#take a shot every time i make a weapon metaphor

[witswords]

the scent of ash and salt lingers even after his attempts to wash himself clean of the night before. he'd scrubbed his skin raw beneath the scalding water until his eyes burned and his hands turned red and he could swear the blood was still there, staining him still. even now, the whites of his eyes are bloodshot as they flicker across the captain's office, the light somehow cold and permeating every inch of the room as if he's a specimen on display, laid out on an autopsy table to be dissected. it's how he feels when levi looks at him, too — the captain is like ice-cold water over his head, a sobering reminder he isn't supposed to wallow like this, sink into his grief as if it's a sea.

his stomach churns suddenly — sick maybe from the reverberations of the marleyans' cries still rattling in his skull, maybe from the fact they've gotten eren back ( at what cost ? ) and now he sits in a cell with seemingly no remorse or consequence, a knife able to stomach its slices, maybe even have an appetite for it, in a way armin never could — he bends and breaks with use, teeters on the edge of shattering, a blade made with metal too soft, forged against its nature into a scythe.

if the commander were here [ … ] it's what he and the captain don't speak about. armin can't help but wonder if the choice would have been the same if he knew what everyone is thinking: that armin is much too small, even with the colossal, to fill the ever-gaping hole erwin left behind.

@centuricnis says: we got lucky, but the next time they attack, they'll be ready for us.

he blinks away the blurry film creeping across his vision and nods quickly, shifting as if he means to try to inhabit that space, cutting along the dotted line of sentiment and strategy and trying desperately to separate them in the way he's never quite been entirely successful at. " right. they'll know our equipment now — and we're still outnumbered by titan metrics. " he's not even certain how to count eren now — even so, considering the limitations ( the destruction ) of his own titan, his scope is limited — something he's selfishly relieved by. " they know our strengths now, and they'll certainly have enough time to consider our weaknesses before their next move. the question is [ ... ] what we do before then. "

it's not an easy question, not with all the resentment and division festering between the scouts now. but it's one armin knows he's almost expected to answer — for all of their sakes.

[neeksparksg]

Sparks in conflict

The chill of the desert night was a sharp contrast to the simmering tension between the two Autobots as they sped across a desert. Arcee’s sleek blue motorcycle form hummed softly beside you, her engine purring like a cat. Your own form, a sports car with deep (f/c) detailing that glinted under the dim moonlight. You could feel her optics on you even now, filled with distrust and frustration.

“This is ridiculous,” Arcee muttered through the comms, her tone cutting like a blade. “I don’t understand why Optimus paired us together.”

“Believe me, it’s not my idea of a good time either,” you replied coldly, trying to keep your irritation in check. “I’d rather be anywhere but here, babysitting your self-righteous spark.”

“Babysitting? I’m the one in charge of the mission, don’t forget that you cold-constructed con,” she snapped. “You shouldn’t even be here. Optimus made a mistake by allowing you to stay”

Your grip on the metaphorical wheel tightened. It was obvious that the autoboots weren’t happy with working with you, but at least most of them have the decency to keep their discomfort to themselves but Arcee had always been vocal about it “I am no decepticon” you said with clear anger on your voice

“Doesn’t change what you are,” Arcee shot back. “You’re a weapon. A Decepticon-designed killing machine. With no regard for innocent lives, and no concept of loyalty, I don’t trust you not to try and kill us when Megatron gives the order” she say as both of you arrive at your destination changing into you alt forms

 “you know what?” you said with a smile of anger on your Faceplate “I may be a cold-constructed Freak as you so graciously remind me everyday, I may have been forged to serve the decepticons, but that doesn’t make you better than me” as you talk you walk closer to her, “Because unlike you I keep my partners Alive”

The silence that followed was to say the least uncomfortable. you could feel the weight of your words. Her optics glaring at you, she was seconds away to lose it

“Shut up” Arcee hissed, her voice low and venomous.

“or what? You are going to make sure I join the ongoing list of partners that have died at your side?” you teased, perhaps it wasn’t the best idea but you were tired of the autobots attitude towards you

Before she could respond, a blast went off close to the two

“Decepticons” you said, shifting towards the upcoming vehicons ���Looks like this conversation have to wait"

Arcee didn’t respond, she just ready her weapons and start fighting back, that was all confirmation you needed.

---

The battlefield was chaos. Blaster fire lit up the dark sands, explosions illuminating the silhouettes of the Vehicons. You moved with precision, every shot and strike calculated, dispatching Vehicons was just to easy to you, you knew their maneuvers and tactics, you knew how to fight them it was one of the few things Shockwave made you do as training once you were completed. Arcee was a blur, her blades slicing through the enemy ranks with practiced ease. Yet, even in the heat of battle, the tension between you two lingered.

“Behind you!” you called, firing a shot that narrowly missed her shoulder to take out a drone creeping up behind her.

“I didn’t need your help!” she snapped, spinning to cut down another attacker.

“Could’ve fooled me,” you retorted, dodging a missile and returning fire.

Another wave of drones descended, forcing the two of you to fight back-to-back. Despite the hostility, your movements were synchronized, Yet, the argument continued, woven into the chaos.

“You know,” Arcee grunted as she drove her blade into a drone, “no matter how much you try, you’ll never be an autobot.”

“Funny,” you said, kicking a drone aside and firing point-blank into its chest. “Because I don’t remember asking for your approval. All I want is a bit of trust”

“You don’t get it,” she snarled, blocking an incoming strike. “We’ve fought your kind for eons. Trust isn’t something you can just earn overnight.”

“They are not my kind,” you shot back, your voice rising as you tore through another Vehicone, with perphaps more violence than needed. “I left behind everything I knew, I betrayed those who created me, risking everything to fight for something better. I'm nothing like them”

“Then prove it!” she shouted, her voice filled with frustration and pain.

“I’ve been proving it every day since I joined!” you yelled, the heat of the argument nearly drowning out the sound of battle. “But maybe you’re just too blinded by your own Prejudice to see it.”

The moment your words left your vocal processor, the ground shook as a Decepticon brute landed nearby, swinging a massive hammer. The force of its strike sent both you and Arcee flying. You hit the ground hard, your systems sparking in protest. Arcee wasn’t as lucky, a jagged piece of debris piercing her side as she landed.

“Arcee!” you shouted, scrambling to your feet.

“Stay back!” she hissed, her optics flickering as she tried to rise. The brute loomed over her, hammer raised for the killing blow.

Without thinking, you launched yourself at the Decepticon. The brute was tough, but a well-placed shot to its head, the brute crumpled to the ground.

Breathing heavily, you turned back to Arcee. She was slumped against a rock, energon pooling beneath her. Her optics narrowed as you approached.

“Don’t—” she started, but her voice faltered as pain overtook her.

“Shut up, You rust-headed glitch” you snapped, kneeling beside her. “I’m not letting you die out here.”

She flinched as you carefully examined her wound, her expression a mix of anger and reluctant acceptance. “You don’t have to do this.”

“Yes, I do,” you said firmly, activating your repair tools. “Whether you like it or not, we’re on the same side now.”

Arcee grimaced but didn’t protest further, her optics fixed on you as you worked. The silence between you was heavy.

“Why?” she finally asked, her voice softer than before. “Why do you care?”

You paused, meeting her gaze. “I told you, I keep my partners Alive” you said quietly. “even you.”

For the first time, Arcee didn’t have a sharp reply. Instead, she simply nodded, the faintest hint of gratitude in her optics.

---

By the time the groundbridge open, Arcee was leaning heavily on you, her injuries slowing her down. When the rest of the team arrived, they looked between the two but no one said anything.

As the Ratchet rushed to tend to Arcee, she glanced back at you. “Maybe... maybe I was too harsh on you” she admitted reluctantly.

“Maybe,” you said with a small, tired smirk. “and Maybe I was a bit out of line with what I said”

Arcee huffed a faint laugh, the first sign of something other than disdain since you’d met her. It wasn’t a perfect resolution, but it was a start. And for now, that was enough.

[guster-animations]

Kamen Rider Gavv Episode 30 Production Blog

aw gee 2025 SHT how come you get TWO obvious metaphors for the corrupt japanese government that also happen to apply to the current rapidly deteriorating state of the US government

TOKU TRANSLATION MASTERPOST HERE

translated from this website

Looking at the Next Episode

It’s sudden, but I wonder how long it takes for “Gavv” to be made. In the case of Sentai and Rider, it progresses two episodes at a time for each director.

How to make a script: At ordering meetings… What story should we do, and who should it be about? If there are new weapons or forms, everyone also looks at designs. We brainstorm the future plot structure in idle talk. Then, Plot meeting -> First draft meeting -> Second draft meeting -> Final draft completion

Generally, two episodes take three weeks to write.

Filming -> Around two weeks.

Voice-overs -> Post-transformation, Gochizos, and the like. Generally a day of work.

Finishing work -> About a month.

All-rush preview screening… A preview without visual effects, music, or sound effects for the people involved. Slight adjustments may be made here.

Basic editing… Visual effects, color adjustments, etc. Subtitles are added and footage is completed as well. Done twice.

MA… Sound effects and music are added, and sound levels are balanced. Toy sounds are also added here.

First screening… Finally complete!

