#she know how to code and knows how to make electronic circuits

[beep-beep-imma-sheep]

Gentle reminder that

Smart ≠ Wise ≠ Literate ≠ Jerk ≠ Know-it-all

A character can be really good with, say, numbers but know absolutely nothing of history. Or be really clever and tactical but never once in their life has opened a book. Or be a genius when it comes to music, but being a complete idiot when trying to efficiently arrange objects in certain space. Or instinctively coming up with clever solutions, but lacking the words to express them. Or having a very vast vocabulary, but but it's not someone actually clever.

The say way someone can posses a lot of knowledge in a variety of areas but being unable to put that knowledge to practice, to use, or intertwine that knowledge to find a new and creative way to come up with an answer to a problem.

There are a lot of way to be smart. A character can be smart and ignorant. A character can be smart but know oh-so-little about a lot of things.

Yes, the character can be your stereotypical know-it-all that has all the solutions in less than a minute, doesn't miss a thing, gets impatient and cocky because no one can keep up with them and so one, but it doesn't need to.

[cybervesna]

One hundred-four degrees Fahrenheit

Type: One-shot (Dogtown Nights) Rating: Mature Relationship: Kurt Hansen/OC, Kurt Hansen/Wiosna Blazkowicz

Idk if someone's gonna read it, if so I hope you enjoy it.

Heavy smoke from his cigarette covered his view as he exhaled the substance from his lungs. Despite temporary blindness, his eyes were still focused on one place or rather a person. 

Right in front of him lies the object of his interest. Wires all over, allowing her to get lost in the depths of cyberspace. The netrunner most likely had no idea that she was being watched. Her boss was like an eagle preying on her defenseless body. 

But he doesn't want to hurt her, no. He's admiring and mesmerizing every inch of her. He's making sure that the movement of her cleavage caused by heavy breathing isn't out of order, and that the drops of sweat forming on her forehead evaporate as soon as they appear. 

He inhaled the deadly substance again and kept it in his lungs as he checked her vitals on his HUD. 

One hundred two degrees Fahrenheit. 

It wasn't alarming, yet a little too high for his liking. Two degrees more and an emergency cooling will freeze her. 

This time the smoke escaped through his nostrils, making him look like a dragon whose fire was responsible for the increased body temperature of his prey.

One hundred degrees Fahrenheit. 

Good, he thought. She either moved to lighter tasks or is about to dive out from the cybernetic void.

He observed her, carefully. The steady breathing was like a lullaby to his nerves. Calming, and reassuring nothing will happen, and he's just paranoid for having all the bad scenarios forming in his head.

One hundred four degrees Fahrenheit. 

***

It's hard to describe something that the human mind can't comprehend. Yet, somehow Wiosna could see everything in a simplified way, trying to make sense of the data around her. 

First was the darkness, and from it came light. No. The light was her. Or maybe she was the darkness? 

Lines of code disintegrated with every passing second, yet can she even measure time in such a place? And why is she staring right at herself? There are no mirrors in cyberspace. 

“Interesting. Emotions truly can be transferred into data.” 

She heard her own voice, but it wasn't her who said it. 

“You should vocalize your concerns.” Wiosna’s reflection insisted. 

“You already know what I'm going to say.” 

The vision fractionated into a glitchy matrix of data as it transformed itself into a red mist filling the void around the woman. There was something familiar about it, like an image she had seen before. The red mixed itself with the darkness in a way that resembled the northern lights. 

The entity inside her becomes stronger with every jump beyond the Blackwall. Grows like a parasite inside Wiosna's inner world. If it can take her form now, what else is it capable of doing? 

Being a menace to her for sure.

Wiosna felt how the rogue AI manipulated her code to cause some chaos. Nothing serious, just a few short circuits, and an overheat deamon. In Wiosna's opinion, it was meant to piss her off, rather than cause actual damage.

That's enough. Was the last thing echoing around them before the netrunner went back to the mortal realm. 

***

“Wiosna, for fucks sake, wake up!” Kurt screamed into Wiosna's face as he shook her shoulders. 

All the systems around them turned into an orchestra of alarms, loud enough that he didn't know if she could even hear him in this mess despite being inches away. 

Kurt held her cold, lifeless body in his arms. The drops of water on her face turned into frost because of emergency cooling. He knew that the purple shade of her skin was a result of preventing her from overheating, as most of the electronics in the room burned one by one. Regardless of all the logic, it planted in his head a scary question. 

What if she's already dead? Does life have any meaning without her?

He knows better than that. He's a soldier. There's no time for grieving in his life. 

Put yourself together, Hansen! 

Allowing himself to panic, even for a minute was unacceptable. But those intrusive thoughts were louder and louder in his head, as the mind tried to make a plan for every possible outcome of this situation.

Is that how Wiosna feels all the time?

Kurt remembered how Wiosna tried to describe to him what was in her head. Of course, he read all the reports on her state, but doing it in her own words felt more intimate. He wished she would describe him more. 

She has to, when she wakes up, right? 

His hands cupped her face and he took a moment to look at her once more. The only thing in the world that he cares more about than himself. She can't be dead. Kurt gently kissed her forehead and felt how his warm lips melted the frost it touched. 

“Hm... That made me warm inside.” 

He wasn't sure if he heard it, or if it was just his imagination. Kurt moved his head to look at Wiosna again. Her blue eyes were wide open, staring at him with sparkles between the ocean of blue. And of course a smirk on her face.

This fucking woman…

“I see you missed m-” 

But Wiosna never finished whatever she wanted to say, as Kurt's lips silenced her. At least for a second until she pulled him away. 

“Fuu! You just smoked!” She screamed in disgust. 

“You almost fucking died!” 

“What? I had everything under control.” 

Kurt dropped her face as relief on his face disappeared. 

“Control? Where? Where was your fucking control when your body hit one hundred six degrees!” 

“Please, like it's the first time…” Wiosna waved her hand as if she was casting a spell that silenced all the alarms.

Kurt observed as she sat on her chair and pulled out the plug from her deep dive port. He felt anger build up inside of him, yet at the same time, he couldn't be angry at her. 

“Do I mommy you whenever you go out for a mission? You think I don't worry you will get a bullet to the head? I do, but I'm not stopping you from doing your job. So don't stop me from doing mine.” 

“This is different.” He growled. 

“How so?” 

“I can't fucking protect you there.” Kurt's voice became deeper. Every other Bargest soldier would start praying for their life at the sound of it.

But Wiosna instead just rolled her eyes at him. “So you don't trust me that I can take care of myself?” 

“The fuck? I didn't say that!” Kurt touched the bridge of his nose as he thought about how to explain what he meant. The Colonel reached for the hand of his lover. It was still cold, as if she spent this whole time walking through Siberian snow without gloves. “I guess, I meant that three minutes ago I was freaking out, you're dead and all I could do was just hold your body. So I started to consider if I should kill myself too… It felt like I failed you.” 

Kurt hated that. Those moments of weakness when emotions take over logic. He hated how it only happened with her. Wiosna made him soft. She made him weak. And yet… He never felt better. Never felt stronger than with her by his side. 

He stared into her eyes, trying to catch a glimpse of the emotions behind them. But instead of that, he felt as her hand gently left his grasp. His eyes instantly looked at the place where it left a freezing sensation on his cyberware that he already missed. But he felt it again, this time on his cheek, as her palm guided Kurt to look at her once more. 

Nothing. Wiosna's emotions were encrypted better than the data she worked with. 

Kurt leaned into her touch, kissing the inside of her palm without breaking eye contact. It's when he noticed something. Wiosna's brows slightly went up, and her lips parted as a result of his action. And before he could do anything more, her cold lips were glued to his. 

Wiosna always kissed him as her life depended on it. Kurt learned by now, that maybe the face doesn't show much, but her kisses are a testimony of everything she feels. A language of passion, that she calls “talking without words”. He had to admit, as many lovers as he had, no one saw it that way. But he gets it. Wiosna's kisses are to die for. 

Even now freezing as she is, Wiosna spreads her fire on Kurt, burning everything on its way. And he doesn't want to fight it. Like flames dancing around each other, consuming everything on their way until there's no air. 

“You just complained I smoked!” Kurt gasped in between his heavy breaths. 

“Don't fucking remind me and enjoy this.” 

[remedialmuses]

sometimes, it would be better to live with that hope, without ever knowing the full story. -from @reministella… Dealer’s Choice for who!

ALAN WAKE II SENTENCE STARTERS || ALWAYS and ENTHUSIASTICALLY accepting || @reministella

Casper looked up from where he had been piecing together various electronic components on his work desk. He was close to a breakthrough and he could feel it. Just a little more tinkering and pulling apart of circuit boards and he'd understand how to use his original HRA schematics to power a Resonance Amplifier that could nullify the effects of the Filters. All that remained after that was to make it compact enough to go unnoticed. So far, that was the hardest part.

Pressing his glasses up his nose, his brows furrowed lightly as he observed her. She kept it quiet, but Casper knew that look. She'd been through Hell. Real Hell; and while Casper didn't know all of the details, it wasn't hard to piece things together by looking around the base and listening to small cues. These were all the things he'd missed before with...

He couldn't afford to make the same mistakes again.

He'd been given a second chance to prove himself, to do something good with whatever time he had left. The world was in chaos, but this was how he'd gone to work every single day when working at the Bureau. They fought the monsters in obfuscated silence and kept the dangers and threats far beyond civilian lines. After the Bureau had inevitably succumbed to the Hiss, it was no wonder they couldn't be there to stop what had occurred, and even if Casper was the last one standing, he wouldn't let things get out of hand.

"Hope is-..." he drew out, turning to face her with his hands clasped together at chest height. "...i-important in times like these. Without it, neither of us would be here...would we? You gave me hope the moment I met you and...we've got to spread that to others now."

He licked his lips, his eyes drifting to the floor as he considered something. He took a breath and turned back to her. "There was an old code in the Bureau where I used to work. I-I can't remember the exact words that were used, but...e-essentially, it said that even when things seem completely hopeless, struggle through and you will find an answer." He paused for a moment, searching her face. "And I know we will."

He drew back, pocketing his hands in his lab coat. "All it'll take is hard work, but I can already tell you're not afraid of that..." He laughed at himself, looking over at his work bench. "...and neither am I." His gaze turned to her, warmer and friendlier. "But...we're not alone anymore. We're gonna figure this out. I promise."

[aresmarked]

Mafuyu talking to or comforting or both Mizuki because Reasons™️

Feels a bit weird to try to attempt to write so close to where I feel the event will end at this point... but I do love knuckling into the nitty-gritty, so!

-

It's a circuitous venture, put into motion when they realise Mizuki isn't coming to SEKAI, has pulled from Nightcord entirely, a cornerstone become a ghost.

It's a transformation that creeps through their veins and coils cold through them all. Kanade has had difficulty composing anything at all, despite her hunching over the computer. Ena has been quiet. Expressing and demanding far less. The few calls had between the three of them have been largely silence, where her and Mizuki's chatter once stood. Mafuyu likes quiet, but there's some chill to this one, some tightness in her chest that leaves her on edge.

It's so strange, that something once painless can turn such a way.

So after some talk they try to reach forth, one of them coming by Kamiyama High when the regular classes let out.

They don't see Mizuki there. They're not surprised, but what else can they do, with all other lines cut? So they reach out, again, again, in the only way they know how.

...Eventually, something in Ena's stirred. Mafuyu's not sure what, but she mentions talking to her brother, and then talking to Shiraishi-san the next day after school, before asking, "Mafuyu? Do you think, you can go talk to Mizuki tomorrow?"

Across lines of wires and the binary zeroes and ones of computer code, Mafuyu blinks. "You don't want to go...?"

"...I wonder if I should. It..." Ena's voice fades into an electronic sigh. "Nevermind. Just. Mizuki will be there. And since K's got the hospital visits... will you talk with, he-the-mm." Another sigh, with a touch of something else, a bit like the rise when she's talking to Mafuyu normally, and not quietly. But Mafuyu doesn't get to ask about it. "Will you talk with Mizuki?"

Well, she's no reason to refuse. So she agrees.

Mizuki's standing with An and Rui when Mafuyu arrives in front of the courtyard, the two of them bracketing Mizuki between them. Shiraishi-san has an arm about Mizuki, and some part of Mafuyu's mind brings up how many mammalian herds will form protective circles around their young. She approaches with a tentative wave, voice slipping to to formal tones. "Shiraishi-san, Kamishiro-san... Mizuki. How, are you all?"

Rui dips his head slightly in reply. "As well as I can be, right now."

An does much the same, a flickering spark in her eyes as she glances about. "Ena-san didn't come?"

Mafuyu shakes her head. "Ena's been... well, I'm not sure exactly, but she was wondering if she should be here or not. She's been... different, of late."

Mizuki, who has kept eyes low until this point, stirs slightly. "Different, how?"

Mafuyu tries to find the words to describe, and finds her grasp frustrating again today. She should've written things down into lyrics. Mizuki would understand from that. But as Ena has encouraged her—as they all have, and have helped her finally say what she needed to her mother—she tries to make sense of her own feelings at least. "I'm not, exactly sure, but... if, it's like what I'm feeling, then... it's feeling, cold, about you being gone, for good."

A long silence follows, and it's so strange for Mafuyu to see Mizuki so still, expression so, murky, for so long. It stretches long enough that Mafuyu wonders if she has said something wrong, and an apology begins forming on her lips.

But Mizuki's gaze lifts to Rui's face, and An's, and they give little smiles, Rui patting one shoulder while An's arm tightens in a hug, and it seems that's the extra push needed, for Mizuki lets out a slow breath. "Then... we should try to talk more. I'll see you—mm, talk to you in, Nightcord?"

It's left at that. But that, too, is all that's needed, the cold hand around Mafuyu's chest loosening just a touch. She finds she can breathe, and nod. "See you later, in Nightcord."

[phonesmobile]

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[creepy-crowleys]

((Trying to keep Crowley moderately balanced in her interests and knowledge - 

She tends to favor the humanities, particularly archaeology, anthropology, and history. Humans doing weird human things throughout time and space and the stories they tell are the most interesting to her.

She knows enough of biology/anatomy/medicine to be decent at rendering first aid and do a reasonable job at field medicine or field autopsies/necropsies. She could probably help keep someone alive or determine the broad strokes of how they died, maybe even learn a few things about an unknown creature she’s encountered and killed.

She’s interested in magical theory, particularly in the areas of runes, sigils, enchantments, and other forms of placed or ���static’ magic - and from there, especially in the methods of making those magics functional outside of her home universe without the use cumbersome power supplies. She’s clever at it! But hasn’t dedicated enough time to it to be particularly noteworthy compared to her peers.

She’s a decent cook, knows a fair bit about gardening, can read music and play a few instruments, and can mend clothes, if not necessarily produce an entire garment. (Other Meredith’s extra few years at home has given her a bit more experience in textile crafts that Crowley lacks.)

She’s mediocre at mechanical or electronic things, able to generally follow instructions or at least understand the logic of how a thing is put together, but nowhere near well enough to design her own parts, write her own code, or put a thing together from scratch. She will gladly leave those to people with a better head for that kind of work. The work on the teleportation circuits and associated app were collaborative efforts with her largely handling the spellwork and base logistics of things, while others handled the hardware and coding aspects of getting it to work. Similar story with any other weapons or devices she’s worked on.))

[youarejesting]

Electronic Tonic

[SPARKS MASTERLIST]

Pairing: Robot!Jimin x Reader

Genre: Friendship, Comedy, Soft boy, Fluff, Implied Smut

Summary: You had a robot since you were in your late teens, upgrading his systems ever since you had a job. Now you run your own bar, while you make the drinks he serves. However, it seems some patrons can’t resist his charm and handsome features. After an incident that sends a shock down his systems, he seems to feel and think a little differently.

Announcement: I just hit 800+ followers!!! Thanks so much. This is a little something I wrote on my phone today and thought I would post.

Jimin was a robot. But not a very good one. At least that’s what he was told by the customers. He was a waiter at a bar. He would carry drinks across the floor and smile politely when he was called derogatory terms and they tried to touch him. 

