he won’t die right?

TN: haha it seems like it doesn’t make sense but it does, I just don’t know how to phrase it English. Tess means that the reason they are making that body is because if he revives without a body we will “be nothing”.

*Netabare text: Tess observes Alibaba and the others. Wahid and Setta make Alibaba stand on a black circle.

Setta: Listen, Alibaba-kun! The great magic that we created is a magic that connect dimensions with one another just for an instant.

Setta: You will go through that path and return to the original world.

Alibaba: Then, will I be able to come back to this place again?

Page 14

Setta: No, the load of this great magic can’t be endured by a human flesh body. it’s a strange way of putting it, because you are already dead, please think of it as a separation technique that can be used only once.

Wahid: It will be a slow training of your spirit* You will have to become able to move on a temporary body made of stone. How will you feel in 100 years? How will you feel in 200 years? Will you be able to remain sane?

Alibaba: Let’s find out!*

TN: *Put in a simpler way: “i’ll try”

*Netabare text: Alibaba starts training inside the black circle.

Page 15

Narration: The day of departure

Alibaba: Well then, see you later! Thank you so much for everything until today!

Wahid: yeah! I hope you can stop it! The downfall of your world!

Alibaba: And in addition to that… I thought about one more thing that I want to do.

Tess and Wahid: ?

Wahid: Something that you want to do?

Page 16

Alibaba: This magic that i received, it can connect dimensions, right? Maybe it can even connect rukh?

Setta: Connect the rukh? What do you mean?

Alibaba: The people that die on my world become white rukh, and go to the place of the “great flow”

Alibaba: But the fallen guys become black rukh and are left out. You guys that are inside ill illah are in a different place. The guys from Al Thamen are also in a different place…

Alibaba: why do dead people have to become all dispersed now? If i could connect them all together…

*Netabare: People around have surprised expressions.

Page 17

Setta: Can we meet again? Brother...

People: I want to see my family!

Tess: I want to see mama!

Wahid: Can we meet again? Falan...

Wahid: Alibaba, if it was your intention to sell us a favor so you could be repayed, you would have better said it since way earlier.

TN: Still not sure about this line...

Alibaba: You are wrong! This is what I want to do.

Alibaba: Living and rescuing the world.

Alibaba: I won’t stop for anyone else’s reasons…

Page 18

Alibaba: Even if it’s not wanted by anyone else, i will live by my own will…

Alibaba: That’s what i have decided.

*Netabare text: Alibaba becomes Hanibaba and departs with* the magic formula

TN: by means of.

People (Manuscript) : Take care, Alibaba!

Setta: Thanks to him, it was fun for the first time in a while.

Wahid: He was a weird guy! He constantly believed that he could be revived by his energy alone… just like that guy…

*Netabare text: Setta and Wahid exchange glances

Wahid and Setta: HAHAHA! It can’t be!

Text in white:

His will is strong!

( i think that after that, it says something about the next issue having some coloring)

As always, thank you for reading ^^

#Magi 345 #Magi spoilers #Magi #magi the labyrinth of magic #Alibaba saluja #Tess #Wahid #Setta #my magi translation #so is alibaba a singularity too? XD

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parkerjonesacoustics · 6 years ago

Text

Bite-size Acoustics – Airborne vs Structure-borne Sound

Acoustics A to Z

B = Building Acoustics

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Author

Chris Parker-Jones

January 2, 2020

The aim of our articles are to break down acoustic terms and concepts as simply as possible, without going too far into the mathematics and every nitty gritty technicality, that acousticians usually love to get stuck into.

So please, if you’re an architect, contractor, developer, planner… or really anyone who occasionally needs to dabble in acoustic design and assessments… then read on…

Got a question?

Is there an acoustic, noise, or vibration related topic or problem that you would like explained? Send us an email and we’ll write an article about it.

[email protected]

What do you mean Building Acoustics?

B gives me another excellent topic which I’m very familiar with, which is… Building Acoustics. Now I appreciate that it looks like every topic in this A to Z will be a different word simply followed by the word ‘acoustics’, but I promise… it’s not going down that road, there will be some variety!

Anyway… a common misconception (along with eggboxes on walls) is that Building Acoustics means designing concert halls and recording studios, types of space which have a strong connotation with good acoustics and quality of sound. However, it’s also an important aspect for any building which contains ‘noise-sensitive’ spaces, which is most buildings, i.e. our homes, places of work or education, healthcare facilities and places of recreation and leisure. It can have a huge impact on our living comfort, health and wellbeing, productivity and communication.

So, what is Building Acoustics?

Well, the clue’s in the name, so you’ve probably already guessed that it’s to do with the acoustic design of buildings… but still, what does that mean? Let’s briefly look at some of the different aspects of Building Acoustics (and bear in mind, I’ll cover most of these in more detail later in this A to Z series).

Airborne Sound Insulation – The control of sound transmitted through the air, such as speech, television, music or the next-door neighbour’s dog. We usually want a decent level of airborne sound insulation from the room next door so that we don’t hear private conversations or have to listen to their music. We achieve this by specifying wall and floor constructions which have good sound reducing qualities, making sure they all connect together without leaving weak points for what’s known as ‘flanking sound’, and sealing any ‘penetrations’ like ducts and pipes which may run through the separating wall or floor.