The reason I wrote this process is because we order things even earlier than we film. Episode 31 and 32’s scripts were written by Hiroki Uchida. It’s his first time writing for “Gavv”. I’ve worked with Uchida on the “Gotchard & Geats” winter movie. He wrote the characters of “Geats” vividly in that script.

When I asked him to do episodes 31 and 32, Gavv had only aired its first few episodes… He had to read 30 episodes of script all at once! He figured out the story’s world and characters all at once, and watched what all-rush footage had been completed at that point… I think I only could have asked Uchida, whose love for Rider seeps from every corner of Gotchard. Thank you very much, Uchida!

Hanto and Rakia, who haven’t been getting along so far for some reason, are stuck together now?! You should definitely look forward to the next episode!

It will be directed by Director Kamihoriuchi. It’s his first time in “Gavv” since episodes 11 and 12. It’s been a while! Director Kamihoriuchi has also been busy for some reason… The scenes in episode 12 where Shoma and Hanto find out each other’s identities was great. It’s that time of year where we say that they should definitely come back. Kamihoriuchi’s style of making shots one-by-one is interesting. Don’t miss it!

(Written by: Naomi Takebe)

The Episode in Short

Thank you for watching Episode 30.

This episode was a series of developments and new information not touched on in the trailer, much less the previous episode. The new chapter won’t slow down, so please look forward to what direction the story will progress in from now on!

The Stomachs’ Family Troubles, Swirling With Love and Hatred

Like the previous episode, the young Lizel throws the Stomach company into chaos this time. I would never have expected that the family Jiip marries into would be the president’s daughter… It was a series of developments that Lango also seemed to want to say, “I didn’t know about this,” to.

Siita appears for the first time in a long time! The Mimic Key destroyed in episode 14 has been repaired. There probably were many people who thought, “He could use the Mimic Key like that?!”.

However, Jiip isn’t able to meet with Siita, and the person reflected in the mirror is someone he dearly misses but can’t reunite with. To become someone you’re not and marry into a powerful family, in order to get revenge… The Stomach family’s drama of love and hate is speeding up.

Kawasaki and Koga finally got to see each other on the set again! Welcome back, Siita.

It’s not only characters that have rushed into the new chapter and made first appearances. The new asset (3D-CG space) nicknamed the “President’s official residence” makes its first appearance in this episode.

When posed with the problem of “how do we give the impression that a new level of power has been added to Gavv’s world?”, we made a request for this episode to Black Frame, who made the assets for the Stomach Company, and they made new assets at a fast pace.

aIt also matches their clothing, but the design uses a noble white that contrasts against the Stomach’s colors! And “the President’s official residence” sounds like a castle-esque building that reigns over the skies, so the Jardak family’s crest designed by Hideki Tajima appears in many places.

When you try looking at the details, you see elaborate designs all over the place. Filming with unfamiliar assets was difficult, but the director also got the shots he wanted, like the ones from the sky to the atrium!

A new Granute, Magen, appears in this presidential residence. He seems to be an extremely powerful person who’s close with the President… and he’s being fed Dark Snacks!?!?

I have a feeling that the President using Dark Snacks for personal reasons could cause problems.

Magen’s voice actor is Wataru Takagi! He’s a corrupt merchant who reflects Director Morota’s idea that “the important people are also bad guys~”. He gave an explosive performance that truly embodies that image!

Dark clouds loom over the Granute world, and thus the Stomach family. Lango’s seat as the company president has been stolen by a young girl, and Glotta, who used to be as violent as she wanted, can’t do much either.

Ochiru the Granute Falls From Trees

Find Director Morota’s cameo in this image!!

Setting aside that joke, there’s a search for the Granute who got away in the last episode! While on the hunt, Shoma goes to a certain candy store to ask for information.

The candy store’s name is “Hidamari”. There’s a cafe space, so it has the name “Candy Cafe”.

The store’s owner that Shoma encounters there is played by Shuhei Handa! His warm gaze with a really kind presence was striking. It seems like he’ll also appear in the next episode, so pay attention to how he’ll be involved in the future!

Higo made a fun battle full of witty remarks for this episode too. He was a basketball spectator last time, but it was uncovered that he’s actually an attendant at a bathhouse. At the time we cast him, we approached him in part because he perfectly fit the part of an old man at a bathhouse. (It’s not a hot bath!!)

A double ice cream transformation and a double Rider kick! Since Frappe has appeared now, we wanted to do an ice cream lineup with Gavv and Valen at any cost! So, they successfully defeat a Granute with richly chilly action in this episode.

There might have been many serious fights recently, but fun action is also good to have!

Off-screen Birthday

Shoji celebrated his birthday during this Morota arc. The troupe’s leader, Chinen, presented his cake!

Happy birthday, Shoji! We took a celebratory photo with everyone, including the director!

Since it’s Rakia, we obviously had to do pudding. 🍮 We asked a cake shop close to the set, and they made a special, extra-large pudding cake! LOL

Furthermore, not only Shoji but also Tsukada celebrated their birthdays during this Morota episode! What a birthday rush! Satoshi Morota is a birthday-attracting director.

Our Lango was able to celebrate his birthday with his entire family (including his new sister-in-law Lizel)~!

The Stomach family’s situation is chaotic, but on the set, they’re always kind to each other, and they all celebrated with him.

(Written by: Ryohei Takahashi)

[fuckyeahisawthat]

Hey ho, have you seen The Creator (2023) yet? Unsubtly about US imperialism, but also really moving, aesthetically stunning (Greig Fraser as DP, oh yeah) and John David Washington killing it in the main role. I was surprised by how much there was to love. xoxo

I fucking LOVED The Creator and kept trying to write something about it here but never managed to collect my thoughts. But yeah what a fucking movie, oh my god. I feel like it kind of got buried by lack of publicity but tbh I am not that surprised because it's one of those movies with politics that make you think how the fuck did they get away with making this.

Gareth Edwards, like Villeneuve, is a director I've been paying attention to for a while now, ever since his 2010 movie Monsters, which was a really impressive low-budget sci-fi with effects that just looked seamless and interesting things to say about borders and the human cost of militarized responses to disastrous events.

And then he did Rogue One and pulled off something very impressive, which is to take one of the most famous sci-fi weapons of our era--the Death Star, a metaphor for nuclear weapons so iconic it has become a symbol in itself--and made it actually fucking scary for the first time in the history of the franchise. And he did it by turning the camera around.

Because the thing is that before this point, we had only ever seen the Death Star from the point of view of the people firing it. The idea of a planet-destroying weapon is intellectually horrifying but we didn't really ever feel it. Because for that we need to see the weapon from the point of view of its victims. It's such a simple but radical shift in perspective, and I feel like Gareth Edwards took that idea from Rogue One and then made it into a whole movie with The Creator.

The Creator, for those unfamiliar with the premise, is about a near-future counterinsurgency war in which the US military is hunting down various forms of AI/android/robot beings. It also features a space-based super-weapon that is eerily beautiful but goddamn fucking terrifying. It was mostly shot in southeast Asia and heavily evokes Vietnam War imagery (as the ending of Rogue One did as well); it is probably about as close to "Vietnam War movie but you're rooting for the Vietnamese" as it is possible to make in the American studio system. The protagonist is still an American soldier (who defects and "goes native" fairly early in the movie) but making him a Black disabled veteran was certainly a Choice. And yes it's John David Washington and he's great in it.

It feels facetious to say The Creator is Reverse Terminator, because it's much richer than that, but it's also kind of fucking true. For the entire movie, the characters are just running for their lives from the implacable and overwhelming destructive force of the US military which is just crushing everything in its path.

The movie does a lot of things that you simply do not see in most American war movies, but the one that stands out to me the most is that in every scene of war violence there are civilians, including children, fucking everywhere. It really threw into relief for me how often American war-action movies create these empty video game environments for soldiers to run around in, where any actual people who might live in the place where the war is happening are at best props and at worst completely absent. (Alex Garland's Civil War, in addition to being terrible in every other conceivable way, is a particularly bad offender at this.) The Creator does what really should be the bare minimum of taking time to showing that these are people whose homes and lives are being destroyed and it is shocking how novel it seems. (There's a line that plays in my head all the time where one of the AI characters says something to the effect of, "Do you know what will happen to the humans when we win this war? Nothing. We simply want to live.") I will also say that this made it a very intense watch in late October 2023 in particular, but it is fiction so we get a very satisfying and cathartic ending. And yes it is an absolutely gorgeous movie, the VFX are mind-blowing, and I found it quite moving.

[ladyloveandjustice]

Fall 2023 Anime Overview: Pluto and Scott Pilgrim Takes Off

Pluto

Premise: Somebody- or something- is killing the most advanced robots in the world, along with humans involved with robots (either robot rights activists or scientists). Gesicht, a robot police detective, is trying to track this killer down. But has the detective himself been compromised? What is going on with these strange memories that keep appearing in his head?

Based on an arc in Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy, this anime is a tense, tightly plotted robot murder mystery that kept me engrossed and invested. Stuff that deals with "android" rights can often feel cringey at best and insulting at worst, but Pluto avoids this by having a future where robots have already gotten their civil rights. It instead largely uses robots as a metaphor for being seen as a disposable tool in a corrupt system, for how if you resist being a weapon for violence and imperialism, those in power will either discard you or fear you. And it asks the question--can robots feel human emotions like hatred? What happens when they do?