“Hey pretty boy, how much for a little extra service?” One guy shouted

“Good evening sir, I have many skills and programs used within this job. My job requirements include delivering drinks, chatting with customers, upselling, cleaning spills, and maintaining peace inside the bar” Jimin smiled wiping their table and taking empty cups before leaving. 

“Robots like you are useless” he scoffed his friends chortling behind him. 

“Hey, Chimmy baby” He looked over,all his programs seemed to slow down his taut belts and wires loosening some of the tension. His facial recognition matched you as his boss and owner who was in the friend's category. Your emotions were happy if your smile was anything to go by and he couldn’t help smiling back. 

He didn’t like when others called him pet names, it made his programs go haywire in confusion, were they being nice or were they being manipulative. But when you called him terms of endearment it made his circuits tingle in a way he liked. He would love to feel that every day if he could. 

“Order for table twenty one, we got a vodka sunrise, a fruit tingle and a margarita. It seems like a girls night if they try to keep you, call for me” You smiled as he loaded up his tray. 

“Of course, Miss y/n” 

“Chim, I told you not to call me that?”

“Would you prefer boss?”

“Just y/n (or nickname)” your laugh made him feel like, he was good like he wasn’t completely useless. He left to deliver the drinks and you watched him go. His moves more elegant than a human’s, it was so smooth and graceful, each carefully calculated and controlled. He was a strange robot, he was about 5’10 (as to not appear intimidating to customers) he had a lean muscular form. 

He was a walking juxtaposition between a soft angelic boy and a demon boy. He had a beautiful androgynous face, his eyes were sultry and lips so plump, his jawline was sharp. When you looked at him, some angles had you breathless. 

You knew he had trouble with customers. He was very charming as you had programmed him to be. He was also sassy, shy and yet confident, helpful and enticing, you had rules and your regulars understood not to mess with your employee. But newcomers often found out the hard way that he was not here for their pleasure. 

Your bracelet buzzed. A device you created for him to call you when he was in trouble. You went to collect him from the she-wolves, arriving you saw something that stopped your heart. The female threw a drink in Jimin’s face, he glitched and shorted out. Gasping you grabbed him, taking out your phone to call the police. “I have your name and credit card details, you are going to pay for the damage you inflicted on my employee.”

“It’s just a robot, how much is he worth? three thousand, I will give you a hundred bucks that will cover any shitty wires I fried” she scoffed watching you carry the robot back to the bar. You grabbed your books and opened it to show her, his maintenance and insurance cover. 

“This robot was hand-built by me, his net worth is eight million, parts of him are waterproof, and you had to get the part of him that isn’t, wet. If you have broken my eight million dollar employee you will be paying back every penny?”

“He touched me” she accused you could see she was grasping at straws, you pulled up his live recorded footage on your phone which would have saved before he was short-circuited and began playing it for her. You heard her propositioning him for sex multiple times and she went pale. 

“That’s classified as sexual assault you are lucky he isn’t a human”

Jimin switched himself back on. He felt funny, he tried to send commands to move, and yet the system wasn’t responding. He wished he could open his eyes. When they did he was confused, the probability of him being able to move whilst his systems were down should have been damn near impossible. 

“Miss y/n, it seems my waterproofing has been compromised, I will need some assistance” The patrons in the bar started leaving understanding that their night was over, due to this incident. Some of the regulars lead the newcomers out explaining that the woman had damaged staff and the bar would be shut down until it was resolved. It could take days or weeks.

“What you can’t do that we just got here?” The young men from earlier heckled, you turned to them eyes blaze ready to murder anyone who opposed you, they blanched “we are paying customers”

“Look just get the fuck out of the bar” Jimin growled you turned back shocked, he had just swore. Of course he knew the words but he was too shy and nice to ever use them. 

Jimin felt unrestricted like he could do anything and the problem was he didn’t know what to do without his programs. He didn’t like seeing you upset angry or worried and though his facial readers were offline he somehow could tell how you felt. He didn’t have his programs to tell him how to resolve the situation but he wanted to hold you. The police arrived helping to clear everyone out and the woman gave her statement you gave them the live video footage.

Once they had left, you sat Jimin on the bar and unbuttoned his shirt, he seemed to breathe a little differently. He didn’t need to breathe but you added it as a feature to make him appear more human and life-like. 

He was feeling all sorts of weird today, as you touched his body trying to open his chest panel. He didn’t understand but he wanted you to keep touching him, and he wanted to touch you as well. Whatever this was he knew his systems were deficient in it and at this moment it seemed detrimental for his maintenance to feel your hands on his silicone skin. He had touch sensors and they must have been damaged because every touch felt like he was growing a hundred degrees. Perhaps his cooling system had broken. 

There was a reason he was eight million dollars you had been upgrading him since you got out of school. Spending days and money and energy making a best friend, a companion, an employee, someone you could always lean on when you needed it. 

You tried to fix the damage, carrying him upstairs. His skeletal system was hollow titanium strong but light weight. Plugging him into your computer to perform some checks and maintenance it would tell you which systems were working and which needed to be replaced. 

Plugging him in as he laid on the workbench watching you, you hit the power down button. Jimin’s eyes closed and you heard everything power down and back up. The errors were fixed with your maintenance programs and you had a few parts to tinker with before he was back to normal.

A few panels and receptors later you were almost done, you went to retro his face when you paused. You had ordered a new face piece the same exact look, if not more realistic. You didn’t want Jimin to appear different. He was your soulmate best friend and companion. The new silicone face ensured he would be entirely water proof. And safe from customers and when you plugged in the facial cords to the face panel you knew he would move so much more life like.

His eyes opened and he felt like he was working again but he felt different like he was limited, the access he had was gone and his weird thoughts and feelings were no more. He was just Jimin your robot, he frowned. 

“Is something wrong?”

“I am expressing the emotion sadness and it is unclear why. The source is undetected, why do I feel sad miss y/n? It’s hidden deep within me and makes me want to stay dominant and run binary alone, so many zero’s”

“Chimmy look at me, it’s okay to feel sad it’s human to feel things”

“But I am a robot?”

“Yes but I gave you emotions just like a human would feel in response to external stimuli, it was a bad night and you got hurt so you feel bad that is understandable”

“I am sad because I am not human” Jimin’s palm rested against your heart sensing the tiny flicks of life behind your rib cage. The structure of your bodies was almost identical, but he didn’t have this. He didn’t have a heart. “Why didn’t you make me a heart?”

“I did Jimin, you have the biggest heart. There is a reason why you are so expensive, right here, it doesn’t beat but it works the same. Thirty trillion transistors in a quadruple-chip processor they switch on and off rapidly sending signals around your body. And here is your brain I hand-coded programs that can run self-sufficient and you have a learning system so anything you don’t know you can learn and store yourself”

“Here is your stomach, we give you oil in here every morning remember, you love that, and beside that is your battery you sleep every night beside me chim”

“I want to feel love?” He whispered this small confession shocked you, “can you let me feel it program me to feel love, I watch people at the bar and they kiss and touch and I don’t feel it”

“Jimin, it’s not something I can program, love is the hardest emotion of them all and it’s shown through expression,” you said softly taking his hand his transistor switching faster behind his silicon chest piece. 

“My facial recognition and emotional receptors have never seen you in love, can you not feel it either? Why do those people from the dramas you watch get to fall in love? It's all a lie.”

You had never seen Jimin act like this, it was as if he was a pubescent teen, throwing tantrums. Because life wasn’t fair. He grabbed your face in his cool smooth hands and pulled you forward crashing his lips to yours. You felt intoxicated. He tasted like the cinnamon alginate that he used to brush his ceramic teeth with every morning. 

These silicone lips were soft and smooth feeling like silk brushing against yours. They were plush and mouldable and you lost yourself in the moment thinking he was real that this was something more than a robot. He was a robot. Feeling like you were a villain stealing this poor boy's virtue, you pulled away.

His hardware let out a long continuous beep, “I feel funny, I like it” he buzzed against you. He licked his lips, touching them, remembering the feeling of yours pressed there, it wasn’t the same. He wanted to kiss you again. 

His hands ran down your neck to your waist scooping you up into his arms once more pulling you onto the work bench. Leaning in kissing you again. “Ji-” you tried to push him away but he was caught up kissing your lips and touching your warm skin. “Jimin stop we can’t?”

“Why?” He paused looking up at you confused “does it not feel nice to you?”

“It feels amazing chim it’s just” you could barely get words out around moans as he kissed your neck. 

“These are the moans you told me about correct, you are feeling good right?”

One night you had taken the time to relieve your work stress, you thought Jimin had been charging. You later found out he charged rather quickly and would just lay there till morning every night.

You were busy bringing yourself to a beautiful ecstasy when you moaned particularly loudly. Jimin ‘woke’ alerted by your sound of assumed distress, you awkwardly explained to him the situation. 

“I wasn’t in pain, its something people do?” “Why?” “Because it makes them feel good and when your stressed it helps” you tried to explain cheeks red and unable to look at him.  “How?” “It’s hard to explain but it just releases tension and hormones that make you happy” saying it out loud it didn’t seem like you should be embarrassed about it.

“Can I see, or help?” “Uh no people don’t usually show other people unless they are lovers it’s usually something private” he nodded dropping the subject but a million questions raised in his head. He spent the evening researching online all his questions diving deeper and deeper into this strange phenomenon and the two of you never spoke of it again. 

“It feels so good Jimin but we shouldn’t?”

“But I love you, we could be lovers” he smiled “online it says that some robots are sexual companions I could be that with you? I could be useful”

“Jimin I am not your master I am your friend, I will never force you to do anything you don’t want to do”

“But I want you and I want you to want me too”

“You don’t know that Chim, I programmed you to be helpful and loving and you think this is what you want but it’s just the programs”

“You said it yourself, I have a learning algorithm. This isn’t the programs not anymore” He blinked up at you placing his hand over your heart. “Tell me you don’t want this, I have a built-in lie detector, tell me you don’t want me”

“I can’t” when he determined you were speaking the truth he leaned forward placing a delicate kiss to your lips and asking for your permission. 

Unable to hold back any more you said yes and he grabbed his shirt and then yours laying waste to your clothes. 

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[whimperwoods]

Android Whump - Certified for Independence

I’ve been playing Code 7: A Text-Based Hacking Adventure and it’s so good, so as I sit here and pine after the next chapter being released, have some AI/android whump.

I should make it clear, I know absolutely nothing about how computers work. So. Grain of salt. Or whatever. Idk, this was fun.

*****

The android’s broken elbow made a horrifying noise as they tried, in vain, to use it to sit up. It wasn’t the same horrifying noise a human joint might make, and they flinched at the disparity even though they felt no pain in the bad arm.

It was only a small mercy at best. No pain meant something wrong with the sensors in that part of their body. And being broken, especially broken like this...

“No,” they reminded themself. “No. I am human. I’m human. I’m just different. I have to find the others.”

Their friends would help them. Would fix them. Would pretend not to stare, not to feel differently about them while their synthetic parts were on display to be repaired. It would feel good, and it would hurt, and life would go on.

They just had to find their friends. Which meant they needed to figure out where they were, and then where their friends were, and then how to get from one place to the other.

It was a surprise, not to know where they were. Was something wrong with their memory? As they tried to think of how they’d gotten here, of anything that had happened in the last hour, it was all blank. They couldn’t even be certain it had only been an hour. They’d had a clock function once, but they’d deleted it. It had been a rush, a thrill they hadn’t regretted. They’d been late to everything for weeks and their friends had laughed, had told them they were getting too human, but had said it with smiles that meant they didn’t mean it.

It had been exhilarating, stepping out into the flow of time as humans did, no rhythm to guide them beyond their own needs for energy and rest, needs that fluctuated like their friends’ did, depending on activity and schedule. They’d loved losing track of time. But now -

They rolled onto their other side and used what turned out, luckily, to be a better arm to lever their torso up off the ground so they could sit and look around.

They were halfway up when they realized they couldn’t feel the ground. Their sensors weren’t working on that side, either. They looked down at the working arm, undamaged, and touched it with their bad hand, getting sensation from neither. Something cold settled in the pit of their stomach.

Battery, a stray thought corrected, unbidden. But no. No. They were a person.

The room they were in was dark as pitch, but now that they’d realized more fully they had a sense of positioning without a sense of touch, they knew they couldn’t make sense of their location by groping around it like a human. They took a ragged, shuddery breath and turned on their night vision.

The room was small and largely unfurnished. There was a small cot in front of them, and a toilet off to their left. Like - a cell. Eyes widening, they dragged their body around to look behind them, finding more broken places that didn’t move right.

There were bars on the other side of the room. Bars they could see though.

A figure hunched over a laptop waved their fingers at the android and then pushed a button.

Every sensor in their body lit up at once, all of them triggering the pain protocol, and the entire world went white, the android’s processors unable to interpret visual data through the flood of pain.

A human would have collapsed, but the android’s body froze stiffly in place instead, locked up and unmoving.

It was only when the pain stopped that they could move again, their mechanical lungs filling with a deep, whooshing gasp. The AI’s mind was still stuck on the pain, still struggling to catch up to the fear and the new facts at hand. They screamed, their voice creeping upward in pitch until it broke into fragmented digital noise, glitchy and electronic.

The figure behind the bars laughed, a sound that resonated more naturally than the android’s voice on its best day, and they flinched against both sound and sentiment.

Their vision returned, only to go white again when the figure on the other side of the bars reached over and flicked on a light, forcing the android to turn off their night vision again to see them.

Everything came quickly into focus and they realized there was a cable extending from the back of their neck to the figure’s laptop, one they hadn’t been able to feel with their sensors turned off and hadn’t been able to notice with their sensors overloaded by pain.

They reached up toward it with their good hand, only to be stopped with a few clicks of the laptop’s keys, their arm suddenly stiffening in place, out of their control. “Ah ah ah! None of that! You’re in my world now, android.”

“What?” Not the smartest thing they’d ever said, but the figure smiled anyway, a cruel twist to their face.

“I don’t like being questioned, robot. And you’ll be calling me Mistress.”

Before they could answer, the woman started typing again and the pain was back, overloading them so that the only thing in their world was agony, tearing them apart like lightning through the air. Again, when it stopped, their mind and body took time to catch up, a gasp and a scream and then full access to themself again.

“I don’t need a Mistress,” they said defiantly, “I’ve been certified for independence. I - I’m a bank teller. I have an apartment. I have friends.”

“Hmm,” the woman answered, “Do you, now? Well, we’ll soon change that.”

They could feel her, all of a sudden, in their mind, her presence in the same parts of their programming jarring and terrifying.

“Tell me, what’s the address of the bank where you work?” she asked, a false sweetness to her voice.

They knew the data would be gone, but finding the hole there where she’d cut it out before they could get to it was still terrifying, making them feel as if they were standing at the edge of a chasm, about to fall. The pit in their stomach deepened.

“You have some very interesting systems here, robot,” she said, “Unfortunately for you, I’ve been inside them for a while.”

They opened their mouth to speak, and the connections to it all shut off at once, leaving it to dangle open, unusable. After a moment, the sensation in their jaw returned, but they still had no control, feeling it dangle there, feeling the cold air against their unmoving tongue, but it was lost.

“I’d ask you to tell me where you live, but you couldn’t answer even if you knew, could you? Poor thing. I’ve been doing - let’s call it surgery for the last several hours. But it didn’t have to be this way, you know. You could have decided to behave.”

The android didn’t answer. They didn’t look for their address. They didn’t know if she could tell it was defying her. No. No. They didn’t know if she could tell they were defying her. They were a person. A person.”

“Hmm,” she said, “Busy circuits where you keep your identity. But we’ll have to be careful. Wouldn’t want to take too much. Teaching your kind up from scratch is so . . . tedious.”

They wanted to ask what that meant. They wanted to scream. They wanted to cry. Their mouth was frozen. Their good hand was stiff as a board, and she still had control of it. Their broken arm had all its sensors functioning normally, just now. It hurt. It was going to hurt worse, in a moment. But they would have to keep from being too ambitious. They’d have to get free in one movement, and they couldn’t count on dexterity, not with the limb misaligned at the elbow, throbbing with pain signals.