Impact Sound Insulation – Impact sound occurs when an object impacts the structure, typically the floor, such as footsteps and chair scrapes. Carpets and ‘resilient’ underlays help to dampen the impact, as do rubber or spring mounts on raised floors. In most cases, we’re dealing with vertical transmission across intermediate floors from above to below. But in high impact areas, such as sports halls and gym floors, we can also have impact noise transmitting horizontally.

Room Acoustics – How sound behaves in an enclosed spaced, in particular, how reverberant a room is, which refers to the length of time that sound takes to decay. For example, think of two contrasting rooms, firstly a large sports hall with lots of hard surfaces such as vinyl flooring and concrete block walls, which has a very ‘live’ feel. Secondly, a small control room at a recording studio, with plenty of soft surfaces (which absorb sound) such as carpet, foam wall panels, ceiling tiles and furniture, which has a very ‘dead’ feel. The former has a much longer reverberation time, resulting in poor speech intelligibility and high levels of noise build up. If you think of a classroom, an office or a bedroom, this is somewhere between these two extremes. This is important, after all, can you imagine working in an office as reverberant as a sports hall?

Indoor Ambient Noise – This is the background noise level in each room of a building, when unoccupied but operational, or if you like, when you sit in silence with the television off. In this case, we might hear the sound of passing traffic outside, noise from a nearby school playground, maybe the air conditioning, and perhaps the sound of water rushing through the pipes. So, the aim is firstly to control noise ingress from outside by specifying façade constructions that have sound reducing properties, and also considering the ventilation strategy, i.e. will open windows let too much noise in? Secondly, we need to limit the noise generated by the building services, avoiding noisy mechanical ventilation units in sensitive spaces, using silencers in ductwork, and perhaps lagging pipework or encasing it with plasterboard. We need low enough indoor ambient noise levels to avoid sleep disturbance in our bedrooms, and to work or learn without distraction from noise (although in open plan offices, some background noise can actually be beneficial in masking the sound from our colleagues, and providing comfort to ourselves, after all, no-one wants to feel like the whole office is listening to their phone conversation, especially if you can otherwise hear the proverbial pin drop).

Rain Noise – As you can probably guess, this is the control of noise generated by rain impacting on the roof, particularly if it’s a lightweight roof, and especially if it has rooflights. If you’ve sat in a conservatory when it’s raining heavily, you’ll know it can get very noisy.

Structure-borne Sound – This relates to vibrations through the structure which then radiates sound into a room. Indeed, impact sound is a form of structure-borne sound. But it might not be a sudden or intermittent impact, structure-borne sound could be excited by a continuous source of vibration. Examples of this might be mechanical plant with moving parts (such as a fan unit), which if not installed well and isolated from the structure, can cause continuous vibration to be transmitted through the floor, walls and fittings, which then radiates noise into rooms nearby. Or, the vibration could arise from the foundations, particularly if the building is close to a railway line.

Noise Pollution – This perhaps fits under the area of Environmental Acoustics rather than Building Acoustics, but as I’ve referenced noise and structure-borne sound generated by building services, it’s worth mentioning. This mainly refers to controlling the external noise emissions generated by the mechanical plant of a proposed building, to ensure it does not adversely impact on those that live and work in the surrounding area. But we also must consider how ‘activity’ noise might impact on others, particularly if a building has high noise level spaces (i.e. music rooms, dance studios, workshops, etc).

Credit: Acoustics of Schools: A design guide – IOA (2015)

Is good Building Acoustic design needed for all buildings?

Well, ideally yes… but the necessary level of detail in the design and the performance will vary for different types of buildings, rooms, and adjacencies. If we live in an apartment, we’d want a good level of sound insulation from the flat next door, but we probably wouldn’t be so bothered about it between the rooms within our dwelling. If we live above a nightclub, then we’d definitely want a VERY good level of sound insulation! Low indoor ambient noise levels in our bedroom are important for sleep, but not so important on the dancefloor of the nightclub downstairs. Many guidelines exist (in the UK) which govern the acoustic design of different buildings, such as Approved Document E (Part E) of the Building Regulations (residential), BB93 (education), HTM 08-01 (healthcare), BCO guidelines (offices) and BS 8233 (multiple building types).

When does Building Acoustic design occur?

With the exception of assessing external noise ingress through the building envelope, where a site with high external noise levels might not be suitable for a sensitive building unless designed and mitigated appropriately, and perhaps some high-level internal design as part of a feasibility study, the bulk of Building Acoustics design is usually (though not always) done after gaining planning permission, depending on the project. So, this is on new construction or refurbished developments from RIBA Stage 3 onwards. That is, detailed design, technical design, and construction stages. We may also have to ‘test’ the building at handover and completion, to demonstrate that the acoustic design criteria have been achieved. Occasionally some input from an acoustic consultant may be needed for developments that have been in operation for years, in response to a complaint from the occupant, usually as a result of a refurbishment or a change in the surrounding environment.

I hope you enjoyed this short article, and keep an eye out for more articles on the common questions that I get asked by clients in my job as an acoustic consultant. Feel free to connect and message me through LinkedIn, send me an email at [email protected], or through our Contact Us page.