Speaking of imperialism, there are some very obvious allusions to the Iraq War in this and I mean obvious like the "United States of Thracia" stars a war with the "Kingdom of Persia" under the pretense of finding "robots of mass destruction". The anime is deeply sympathetic to the, uh, Kingdom of Persia (and very accurate about how much the United States of "Thracia's" government sucks and is imperialistic), but it does feature content that can be tough to deal with (especially right now), and does have some Middle Eastern antagonists, though they're not one-dimensional . I don't feel qualified to dig into it too deeply, but I just have to note it. 

Pluto is impressive with it's sizable cast that all have their own distinct stories. It makes you feel for almost every character. A lot of the plot twists punch you in the gut, and the animation is generally stunning. I

I did find parts of the final episode fell flat. It was a solid finale, but the world-ending stakes and the focus on pretty predictable action beats were so different than the gripping, investigative stuff that came before it that it was a bit of a let down. And it really beat you over the head by constantly verbally repeating the central message.

 (I also hate the trope of a male character lying to a female character about information she's begging for and affects her deeply, and it being treated as a great kindness. I wish female characters got more to do overall in this, because the two we had were potentially very interesting. It did give a nod to the female robots being just as advanced at the male ones but that being ignored because they weren't advanced in a traditionally masculine way. But you could feel it's Astro Boy roots in how male dominated the cast was.)

Overall, this is one of the most well-crafted anime of the last few years-- a psychological thriller and meditation on humanity and conflict, rich with story and themes, with not a second wasted. I definitely recommend giving it a shot, you'll probably be hooked in no time. And expect it to break your heart. A lot.

Scott Pilgrim Takes Off

Yes, this counts as an anime. It was animated by a Japanese studio, the director is based in Japan and has worked in anime for years. But there are some spoilers in the premise itself here, so I'm going to put it under the cut.

You have been warned!

Premise: Scott Pilgrim meets a cool girl named Ramona Flowers and falls for her, only to find out she has seven evil exes he must defeat. Unfortunately, he seemingly dies at the hands of the first one. This leads Ramona on a journey where she must confront her evil exes and see if Scott is really dead after all.

So, I was a fan of Scott Pilgrim as a teen. Moreso of the comic than the movie, since the movie didn't have the interesting arcs for the female characters the comic did thanks to it's short runtime and what it prioritized. (Ramona, especially, was done dirty). I liked Ramona a lot in the comic, especially how she went from a mysterious figure to someone just as messy and screwed up as Scott is, and the "final boss" was actually the abusive relationship she was stuck in, and she was the one who really had to defeat it. I liked how Knives outgrew Scott, and I liked how Kim exposed Scott's fantasies as not real, and let her crush on him go. I liked how Scott's arc was realizing he'd treated the women in his life badly and that he needed to grow up and stop being so selfish. 

So I was a little excited to see a more comic-accurate version... but what we got was even better. A story that was more from Ramona's perspective, that centered her from the very beginning, and which focused on her understanding, and often reconciling with her exes, rather than them being enemies to defeat. I especially loved seeing Roxie finally get her due. (The comic handled Roxie better than the movie's bullshit, but it still left a lot to be desired). Ramona's ex-girlfriend finally gets treated as an ex-girlfriend, with no "just a phase" bs from Ramona and no Scott doing the straight guy "ooh lesbians so sexy" bs. Instead, it's a sincere, emotional look at their relationship and the ways Ramona hurt Roxie, along with a killer fight scene. 

It was also great to see Knives thriving without Scott around, and Matthew Patel getting more of a spotlight. The series has grown up over the years ,but the themes are as sharp as ever. It examines the bad decisions Ramona and Scott have made, and not only the fear of growing up as a young adult, but the fear of what you'll grow into. It explores the fear that relationships will become regrets, the messiness of people trying to connect, and how you need to keep trying to communicate and move forward and take risks anyway.

There were a few things I wish we could have seen more of- like Kim and Envy. (And small yet bothersome nitpick, I also disliked how when Ramona talked about her pattern of "running away" from relationships, Gideon was included, despite the fact he was abusive to her in this version too). The English voice cast was also weak with the voice acting sometimes (likely because most of them were more used to being on-screen actors)- though there were some stand out performances like Satya Bahba (Matthew Patel), Michael Cera (Scott) and of course Mae Whitman (Roxy) (I also think Winstead settled into her role well too)-- though I got used to it after a while, and the Japanese cast is aces.

The animation was also phenomenal, and it had a killer soundtrack.

I'm not sure how this anime would hit if you haven't seen either the comic or the movie, (I've heard some newbies say they liked it) but as a fan of the source material, I was very pleased and found it a treat. Definitely worth checking out.

[buttercup-art]

Hiiii its meeee :] Could you tell us a bit about Noa ? How did she meet Hugo ? I've been thinking about her latelyyyy... Also, does she have a reference sheet of some kind ? For no particular reasonnn (<- planning on drawing her)

AAAAHHH HI FRIEND!!!! <3 I’d love to tell you about her!!

Noa Elizabeth Simmons (She/Her) is a powerhouse in Hyperion, having climbed her way to her position as President of Weapons Development through many forms of deception, manipulation, and overall perfectionism. She's an expert when it comes to all things related to weapons, and is one hell of a shot (her job is more managerial, but she enjoys it when she actually gets to shoot stuff lol). Like many in Hyperion, she’s always looking for ways to reach the top, wanting that control and power for herself. She’s known for being confident and narcissistic, believing she’s better than everyone and being critical of others, especially their intelligence and/or fashion choices. Having been born on Eden-5 was a big cause of that, as she was raised in a very wealthy and influential family who constantly worried about their image and pushed her to be the best. Her parents were often emotionally distant and cold, which caused her to have issues with processing emotions and things of that nature (talking about her feelings makes her uncomfortable). She doesn’t trust people easily, and has a very difficult time getting close to people. Being vulnerable around others makes her uncomfortable, because it feels like they have some sort of power over her. She likes being the one in control. She’s also French, and frequently switches between speaking English and French (or the equivalent of those languages in that world lol).

She's also a very logical thinker, often listening to her brain first instead of her heart. Overthinking is a pretty much a normal process for her; it's only natural to extensively work through things in order to reach a rational conclusion. But when things don't have a clear answer (like love), that's when she gets stuck and ties herself in a metaphorical knot. She's in her head most of the time, and that ends up doing her more harm than good.

And despite her cold exterior and bitterness, she's actually a pretty sensitive and compassionate person, secretly needing companionship (although she always tries to convince herself that she doesn't and/or it's not a good idea). When she does take a liking to someone, she gives them special treatment (giving them gifts, bringing them along with her whenever she has to do business/finding reasons to see them, giving them advice about things, protecting them, etc). She is also a good listener, and will happily listen to someone rant or gossip to her about anything they want. Just as long as she likes that person. She might tell them to "casse-toi" (piss off) if she doesn't know them that well lol

Another thing about her is that she's a lover of the arts, often painting in her free time and visiting art galleries/exhibitions every now and then. She always makes an effort to dress stylishly, even when she's alone, and takes a lot of pride in her appearance. Flowers and tea are also something she really likes (and is VERY particular about the quality of tea she drinks and how it's brewed. She wants it to be done right).

As for how Noa met Hugo, I imagine she'd meet him when he accidentally walks in on her having a meeting with Henderson, wanting to talk with his boss about his (not so) upcoming promotion. When they see each other again later on, when Henderson isn't around, he ends up lying to her about how important he is and what position he has to try to give himself a bit of a social advantage (he thought she was also middle management). However, she knew right off the bat that he wasn't telling the truth at all, because it takes a liar to know a liar. She decided to play along anyway, letting him dig himself deeper and deeper so he would have more trouble trying to get out of those lies. For funsies. And also to sort of manipulate him into killing Henderson for her. And it works out for both of them, in a way. Noa has Henderson dead, and Hugo gets to back up his claims of being Senior Vice President while also catching her attention. Seems like a win-win to her.

And she does have a reference sheet!! I initially designed her to be a sort of antagonistic character and for her to look Hyperion (and she works for them and likes what she does, so yeah, she's a bad guy) She's a snake and I love her for it! <3

[cinderswife]

Fangs

General White survives her first up-close encounter with a Rose Red.

(Crossposted to ao3)

There was a gun pointed at General White’s head.

Her breath came in short gasps. She lay flat on her back on the pavement, unable to reach her gun. Dimly, she was aware that she was bleeding. Pain laced up her torso.

She was going to die here.

The face of the monster behind the gun was blurry in her vision. Short scarlet hair, almost buzzed, darker red bear ears, and a long, strong jaw marked this as her sister. Her sister wasn’t this tall though, wasn’t this unblemished and hollow eyed.

A Rose Red, then. General White had seen them from a distance as she’d blown their bases to kingdom come, but this was the first time she’d had to look one in the eyes. It wasn’t a threat, couldn’t be; when she and Rose had tussled this was always the point where Rose had held up a hand and lifted her to her feet.

But no, Rose (not-Rose) had a rifle to her head and if the clicking was any indication was about to shoot.

“Get up.”

Rose’s voice, but the monster’s mouth hadn’t moved.