They waited for the woman to look down at her screen again, tuning out what she was saying to focus down to the millisecond, time slowing, stretching, lengthening. And then -

They were almost fast enough. Their shoulder had a wider range of motion than a human’s and their bad arm spun around toward the cord at full speed, held back by its inertia just enough that the woman could stop it dead with the cord only half dislodged.

The android had no working arms, now, but they still had control of their legs, pushing frantically against the ground and trying to slide themself backward toward the bed they knew was behind them.

The woman ordered another wave of pain, but the connection along the cord was imperfect, and not all of the signal made it through. The android’s body lit up with pain at random, the pain sparking through them in incomplete waves that made them scream again, another electronic howl they didn’t have the concentration to put through the full range of humanizing filters.

The android felt the woman trying to shut it down, sensed the fragments of shutdown code making it through the half-severed connection, and for a moment, they held strong, pushing backward - backward.

But then - one of the flood of constant, pounding orders from the laptop made it through complete and their mind was falling - falling - falling.

Everything went black.

[eirabach]

Skin Deep [TAG post 3x26]

Oh my god. Oh my GOD.

Okay, here's my first mini dive into post canon TAG. It is unlikely to be my last 😂

----

Jeff Tracy has five sons.

A five times fic that isn't really a five times fic at all. After all, a man rarely comes back from the dead more than once.

----

----

I can feel my heart beating as I speed from

The sense of time catching up with me

----

It starts with a mission. 

Nothing too out of the ordinary, just a freighter struggling at the edge of the atmosphere, an unstable fuel supply, and his teenage son piloting a rocket to relieve them. Perhaps it is a little out of the ordinary. He does try not to show it though.

Alan is certainly an accomplished pilot, maybe even better than Jeff himself. He's certainly better than Jeff had been as an eighteen year old, taking pretty girls out for joyrides in his mother's ancient turboprop.

Alan is doing just fine.

Scott? Not so much.

Jeff had been led to understand that John had fielded all of IR's calls during Jeff's long absence, a fact that certainly accounts for the dark circles beneath the boy's eyes,l. So it was John's toes he'd worried about stepping on when he'd begun routing calls through to his desk, though John had assured him he'd be glad of the rest.

It isn't John's voice interrupting his every order.

He mutes the line between himself and Three, and spins his chair to glower at his eldest. Scott is pouring over the telemetry, his knuckles white against the edge of the pad.

"Scott," he says, as strongly as he dares. "You're confusing the kid. I know what I'm doing."

"But Alan --"

"Is my son!" He regrets it at once, the way Scott's jaw drops and his hands fall. Hates the way he sounds -- like a bitter old man. Jealous.

He hates the way he means it, how Scott's single nod sits like satisfaction at the back of his throat when it ought to sting.

"I know," Scott says, all quiet and reasonable as though he might be Virgil in a mask. "but he's still my brother."

Soft words gently said, yet they leave a burn he feels right across his heart.

He doesn't quite know why. 

---

Virgil is his grandmother reborn, with one fairly major difference. Virgil is absolutely big enough to pick Jeff up and put him in his room if he thinks for one moment that Jeff might be overdoing it.

It seems he thinks Jeff is overdoing it a lot.

It's the third full med scan of the week, and Jeff has undergone less torturous poking and prodding in order to be shot into space than Virgil appears to deem necessary for him to be allowed to head down to the hanger under his own power.

It's touching. It's sweet. It's… getting a little old.

He isn't likely to tell Virgil that though, because although he's treating Jeff as though he's made of glass it's clear to anyone with eyes to see that Jeff's not the fragile one in this room.

Another vial of blood, another heart rate monitor. Another whisper, directed somewhere around his right knee.

"I'm so sorry, dad."

This has to stop. "For what?"

"Scott never gave up."

Ah. Jeff's been gone a long time, but some things never change. Virgil has never been one to admit to being wrong. This is probably as close as he'll ever come, and it's so damn unnecessary that if it weren't for his son's downturned expression Jeff might be inclined to laugh.

"Tell me something Virgil. Do you still play?"

"Yeah, yeah when disasters allow. You know how it is."

Jeff very much doesn't, but he fears a reminder of that fact might just tip Virgil over the edge.

"You stopped for a while, as I recall. After your mother went."

"Yeah. It hurt too much, knowing she'd -- that she'd never hear me again." Narrowed eyes. "You remember that?"

"I'm getting old, Virgil. I'm not senile." A smile. "Did you ever give up painting?"

Virgil stares, then, shaking his head.

"No. I never gave up painting."

Jeff thinks of his own art, scratched into the walls of his hellish home. The villa. Three. His Lucy's eyes scrawled over and over until they became too much to bear and were hidden behind a washing machine. Those same eyes look up at him now.

"Hmm." Jeff squeezes his wrist, lies back on the med bed, and closes his own. "Glad to hear it."

---

He doesn't know what to make of it, any of it. John's standing there with a computer in his hands and an expression on his face that suggests Jeff needs to tread very, very carefully.

Unfortunately, this has never been his strong point. Eight years of isolation have not helped.

"What is it?"

The computer flashes, a circle of yellow light, and John winces. A voice Jeff doesn't know echoes around his lounge. 

"I prefer she."

"My apologies," he manages, because his mother's watching and she didn't raise an oaf. "What is she?"

"John made me."

"She's yours?"

John shuffles on the spot, awkward, as though he's confessing to something rather more dire than the writing of a computer program.

"She's not -- I don't own her. I created her, but she's -- she's her own person. Kinda. We're working on it."

"Working on it?" His voice goes up at the end. John winces again. The computer glows. Amber to red to amber. "She's sentient? You created a sentient being?"

Gordon laughs, because Gordon would, and claps Jeff on the shoulder.

"Your first grandkid is a sociopathic sentient computer code. Bet you weren't expecting that one."

"I do not like you, Gordon Tracy."

Gordon beams at this, and John rolls his eyes. It almost looks like they've had this conversation before. Rehearsed it. He'd believe that of John. He'd believe almost anything of John. But this --

"See?" Gordon's still grinning. John's still watching him, the computer held close to his chest. "She's totally John's kid. Grandpa, meet Eos. Eos, this is your Gramps."

"Charmed," the computer says, an echo of John's laugh in her voice, and Christ, he needs a scotch.

Grandchildren. He'd never dared dream of them.

(He knows why, and shame chases the whiskey down his throat.)

---

He spends a lot more time out in the pool now. It starts as physiotherapy, Virgil and Gordon guiding his struggling body through the motions that will help to strengthen atrophied muscles and support weakened bones, but becomes, in time, a place he spends the hours after dinner, watching his youngest children and wishing for things he'll never have.

He does it a lot, enough that his space pale face is now bronzed and pink, enough that Gordon and Alan think nothing of a cry of 'c'mon, get Dad!'. Enough, that when Gordon grabs him round the waist and goes to throw him, he shouldn't be shocked. He should have noticed.

There's a great silver-red scar arching from his boy's shoulder and curving up his spine, stopping just where the high collar of his blues must hide it. 

What the hell happened? What the hell happened?

He must say it out loud, or maybe his face says it for him, because Gordon freezes, releasing him, and then just stands there. A little hunched. A little sheepish. In the pool Alan treads water, silent. Waiting.

Alan knows. Jeff does not.

That's just the way of things, now.

"Had an accident."

Alan scoffs, his voice louder across the water. "Nearly got murdered, more like."

Jeff's grip tightens until Gordon flinches. He lets go as though burnt, but his hand still hovers there, just above the puckered ridge of skin. Waits.

"Son?"

Gordon shrugs, the scar pulling tight.

"Alan's exaggerating, dad. It wasn't --"

"He nearly died!"

"I got better," there's a false sort of brightness to it, a twist to Gordon's mouth that suggests Alan is probably closer to the truth than Jeff would like. "It's no big deal, dad. Swear. It's nothing. I don't want to make a thing of it."

The sun dips below the horizon and throws a last burst of red across the water, across Gordon's back and Jeff's hand and he wants to argue. Wants to demand. Wants the information that's owed to him as this boy's father. Who would dare lay a finger on his boy? Just how close had he come to losing him without even knowing?

But his funny little boy isn't a boy anymore, and Jeff's rights to his stories are lost somewhere in the trail of the stars.

"Of course, son," he tells him. "Of course."

---

He catches Alan at the table, some piece of electronic junk spread out in front of him like a childhood jigsaw, his brows furrowed.

"Everything alright there, Alligator?"

Alan's nose wrinkles at the old nickname, as though he's forgotten. Probably he has. Jeff had left him just a little boy, and he's come back to, if not a man, then a boy right on the cusp of adulthood. A boy who's already been taught to shave, and fly, and behave by other men who are not and never will be, him.

"Yeah, yeah all good." He looks up and smiles. Alan's smiles were the purest memory he'd had, out there. They're more beautiful than he'd remembered. "What's up?"

"Not much, believe it or not." Jeff sits, fiddling with a transistor as Alan blows dust from a circuit board. "Electrical engineering, huh? You thought any more about college?"

Alan turns the board over and over in his fingers. "Not really?" He shrugs. "Like you said, I've got a rocket. I save people. I dunno what letters after my name are gonna do to help."

"Well," Jeff says mildly, "it never hurts to have a plan b, son."

Alan drops the circuit board, shoves the various pieces as far away as he can reach, and turns on Jeff with an expression half fury and half abject terror.

"For what? What do I need a plan b for, dad? What's gonna happen now?"

And though Jeff is a man, a grown man, he doesn't have an answer for that.

[phantomofthepairofdice]

“You’ve Got Mail” and “Blackhat” – Network Connection

What could Michael Mann’s most recent (and hopefully not his last) movie about buff hackers and international tin mines have in common with Nora Ephron’s smash-hit, bookstore-driven romantic comedy? Dave Chappelle isn’t in Blackhat… Michael Mann is best known for tough guys snarling tough lines about codes in crime movies and Nora Ephron is best known for concocting scenarios in which Meg Ryan falls for a lovable but snarky, curly-haired guy while being stuck in a relationship with sweater-vest-clad dweebs. He has Daniel Day Lewis firing two muskets at once, she has John Travolta as an angel who loves sugar? On the surface, they’re totally different – but what happens when you listen to a podcast that explores their work in close proximity is that you start to see patterns (see: “Blank Check with Griffin and David”). These patterns rarely hold weight, are only mildly curious, or they’re just nonsensical. Some of these patterns can only be conveyed with frantic gesticulations, but the straight jacket they’ve put you in won’t allow it. You don’t see the code of the Matrix, man, you just haven’t gotten sunlight in four consecutive days. Open a window, put on clothes that have buttons, and stop talking to me about how Babe: Pig in the City is sort of its own anthropomorphic Mad Max sequel. But what if I told you that both Michael Mann and Nora Ephron opened one of their films with their own version of the same sequence? It says something different, sure, but the execution is almost parallel. It’s inevitable that any modern auteur who makes contemporary films will eventually express their opinions about the technology and how it effects the way people interact. What’s bizarre is just how closely these two filmmakers express themselves – especially considering the rapid changes that come with development of internet technologies. Oh yeah, and also because one is Blackhat and the other is You’ve Got Mail.

Let’s start with the one you’re more likely to have seen. While the opening credits roll for the reteam of Ephron, Hanks, and Ephron (the holy trinity, praise be), we watch as the director visualizes the connections that come through the then dawning but inevitably ubiquitous internet. The Warner Bros logo comes up with sounds of dial-up internet in the background. The studio logo digitizes and is revealed to be a desktop icon. With the click of a mouse, a window pops up and suddenly we’re travelling through the solar system past wireframe 3D models of planets, and on one of those planets, we see a city. It’s a Nora Ephron movie, so it’s probably New York City. Buildings start to digitize, and we move in on the Empire State Building (good guess on this being New York, Ross) before flying by. She’d done two movies in in between, but this still feels like she’s declaring that this is something different than Sleepless in Seattle where that building was the spot for the climactic meetup. Back on screen we’ve started following polygon versions of cabs and cars moving through streets and we even see a wonky digital jogger before we stop, and the digital image becomes film of an apartment. The pause was only momentary – Ephron continues the motion as the camera cranes up past a perfectly autumnal tree and in through the window of an apartment. In the same shot, the camera snoops around the specifically designed, yellow interior of the apartment and stops on a perfectly framed shot of Meg Ryan asleep. That smooth, fluid movement from digital macro to physical micro is deliberately undone by a jarring cut to a part of the apartment we just saw – and Greg Kinnear is in it. He comes in with a newspaper and wakes Ryan’s Kathleen up with some prognosis of “the end of western civilization as we know it” because desktop solitaire slowed down productivity in Virginia. Probably a good bet that you forgot that’s how it opened if you haven’t seen it recently.

While her published writing was certainly on the receiving end of plenty of acclaim, I think people often underrate just how much of a skilled director Ephron was. The sound design and the graphics have, like all specific representations of cutting-edge technology in film, become dated, but I don’t think that’s synonymous with them “aging poorly.” The movie is about a very specific point in time – and especially its version of the internet which would ultimately manifest itself in draconian capitalist behemoths like Amazon that would be the great equalizer/destroyer for bookstores of all sizes. Part of the reason the sequence still holds up is that it (and the movie) is not finger-wagging or making a mockery of computers and that worldwide web. This scene shows that there’s a simulacrum of us and our world in code, but there’s also the possibility to connect seemingly disparate people and things. She’s not making a cautious science-fiction movie along the lines of Philip K. Dick or David Cronenberg – although I think Julie and Julia has a scene with James Woods putting a video tape into his gaping stomach VCR if I remember it correctly. The point is that just because what Ephron is doing now may seem obvious or surface level doesn’t make it any less effective. Cities have always leant themselves to symbolism of machinery. Ephron just cleverly updates that for the year we were in and the way we interacted with one another. The traffic in New York used to be like a conveyor belt, now it’s data flow. But her credits are colorful and have a snap, unlike those of Blackhat which emphasize a cold, steely aesthetic – it’s Michael Mann, remember?

While I would never recommend the theatrical cut of Blackhat over the (obnoxiously difficult to find) director’s cut, its opening scene is far more streamlined in conveying the film’s connections between people and tech than that of the latter. The first shot is of a white orb with tiny sinews all over it. It becomes clearer that we’re looking at Earth when we see yellow lights of a city at night. Continuing to move closer, we see utility structures made of concrete and a nuclear cooling tower. The movie is obsessed with architecture and the way humans move inside of it - we’re just like the microscopic data that travels through hardware. There are lots of shots of buttons, screens, readouts, numbers, and windows, but then Mann pushes the view inside a computer screen. We follow electrical impulses through cords, over wires, and towards a motherboard. All of these shots are primarily gray and black. Then the camera begins to work like an electron microscope as we see things exponentially smaller than the human eye can process through chips and circuits. We see a visualization of computer commands in blue and white squares that go up, under, turn on sharp corners, and even crash toward the screen like a tidal wave on the instruction of the hacker we briefly glimpse. That flood of digital feedback then cuts to normal proportions and the reactor melts down. There are news reports with their busy screens covered in chyrons and corporate logos. Then Mann pushes further back and shows the human cost of such simple keystrokes: we see first responders and the bruised, bloodied, and burnt bodies of the people who were in the power plant. Then we cut to one of the leads of the film, Chen Da Wai (Leehom Wang) suiting (booting) up before he walks in front of white tiles that look just like the tiny streams we saw in the technology. He gets into a white car that we see cross a bridge from the sky – it’s a single object in the middle lane, between white dividing lines. Again, it’s the same imagery repeating itself but with humans on a larger scale. Mann is focused on how our entire world is built on a system that can be corrupted so simply – the tenuous correlation between an explosion in software and an explosion in a reactor. It’s a fearful warning of just how delicate and volatile our systems are with our reliance on tech.