“I said, get up!”

How? She would be dead in a second. No weapons, just bleeding out on the ground.

“You’re not weaponless, Snow. You have fangs.”

Out of the corner of her eye, a translucent figure moved. The same scarlet hair, the same red ears, the same jaw, but this one was battered and in her wedding dress. A ghost then. Also, what good would metaphor do now?

“Snow. We’re bear folk. You have a mouth full of fucking two inch knives.” The ghost pulled back a lip to reveal a knife-like fang. “The Red’s about to shoot. Do something about it.”

Something, something, what something could she do? Wait. General White raised an arm and knocked the giant’s aim off just enough that the shot fired harmlessly behind her.

“Good. Keep going.”

The Rose Red moved to aim again. General White grabbed the gun and despite the pain tearing at her side twisted it out of the Red’s hands. It stumbled. She grabbed its wrist and pulled it to the ground.

Now the Rose Red was the one flat on its back. She straddled it, pinning its arms to its sides. It struggled, but there was terror in its scarlet eyes. It was Rose’s face staring up at her, afraid of the hollow socket in her face and the hatred in her remaining blue eye.

General White bared her fangs, but how could she? How could she rip Rose’s throat out with her teeth? It would be Rose’s blood in her mouth.

“DO IT.”

Fine. With animal ferocity, she plunged her fangs into the Rose Red’s throat and tore. It screamed in Rose’s voice, the kind of scream Rose had made when waking from nightmares. General White shook but tore again and again. Blood sprayed onto her face and dripped down her chin, coppery on her tongue.

The Rose Red stopped screaming only when its lungs finally gave out. The life had drained from its eyes, but the terror it had felt in its final moments still lingered. General White stared down at it, frozen and unmoving.

Rose was dead. Rose was dead and she had killed her. She had been the one to make Rose scream, to make Rose fear, to make Rose die. How could she ever forgive herself?

“Snap out of it.”

But there was Rose’s voice. General White raised her head slowly to see the ghost in her wedding dress pull a cigarette out of nowhere and light it. Acrid smoke curled through the air, covering up the scent of blood and death.

“I just killed you,” General White said through a mouthful of regret.

The ghost sighed, exhaling a puff of smoke. “I’m not dead, Snow. Taking a vacation from my body, sure. I’d rather not think about what they’re doing to it right now. Anyways, it was you or her and I’m glad it was you.”

General White looked between the dead Rose on the ground and the ghostly Rose standing over her with a cigarette in hand. One of them was large with an unblemished face – no scars or freckles – and the other was short but dense with every scar General White remembered her having and freckles like a starscape.

“You need to get up now.” Ghost Rose stared at her with tired but firm scarlet eyes. “There are more coming and you’re dead meat just sitting here.”

She tried to move, but her body didn’t respond. Adrenaline bled out from the gash in her side and it was all she could do to avoid collapsing atop the corpse that wasn’t her sister’s below her. Something churned in her gut.

“I’m going to vomit.” This was a statement of fact; she could taste the acid on the back of her throat.

“You’re not puking right now, so I need you to get up. What kind of a revolutionary leader are you if you sit and wait for death to come?”

She growled low in her throat and slowly willed herself to her feet. Her left leg, then her right, then she was on her hands and knees clutching her side. Rose just watched, unwilling or unable to help. She almost made it up before the threatened vomit spilled out her mouth and down her front.

Still, she kept going until she was on her feet. Every muscle in her body ached and all she wanted to do was lie down forever, but General White stood unsteady in her boots and took a slow, shaky step forwards.

“Good. Can you remember where the rendezvous is? You just need to get there, and then Doc Lorenzo can patch you up.”

She shook her head. Red fog filled her mind and weighed down her bones.

“That’s fine, just follow me.”

The ghost of her sister turned and walked away, the train of her wedding dress leaving rose petals in its wake. Smoke still curled in the air. Could anyone else smell it? Still, General White knew she had to follow her. What kind of a leader was she if she just lay down and died? No, she was going to live and she was going to lead her tiny army to victory over the king.

Taking a step was agony, but she would have to endure. It was, at least, marginally better than standing. Rose wouldn’t let her stop moving, not even to spill her guts again, so she forced herself to keep going.

They walked in silence, stopping only to hide behind a barely standing wall as another squadron of Rose Reds passed by them into ruins they were leaving. She looked at the ghost of Rose, whose face was scrunched into an expression of annoyance and disgust.

“Really?” Rose said, throwing the cigarette on the ground where it faded into nothingness. “Rifles? They should’ve used rail guns, I never miss with those.”

General White raised an eyebrow but said nothing. They hadn’t really ever talked about what weapons Rose had liked. Snow had abhorred the subject, an opinion General White no longer held. It would’ve been nice to have more of Rose’s expertise by her side, but other than whatever this was she had nothing but what her advisors could give her and the pieces she’d fumbled out for herself.

When the squadron had passed, Rose started them up again. Her pace was steady, but slow enough for General White to stumble and curse her way to keeping up with. At some point, the ghost had produced another cigarette and the foul stench not unlike the cigars she herself had made into a habit managed to keep her going.

One foot in front of the other. Clutch her side, pray she wasn’t going to bleed out before she made it through the woods and to the rendezvous where medical attention and a vehicle out of here were. Try not to think about the blood and the vomit and the other fluids she didn’t care to acknowledge she was covered in. Cling to the scent of roses and smoke and death.

Rose didn’t talk. Her face was hard and angry and tired and General White found that she didn’t have the energy to say anything either. What could she say to a ghost? Still, Rose expertly navigated them through unmarked trees and half remembered stones so General White could focus on staying upright and moving forwards.

And there it was: a clearing with a getaway vehicle and the half dozen of her troops whom she’d taken with her on this ill-fated excursion. No one had died thankfully, though she could see Doctor Lorenzo scurrying as he patched up bloody wounds.

“This is where I leave you.” Rose extinguished her cigarette and saluted. “Take care, Snow. I’ll try to hold on long enough for you to rescue me. I love you.”

“I love you too. Cinders and I will find you, I promise.”

With that, the ghost and her rose petals and her cigarette smoke faded into the dim afternoon light. General White stood, watching the nothingness where her sister had been just moments earlier for a good long moment.

Then someone shouted. Her brain started back into gear and she stumbled towards her men. One of the least wounded of her soldiers raced towards her, catching her as she fell. The last thing she saw before she faded into the dark herself was Doctor Lorenzo’s worried gaze and she couldn’t help but smile.

[pretentious-art-love]

Film Reviews #11 - Memories

Memories an anthology film with three anime shorts released in 1995. They are all a bit more style than substance, but I did like some things in each one of them that I want to document.

Magnetic Rose lasts 40 minutes and is an a-bit-on-the-nose film about memories. Two astronauts find a distress signal in a wandering ship and they decide to look for survivors. Sometimes you feel the film is spelling out things way too much too you, you see where things are going and say, okay, I get it, the woman is stuck on her memories, that was enough! But there are lots amazing sequences and scenes that get close to the plane of surrealism. This one reminds me a bit of the ideas that Solaris, the soviet movie of 1972 explores, like exploring what you appreciate more, a fake memory you can hold onto, or the real thing. The difference is that Solaris is a very dry and slow film, closer to something like Kubrick, and Magnetic Rose does it with a lot of style and pyrotechnics, there are some wonderful animations here in there even when I found the woman of Magnetic Rose hard to sympathize with at all.

8/10

Stink Bomb is my favorite one and that's because its hilarious! An oblivious guy with the flu takes some experimental pills from his boss' office (that were intended to help soldiers with biological warfare) but the pills react with the flu shot he just had that morning and turn him into a weapon of mass destruction that kills everyone around him with his stinky smell! A lot of destruction ensues! It is basically a comedic version of Akira, oh and the music is fantastic too.

9/10

Cannon Fodder is the shortest of them all clocking at 22 minutes and it doesn't have too much plot aside showing the every day life of a boy and his father in a city where they are all working and studying to launch a cannon towards an enemy we never get to know. The ritual of launching the canon is also shown in excruciating detail. There are two things that I love in this short, the music and the coloring. Like.... dude, just like at that, it's just a bunch of industrial machinery, but that red contrasts the dead green and yellow tones of the rest of the city, just look at it, it's so good, so so good! The art style is also more designed to look like a painting than a contemporary anime and it has some resemblance of... I'm not sure, soviet cartoons? Either way, it looks very stylish and the coloring is spectacular.

Now, the reason I think Cannon Fodder is still worth watching is the music, like sure, I have saw a lot of criticisms about it and how it was trying to be deep without giving that much of a meaning to its anti war message, but the music is so good, it is almost like a very cool music video and I feel that if they went further with the music direction it would have come up as even more original and special. The music sounds out of a carnival at times, it has so many mischievous and bright tunes filled with joy which you will imagine contrast a lot with the setting. There are is also a more atmospheric piece that is hard to describe and I really enjoyed too.

One thing that also stuck with me is its depiction of the influence that has environment. Like sure the whole canon metaphor is a bit too plain, but I think it's works more than just an anti war statement. It works also as a statement about the construction of environments. Look at the kid in that short, he only knows the city working for the canons, his dream is to be able to push the canon button one day, he is nothing more than canon fodder. It is something that makes me terribly afraid because it makes me think, am I just a result of the things that have been given to me? How much are my dreams and aspirations built based on the objectives of the country and/or environment where I live and was raised in? I could very well be fodder, just for something else that I am not noticing, because that's all what the world that contains me shows me it is possible to do.

7/10

[bossbutch]

umineko chapter 4 (2/2)

the fantasy action sequences have gotten significantly more tolerable because they've gotten significantly funnier. also i've gotten ahead of bryn's more detailed readalong!

the scene where Krauss is fighting a goat man and virgilia is comparing their Numerical Power Levels but there's all these arbitrary multipliers ( and goat's power level goes way down when he talks about his family and being a week away from retirement etc etc) is mwah chef's kiss

the Reveal of kasumi reading the definition of uu-uu in the grimoire is my favorite moment so far. god damn. eva-beatrice being all star wars emperor "let the hate flow through you" was also pretty funny.

so battler isn't asumu's son! and he learns this through his own red truth? which i think removes "perspective" from the red truth, right? because from his point of view he's her son, just like from beato's point of view shannon is nonhuman. whether he's kyrie's kid or there's a *third* wife i'm not sure. it'd be fucked up if it's a/nother beato.

so we end with a big blue vs red sequence where battler says what he thinks has happened, which lambda says is mostly wrong but is a good "check your theories" speed bump.

game 1: • stake deaths being shot and then staked after death seems guaranteed • yeah, no magic for The First Set of Murders • Eva and hideyoshi: killed by kanon, door locked through Device X. when 'he' "discovered" the bodies he had ample time to draw the circle • kanon faked 'his' death, so beato can't say in red it was homicide. then he killed the last 3 and natsuhi. beato says "i guarantee the identity of all unidentified corpses" but if he Wasn't a corpse that wouldn't apply. game 2: • "from the time maria received the key to when rosa unsealed it the next day it passed through no one's hands" = rosa took the key before we saw her taking it? though idk if she actually Killed the first six she was definitely involved • if kanon is A Beatrice then 'him' fighting her goons over jessica can metaphorically be kanon having trouble deciding whether to kill her or not. occam's razor says if there's no body and A Violent Kanon shows up later then fake kanon was real kanon game 3: • the only mystery i think Matters is who killed nanjo. he recognized the killer and begged for his life, maybe he knew what their plan was? but i don't know who did it. beato seems to imply that the killer took the identity of a dead person (other than kinzo, kanon, jessica, battler, or eva). • i guess "how did george leave the guest house" is worth solving but i haven't thought about it much game 4: • "all those present at the family conference acknowledge the presence of kinzo" yeah it's his house. his body is there. he's still metaphorically present and genji and shannon? and associates are carrying out his wishes if shannon and kanon aren't "real humans" it provides space for two Persons X but is also means the cousins can fall in love and make and break promises to objects/ideals/whatever. battler's direct narrative describes kanon as "a slender boy" who can manipulate a wheelbarrow so if kanon isn't present as a person (and not part of an existing member of the 18 or nothing) i'm calling bullshit battler's sin that beato wants an apology for was breaking his promise to come back for shannon. is episode 2 Suit Beato derived from shannon? every beato is derived from trauma, so her breaking the mirror is a metaphor for Some Other Traumatic Event magic metaphors: "beato prime", who was captured and abused by kanon and is almost certainly dead, had a child with him, beato 2. one of the two of them imagine magic genji (ronovo), magic kumasawa (virilia if she isn't beato 1) and gaap, for the same reason maria made sakutaro, To Cope. and the seven sisters and the bunnies are personified weapons. but what are lambda and bernie representing? they might just represent their goals ("battler denies beato/ finding the emotional truth" and "battler tries but is never successful because he lacks love" ) and either way beato doesn't get closure. i think beato will "win" but her real goal is not to kill everybody and take them to heaven but rather to get some catharsis from battler for what his family has done to her/ all the beatos. alternatively the other witches exist for no reason other than adding yuri

[grumpygreenwitch]

The Witches and Wizards Job 34-35-36

AO3 Link

Buy me a Ko-fi?

Remember: Tumblr has no algorithm. Reblogs give me life.

1-2 + 3-4 + 5-6 + 7-8 + 9-10-11 + 12-13-14 + 15-16 + 17-18-19 + 20-21-22 + 23-24-25 + 26-27-28 + 29-30 + 31-32-33 + 34-35-36 + 37-38 + 39-40-41-42

THIRTY FOUR

Nate closed his eyes for a moment in the dark.

They had the real portrait, for now.

They had the real Grandmother, for now.

They had Koschei, upstairs, for now.

But the first was going to cost them Parker, the second Eliot and the third Dresden, and at that point the cost got way too high for any con to be feasible. "Hardison," he said at last, beginning to move once again. "Endgame."

"Wh- I'm not ready, Nate!"

"Be ready. Sophie, Fedorov, go make sure our consultant stays in one piece. More or less. I need to borrow your bodyguard for a second, Fedorov."

"Oh, sure, give us the easy job," Sophie shot at him.

"Well, you gave him to me," the Russian agreed easily, looking mildly intrigued. "I suppose you're free to take him back. Are you looking for your thief?"

"Parker?" Nate seemed nothing if not puzzled at the question. "No, she's fine. She just got too close to something that fried her earbud which, you know. Inconvenient. No, I just don't want the Blackbird to know Nick exists. Yet."

Nick's grin broadened in delight at that. "Oh, you understand ambushes. I like you."

"That is slightly terrifying coming from you," the mastermind admitted cheerfully as the group split up. "Eliot, the non-negotiable factor."

"Yeah, I got her." The hitter had slipped into the mansion's vast basement without a problem; it was the one place where there were no visible guards. It was a vast, echoing space, a little dusty but overall in good order. He could see plenty of lights over his head when he shone his phone's flashlight up. Several smaller spaces had been partitioned out: a pantry, a cava, a corner full of totes marked 'Christmas', 'Halloween', 'Easter' and so on. It was also one of the few rooms that betrayed the house's age: salt streaked the concrete walls. There was a good reason why most houses along the New England coastline didn't have basements; once you got inland, sure. But where the land had been stolen from the ocean, the ocean was ever eager to reclaim it, one drop at a time if need be.

He'd found the room behind the old cast iron furnace and its piping, which had been disconnected but never removed. It was one of the few rooms that, like the cava, showed signs that care had gone into its construction, the walls solid when he ran a hand over them. Eliot guessed it was a man-cave of some sort. Light came in from under the door, a steady golden glow which he figured came from the glow-sticks the leshy favored. He could hear the rough, gravelly voices of the leshy and the more familiar Russian speech of the humans with them. The light, the hitter knew, was for their benefit; the leshy couldn't fully see in the dark, but it also didn't hamper them. He counted voices, and steps, walked back to the cava and the pantry, prepared his weapon of choice, took off the earbud and the earclip with the mirror shard, and walked right back to the door, knocking jauntily on it. "Tea service!"

The voices on the other side went silent. "We asked for nothing," someone replied.

"Look, man, I just know I have wine, cheese, some of them lil' toast things, a whole spread of jams -"

The door opened a crack. A man stared out, mouth open and ready to take Eliot's head off, metaphorically, until he saw the massive tray and the two bottles of wine the hitter was carrying.

A leshy came up behind the man, growling quietly. It, too, paused, sniffing. Eliot lifted up the tray, where he'd painstakingly smeared every sweet jam he'd been able to find in the pantry, and grinned winningly. Man and leshy crossed a look, and the door opened all the way. Eliot passed the human one of the wine bottles, winked and stepped in. The door closed behind him.

Two broken bottles, a dented tray, an utterly thrashed room and eight unconscious thugs later, the hitter knocked politely on the bathroom door. "Ma'am? You there?"

The door opened a crack. "That sounded very exciting."

"It gets the blood flowing," Eliot admitted as the old woman stepped out. She could've just as easily been stepping down from the portrait, stern and austere, though there was an odd fragility to her that was not part of Sokolov's work. Her silver hair was neatly braided back and she wore an elegantly simple white blouse with little golden mice for buttons, a flaring skirt with a repeating pattern of dancing farmfolk, and a black knotwork shawl. She glanced appreciatively at two leshy embedded into one of the walls as Eliot escorted her out of the bathroom and through the ruins of the room, and then clung to his arm with a small, very ladylike swear.

"Are you alright?"

She attempted a smile. "He has taken much from me," she admitted. "I did not realize how much until he trapped me. Arrogance makes fools of the best of us." She shrugged a little. One of the thugs groaned, sprawled among the wreck of a low shelf and a scattering of movies. Without missing a beat she aimed one of her sensibly-clad feet and kicked him hard enough to bowl him over and knock him out once again. "What now?"

Eliot managed to stop staring long enough to dig in his pocket for the enchanted mirror shard and clip it back on his ear. "I've got Grandmother, Nate."

"Give it to her."

"Got it." Eliot reached into an inner pocket of his dress jacket and smiled at the old woman. "Got something for you, ma'am. I believe it's yours to begin with." He offered her a plain, coarse square of blue fabric, neatly folded, and she stared at it and him in surprise and keen interest. "So, here's the plan."