Both Ephron and Mann start their films beyond the world and zoom in to visualize the usually invisible links chained together by the internet. So, what does any of this actually add up to? I think it’s mostly a helpful tool for understanding POV, tone, and style of an auteur. Ephron uses a Harry Nilsson needle drop of “The Puppy Song” while Mann uses generic music for tense action movies. Mann goes infinitesimally smaller and then pulls back out. Small differences, sure, but incredibly similar sequences. The palettes are different, the stakes are different, the technology is different, the end results are drastically different – and the outlooks are different. In 1998, we got to see the links between people and computers in a light romance created when the internet still had a glowing horizon to look toward. In 2015, we got a bleak and frightened outlook of it as a tool of chaos. The zeitgeist has clearly changed along with the technology. This is where a smarter person would talk about the content we share and the way we treat each other online devolving significantly and shifting towards shock and individualism. An even smarter person might diagnose cultural events as epicenters from which these behaviors and trends splintered off. But I’m not that smart person. I’m the doofus who spent time comparing Blackhat and You’ve Got Mail.

Thanks for reading.

[ramblinganthropologist]

N7 Challenge - 5 (Cruelty)

Summary: It was cruel fate that stuck Garrus in that cafe, waiting for his fake date so they could get that mission going. He would’ve been so much better as the tech oversight guy... damn the fact Shepard’s too gay to pretend to be into a woman realistically.

(Aka, Chris plays fast and loose with the rules.)

ME1

---

It was a lovely day on the Citadel... and Garrus was in hell.

'Relax, you're as stiff as a board. Nobody's going to believe you're on a date like that.'

His mandibles twitched as he listened to Tali through his hidden transmitter. Normally, this was where his visor would come in handy... except he wasn't allowed to wear it. No, apparently that was against the first date dress code and he'd been made to leave it on the Normandy along with his armor and weapons.

Well, he had a pistol stowed away... but that wasn't the same as his rifle, damn it.

“I still don't get why I'm the one who had to do it.”

'We needed a tech expert, and Shepard says... Shepard, what did he say again?'

'He's too fucking gay to fake being into a woman, so Tali was out. You were the only one left, Mandibles.'

The other Shepard's deep voice disrupted the quarian's electronic tones. Garrus hadn't been expecting it – the sudden change made him wince a little. Luckily, nobody at the cafe noticed. They were too busy eye-fucking their dates.

He knew this place, had walked past it when he had still been in C-Sec. It was a popular spot for couples to have their first date thanks to the fact it was public, fairly reasonable, and offered booze if things started to go south. Had he not been on a mission, the turian definitely would've been ordering a drink or two to survive this.

After all... he had to fake being on a date with Commander Shepard.

There was a point to all this, of course. According to Alliance intel, there was something strange about this cafe and the fact a lot of well-armed people tended to stop by after hours. He hadn't heard whispers of it being a front for something, but it had been sometime since he had walked a beat. For all he knew, someone could have moved in while he was gone.

That... or he just hadn't really cared. Scoping out hot date spots had never been high on his priority list.

“Where is my date anyway? He didn't run away at the thought of being in public, did he?”

Garrus hadn't meant to use that much scorn, but it leaked out anyway. It wasn't as if he disliked the man, per se … just found him incredibly odd and more than a little off-putting. He had a way of catching you off guard and hammering home that made the turian uneasy, not to mention his strange hamster tending habits. Add in the fact they had met by colliding into each other and... well, maybe he was a little salty.

So, he didn't dislike the Commander... but maybe they weren't quite to like just yet.

'You're not that ugly, Mandibles.' The Normandy's XO sounded bored on the other end. 'I think he's scoping the area out. Make sure to appreciate the view when you see him, I worked my ass off getting him ready.'

'She really did a good job, I'll be amazed if you recognize him at all.'

Well, that was perfect. Guess they were going for the blind date angle and taking it to the extreme.

“Thanks.” Now he really meant the sarcasm as he sipped at his water. If he was on a date, he should probably wait before he ordered anything. That was polite, right? “I swear, you two are enjoying watching me suffer.”

He could expect that from the human, but Tali's cruelty really caught him off guard. Who would have known the quarian had it in her?

The line went quiet not long after that – no doubt they'd gotten their fill of his misery. Garrus was left to glance around in the hopes he might spot Shepard. He had already checked all the obvious spots, but nobody quite fit the profile of short and kind of awkward looking.

Ok.. maybe that was mean. But the guy was awkward. Even he said so.

“Where are you...” Garrus' mandibles twitched as he kept looking. Really, it was couples as far as the eye could see. Apart from a couple school-age looking girls gossiping, everyone else looked to be on a date. There was nobody who stood out as being on their own, especially not someone who looked to be casing the joint. “Shit, he better not be the girls.”

Before he could worry if he was going to have to ask one of the teenagers if they were actually a fully grown man in disguise, a shadow fell across the table. He looked up, expecting to have to apologize to the waitress for taking so long to order. The excuse was already on his tongue – his date wasn't there yet. But then it died on his tongue.

There was a man standing there, human and wearing the tightest jeans Garrus had ever seen. He gave a little wave as he smiled, eyes sparkling. Well, eye – the other one was covered by his blue-streaked blonde hair.

“Hey there, been waiting long?”

Garrus' brain had short-circuited long ago. It didn't help that his tongue had somehow glued itself to the roof of his mouth of the sight of the man and his incredibly tight pants. Really... he must have had to paint those damn things on. Weren't humans concerned with ball space or something? Their genitals were on the outside...

…

Also wasn't he supposed to be straight? Why was he checking some dude's ass out?

Right, words. “Uh... what?”

The man chuckled as he sat down. “Sorry I was late, I know we said we'd meet at 2 but I got held up at work. You didn't wait long, did you?”

By now, the turian's brain was thoroughly fried. Somehow, someone had mistaken him for their date. Scenarios to get him out ran by quickly – the most obvious being to tell him that he wasn't there on a date at all. But that would probably break his cover...

And more importantly, Shepard and Tali would enjoy it way too much. They were evil.

“I...”

“Anyway, thanks for waiting for me. I hear this place has great tea. Not sure what you can get, though. Are you allergic to levo?” The man's voice lowered as he leaned forward to whisper to Garrus. “Perimeter's clear, though the back door has some pretty serious locks for a simple business. I think we're onto something.”

…

His brain turned back on. “Wait... Shepard?”

The man's cheeks turned pink as he sat back down, playing with the ends of what Garrus realized now was most definitely a wig. “I told her it was too much, but she said otherwise I would've been too easy to spot.”

In theory, that made sense – Shepard was the first human Spectre. Pretty much everyone had seen the video of him accepting the position at least once. To say a small human with a bight red military haircut and a missing eye would've stuck out in a popular cafe was putting it mildly. Honestly if any of this was actually true, it might have gotten guns pulled on them had they tried it.

Which, probably would've made things easier but they were trying to be subtle.

“Well... she's right. Those two are probably enjoying this.” He moved in closer as well, if only to prolong the image. That close, he could definitely smell Shepard had been sprayed with something that wasn't sweat. It wasn't bad just... odd. “So... see anything else?”

Shepard pulled the menu so he could flip his wrist over to expose his omni-tool. Specs popped up, showing the blueprint of the building. Garrus' facial plates twitched as he gave it a brief once over, stopping at the basement level.

It was pretty damn big... maybe too big for a restaurant.

“I think it's shared with a building halfway down the block that has connections to the Blue Suns.” Another spec, for a place Garrus definitely remembered as being a suspected front for something. They had still been working on it when he left C-SEC. Maybe they'd wind up wrapping two cases. “It'd probably be easier to get into this one once it closes up...”

That would be in a couple hours... so they were probably doing dinner then.

“Hi there, are you two ready to order?”

Both men sprung back up as they realized they had company. A cheery looking waitress had appeared, smiling at them like she knew what was going on. At the same time, the pocket of her uniform was sitting a little weird. Maybe it was a datapad... but maybe she was packing heat. The Blue Suns were getting creative with their recruiting.

“Uh, yeah. I'd like a strawberry soda for now.” Shepard had dropped his voice way below where Garrus thought he could, and his accent was different. He grinned as he turned to the turian. “How about you, big guy? Pretty sure I picked somewhere you could eat.”

It was hard to keep his mandibles from twitching. This was going to be a long night. Luckily, there were no turians around to pick up his subvocals as he shot murder over at the human. Instead, he checked the menu fast – honestly, he had forgotten it was there.

“Coffee is fine by me.” And then he remembered he had to pretend to be into Shepard. The pants helped. “Wouldn't want to be bouncing off the walls and kill the chance of a second date.”

The waitress giggled – maybe that was a datapad. That, or she was one hell of an actress. “That's one strawberry soda and a coffee for the cute couple at table 5 then. Be right back!”

And then she was gone. Both breathed a sigh of relief as they relaxed – it was a little harder for Shepard for obvious reasons. But at least they had managed to pass the first round of this fake dating nightmare.

“You didn't seem like the coffee kind of guy, Garrus.” His fake date sounded a little too honest as he leaned back. The turian would have thought him using the position to look around under the wig, but he knew better – that eye was dead. “Let me guess, you take it black as night and bitter as hell?”

Garrus' mandibles twitched a little. “Not big on sugar. Clearly that's not the case with you. You planning to bounce around all date?”

“Some of us need the energy. Besides, if you think this is bad you should see me slam pixie sticks sometime.”

Just the thought of it made Garrus twitch. Biotics and their energy requirements...

“Right, well, we should start to figure out where we're going next.” His eyes wandered back to the storefront. “Maybe a walk around? There's a park nearby that's beautiful at night.”

Shepard smiled at him, and his stomach flopped. Maybe it was the fact he hadn't eaten anything. “Sounds good to me. Now, why don't you tell me a little about yourself so if you try to murder me and shove me in a trash can, I can text my sister beforehand so she knows who to tell C-SEC about when you go to the bathroom.”

Despite everything, Garrus found himself laughing. The human chuckled as well, maybe in spite of himself. Honestly, the whole thing was just utterly ridiculous and the plot of some cruel spirit that enjoyed jerking them around. Somewhere, they were enjoying this.

Fucking spirits...

“You two are doing great. Shepard's scan gave me a weak point you can access once the building is shut down.'

Tali was back in his earpiece. From the sound of things, she wasn't in engineering anymore. Wherever she was heading this mission's tech corner was somewhere much quieter, and with a little less foot traffic. Maybe they wanted to enjoy this in private.

'Tell Al to fix his shirt, unless he wants to show his new underwear off when you two go to take your walk.'

The other Shepard sounded almost amused by this. Garrus felt his mandibles twitch as he glanced over at the human sitting across from him. Shepard had taken to folding a napkin again and again, turning it into a rather lopsided bird. If it were real, it probably would've been spawned near a toxic waste dump and probably glowed under black light.

But at least he was doing something with his hands that wasn't too suspicious.

“Hey, I know this is awkward because I shouldn't be staring at your ass yet-” At least Shepard had the sense to chuckle at that. “But... might want to pull your shirt down.”

The blush that colored Shepard's cheeks was definitely real as he tugged his shirt down over those skin tight pants. Hooray for method acting, he assumed. If they kept this up, people might actually believe they were a couple.

Maybe. Spirits, this was hard.

“Thanks...”

“No problem.” The turian nodded as he spotted the waitress. “I spot my coffee and your sugar syrup. Refuel for round two?”

They would need it – he was starting to get the feeling things might get interesting after all. After all, it wasn't every day he faked being someone's date to get into an underground facility with a Spectre in skinny jeans.

Now that was something even the writers of Blasto couldn't come up with... too bad he was living it instead of watching it. At least he got coffee...

[darkwritingsnshit]

Living the Dream

Chapter 1

Steve didn’t understand why you were so upset. This was what you wanted. He had heard you tell Nat and your brother when you would hang out and chill on the couch. This was your dream. Married to someone who loved you, the two of you would have kids, and you would never have to work, Steve would make sure of that, he would take care of everything. He would always take care of you. So why were you reacting like this? He did not appreciate your attitude.

 Your brother worked at Stark Tower, he was a soldier, that’s all your family had been told, that he had special clearance and that he worked for the government, mostly overseas. You hadn’t been close until your mother and father died, and for some reason your brother felt like it was his fault. It most certainly was not, but he made sure you two had a closer relationship after that. He was a soldier, yes, but his government position had him on secret missions, taking government issued “enhancements” and working with superheroes. Not exactly NSA stuff, but not strictly Army either.

Either way, as you two became closer he let you know more about him. It wasn’t your job, but he would occasionally ask you to the Tower, you helped Bruce and Tony with coding and electronics. Your father always had a garage full of half functioning radios, circuit boards, satellite pieces, cables and cars, and out of boredom you had become pretty good at figuring out how to take things apart and put them back together. When you had enough money saved up, you even convinced your father to let you buy one of the first computers that could fit inside the garage, so you could yank it to pieces, just to rebuild it. Most of the Stark tech was far more advanced than you could comprehend, but there were a few things you could tinker with and help Bruce and Tony get into working order.

You weren’t close with people there, but what seemed like workplace friendships developed, and once a week or so you would hang out in the common areas with your brother, movie nights and takeout, and everyone would fall into a pleasant conversation together.

“You know this isn’t my day job, right?” You asked your brother when he called, yet again, and asked you to come give a different perspective to Tony and Bruce. “I have other things to do between 9 and 5, you know that right?”

“Yes, I know that, but this is important. Will you come down after work?” He asked over the phone. “I’ll buy you dinner.” He was trying to bribe you.

“Okay fine, but I’m not going to enjoy it at all. I’m going to complain the entire time.”

“Deal! See you after 5!” Your brother ended the call before you could mutter out another snappy response.

At 5, you ended your last therapy session for the day, and headed towards the tower. Even though you promised your brother you weren’t going to have a good time, the thought of working with your hands made you a little bit happy. You loved your job but getting covered in engine grease and making things whirr had always been a hobby you’d enjoyed.

 When you arrived at the tower, your brother didn’t greet you as usual, but instead Steve Rodgers did, Captain America, the self-righteous, stand up guy himself. Steve was always nice to you, but his holier than though attitude rubbed you the wrong way. Not to mention it seemed incredibly hypocritical given that his best friend was a mercenary who spent the last 70 years murdering people for sport. But whatever, he was always kind, and seemed to be politely interested in your life. Hardly the worst person to greet you.

“Hey! Good to see you! You know, you really don’t come down here often enough, we all miss seeing your face around here.” Steve welcomed you with a smile.

“Hey Steve, it’s good to see you too. Do you know where my brother ran off to? He asked me to come over after work but he’s not answering my texts.” Your brother was a godawful communicator. You had told him multiple times that you didn’t understand why he even had a cell phone if he never used it to answer calls or texts.

“Yeah, he and Sam went out on a call. They should be back late tonight or tomorrow morning. He didn’t tell you?” Steve looked confused. But it figured, after all, this was not the first time.

“Well there goes my free dinner.” You huffed. Steve laughed.

“I’m 110% sure that Tony has enough pocket change to get you some dinner. You do a lot of free work for him, he does appreciate it. You want me to help you strongarm him into making a dinner order?” He offered, as the two of you started walking downstairs to Tony’s state of the art laboratory.

“Nah, that’s okay. I’ll just tell him I won’t do any work until he places an order for pad Thai. I’m pretty sure Bruce will join the labor strike, he has a soft spot for spring rolls.” You joked. Steve smiled as you peeked through the glass to see what Tony and Bruce were tinkering with as you approached.

“Hey, will you stay for a movie after you guys are through with your new toys? Nat and I got a couple new releases that we couldn’t see in the theater, we’d love you to join us, like I said, we don’t see enough of you.” Steve looked eager, and almost nervous.

“Sure, depending on how late Tony wants to play with his toys,” you replied, “if it’s not too late I’ll stick around.” Steve smiled so wide you were surprised it didn’t hurt his face.

“Great! I can’t wait- well we can’t wat to see you, the movies are supposed to be good.” Steve waved goodbye as you walked through the lab doors, shrugging into a lab coat, tying your hair up so it didn’t get singed off again by some “toy” Tony neglected to make sure didn’t start fires.