While Eliot escorted his precious cargo away, mister Alexander Worthington (the Third), drove back up the driveway to the front of the mansion, yelling to all and sundry as well as at the person on the other line that he did not want to be there, he did not need to be there, he had no reason or goal to be there, not with every portrait being a fake and the seller being a con man - and a bad one, at that. He yelled a brief bout of angry Russian into the phone before hanging up and trotting furiously up the stairs. The guards on duty could scarcely believe their good luck, but they were also not about to question it, even when the Brit switched from whining on the phone to whining at them about everything and anything, the portrait failing to be produced, the outlandish nature of the company, the buffet being a joke. Coming in to find the mansion subsumed in complete darkness did nothing to appease him. He was escorted back to the main room and was there all of ten seconds before disappearing into the dark guts of the house.

They had been told, after all, to keep people in, not out. And mister Worthington (the Third) had been invited.

But only Sophie and Fedorov were close enough to the room on the top floor of the mansion to hear when Harry screamed in pain. She went very still with a little gasp; the Russian enforcer instinctively reached for his gun, and she immediately reached out to put a quelling hand over his. "That won't help," she assured him quietly. "He knew this would happen."

"That does not make me willing to let it," he countered tightly, but he drew his hand away.

"We're not going to let it," she assured him. "I need you to wait out here until it's time for you to come in."

"And how will I know when it is time?"

She smiled a little at him. "Parker will tell you," she assured him, and stepped gracefully away to knock on the room's door.

THIRTY FIVE

Koschei stalked into my room surrounded by half a dozen guards and a single floating source of pale green light. One of the guards was tugging Parker's friend along; she looked pale and terrified, and a little angry. Then again, I was probably all of those things myself, I just had more practice hiding them. "Is this how you treat your guests, Blackbird? Who's your friend?"

He didn't seem to hear my taunt. He rushed over, picked me up by the front of the very nice shirt and vest I was wearing, and lifted me up. He was about my height, which made him taller than the average person, and I was sure he had plenty of muscle to pick people up right off their their feet. But I was just tall enough, just heavy enough, that he couldn't quite pull the trick on me. "What did you do, Dresden," he snarled at me, and it wasn't really a question.

Golly, the list was endless, and I wasn't about to give him even one breath of it without a fight. "Getting a little grabby, aren't we? I don't know what you mean."

"I mean my guests are tearing this place apart down there. I mean my associates think I tried to poison them just now. I mean the Dredgers think I've stolen from them! I mean," he leaned closer until we were barely dodging a Soulgaze, him and me, "that it took me three tries to create the bloody light, so what. did you. do."

"To be fair, you did steal from them."

He dropped me like a sack of flour. "Stone," he said, "disarm him."

His head of security moved forward, but it was one of the guards who'd brought me up to the room who sucker-punched me, driving all the breath right out of me and setting the bruise the leshy had given me to red-hot throbbing pain. I went down on one knee but they pulled me back up, which made my bad shoulder really sing, and they frisked me down with ruthless efficiency. By the time someone dumped me back on my chair they'd taken my staff, my wand, both bracelets, my wallet. They even took off my duster before zip-tying my hands behind the back of the chair. Someone put their hands on me and tried to take my pentacle bracelet, and my anger suddenly came flooding back, helping me gather my scattered wits. I saw the guard kneeling in front of me and snapped my head forward. Forehead to nose, not nose to nose, Eliot had told me, and I tried to remember that.

It was a little harder when I knew the nose I was aiming for wasn't there, but the crunch of the glamour nose was still deeply satisfying. The guard staggered and fell back. Heavy hands yanked me back to the seat and I got punched again, but nothing was going to take away my satisfaction. I heard Jessamine make a little squeak of terror, and then someone shoved her in a chair next to me. "Are you alright?" she whispered at me.

"I've been better," I admitted, trying to get my breath back. Someone had tied my thumbs and index fingers together - while magic was a matter of will and intent, most wizards were trained to use tools, words and gestures to focus their power, like my staff, the bracelets. The words I used were mostly nonsense, but they made sense to me. And while I didn't often use my bare hands, I did tend to fall back on gestures when I didn't have access to anything else. Obviously Koschei knew that as well as I did. I started to work as best I could on tightening the zip-tie further; it wasn't much.

Someone caught my head in a rough grip and yanked the earclip off, handing it off to Koschei. "What is this?" he demanded, sniffing it. "Why does it smell fam-" The most painful feedback sound came out of the earclip and everyone in the room cringed. Koschei threw the earclip on the table along with everything else. "A machine, Dresden? Really?"

"Well, you know, any port in a storm and all that." I had to admire the quick-thinking of Alec-not-a-burger-Hardison. I could think of no better way to disguise the little mirror shard than making it act like the piece of technology it definitely wasn't.

"Well. That tells one much about your magic, does it not," he declared scornfully, flicking his fingers. The guards left me alone. Someone brought him a chair and he sat before me, fussing with his robe first, then with the items his goons had taken from me. "Toys." He rolled my wand between his fingers, and then pocketed it, the asshole. "Scraps. You are many things, Dresden, but I hesitate to even call you a wizard."

He hadn't taken the pin on the collar of my shirt, or my necklace. He hadn't caught onto the shirt.

"Now, what did you do with my painting?"

"Portrait."

His magic hit me hard and fast, like talons closing around my heart and squeezing, slow and relentless. The pain was immediate, burning like acid. I've had worse, but I wasn't about to let him know that. I made what I figured were appropriate noises for someone being tortured. Fortunately, I've had a lot of experience on what that sounds like.

"I have had my patience thoroughly tried tonight, Dresden. It would behoove you to indulge me." He let go of me and smiled that grin that made me want to punch him. "Unless you want the young lady to know what it feels like to disagree with me."

"You won't hurt her. You need her." I grinned at him, but I could feel it in my face, it wasn't friendly.

"I didn't do anything," Jessamine breathed, frightened. Apparently I'd done my job so well I'd spooked the angry right out of her. Time to give her back some agency.

"He can't tell his own portrait from the fakes. He n-" The vise closed around my heart and my lungs, boiling venom, crushing harder this time. "Needs you to make sure he's got the real one," I gritted out, teeth bared at Koschei.

"I am sincerely wondering if you are worth the trouble of keeping you alive, Dresden."

"Get in line, you old bird. You think tonight ends with you winning? You've lost everything. You filled this house with fake portraits, and now you can't tell yours from the copies. The Dredgers know you cheated them. Some of the most powerful people in the European and Asian supernatural underworlds think you were out to kill them. I don't know what you were after but man, you're certainly raking up some heavy-duty debts in the process, aren't you? Can't wait to see you try to squirm out of them-"

Unsurprisingly, he struck again. This time his power locked not just around my heart but my lungs, up my throat. I could taste the foulness of it on the back of my mouth, blackest magic. I heard myself scream, blowing air out of my lungs just to try and get some of the foulness out with it. "I will tell them you did it," he declared blithely. "You will not be around to defend yourself, of course."

"Leave him alone!" Jessamine yelled at him.

There was a knock on the door. Koschei let me go and stood up, and I heard him speaking to the guards. There was a sense of wary readiness in the air that made the hair on my arms stand up on end. A guard opened the door while Koschei faced it.

It's hard to explain the quality anyone's talking about when they say that something shines with the darkest light. It's a radiance that both brings details out of something while terrifying you with the sum total of them. It's the light you see from the darkest fairies, the glow around them that replaces the golden, summery haze of their counterparts.

That light, that darkest radiance, filled the door and spilled into the room. The guards all took a step back; Koschei took two and squeaked like a toddler. Fear and cold came in with the woman who stepped through the door. "So this is where you are hiding," she purred in a tone of such menace that I felt cold sweat break out along my spine, and I wasn't even the one she was talking to.

I'd wrought a hell of a Veil, but it wasn't just that. It was the way she spoke, the way she moved, the way she wore it. Sophie stepped into that room and she was Ekaterina Yegorov, an unknown supernatural power, a thing both beautiful and terrible, worthy of Tolkien's every written word.

"Hiding -" Koschei had to clear his throat before he could continue. "Hiding is such a strong accusation, my good lady."

She merely glided in, glancing disdainfully at the guards, who backed away nervously. "Why are you in the dark?" she demanded, flicked her fingers. On cue, the lights in the room -and only in the room- came back to bright and beautiful life.

No one there could make sense of her. The guards didn't even dare look at her directly. Koschei was still trying to figure out what she was; without that knowledge he couldn't shape a defense, a counter. "Hiding," she repeated. "Do you think disappearing will save you? After you tried to kill us all? The vampire down there is already offering a blood price on your head." She smiled. "Perhaps it will do tricks and tell prophecies. A man's head is so much more useful when separated from the body."

"My body is quite useful to me, madam, and I am rather fond of it," he declared tightly.

"Perhaps you should have thought of that before you stole Batra's pet and cheated the Dredgers. I am becoming hard-pressed to think of someone you have not upset in this house."

"You," he replied without missing a beat.

She stared at him for a brief moment… and then laughed, soft and rich and deadly. "Me," she agreed in a tiger's sated purr. "Though I am no more pleased about that trick with the Witchwell than anyone else."

"I swear on my heart, madam, that was not my doing."

"Whose, then?" She tipped her chin disdainfully in my direction. "His?" When Koschei opened his mouth she added. "Do not lie to me, wizard. You hang from a very thin thread as it is."

"No," Koschei admitted, and it was obvious to anyone with eyes that it cost him to do so. "Though that is what I mean to tell the rest of the gathering. But my people have reported that it is very likely the Prince of Thieves is inside the house."

She scoffed elegantly. "Seeking what? Fascinating as all the oddities here are, that is all they are. Oddities. Only the portrait would be worth anything to a mortal, and he would not be able to tell it apart from the fakes any more than you can."

"I believe she is in cahoots with Dresden."

"She? The Prince of Thieves is a woman?" The unknown power facing Koschei mulled on that, seemingly the only thing he'd said that had surprised her, and smiled minutely. "Well, finally the job goes to someone worth the title. But what does that have to do with anything?"

"Dresden put a marker on the portrait. A childish scrawl. I believe she's using it, he's empowered her to detect it in some fashion."

"Then use it yourself."

Koschei scowled at me and I grinned the biggest grin I could. "He can't. He tried, and then he realized that he couldn't keep it under wraps because I made it in a hurry and it's sloppy as hell, bleeding power everywhere. Everyone downstairs would sniff it out along with him if he kept it active." There were times when not having a fine touch with magic could come in so handy. "You think he's got a target painted on his back right now? That portrait's gonna be a neon arrow pointed at his head no matter where he goes with it."

She blew out an exasperated breath. "I do not care to wait until you are in pieces or in possession of the portrait, one or the other," she declared archly. "I need access to the gate it hides, and it is a critical matter."

"I am afraid, madam -"

"You should be." She stepped into his space and glowered briefly. "Send your men to bring all the portraits here. You have the foremost Sokolov expert in the room, you have angered a very powerful creature to get her here. Use her, be done with her and start soothing some tempers by handing back what things you can give back. Or do you expect the Prince of Thieves can steal a portrait that size while you're in the same room with it?"

"Even if I did, I could not open the gate for you!" he protested. "I have been unable to recover the key -"

"Oh, the key Vanya promised you?" she interrupted him sweetly, reaching down her cleavage and pulling out the platinum key. "This key?"

Koschei's mouth worked soundlessly a few times. He surged forward but she'd already tucked the key back under the folds of the dress, and she cocked a single brow at him.

He stopped.

She stepped forward, closer, until she could reach out and brush the lapels of the Blackbird's old-fashioned coat. Until the Rosalind diamond just barely brushed the fine black fabric. He went so pale he looked like a fresh corpse. "Have your men gather the portraits. I do not care where. You should not care where, as long as you have her." She nodded toward Jessamine. "I must have access to that gate before sunrise. After that, I do not care what you do, here or anywhere else. I do not care how you deal with your guests, or how they deal with you. I have one care, wizard. It is not a hard one to indulge, not given what I am willing to pay for it, yes?"

She stepped away then, and I saw Koschei reel, as did most people who were ever on the receiving end of Sophie Deveraux's talents.

Someone knocked on the door again. "Oh, that is for me," she told the guards cheerfully, and flicked her fingers at them. "Well, open it."

They obeyed before Koschei could say anything; that's the way with the sort of thug the Russian wizard preferred: not too bright, really good at violence, nearly indestructible but very much keyed to instinctively respond to the authority of the biggest power in the room.

I caught my breath. Parker stepped in, her hands laced over her head, angry and stone-faced, dressed all in skin-tight black. Just behind her, gun leveled at the base of her skull, Fedorov chivvied the thief into the room. "Kate, are you - ah, you did find him," he declared casually.

This was not the plan. None of it was part of any of the plans Ford had explained to me. I was feeling the loss of the ear-clip keenly; the only reason I could tell this was still a plan of some sort was that no one who should be was actually upset.

"Iggy!" Jessamin cried out, lunging out of her chair. One of the guards slammed her back on it none too gently.

"Hey!" Parker surged forward.

"No," the third woman in the room purred, and the thief went down like a puppet with her strings cut.

Ok, so yes, it was a plan of some sort, one I didn't know about, but I still tried to launch myself to my feet all the same. I nearly took the chair down to the floor with me.

Fedorov tipped his gun back, examined Parker, and grinned a little as he holstered it. "Show-off."

"Flatterer," she replied.

Fedorov and one of the guards brought Parker to another chair. They frisked her, found nothing beyond her phone and the non-working earbud in a pocket. "Hands in front," Koschei said when someone broke out the zip ties. "Where we can see them. One should never bind a thief's hands out of sight." He looked daunted and, looking at from his point of view, I couldn't blame him; here was a wizard as deeply attuned to the currents of magic all around him as any I'd ever met. It took that particular awareness to be able to pull off all of the magic I'd seen him work. But he wouldn't have seen anything from miss Ekaterina Yegorov. Not a breath, not a whisper, not a sigh of magic, not one single detectable little thread of energy. She'd spoken one word and the Prince of Thieves had gone down, just like that. The only possible conclusion one could draw was that she was operating way, way out of his league, a house on fire compared to his little candle.

"Thief?" Jessamine squeaked.

"Long story," Parker mumbled.

"Is Isabelle even your real name?" the young curator cried out in despair.

I saw Parker's face crumple with very real hurt. There was crap-all I could do at the moment to help her, and it made my heart hurt just as much, so I did the only thing I could - I stuck to the plan and started laughing. It's not hard; I've done my share of it when staring death or worse in the face. I knew the sound of it, I knew where it came from. I had to force it a little at the beginning, but once it got going it flowed naturally out, along with all the pain and the anger.

"What," Koschei gritted out, "are you laughing at, Dresden?"

"You," I admitted. "You and your best laid plans. You need her," I tipped my head at Jessamine, "to cooperate. The only way you're gonna get that is if you threaten her friend, so you need her," I tipped my head at Parker. "And since she's not about to tell you where the painting actually is, you need me." I beamed at him. "Ain't life a bitch. Just when you thought you finally got to kill someone."

"The night is young," the Russian wizard hissed at me.

"Maybe. But three people already found you, all cozy up here with me. How long until one of Batra's dryads sniffs you out? Or Ying Ying? I'm surprised the Dredgers aren't here already. How many guards you got willing to tangle with Mister Act and his people?" Every word was a blow that Koschei couldn't dodge, couldn't block, couldn't defend against. He'd been left primed for it, and I could only hope I was helping the plan, not hindering it.

"Mister Stone," the Blackbird said at last. "Get your people together and round up all the portraits. Bring them to the boat-house."

Stone did a nearly-visible head count before turning to his boss, his tone dubious. "All of them, sir?"

Koschei paused; his own head count was a little less obvious. "Well, the two in the main room are fakes, those can stay behind. And bring the wizard, I do not trust him out of sight." He clamped a hand on Jessamine's arm and dragged her up, his tone going to utter cordiality. "Mister Fedorov, could I possibly impose on you to bring the young lady with you?" He tipped his head at Parker. "We will further tie her up if you believe it will help."

"What's there is enough," the Russian enforcer declared blithely, moving over to Parker and tossing her over his shoulder like a sack of laundry. "I trust the lady whose protection I'm under." He grinned winningly at said lady, who beamed at him.

Stone, having finished instructing the rest of his people, moved over to me, closed a hand on the back of the chair and picked it up, with me in it. I knew instantly he was going to be a severe problem down the line; strength is not an uncommon attribute in Nevernever thugs, but Stone hadn't even paused to take a breath or brace himself. He'd simply done as he was told. I looked more closely at him, since I was being given the chance, looking for confirmation; I was pretty sure his clothes weren't painted on, but he hadn't been so close to me until that moment.

The clothes were real, well fitted, custom-made - not surprising, the man was too big to fit in anything off the rack. It was as he shifted to wrap his free arm around me so I couldn't jostle out of the chair that his sleeve hiked up, just a bit. Just enough for me to see that there were no wrinkles where his wrist was bending, no hair, no definition to his knuckles. His nails were engraved - they looked real from afar, but I was less than a foot away.

Well, crap. I started running down the list of any magic I knew that could scratch a golem, let alone take one down, as we left the room and moved through the darkened hallways, led by Koschei's pale light spell. It was a really short list and I didn't have any angelic swords at hand or dragon's blood on tap.

"Let's keep in mind I need to breathe, Stone, alright?" I told him when his arm tightened a little too much over my sore ribs.

"Let us keep in mind that I do not care, wizard," he replied indifferently, considering the chair and tossing it carelessly aside in favor of throwing me over his shoulder, like Fedorov was carrying Parker, except he hung me with my head facing his chest.

"Gosh, who spit in your cornflakes? Is Koschei holding your keystone hostage or something?"

The golem didn't hesitate. "My keystone is my own. The cornflakes, you can keep."

"Oh, hey! I didn't think golems had a sense of humor."

"Lacking one yourself, I see how you would not recognize one."

I wasn't just talking to get him to talk at that point, I was honestly astonished. "You're old."

He did glance down at me at that, as if detecting the honesty of emotion in my voice, and why wouldn't he? I'd never even heard of a golem capable of independent action, or thought. To have one that also had a sense of wit and levity was mind-boggling. "Age and craftsmanship," he admitted.

"And you waste it all working for him."

"I enjoy service. I do not see the point of ethics or morals. The first is for everyone. The others are mortal fripperies."