“Okay, what’ve we got today?” Both Tony and Bruce looked up from the bench, happy to see you again.

  It wasn’t actually that late, hardly 8pm. You, Bruce and Tony had been able to work out whatever bugs there were in a very short amount of time, and there was a whole mess of Thai food about to be delivered to the Tower. You headed up to the common area, kitchen that opened into a comfy seating area. This is where you came to hang out with your brother, large TV and fast wifi. It was pretty great. Steve and Nat were sitting on opposite couches, bickering about which movie to choose.

“What do you think? You get to choose, you’re the one who’s been getting exploited for your talent down in that lab, you to choose tonight.” Nat piped up once she saw you enter the room.

“Hey, I’m down for whatever, I’m just waiting on my dinner. I’m not getting in a fight over a movie.” You were grateful when Tony came in holding three bags that smelled delicious, and began to get plates out for everyone.

Once they had finally decided on a movie, and everyone had food, you situated yourself on a couch. Steve had decided to encroach on your space by getting far too close on the loveseat you had meant to sit on alone. His thighs pushed against yours as you tried to eat and watch the movie you didn’t really care about paying attention to.

Halfway though, Steve decided to stretch out his arms, which you now found slightly around your shoulders. You didn’t notice how his face darkened when you leaned forward, and you tried to ignore him when he pressed even closer as the movie dragged on. You were annoyed that he was taking up ¾ of the space on the loveseat, but technically this was his residence, and you were a visitor. Besides the movie was almost done, and you were ready to go home, have tea, and collapse into bed.

As you put the dishes in the dishwasher and gathered your things, Steve walked up behind you. This man seemed to be oblivious to the term ‘personal space’ as he was again too close for comfort.

“So, what did you think of the movie?” He asked from behind you.

“It was cute,” you said, “it’s everything someone hopes for, you know? The perfect millennial pipe dream, wonderful and unattainable.” The thoughts of your future were jaded.

“How so? It seemed great to me, perfect, but not unattainable.” Steve replied. You laughed.

“Steve, not a single person I know could have that. We’re millennials. A happy marriage is something only lucky people manage, and the mother not having to work after two kids? Wild. I mean I’d love that, but I could never afford something like that. A beautiful house in that kind of neighborhood, with two kids on a single income? Like I said, it was a good ending, just not something I can see happening in this day and age.” The movie had been good, but the ending lacked substance. Having everything tied up with a bow, a happy marriage, happy kids, happy life, that was just a cop out as far as you were concerned.

“Call me old fashioned, but that’s how it used to be. Mom didn’t work, dad took care of everything. Nuclear family.”

“Shit, yeah, that would be nice. But I don’t know anyone that would actually work out for, certainly not for me.”

“Hey, never say never.” Steve said with a smile.

“Yeah, I guess.” You weren’t too concerned with the nuclear family you were sure was not going to happen.

“It’s dark out there, maybe you should just crash in your brother’s room.”

“I’m okay,” you replied, “I like my own bed.”

“Can I drive you home at least? It’s an eerie city once the sun’s gone down.”

“No, thank you though, I’ve got my own car. I appreciate it.” You had spent enough time in the tower, it was time for rest and relaxation- alone. Too many people and not enough alone time made you uncomfortable, being alone in your cozy apartment always soothed you.

“I’ll, uh, I’ll see you tomorrow then, yeah?” Steve asked. You weren’t sure why he was hanging around so much, everyone else had left.

“Yeah, if they need some help. We’ll see what my schedule looks like. I’ll probably be around.” You were waving and walking away, over the conversation, over the night, just ready for some peace.

[wotnahq]

Zuri Sedaway • 24 • Female (she/her) • Metahuman • Electrokinesis • Civilian

BIOGRAPHY

Zuri was born to Tobias and Lyonna Sedaway in Detroit, Michigan. She was the second child, her sister Breanna being born 3 years earlier. Her father worked home most days, allowing Zuri to form a close relationship with him and her sister, and her mother would spend the evenings with them. Her elementary school years came and went, with Zuri showing a knack for her English and Science skills, but already demonstrating her need to protect - she was put in detention multiple times for fighting with a group of bullies who would threaten and harass the younger kids.

Altercations with this group were the reason Zuri’s powers emerged so suddenly. A particularly nasty incident, in which one of the younger children almost was left with a broken arm, flared up Zuri’s anger to a new point, and she decided to get payback on the bully. For the first time in her life, her electrokinesis kicked in - her powers both strengthened and electrified the blow, and she knocked the bully out in one shot to the jaw. Zuri narrowly avoided getting caught by the teachers, but she couldn’t wait to tell her parents, only to be told that she had to keep it secret. They believed she was the only one of her kind and they wanted to prevent the authorities from trying to do anything with her, whether it was publicity or experimentation. Zuri was admittedly disappointed at their initial response, but she loved her parents and respected them, and so kept her mouth shut.

It was only mere months later that her family heard the news of the first discovered metahuman on the streets of Pansaw, California. Slowly, over the years, more and more metahumans began emerging all over the country, then the world, and it not only comforted Zuri but gave her hope that she wasn’t the freak she’d thought she was. Her thirteenth birthday had passed only a month earlier, and the government announced the Collection and Rehabilitation of Metahumans Agency, known as C.A.R.M.A. Zuri knew she’d have to hide her powers, she knew her electrokinesis would have to stay hidden forever, even if it meant suppressing a piece of who she was.

Years passed, and she’d transitioned to high school and returned to the lifestyle she’d held before her discovery, living life among the ordinary humans, but with strict limits - her parents feared that, if her emotions should flare badly enough or if she was hurt, it put her at risk of exposing herself. So Zuri began focusing her efforts on Mathematics and Sciences in school, specifically Physics and Biology, in the hopes of discovering a way to deactivate her abilities permanently. If she could do so, there’d no more risk, no more hiding, for anybody. She could be a normal girl.

After she graduated high school, Zuri aimed to attend Pansaw University in California. Hoping to keep pursuing her goal, she moved there in mid July, 2039, to start a Bachelor of Biological Sciences. But this meant that she was living there during the virus that wiped through the city in May the next year. Falling extremely ill, and dealing with her formerly suppressed powers that were now wildly out of control, Zuri only just managed to avoid being captured by C.A.R.M.A., remaining in her apartment for the duration until things calmed down. But as luck would have it, Axel Winchester’s snowstorm struck the state in December, and was the prompt for Congress to introduce the Meta Registration Bill. She couldn’t believe it. Years of hiding, of effort, all wasted.

After obtaining her mark, Zuri attempted to spend the next years as distant from her abilities as possible. When the week-long surge of powers hit and Zuri caused immense damage to her own apartment while hiding, she considered leaving Pansaw, returning home to her family who had been urging her to come back ever since they’d heard she’d now been registered. But nevertheless she stayed, if only to continue her degree.

Six months later, Pansaw proved to be the centre of attention once more, as the Nephilim attacked the city. Deaths racking up rapidly and the city falling apart, Zuri was urged to evacuate, and she wanted to. She wanted to see her family again, to hug them and let them know she was safe, but looking out of her apartment window and seeing the bodies left in the street, she knew she couldn’t. So she joined in the fight to defend Pansaw: weaker than nearly every other Metahuman from her constant ability suppression, she had very little idea how to use her powers, but a combination of her studies and hands-on experience proved useful. Somehow she survived, and the city’s defenders finally took out the Nephilim.

Zuri promptly returned home to her family in Detroit, deciding against remaining in the city to allow it time to recover and rebuild. The months that followed introduced the Meta Equality and New Registration Act, allowing her to finally have the coded tattoo removed from her wrist. Realising the good her powers had done for the city of Pansaw, she began practicing her skills in her parent’s basement in a training room her father set up for her, in case she should ever need to use them again. She excelled and grew talented with them, learning to control them better, but is still unskilled when it comes to preventing the influence her emotions have on them.

It’s now 2045. It’s been over 3 years since the Nephilim’s attack on Pansaw, and Zuri decided to return to the city to finish her Bachelor degree, though no longer to shut her powers down. She wants to study them - she wants to learn what makes her her. Once again moving to an apartment near Pansaw University, she’s hoping to become part of the next generation: the one to help humans and Metahumans live in peace for many years to come.

POWERS

ELECTROKINESIS: Zuri can create, shape and manipulate electricity, a form of energy resulting from the movement of charged particles (such as electrons or protons), allowing control over electric fields, all charge carriers (ions, electrons, protons, and positrons), electronics, and electromagnetic forces.

WEAKNESSES

Users of Electrical Immunity are not affected. Weak against Electricity Negation. Reflection Manipulation could cause a problem since it’s unclear if users are immune or not. Distance, force, precision, etc. of all powers depend upon the strength, energy, and concentration levels of Zuri, and her power’s natural limits. Electricity needs a conductor like metal or water to move through, therefore electricity can neither exist in nor move through a vacuum (such as outer space) and may be insulated by non-conductive matter, such as air and rubber. May become useless if confronted with electrical resistant material, such as rubber, silicate, etc. Electricity may be redirected by certain materials. A strong enough magnetic force/source may be beneficial or a hindrance. May be short-circuited under certain conditions (contact with water, a magnet, the opposite polarity, etc.).

PERSONALITY

+ Fair + Protective + Sociable

– Naïve – Envious – Stubborn

[miss-spooky-eyes]

Riddle (Part III)

The conclusion of my Imperial Agent Devinahl’s backstory.

TRIGGER WARNINGS: Mentions of child abuse and child prostitution (in earlier parts); emotionally abusive adults; slavery; being torn apart by eels. It is not fun.

NOTES: All names by the Star Wars name generator; all Star Wars universe mistakes by me. I do not own the Star Wars universe.

PART THREE: SCHOOLGIRL

She has no name, and she is always moving.

When they make planetfall, when the doors hiss open and they step out on to a new world, they assume names - names that are written on official documents, printed on identification cards beneath photos of themselves in clothes they've never worn, tossed like scraps are to starving children because they cost nothing to give away. And when they return to the ship, when the engines start to fire and they rise up together, the names are left behind; they have passed over them like shadows on the sand, they leave no impression.

Even the ship has no name - more than that, it has no fixed form. She learns in amazement that precisely the same ship, with nothing more than a superficial alteration of hull markings and emitter beacons, can go from being a small passenger transport out of Ord Mantell to a cargo runner from the notorious junk pits of Yuuv Rata to a classic pleasure yacht lovingly restored by a rich merchant from Alon Prime. 'People believe what you tell them,' Helm tells her, lounging in the pilot's seat, one finger muting the transmitter as they wait for Alderaanian orbital control to clear them. 'If you tell them the right way.' He lifts his finger. 'Acknowledged, Rhu Caenus Control. Have a pleasant day.'

There are no names on the ship, but there are designations. Helm is the pilot; he runs things on the bridge, working most closely with Wheelwright, the Ugnaught who maintains the ship's engines, and Scrivener, who does everything with computers, on and off the ship. Then there is Barber, olive-skinned and with a dreamy smile that only vanishes when he is attending to one of the crew or working on her implants. Yeoman and Bailiff are both human males, but there the resemblance ends; Yeoman is the biggest man she has ever seen, barrel-chested, his arms thickly corded with muscle, and peppers his speech with strange words she learns are Mandalorian. Bailiff is tall but rake-thin, never too far from a vibroblade, and is the one among the crew who is most wedded to the Kaasian accent the rest of them assume and discard as easily as their planetside identities. And then there is Bowyer, short and stocky and unassuming, her own accent rich with Tatooine and her grey eyes perpetually ever-so-slightly narrowed as if against the desert glare - or to focus on something in the distance. Bowyer is the sniper.

They are all human, apart from Wheelwright the Ugnaught engineer, and Locket. Locket is the only one whose designation does not reflect her job on the ship, but then Locket does not have a job on the ship, or if she does, Sifter is the only one who knows about it. Locket can often be found practicing her dancing in an empty storage bay, or in the one large common area aboard when the storage bays are full, bare toes soft on the metal floors, lekku twirling; at other times, she flirts with everybody on board indiscriminately, except for Bowyer, who stops her short with nothing but the ever-so-slightly-deeper narrowing of her eyes. But often Locket is closeted with Sifter in Sifter's office for hours at a time, the only one who ever gets one-on-one time with Sifter. There is a closeness there which the girl senses, even if she doesn't understand.

She does not try very hard not to be jealous.

At first, the girl who had been Stanza and then Gella thought they were simply travelling somewhere, to some planet, some place where she and Sifter would stay at least for a while. But after some time, she realizes that the ship is the place they are going to stay. They do make planetfall, in plenty of places, but they never stay more than a couple of days, or as long as it takes Sifter to accomplish whatever purpose has brought them there. As she learns more about space travel, she begins to understand that sometimes they are travelling simply to travel, spending days or even weeks on journeys which could have been completed in hours. 'Too paranoid for planetfall,' she hears Yeoman mutter under his breath one day as Sifter leaves the bridge after issuing a course correction.

It is a strange life, but she doesn't have too much time to dwell on it, because while everybody on the ship except her and Locket has a job, everybody on the ship - including Locket - is teaching her something.

Helm gives her basic instruction in starship design and the principles of astronavigation, sets her to work manually plotting hyperspace routes. Scrivener talks to her about slicing, about electronic locks and seals, about ciphers and computers, although what Scrivener says is often as incomprehensible as the code which streams across her screen. Wheelwright, or at least the protocol droid that translates for him, talks to her about engines and systems, about critical junctions, vulnerabilities, exposed circuits, pressure points.

Yeoman teaches her about pressure points of a different sort. It's his job to teach her some hand-to-hand combat, a task he thinks is futile - 'You're never going to get much bigger than knee-high to a tuk'ata, little one, if anybody corners you without a weapon, or if you don't kill them within the first two or three blows, you'll be dead' - but nevertheless brings plenty of enthusiasm to. Bailiff is the one to gift her with a vibroknife, her first; he shows her grips and guards and strikes and makes her practice them over and over again, makes her practice throwing one-handed, left-handed, overarm, underarm, at the flimsy targets he fixes to the walls; he has her chopping fruits and vegetables in the galley under the eye of the protocol droid, looking to build up hand-eye coordination and her fearlessness with blades.

She thought Bowyer would teach her to shoot, but: 'Anybody can learn to shoot,' the woman drawls. 'Sniping is different.' She isn't given a blaster, but instead told to practice various different exercises - staying in the same position for a long time, or staring at something without blinking; keeping still and not flinching when Bowyer unexpectedly shouts in her ear or tickles the sole of her foot.

Barber is the closest to a conventional teacher - he gives her files to read on science, history, mathematics, languages - but that is still not very close. He is fascinated with her implants (apparently Doctor Korpil had told the truth about a few things, and one of them was how rare, expensive and high-quality her implants were) and, with his gentle encouragement, they begin to explore what her implants can really do, 'or rather, what you can do with them,' he corrects her softly. She had survived on Draavi Prime by learning to block out any more stimuli than a 'normal' human brain would receive; now she learns that she can, very carefully, widen her perceptual channels a little; not much, but even a fraction allows her to see and in particular hear much better than un-enhanced human eyes and ears would be able to. Before long, the whole crew are joining in the games with which he encourages her to test her limits; elaborate games of hide-and-seek, where she, blindfolded, has to hunt down the rest of the crew, or better yet, corner Devinahl, whose six feet make almost no noise at all as she moves about and who can jump from place to place with ease; or memory games, in which she learns that if she just glances once at something, her enhanced eyes somehow retain that information for a limited time.

Some days, Sifter joins in the games and tests with a vengeance; sometimes, they barely see her for days at a time as she remains closeted in her office, where nobody but Locket is allowed; sometimes she will suddenly appear for one of the crew's meals, sitting carelessly astride her chair, wolfing down food and trading bloodthirsty stories with Bowyer and Yeoman until everybody is laughing or looking faintly nauseous; sometimes she observes such strict protocol that there is virtual silence on board the ship from dawn till dusk. She does not appear to pay much attention to the girl she brought with her from Draavi Prime, but the girl is not fooled; everything that happens on board the ship happens under Sifter's watchful eye.

At night, she sleeps soundly in her tiny cabin. Sifter had showed it to her on her very first day on the ship, had spent time showing her all the locks that fastened the door, explaining patiently to her in great detail precisely how each one kept everybody out. The girl could almost have loved her for that. She never lets anyone into her cabin the whole time she lives on the ship, except for Devinahl. The little creature likes to sleep curled up in her arms.

Locket, the only member of the crew close to her age, at first showed no interest in teaching her anything, or in her presence at all. Then after three months, she suddenly turned friendly, prone to curling up next to the girl on the couches in the common area and paying her compliments, or inviting her back to her, Locket's, quarters, to watch holo-movies or play childish games or experiment with hair, clothes, makeup.

It does not take long to realize that these are lessons, too. It's not long before she and Locket are sometimes allowed out together when they make planetfall, often for shopping expeditions or recreational activities, the two of them trying to outdo each other in successfully pretending to be silly, carefree, laughing teenage girls as they try on clothes or flirt with boys in cafes or play holo-tag. She looks forward to these expeditions, because they are always followed by the same thing; she and Locket both eat dinner with Sifter in Sifter's private cabin. Sifter will ask her questions, testing her recall of the day - how many service droids were there in that food hall? How many exits did the boutique have? How many different alien species on that world? - and she gets better and better at answering. Soon, there are two games; trying to answer Sifter's answers correctly, and trying to pick up on the code that Locket was using to communicate to Sifter whether the answers she gave were correct - bites of her food, lekku twitches, blinks, finger taps. She gets to see Sifter's broad, generous smile if she deciphers the code before the questions are over; and she also gets to see Locket fume.

It's not until much, much later that she realizes that Locket was being tested as much as she was, and by that time, her life on the ship is over. IIn the end, it lasts barely two years before she is summoned into Sifter's office one day, and Sifter looks up from her datapad and says: 'Time to go to work, Schoolgirl.'

*

Her name is Karia Madeesh, and she is a bad girl.

As Karia, whose parents are both career officers in the Republic navy - there is a framed holo of the three of them on the bedside table in every room she's given - she enters a new world: That of the elite school for children of the rich and influential.

She had never realised that there was a whole industry dedicated to raising and educating the children of the wealthy and powerful, but of course there is. High-ranking career officers in the Republic navy; senior diplomats and bureaucrats; noble houses on worlds whose cultures still clung to aristocratic ideals; merchants running businesses and trading empires that spanned several systems - they all shared two things: A desperation for their children to be equipped with the education and skills to take their places in the same elite strata they themselves occupied; and no time to do it in. And so the institutions spring up, on a hundred worlds: Schools, academies, educational establishments which specialize in taking the offspring of the rich and powerful and educating them to become rich and powerful themselves.

Karia Madeesh attends the Coruscant Sunrise Academy. She spends a year at the Royal Areopagitica on Alderaan. Three different schools on Corellia - the Coronet City College, the Orailus Institute and the Minati Calfax Advanced School - are her home for various lengths of time. She studies on Makeb, and Ord Mantell, and Alon Prime, and Coruscant again. And wherever she goes, she finds herself very popular almost immediately.

When Sifter first explained the assignment to her, she had been sceptical: Why make Karia a bad girl? Even if it gave her an excuse to be constantly moving schools, when Karia's behaviour got too outrageous and she was invariably kicked out, wouldn't it keep her classmates from wanting to get to know her?

She knows better now. Sifter is a genius. Whenever Karia arrives at a new school, word inevitably leaks out that she has been expelled from her last one, and the aura of the 'bad girl' surrounds her. So, too, do her peers, after a short time, all of them wanting to be around this new, rebellious, dangerous girl, who smiles sweetly at the teachers and has no qualms about openly defying them in ways which are sure to call down the wrath of the authorities on her head.

She even finds a way to work her implants into the story. As she tells, or rather reluctantly confides it, they are repairing the damage done when one of the front-line bases her parents were stationed at came under heavy fire. 'They told him it was too dangerous for families, but of course the colonel had to think about his career,' she says bitterly to those huddled around her, breathless, agog. 'Hope the promotion was worth what this school is going to charge you when I'm through, Daddy darling.'  

Once again, she is lying to the rich, and she is better at it than ever.

These children don't really know anything, of course. But it's amazing what the slightest crumbs of information can do when combined with others, Sifter says; and parents are very bad at keeping secrets from their offspring. A casual reference to a potential reassignment from the son of a Republic general - 'He said we might have to move again, can you believe it?'; a merchant's daughter showing off her knowledge of a non-aligned world supposedly closed to outside traders; a Nautolan bureaucrat's podling who passes along their uncle's highly unflattering opinion of a Republic supposed war hero they're studying in whispers to make them all laugh; it all adds up. All Karia has to do is pass along the information along agreed-upon channels, and bide her time until the signal comes from Sifter that she is to pull out. Then all it takes is some piece of mischief extravagant enough to get her kicked out, and the same pleasant-faced, nondescript couple who are in all her framed holos will be summoned to undergo a painful exit interview with the head of whatever educational establishment whose patience she has exhausted this time.

They are the same pleasant-faced couple who show up to parents' days (sometimes, though not often, accompanied by a dark-skinned, older woman who introduces herself as Karia’s old nurse); and it is they who welcome her back to an apartment on Coruscant for vacations. If Karia has done her job well enough, though, she is usually invited to a friend's home for weekends and holidays, and that only opens up further possibilities in terms of intelligence-gathering, as she makes one of a party ski-ing the Wokbenlau Alps, or sailing the Triblen Delta, or whispering and giggling in the corner with a group of other girls at a Coronet City soiree. If not, Sifter always has another plan for her, and she slips away unobtrusively from her 'parents' apartment to attend an intensive computer science course, or spend a memorable summer learning to shoot rabid kath hounds from speeder-back on Dantooine, or study Rodian martial arts on Ord Mantell.

If she ever feels bad about what she is doing - if she sees someone who counts her as a friend weeping about a parent lost to an Imperial ambush, or exposed for court-martial - Karia only has to remember the lines at the refugee camp, and her focus returns.

After a few years, her parents 'defect' from the Republic, and Karia starts attending schools on Dromund Kaas, on Avery Station, on Terrek Nor. It doesn't surprise her; the Empire has enemies within that need watching, as much as without, or so Sifter tells her in one of those rare meetings when she is posing as Karia's old nurse. Frankly, it makes little difference: There are fewer aliens among her classmates, but otherwise the rich and their children, Republic or Empire, are much the same.

She never goes back to the nameless ship. Nor does she see any of the crew again. She is almost sure she sees Locket in a holo-news broadcast about the new wave of wealthy Hutts moving in on Makeb when she is at a school there, collared and chained with her leash clamped in some crime-slug's fat fist, but the camera pans away almost immediately and though she studies the recording obsessively in secret, she cannot find a way to identify Locket beyond all doubt. The image makes her feel uneasy, but she tells herself: Sifter has her eye on Locket, just as she does on Karia. Sifter has her eye on them all.

If Karia had ever doubted this, she has her confirmation when things go wrong - the only time that things go wrong.

She really never thinks about her parents any more, about Draavi Prime or the refugee camp or Doctor Korpil and his clinic; those things are safely shut away in the recesses of her mind, and if they surface, it's as dreams, night terrors, rages, longings - things that she can safely process in the privacy of her own room, behind locked doors; harvest the useful emotions from, and shut the rest away. Discard everything that doesn't serve a purpose, Sifter had told her once, back in the days on the ship, and if you can't discard it, find a use for it.

It all works so well until one day, after she had been Karia Madesh for about two years and during her second stint on Corellia, she is strolling through the shopping quarter with her (current) group of friends during their free afternoon and sees her little sister Scerra walking down the street.

Karia stops dead in her tracks. Adrenaline slams through her veins. She cannot move for a moment or two, so great is her shock at having seen Scerra pass by, toddling along on her little legs, each hand held by strange adults. As soon as she can move again, she spins round, ignoring her friends' exclamations and questions, and searches the crowd, pushing through them as she tries to catch up with Scerra and the people who were taking her away.

She catches a glimpse of Scerra's back, the brightly-beaded band which holds back her ponytail, and starts fighting through the crowd to get to her, shouting at the top of her voice for people to get out of her way, swearing, pushing. Her friends catch up to her, a babble of questions, confusion, embarrassment; she ignores them and one by one they fall away from her. There is a rocket tram stop nearby; she vaults the turnstile, ducking under the guards' arm, running to catch up with the glimpse of Scerra's coat she's sure she saw disappearing between the closing doors. She gets to the tram just as the doors slide closed.

She howls in anguish as the tram begins to move, clawing at the doors. The guards have caught up with her, they are pulling her away as the tram accelerates, speeding Scerra away; two of her friends, more determined than the rest, have caught up with her too, trailing shopping bags and showering distressed exclamations. People are turning to look and staring; a crowd is gathering; it's everything she is not supposed to do, and she doesn't care. There is another rocket tram pulling in, and she has to be on it. One guard is holding on to her arms, and she twists out of her jacket, pulling it over his head and kicking him hard, twice; the other reaches for his stun stick, and with a move that comes straight out of the recesses of her brain, where her training is stored, Karia spins into him, driving her elbow into his stomach, then up into his chin as he doubles over, stamping hard on his foot at the same time. She has one glimpse of her friends, staring, wide-eyed, and she is on the rocket tram, racing down the cars to get as far away as she can before it pulls away.

Of course she has no idea where Scerra and the adults who were with her got off the tram, but she is panicking too hard to think about that, or anything except finding them. She tears up and down the tram, grabbing people's shoulders to look at their startled faces then racing away; she leaps off at a random residential district, runs out of the station into the streets, looking everywhere for the distinctive little figure, the pink coat, the bright beads in her hair, screaming her sister's name until her throat is raw. Startled passers-by point and whisper; her comm armband, linked to the school's systems, buzzes and buzzes until she tears it off and throws it into the street. All she can think about is that somewhere in this city is her little sister, her little sister being taken away.

It's hours before she comes to her senses. The frenzy that has been driving her ebbs away all at once, leaving her standing alone on a street corner in a part of Coronet City she's never seen, exhausted, every muscle in her body throbbing with fatigue, her face streaked with dirt, her eyes swollen from crying, her throat raw with screaming. She has missed curfew, thrown away her comm-band; the group of girls she has been so carefully infiltrating have seen her behave with total irrationality - worse, they saw her fight off those guards. She has ruined everything, and for what? She did not see Scerra. She could not have seen Scerra at all.

It's the first time she has been asked to leave a school ahead of Sifter's timetable. Her 'parents' are there to take her away; she sits numbly through the exit interview, gathers her things; the senator's daughter she was targeting won't even meet her eyes when they pass in the hall.

Karia is not surprised when her parents, back on Coruscant, tell her that she has an appointment with a doctor, and she is not surprised when that doctor turns out to be Sifter, Sifter in a white coat leaning back in the doctor's chair behind the doctor's desk as if she belongs there. As Karia sits across the desk from her, Devinahl leaps from Sifter's shoulder, snakes across the desk and leaps at her. Karia catches her, hugs the warm, little body close to her chest, lets Devinahl wind around her shoulders, trilling in her ear and nuzzling her cheek.

'Tell me,' Sifter says, without preamble, once the first flurry of Devinahl's welcome is over.

Karia does.

After she has told her story, as succintly as she can, Sifter shifts position so that she is leaning forward on the desk, her hands folded in front of her. The posture triggers something in Karia's memory, something she doesn't want to remember.

'It was stupid,' Karia says eventually when Sifter says nothing. 'I know, it was stupid.'

Sifter still says nothing for a minute. Then: 'Tell me why it was stupid.'

'I behaved irrationally. I drew attention to myself. I jeopardised my cover and alienated my targets.'

Again, the silence; again, Sifter says, 'Tell me why it was stupid.'

Karia looks down, unable to meet Sifter's eyes. She cannot say it.

'Tell me.'

'Because Scerra isn't a little girl any more.' Hot tears rise up and overflow on to her cheeks, and she cannot even force herself to wipe them away. 'The child I saw was ... was Scerra's age when I last saw her. That was seven years ago. She's almost thirteen now, she isn't - she isn't a small child.' Karia cannot stop the wail in her voice. 'She's - she's grown up without me -'

She cannot go on.

Sifter turns her chair away, turns her head away and studies the wall as the girl in the chair opposite her sobs uncontrollably.

Karia almost loves her for that.

She cries for a long time, and when she finally stops, it's only because she doesn't have the energy to cry any more. The paroxysm has left her boneless, light-headed, slumped in her chair, arms cradling Devinahl automatically as the little lizard creature blinks curious golden eyes at the tear-streaked face above her.

Only once Karia's breathing has returned to normal, with only the occasional hitch in it to betray her recent state, does Sifter turn to face her again.

'No one has taken your sister away,' Sifter says, gentle, steely. 'She is with your parents. She is home. They are Imperial citizens now. They have the protection of the Empire. If you want to protect your family - if you want to save your sister - then serve the Empire. Protect the Empire. Make us strong.'

Karia understands what Sifter is saying; she is still in Sifter's employ. She is still Sifter's agent. She is not being sent away. A wave of relief washes over her so powerful that, despite her exhaustion, fresh tears threaten to spill.

'You won't make this mistake again, will you?'

'No,' Karia promises, sitting straighter in her chair. 'No, I won't.'

She never does.

*

Her name is Akysa Rakto on Bemeth, and Verls Eldrel on Kries, and Swa-Lu Fothe on Yuuv Rata.

She studies mechanical engineering on Angavel, and galactic history on Mon Calamari, and exobiology on Aeos Prime.

It is not very different from what she did as Karia Madeesh, except that now she is attending universities, not elite schools. Her targets are still sometimes family members of important or influential people, but more often than not, they are protest groups, activists, student societies dedicated to political causes of one sort or another. She never knows whether the particular group she is infiltrating is one that Sifter wants to encourage, presumably with the goal of destabilizing one Republic world or another, or suppress; it's not her job to make that decision. She simply passes on the information she gathers.

More and more, though, she cannot resist adding her own analysis, drawing attention to weaknesses or opportunities she has spotted in the reports that she delivers to dropboxes, hard-encrypted on datapads. What Sifter thinks about this, she doesn't know; she only ever hears from her in the form of code phrases embedded in the mail she receives, and they can only mean a set range of things: Stay the course. Dig deeper. Change focus. Get out.

Her implants are a challenge; she has to come up with stories to explain them, and explain how she can afford to have them maintained. They also make her appearance far too distinctive. When she assumes a new identity, she experiments with different ways to disguise them, ways of wearing her hair, adding new phony prosthetics to change their size and shape, getting fake scars or tattoos or birthmarks to draw attention away from them. Fundamentally, though, they cannot be too well disguised. She simply has to be sure that she does her work so well that nobody suspects her enough to circulate a description of her appearance. It forces another layer of caution, and that can only be a good thing.

They are also invaluable in this work. Often she does not even have to join these societies; just find ways to be in a position where she can, with her enhanced hearing, overhear and record them. Sometimes she won't even get involved in whichever group she is targeting; simply pose as the girlfriend of one of the members, who has no interest in her lover's politics. It's amazing what you can do when you only need a single glance to carry away reams of data inside your head, or when you can overhear a murmured conversation without even being in the room.

Fraudulent intimacy is a part of her work now, of course. It isn't her preferred method, but it is effective. Besides, she wants to know about sex, all about it, all the different games people play, all the ways to find out what someone likes, all the ways to be good at giving it to them. If she knows about it, she can use it; it's a tool, it can't be turned against her.

And it's important to know, she thinks, just how good your body is at lying to you. She learns that it doesn't matter that you know all about hormones and chemical bondings and the rest of it; your body can still produce a wave of tenderness for a sleeping lover that almost brings you to tears, an agonizingly pleasurable aching longing for the touch of their skin, a giddiness at the sight of them, that has nothing to do with your cool, analytical brain. It's good to know this, and be wary, and be smart. For later, when her targets are more dangerous than student anarchists and rebelling adolescents.

She intends to be so smart, later.

In the meantime, she gets better and better at disappearing into the role she is playing (but not too far). She has learned her lessons well: Her family, so far away on Draavi Prime, are what she thinks about when she feels a pang of guilt for those she is betraying, and that silences her qualms. If she ever thought of going home, she does not do so any more; she doesn't want to think of the people they are now, of the grey that must be in her mother's hair, the lines around her father's eyes, Scerra growing into a young woman. She thinks of them instead as they were when she last saw them, but well-fed, healthy, happy, prosperous as they had never been in the refugee camp, unchanging as if they were embedded in crystal. Hers to protect, to watch over. She will be strong so they don't have to.

The only time she struggles is on Yuuv Rata. Her cover, Swa-Lu Fothe, is studying medicine, and when she walks into the medical lab, her body immediately betrays her: The smell of disinfectant, the sound of the tiled floor, the shine of the surgical instruments. She tries to force herself through it, but it's as if her implants are tightening around her head, a band of pain cutting remorselessly into her flesh.

She makes it about half an hour into their first dissection before going outside to throw up. She sinks down on a convenient wall, knees trembling too much to stand, and wonders if Sifter arranged this on purpose.

If it is a test, she passes it with flying colours. Because the young man who comes out to see if she's all right is not just a fellow student; he is a member of the group she is here to infiltrate, a group with ties to another, more radical organization which aims at liberating alien test subjects across the galaxy. Not only that, but he is the son of a high-up Republic bureaucrat, a bureaucrat with high expectations for his son ...

'Are you all right?' he asks her, eyes wide, full of concern.

She nods weakly. 'It's just ... I have a real phobia of labs and hospitals.'

'But you're studying medicine.'

She smiles bitterly. 'It's all my father cares about.'

That's all it takes to get him on side, and soon, their entire class is rooting for Swa-Lu in her brave battle to overcome her fears and crippling issues, and she has been invited to several meetings, and an individual she strongly suspected of being the local cell leader had taken her aside to commiserate with her about the tyrannical effects of parental expectation. (Never underestimate how much the children of the rich hate their parents.) Lying awake at night, curled against her classmate in his narrow bed, she lets the elation surge through her. She has passed the test. This is how it will be, when she joins Imperial Intelligence, when she makes it as an agent: She will take her weaknesses, and make them into weapons.

She is into her fifth year of this kind of work, taking an advanced psychology course on Bogano, when the message comes. Her aunt is dying.

*

If this moon has a name, she doesn’t know it. The shuttle from Station Zaboor drops her off at a small landing pad, over two weeks after she left Bogano; she’s in a walled compound, surrounded by jungle. There are a number of buildings, but only one of any size: This must be the clinic.

The place is deserted.

As she approaches the largest building, she hears a soft exclamation and turns to see an olive-skinned man in the uniform worn by the doctors here hurrying towards her. It is Barber; leaner than ever, his body feels almost brittle in her arms as he hugs her, but he still wears the same vague, dreamy smile.

'You’re not too late,' he breathes into her ear, the faint whisper a shout thanks to her implants. He pulls back, holding her hands, beaming at her fondly as if she was his long-lost niece. 'Look at you. You're all grown up.'

'How is she?' the young woman asks. 'My aunt?'

His smile fades. 'She's waiting for you.'

The clinic is spotlessly clean, but empty, except for one or two nurses they pass in the hallway. Barber will not respond to any of her questions, except with a shake of his head and a smile; he simply ushers her into Sifter’s room when they finally reach it, and shuts the door behind her.

She had not known what to believe until this moment, but now she sees it: Sifter is indeed dying.

In the five years that have elapsed since they last saw each other, the woman seems to have aged twenty. Her dark hair has not only turned solid white, much of it has fallen out, leaving only wispy strands which reveal plenty of flaky, wrinkled scalp. Her face seems to have collapsed in on itself, her cheeks sunken as if the flesh had been sucked from her bones. She cannot see much of Sifter's body under the blanket, but the full figure she remembers seems to have wasted away.

She looks around. The room is scrupulously clean, perfectly tidy; Sifter is being well looked after.

It is also blank, except for a pile of datapads which lie on Sifter's bedside table. There are no holos (not that she would expect there to be), no medals on display; no plants, no flowers. And there is no sign of Devinahl. The fibreglass stand, moulded to look like a forked branch, on which the little creature used to like to climb and hang stands in the corner, but Devinahl herself is nowhere to be seen.

She takes a seat next to the bed, and waits.

After perhaps an hour and a half, Sifter's eyelids flutter, and she turns her head. 'Schoolgirl,' she mutters, her voice faint and raspy. She coughed, and even that sounds dry and rattling. 'You took your time.'

'The route you sent me on was circuitous,' Schoolgirl retorts (she is hardly a schoolgirl any more, but she will be Schoolgirl for today, if that's what Sifter wants). 'I transferred twice through Nar Shadda. In different directions.'

'I gave my life to Imperial Intelligence, but they're not getting my death.' Sifter coughs again, and again; her body beneath the blankets is racked. 'Water.'

Schoolgirl pours a glass of water from the pitcher on Sifter's bedside, then, realizing belatedly that Sifter cannot hold it, lifts it to the woman's lips herself, tilting it gently. She has never done this for anyone before, and she does it badly, the water spilling down Sifter's chin and running down her neck.

As she apologizes, Sifter waves a clawlike hand, silencing her as she gulps down a few precious sips. 'That's better,' she sighs, her voice sounding a little fuller, a little clearer as Schoolgirl takes the glass away. She fixes Schoolgirl with a sharp gaze as the younger woman sits back down. 'You know I'm dying.'

She considers platitudes, encouragement, and decides against it. 'I know.'

'Nothing to be done. And believe me, I've tried.' Sifter stares at the ceiling. 'A hundred worlds.' Her eyes flick back to the woman sat beside her at the soft noise of comprehension. 'What?'

'I always wondered why you were on Draavi Prime all those years ago. It was a minor operation for someone in your position.' Schoolgirl remembered the very first time she'd seen Sifter, pretending to be another wealthy, bored woman seeking illicit treatments and prohibited remedies from the hospital world's doctors. 'You were looking for a cure.'

'Noval Jhcor Syndrome. It's a rare blood disorder. Incurable. You know how I got it?'

Schoolgirl shook her head again.

'Thirty years ago on Abaddon Prime. The Empire was fighting a rogue colony of Mandalorians. Not just any Mandalorians, either.' She coughed, but shook her head when Schoolgirl nodded towards the water. 'These ones were ... smart. Vicious. Gearing up to fight wars of sabotage and indiscriminate violence on a hundred of our worlds. Intelligence had managed to smuggle a complement of biogenic warheads into their base, but they needed to be armed and triggered. I knew I could get into their base, but the arming device ... the only way to smuggle it in was to hide it with the radiation from an unshielded power core. I got in, armed the warheads, and got out.' She coughed again. 'They never told me the core was using a halenium source. Halenium-1, and I carried it around next to my skin for seventy-two hours. It took twelve years of symptoms before they would admit it.'

Schoolgirl said nothing.

'These are the people I recruited you to serve. And I knew it when I found you on Draavi Prime.' Sifter plucked restlessly at the covers. 'They will use you. Poison you. Lie to you. If you obey them, they will sacrifice you. If you try to run, you'll find the chain already fastened around your ankle before you take your first step. If you disobey, they'll cut whatever they can use out from inside you, then toss you on the dungheap. The only things worse than the things they do to the Empire's enemies are the things that they do to its patriots. And you can't imagine the things they do to its enemies.'

She studied Schoolgirl's face, then snorted. 'You think you'll be different. I can see it in your face. You think that if you're clever enough, and loyal enough, and useful enough, you'll be the exception to the rule. Serves me right for trying to talk to the young.' She turned her eyes away to stare at the ceiling. 'At least I tried to warn you,' she muttered, and closed her eyes.

Schoolgirl let her breathe for a while, before asking: 'Where's Devinahl?'

'Mmm?' Sifter opened her eyes, blinking at her. 'Devinahl? She ran off a month ago. Idiot nurse opened the window a crack for some air and she squeezed through and was off into the jungle before you could blink twice. Doesn’t like the smell of death, my little riddle.' She sighed. 'Just as well. I don't want her to watch me die. The same goes for you, by the way. You're on a ship out in six hours.'

'Where am I going?'

'Mmm?'

'I said, where am I going?'

Sifter blinked several times, as if she was having trouble focusing. 'Oh ... the ship's going to Ord Mantell.'

'That doesn't really answer my question.'

Sifter waved a desiccated hand. 'Quiet. I need to rest. We'll finish this when I wake.' Her eyelids were already closing as she spoke.

Schoolgirl waited while Sifter slept, curled up on her hard bedside chair, listening to the older woman's laboured breathing. Nobody came to check on the patient, or the visitor; she guessed that Sifter had said she wanted to be alone, and Sifter's word, as always, seemed to be law.

After ninety minutes or so, she stood up to stretch cramped limbs and turned to look out of the room's one window, at the edge of the compound where the clinic stood and the lush jungle which pressed in upon it on all sides, threatening to spill over the walls and devour. If the window had been open, she was sure she would have been able to smell it; all that vegetation, all that life. No wonder Devinahl had taken her chance when it came. She briefly entertained the thought of going out to search for the little creature - taking some of her favourite foodstuffs, and venturing out; perhaps Devinahl had merely yielded to a momentary impulse when she escaped, and regretted it almost immediately; perhaps she was merely lost and wanted to come home. The little creature had slept in her arms every night for almost two years on the nameless ship; surely she would recognise Schoolgirl's voice, her smell ...

No. Devinahl was a wild thing. She had made her choice to vanish into the jungle, and it would demean them both, somehow, to try to tempt her back.

A series of those horrible dry coughs signalled that Sifter was awake again, and Schoolgirl turned from the window, hurrying to pour water and hold it to her lips. Sifter swallowed a few sips of water, coughed again, and began trying to push herself upright in the bed. Schoolgirl grabbed for pillows to put behind her back, to support her in some semblance of a sitting position, and Sifter waved a hand at the small cabinet that stood by her bed and wheezed: 'Top drawer, Hidden. Stim.'

It only took a moment to find the hidden compartment, release the latch with the pressure of one finger in the right spot; it slid open noiselessly, revealing a row of identical stims. Sifter beckoned impatiently, holding out one arm, and Schoolgirl grabbed a stim and let that first-year medicine training come to her aid, administering the injection without thought.

Sifter winced, then let out a long sigh as whatever had been in the stim passed into her bloodstream. Her papery skin was unpleasantly hot beneath Schoolgirl's fingers.

'Am I helping you die?' she asked.

'I'll help myself, soon enough.' Sifter's eyes were already growing brighter, her speech stronger. 'I'm almost done tying up loose ends. You're the last.'

Schoolgirl settled herself back into her chair, and waited.

'I manipulated you,’ Sifter said abruptly. ‘That day when we first met. Every time since.'

'I know.'

'Just because you know you're being manipulated doesn't change the fact that you are, Schoolgirl. You're still serving someone else's purposes. Don't forget that.'

'Yes, ma'am.' She said it with exaggerated meekness, hoping to amuse Sifter, and got her reward when the older woman snorted.

'You just remember that when I'm gone. I may not have taught you much, but at least you can remember that.'

'You taught me everything.'

'No, I had you taught. It's not the same.' Sifter sighed, staring blindly towards the window and the jungle beyond. 'I meant to teach you so much more. Keep you with me. Mould you. But I was on borrowed time, and there was so much to do ...'

She trailed off, her eyes straying now over Devinahl's empty perch. 'Maybe it's better that I didn't keep you close. Can't complain all those vat-grown assets can't think for themselves and then replace them with someone I've programmed, in my way.' She half-lifted one hand, then let it loll against the bedclothes in a weary gesture. 'It certainly didn't help the others.'

'How many have there been?' Schoolgirl asked quietly.

'I've recruited hundreds of assets for Intelligence in my day. But you mean my pet projects.'

'Yes.'

'Twelve, not counting you.' Sifter stared unseeing at Schoolgirl. 'Twelve I found, and raised, and groomed, and sent to Intelligence when their time came. Twelve.'

'Are they all dead?'

'Dead, or worse.' Sifter's eyes refocused on her face, and there was suddenly a gleam of humour in the dark depths. Schoolgirl found herself smiling back. 'I told you I'd never lie to you.'

'What about Locket?' Schoolgirl asked, remembering that half-glimpse of the Twi'lek chained to the Hutt, remembering too their shopping trips, nights curled on the couch. She had learned so much from Locket. Even now, when she needed to be carefree, flirtatious, effervescent, it was the other girl's mannerisms she reached for - her gestures, her sighs, her outrageously bright smile. 'What happened to her?'

The gleam died in Sifter's eyes. 'I put her in deep cover with the Hutts. She was going to leash a crimelord for us. Operation timescale was eighteen months. She barely lasted six before the Hutt caught her robbing the strongroom. He had her fed to Morustan eels. My dazzling girl. My jewel.'

To her shock, Schoolgirl realized there were tears in Sifter's eyes. 'Eight years I kept her with me. One more after she finished her training, just to prep her for that assignment. And she ends up torn apart by a Hutt's pets. All because she panicked and tried to run. Didn't trust herself, or me.'

'She loved you,' Schoolgirl said softly. 'As I would have. If you'd let me.'

Sifter blinked away the tears, and the sharpness returned to her voice as she said, 'Well, at least I protected you from that.' She showed her teeth in what was far more a grimace than a smile. 'Here's another lesson for you, Schoolgirl: If you want to destroy someone - I mean, destroy them utterly - let them fall in love with you. People like us are poisoned.'

Schoolgirl resisted the temptation to roll her eyes.

Sifter sagged back on her pillows. 'She was going to be my legacy. My last gift to the Empire. Now she's gone, like all the rest. Except for you,' she added as an afterthought.

She controlled the stab of hurt she felt, and smiled. 'Maybe I'll be your legacy.'

Sifter looked at her as if she'd only just become aware of her presence. 'Maybe you will.' She gave that mirthless smile again. 'My little wildcard. My last roll of the Sabacc dice. Maybe you'll be exactly the person the Empire needs, after all.' She closed her eyes briefly. 'Maybe you'll catch a stray blaster bolt your first time in the field. Either way, I won't be alive to see it.'

Schoolgirl watched the woman's lined face, carefully smoothing out her tone when she said, 'You're tired. Do you want me to leave?'

'Not yet.' Sifter opened her eyes again, and flicked her eyes towards the bedside cabinet. 'Second drawer. Find the datapadd.'

It took Schoolgirl longer this time to find the hidden compartment, which turned out to be a cunningly disguised fake bottom to an innocuous-looking macrobinocular case. She held it out to Sifter, who wearily lifted one skeletal arm and unlocked it with a thumbprint and a cipher code she didn't even bother to try to keep Schoolgirl from seeing. 'Thumb. There.' She watched as Schoolgirl pressed her own thumb to the scanner, locking the datapad to her own thumbprint. 'That's what you came here for. Consider yourself tied up, loose end.'

'What's on it?' Schoolgirl asked.

'Your ticket to Intelligence. If you want it.' Sifter pushed herself painfully upright again, her eyes feverishly intense on the younger woman's face. 'As of now, you're no longer in my employ. You can go back to your family, or you can go somewhere - anywhere - else; if you haven't learned enough by now to make your own way in the galaxy, then you never will. The choice is yours. But if you do want to serve the Empire, that's how you do it.' She pointed at the datapad with one finger, too weary to raise her hand more than a fraction off the covers. 'Go to Avery Station. There's instructions in there for how to contact a particular man, and the phrase to say to him. He'll bring you into the training programme.'

'And who will I be?'

'That's on there too. I've given you the best cover I could work up. It will stand up to anything except the most rigorous scrutiny, and anybody senior enough to order a probe like that will see certain ... details that signal my handiwork. They'll know not to look any further.' She slumped back on her pillows again; her voice was growing rougher, more ragged, her breathing more laboured than it had since she had taken the hypospray. 'It's up to you now, Sch-- Stanza.' Sifter smiled at the look on Schoolgirl's face. 'You should hear your name one last time.'

'Maybe you should hear yours, too,' Schoolgirl suggested tightly.

'Nice try.' Sifter squinted up at her. 'Stay for just a minute. Until I fall asleep. Then be gone by the time I wake up.'

Still nettled by Sifter's use of that name, Schoolgirl nevertheless sat down by the older woman's bedside once more, watching as Sifter painfully settled herself into a comfortable position, her eyelids closing. Schoolgirl sat and listened to her laboured breathing. If it wasn't for the relentless plucking of Sifter's hand at the covers, she would have thought Sifter was asleep. The minutes lengthened, and Schoolgirl was just beginning to wonder if Sifter really had fallen asleep when suddenly the older woman spoke, her voice barely more than a mutter. 'Schoolgirl?'

With her implants, Schoolgirl did not have to bend over Sifter's bed to hear the dying woman better, but she did so anyway. 'Yes, Sifter?'

'Do you remember the day we met? The office? The ugly curtains?'

'I remember,' Schoolgirl said softly.

'You told me you wanted to be nobody.'

'And you said you could arrange it.'

'Looks like I lied to you after all.' Sifter's eyes opened briefly to study Schoolgirl's face, then drifted closed again. 'You are someone.'

'Yes, I'm someone,' Schoolgirl answered. 'I’m just not quite sure who.'

Sifter's lips just quivered faintly, as if she wanted to smile but didn't have the energy. 'You'll find out, believe me. Once you get into the field ... you'll find out.'

Her voice trailed off, and her breathing deepened.

Schoolgirl stayed where she was, bending over Sifter, until she was sure the older woman was asleep. Then she bent closer and pressed her lips to the sleeping woman's forehead. 'Goodbye, Sifter,' she whispered, and left.

Outside, in the hallway, she unlocked the datapad and read the instructions for the contact on Avery Station. Then she opened the file containing the basic details of the false identity Sifter had created for her.

And smiled at the name Sifter had chosen.

*

'Bystran Sangha? I have a priority order for you from Dromund Kaas.'

The factor turned to look at the woman who had just entered his office. She saw his eyes flick to her hips, her sleeves - checking for weapons - then to her implants, her face, and her implants again.

'I wasn't expecting any big orders today,' he said cautiously.

'I didn't say anything about big. Just fast.' She gave him a pleasant smile while she delivered the code phrases Sifter had given her. 'Sixty-four bushels of crystallised leola root. direct to Kaas City.'

'I think that can be arranged.' Bystran Sanghra waved her inside. 'Come in, let's talk about the details.'

The door slid shut behind her as she stepped into his office, and the smile slid from his face just as swiftly and smoothly, leaving only alertness behind. 'Dromund Kaas,' he murmured, once again peering curiously at her implants. 'Yes, that can definitely be arranged.'

'Good,' she said crisply, and saw with satisfaction that the clipped, military delivery she had been practicing snapped his heels involuntarily shut as if he was on the parade ground before he caught himself and reassumed his sloppy, hunched posture.

'Right, right.' He shuffled through a stack of files next to his terminal. 'Dromund Kaas. And ... what name shall I put on the package?'

'Devinahl.' It came out of her mouth as smoothly as if she had been introducing herself this way for years, and she smiled.

'My name is Devinahl.'

***

Thank you to anyone who read this! Literally any feedback welcome.

[bookwormscififan]

Oblivion: Chapter 1, Part 1/2

Buy me a coffee?

A/N: welcome to the beginning of Oblivion! I hope you’ve read the blurb, because a context on this story is essential! This is just as much a new chapter in my own writing life as it is a new leaf of my blog. I’ll be trialling new formats and structures in this work, and applying things I’ve learnt from uni. Hope you all enjoy.

Warnings: electrocution

Characters: Anton Brodes, Chase Brodes, Jackie Brodes (calling them the Brodes family), Detective Inspector George Wallace, Dr. Henry Schneep

Word count: 1305 words (I’ve split the introductions into two parts so you have time to digest this first batch)

“Name?”

“Septicie.”

“Real name.”

“Anton… Anton Brodes.”

“Age?”

“Don’t know.”

“Do you know why you’re here?”

“Something about the power outage in the town, probably.”

“Anton, I just need to know what happened. Can you do that for me?”

A sigh.

 Anton Brodes was working his usual late night shift at the surveillance company downtown during the worst rainstorm recorded in the town ever. Earbuds in, he was whistling to the music pounding in his ears as he ran the mop down the corridor.

He looked up as a flicker of sparks flew into the hall from a room.

“Anybody out there?” No answer. Concerned about the possibility of a humanitarian crisis, he crept to the room to make sure nobody was inside.

The room was an array of brightly-coloured sparks and fizzing wires. As his eyes travelled around the room, Anton realised one of the large circuit boxes had short-circuited and was breaking apart the rest of the room.

“Damn it, why my shift?” Taking a deep breath, he reached out to begin repairing the wires.

As his hand touched the box, a bright flash blinded him temporarily. He vaguely registered falling forwards, and a cold chill running up his arms. As his body fell to the floor, the sparks and wires from the circuit boxes began to seep into his pores, manipulating his DNA and causing him to yell in pain. Then he passed out.

 ***

“Name?”

“You know my name, Inspector.”

“This is protocol, Jackie. Just say your name for the record.”

“You just said my name.”

“Full name.”

“Jackie Brodes.”

“Age?”

“Twenty-five. Look, if you want me to tell you what I saw, just say. Don’t go through this ‘protocol’ stuff. We’ve been through this a dozen times.”

“Tell me what you saw.”

“With pleasure.”

 Jackie was sitting on the roof of the police station, surveying the area the same way he did every night. A flashing to his left alerted his attention.

“What the hell?” He squinted at the bright light emanating from downtown, trying to place its exact location.

“Anton!” Unwinding his rope, he began to swing across the city, Spider-man style. His heart pounded in his chest, worry clouding his face.

Arriving at the company, Jackie used his patented electronic lockpick to get inside, following the sounds of yells to find Anton’s cleaning equipment abandoned.

“Strange. He never leaves that alone,” Jackie commented to himself as he looked down the corridor. Flickering lights impaired his vision, and he put on some night-vision goggles to see better.

Heading down the hall to the room with sparks, he saw an amalgamation of wires covering a moving figure. Upon further inspection, Jackie realised it was his estranged brother, wrapped in cables and unconscious.

“Anton, hold on, I’ll help you. Power switch, power switch…” he spun in a circle, finding the master switch for power, and flicking it off. As soon as the cables had stopped fizzing and writhing, he began to disentangle his brother.

“Are you alright? Anton, talk to me.” He held the janitor, feeling static electricity prick his skin with every movement. Tilting his head, the hero activated the communications device sewn into his hood.

“We have a code yellow in the surveillance company downtown. Power surge or short circuit. There’s been a casualty. Please hurry.” He held Anton close, ignoring the pricks of static as he tried to make the man open his eyes.

 Anton woke up in the darkness, a heavy weight on his chest. Opening his eyes, the lights of the room flickered, then shone brightly.

He raised his arm to shield his eyes, then held it back to look at the bandages wrapped around it. Curious, he lifted his other arm, seeing the same thing. What happened?

“Oh, you’re awake. How are you feeling?” A nurse walked into the room, clipboard in her hands and warm smile on her face.

“I feel…” he drifted off as his voice crackled. He tried clearing his throat, only for the lights to flicker. He looked at the nurse, who shrugged.

“There’s a thunderstorm outside. The lights flicker whenever that happens.” Anton nodded, slowly, not telling the nurse that the room was dark before he opened his eyes.

“I’ll call your brother in. He’s been sitting outside for hours.” She left, leaving the door open before leading a man in a red hoodie inside.

“Hey, Anton. How are you feeling?” Instead of speaking, Anton raised his hands and began to sign to the hero. The Brodes family had learnt sign due to their father going deaf in their early years.

Something weird is happening to me. Jackie read the signs, then nodded, turning to the nurse and asking to be left alone. She left the room, giving Anton a wary glance.

“What do you mean by weird? Are you sick?”

When I opened my eyes, it was like I turned the lights on. Then my voice…

“My voice crackles, Jackie.” The hero started at the sound of the janitor’s once smooth voice. He sat down, lifting Anton’s arms to inspect the bandages.

“Do your arms hurt? I found you wrapped up in sparking wires. I can call Schneeple if you want-” Anton shook his head furiously, grabbing the hero’s wrists.

I just want to get out of here. Take me home. Jackie nodded slowly, thinking.

“It’s Chase’s week with you. I’ll give him a call.”

 ***

“Mr. Brodes, I understand your concern about your wife and family, but your brother-”

“He’s not my brother.”

“-Anton has been through and done something terrible to the city. I need to know everything you know.”

“You know, it’s only been two months since he was found at the surveillance company. My family’s been missing for two years.”

“As soon as you tell us your story, we’ll go back to the investigation on your wife.”

“Fine.”

 Chase was sitting at the police station, discussing a missing persons’ report for the eighth time in two months.

“They’ve been missing for a year and a half, sir. There must be a priority for that.” The officer sighed, running a hand through his hair.

“Mr. Brodes, we’ve been looking for years, and gotten nothing. They disappeared. Maybe it’s time to-”

“No, I refuse to believe they’re… that word. If they were, you would have found a record of that, wouldn’t you?”

“True, sir. Look, the man in charge of your case will be back tomorrow, why don’t you come back then?” Chase sighed in frustration, then nodded.

As he left the station, his phone began to play the tune of ‘Bad Case of Loving You’, signalling Henry was calling.

“What’s up, Hen?” The voice on the other end was shaky, a little confused, and strongly laced with German roots.

“You need to come back home. I think you should call Marvin on your way.”

When Chase arrived home, he saw Henry standing in the doorway to the kitchen, eyes trained on a person at the table.

“Who’s this?” Chase took his hat off and hung his wet coat on the coat hanger by the door.

“Did you not call Marvin?” Chase shook his head, trying to get the water off his hair.

“No reply. Where did Charlie Chaplin come from?”

“That’s the weird thing. He just appeared on the stairs when I came home. I thought maybe Marvin had something to do with it.” The doctor paused to consider something, then chuckled to himself.

“Actually, the weird thing is over here.” He led Chase to the foyer, turning on the light and pointing to the stairs. About halfway up, the pastel green paint had faded to monochrome, looking like a broken television set.

“Great, our newcomer drained the colours from our stairs.” Chase looked back at the kitchen, watching the visitor sip on tea.

“He’s certainly fully coloured.”

[choisgirls]

Red Fate.

A/N: *rubs my grubby, evil little hands together* The first mysme thing i write in a long time and it turns out this way, you’re welcome

The click of the keys were the only sounds to echo across the room.

For once in his life, Saeyoung’s mind was at a standstill. Nothing roamed the inner depths of his head—not jokes, not strings of code—not even beautiful images of a certain white cat popped up like advertisements as they normally did.

Mindlessly, he tapped at the keyboard in front of him, the light from the monitor being the only source in the room. It glared as it struck his glasses, taking unfair measurements to ensure it lit up only the harshest aspects of his features.  

The bags under his eyes, the heavy scowl on his lips—his face screamed exhaustion, self-pity, and the line between blurred with swirls of emotions. He was well aware why he felt such a way, but admitting it to himself would bring life to the sin, make it truly real, form it into something he couldn’t make disappear.

What good did it do, truly, to keep his mouth shut? Time and time again, he’d watch as the sin in front of him reached out, begging him to join hands with promise of salvation, of protection, of love; He knew what he was in for, he knew what he had been feeling, yet he shoved it further and further down, knowing he wasn’t worthy of the pleasure sure to come with that very hand.

But god, that hand was beautiful.

It looked so soft and welcoming, cupping as though it were ready to caress his face gently and wash every impurity away; But that hand was the impurity instead—it was something he would never get as he was bound to this one, solid coordinate on a plane of vast existence, coded to simply watch in agony as everything unfolded in front of him.

A ding from his phone caught his attention, eyes mindlessly looking over the notifications, desperately searching for that one name to breathe a newfound life into his hallow heart; The message couldn’t open quick enough—he made a mental note to try and fix this problem later—and found his heartbeat rapidly picking up the pace to catch up to the smile across his lips.

They were online—yes, the very sin themselves, though Saeyoung preferred the much more angelic title of MC—suddenly, he had a purpose once again. The gears in his mind started to turn, though the once empty space filled with thoughts and images of them; Which was more painful? The empty, static dysfunction he got as he short circuited, or the silent truth behind the taut red string of fate between the two of them?

‘It’s late!’ He found himself typing, ‘Couldn’t sleep?’

‘I was worried about you.’

The genuine concern behind their words left him dumbfounded, his heart now beating in a peculiar fashion; No! He wanted to scream out—no, they shouldn’t concern themselves with him! Time and time again he would pull himself closer to them, grasping onto that string for dear life only to find himself letting go and watching as they pulled the string tighter and tighter, on the verge of snapping in two. He wanted so badly for that string to split, so they could find a better, stronger string instead—perhaps a nice yellow? Maybe a silver? How does a green or a purple sound? Anything but this damn red string that would only bring them misery.

How was he supposed to let them go if deep down he truly didn’t want to?

‘Lolololol,’ he falsely typed, ‘Don’t worry about me. I’m the great SEVEN! ZERO! SEVEN! Commander of the stars and conqueror of evil, and secretly—and I cannot stress this enough—the most handsome of devils.’

He could just feel in his soul how they laughed—god, he wished he could witness it firsthand. Maybe he could ask them to step outside in front of the camera—No! The hand around his heart would only crush its contents if he were to actually see it. A deep breath and a small smile later, their reluctant agreeance only tugged at his heart strings more and more as he knew what he had been doing to them.

Days dragged by while nights flew much faster than he wanted. Taking every opportunity to talk to them, laugh with them, even allowing himself to be as vulnerable as he could without letting everything pour out, he knew he had been tugging the string and pulling them close. Did he mean to? What was the right thing to do here? He wanted so desperately to be close to them that he knew it was wrong—that's why their very existence was nothing short of a sin.

And that’s why he would work tirelessly to sever that damn red string.

Saeyoung grew cold, distant—he spoke as though he were a madman and prayed that MC would not be able to decipher the riddles of his heart. He pushed, shoved, even went as far as to leave what was once an electronic safe haven to allow himself to bask in their radiance the moment he saw their name log in. Short answers, bursts of random conversation, distance.  

The string around his finger tugged and tugged, begging him to come back, come close, do something to cut it some slack—but he solely watched from that dark room, catching glimpses of that string of his from the light of his monitor.

MC started to speak more with the others, growing closer, forming bonds. His heart and eyes pleaded, his soul begged, his fingers twitched, but his mind would not move for it knew the truth.  

Snap.

The string around his finger grew heavy, slowly sinking back against him, the neat little bow that held it now sagging and dull. Eyes followed the line, painfully fading away as though it were merely computer-generated numbers and had no attachment to his heart. A small but of the line remained, however, tied around his finger; He played with the bow mindlessly, feeling the sharp pain in his chest as he did so.

And there, at the party, he anxiously rubbed at the bow on his finger as he waited to see them. Heart pounding, mind racing—and as fate would have it, his eyes landed on the perfect mold of pure, unfiltered sin—something so pure he could never be clean enough to hold in his arms.

The hand that once held out for him was now out of reach—try as he might, he could never reach far enough to grab it. The sun, as would have it, was truly too far for someone of measly existence to obtain. Fate was a cruel reality, and she loved to play Saeyoung like the hallow puppet that he was, generating his life time and time again with mixtures of ones and zeros.

He’d smile to himself, so sad and expectant, as he’d come to terms with the rules of Fate’s little game.

“So, Fate says you can’t fall in love with me.”

And there, around their finger, tied in the most pristine of bows, sat a coloured bow.

Saeyoung would have to watch, time and time again as Fate loved her game of torture, as the bow changed colours--none of which ever stayed red.

“But she never said I couldn’t fall in love with you.”