I wasn't going to win that argument, not with a golem. "But, that aside, why? Why the Blackbird?"

"He promised I would be challenged." The golem looked down at me once more, then ahead once again. "And I have been."

We got out of the mansion with no one the wiser, though it sounded like the scuffle that had started in the main room had spilled over past the bar and into the dinning room. There were just too many disparate powers gathered all together in a single place; most of the time there was no violence between them because their interests didn't cross paths, and if the auction had gone along as the Dredgers had planned, they never would have. But Koschei and his games had made them all linger. The Blackbird had no one to blame but himself for the mess that he'd brewed.

Hanging there, over a shoulder as broad and solid as a rock, I came to an abrupt realization: I'd been there before. Many times, actually. I was either famous or infamous, depending on who you ask, for throwing myself off the deep end and into the thick of my enemies, and hoping I could wade back out. Most of the time I'd managed, but I usually limped out exhausted, bloody and battered, and there were losses, in friendship, in love, in trust, that were so great they were injuries in their own right.

Koschei was a power that should have left me in that kind of shape. Hell, that roomful of people back at the mansion would've probably loved to take me apart one piece at a time. I had no idea what sort of relationship the Jade and Red Courts had, but I'd never met a vampire that would've passed up the opportunity to get a little debt owed to them from another vamp, and I know the fairy twins would have loved to have me on a leash, because that was just a thing with every fairy in my life barring one.

But there I was. Barring the fact I was hogtied, or that Koschei had taken most of my tools away, I was literally brimming with power, relatively in one piece, and what injuries I did have had been tended to. I still had two aces up my sleeve, three if you counted my pendant, which had come clutch in so many occasions that I really ought to start putting it at the top of the list.

I was as good for the fight as it got, and I had the Leverage people to thank for it. For the time to prep, for the research, for the tools, but above all for covering the bases I couldn't. Good as I was at fighting magic with magic, there was still only one of me. With Leverage, it didn't matter if the leshy came at me or someone tried to rob me or if I couldn't make sense of the puzzle pieces, or if they were all to be found in the electronic ether. These people had a phalanx formation that they'd refined to perfection, and they'd made me part of it without missing a step. It felt both nice and terrifying. Imagine what I'd be able to do with a team like them backing me up. Imagine what they could pull off with a wizard on their corner.

But I also knew it was not a tenable situation. It wasn't just Hardison; we were actually working together just fine, him and me. The language and the tools might be different, but we were both doing basically the same job. It was Ford, who try as he might still couldn't quite get to the believing part. It was Sophie, who thought she needed magic to pull off a grift when really, she didn't. It was Eliot, going up against a golem. It was all of them, running into a Burning Witchwell if I'd arrived in Boston a day late.

It was Boston, burning me to cinders and brushing me off her hands without a second thought. A city can't help what it is. I was Chicago's wizard, I knew my city, its moods, its weather, its seasons, the things about it that empowered me, strengthened me. Did Boston deserve a wizard of its own? Absolutely. It had to be someone better than me at self-control. Swinging power like I did in Boston would get me killed sooner rather than later, and it wouldn't even take a bad guy.

I heard the sound of the surf and became aware of the nearby press of the North Atlantic. I'd expected it to be a grounding influence, like Lake Michigan, but instead it seethed with dormant, subtle layers of power, restive and waiting. Then we were in the boat-house, an elegant single-story house done in that marine kitschy style that says an interior designer got paid very well and no one actually lived in the premises. The open wrap-around porch surrounded two sides of the boat-house, reaching for the stirring surf. Off to one side a dock had been partially dug out, lined with rip-rap and attached to the boat-house like an oversized closed garage. There were two yachts docked there, and an assortment of smaller craft pinned against the walls.

Fedorov automatically tried to flip on the light switches by the door, but nothing happened. A murmur and a gesture from Sophie, and the lights were on.

"You really must tell me how you are doing that." Koschei smiled at her as he walked in, dismissing his own light spell and clapping his hands so every door in the boat-house swung open.

"I asked the little voice in my head for help," she told him with a graceful gesture.

He gave her a strained, polite little chuckle. "Mister Stone, take the rest of our guests to the boat-house. If they give you any trouble, drown them a little."

"Hey!" Jessamine protested.

"Oh, no, not you, my dear," Koschei had clamped his hand around one of her arms, and dragged her back to him none too gently. "The drowning bit is just for Dresden and the princess."

"How do you even drown someone just a little?" Parker muttered.

"Not the question to be asking present company," I replied as Stone took a few steps onto the docks, making them groan with his weight, and threw me down onto the boards roughly. I rolled onto my good shoulder to try and protect myself, and Parker got tossed right on top of me, driving the rest of my breath out.

I felt her brush her hands against mine and suddenly the mage-knot binding the thumb and index of my good hand was gone; I felt her press something familiar against my palm before Stone put his foot against her side and shoved her off to one side.

Seriously, HOW?!

I slid my wand up my sleeve, closed my good hand into a fist over my shield bracelet and decided not to question it. Magic is magic.

"Why?" She countered immediately.

"Because mister Stone might actually oblige with a demonstration, and he doesn't need to breathe."

Parker looked up. The golem looked implacably down. "Oh." She scooted to sit next to me as I dragged myself up, and we both leaned against one another. "He's not really gonna hurt Jess, is he?"

"No, he needs her. He may bluff her, he may scare her, but it doesn't profit him to hurt her. He might hurt you to scare her, though."

Fedorov chuckled a little. "The wizard is not being fully truthful with you."

Parker looked up at me, then at him, then at me again. "Harry?"

I hadn't wanted to say it, but the Russian wasn't leaving me a choice. "He might also hurt you to get to me," I had to admit. "Because the only one who knows where the original is, if Stone's people can't find it, is you. And if you won't tell him -" she scoffed pointedly "- the only one who can safely locate it by the marker on it is me."

She frowned. She looked up at Stone. "What if I tell you where it is?"

"Parker!"

"That would -" the golem began.

I kicked at Stone's shin. It was a moot effort; I knew it and he knew it. I might as well be kicking a piece of concrete. Stone bent down, picked me up by the throat, and let me hang there, unable to breathe and my feet a good few inches off the dock, while he continued speaking in the same calm tone. "That would make matters go faster."

"Faster meaning you and Dresden will die quicker," Fedorov pointed casually.

"But he'll let Jess go?"

I kicked at her. I was two lengths of my leg too far, but dammit, Parker!

"Untrue." Stone leveled an even gaze on Fedorov, then shook me a little, until starbursts of blackness began to swim in front of my eyes, the rest of me tingling unpleasantly. Ok, ok, no more kicking. "It profits him immensely to return miss Lochlin to mister Batra unharmed. It profits him reasonably to have the Prince of Thieves, you, owe him a life-debt." He turned to look at me. "The wizard, he almost certainly will kill."

"No! You go tell him I will tell him where the original is, but he's got to let us all go, Jess and Harry and me! All of us!"

Fedorov and Stone crossed a look. The Russian enforcer looked as dubious as he was amused.

"Why are you here?" the golem suddenly asked Fedorov.

The Russian aimed a thumb at the inside of the boat-house. " The lady promised me an interesting night. My safety was guaranteed." The boards where we were all standing creaked and groaned once again, and Fedorov looked down, then up at Stone with open curiosity. "Should I worry her?"

The world was beginning to blur into colors without shape when Stone let my feet touch the ground again. "Mind yourself, wizard," he warned me, and shoved me down. I went sprawling on my back, landing on my zip-tied hands with all of my weight. Stone bent down and picked up Parker by the front of her skin-tight black sweater, and threw her over a shoulder.

"Hey!"

"Mind the wizard, please," the golem told Fedorov. "He has a bodyguard and no one seems to be able to tell me where he's gone off to." When the Russian gestured agreeably, Stone went into the house.

I laid there for a long moment, examining my circumstances, considering my options and mostly just getting my breath back. "You could've let me lie to her," I told Fedorov.

"I could," he admitted. "But I am coming to realize a lie of kindness is no better than any other lie."

"I'm not her uncle."

He snorted in humorless amusement. "No. But you are her friend. Respect what she has given you."

I had no good answer to that, because he was right. Every time I hid something from the people around me, every time I lied or kept secrets, my friends, the people I cared about, those who depended on me, ended up in trouble, or hurt, or worse. And there was a lot worse in my world that hurt or dead. So I just laid there, staring up at the beams of the open ceiling in the boat-house, with nets keeping floats and boards and kayaks and paddles safe.

The door to the boat-house opened again and Koschei stalked out, dragging Jessamine with him. Behind him came Stone and Parker, the golem stepping carefully on the boards of the dock. trying to keep the complaining from the wood to a minimum, not that it helped. Behind them all came the beautiful, deadly woman in the indigo dress, who moved immediately to Fedorov's side. The wizard was back to his tooth-rottingly cheerful self. "It is a promise easily given, easily kept," he assured Parker. "Give me the original, prove that it is the original, and all three of you can leave safe and sound at once."

"Parker, it's a tr-"

Koschei turned and whipped a hand at me, and his power choked the voice right out of my throat. It didn't matter, she was far too quick for it. "What does he mean it's a trap?"

"How would I know?" Koschei replied archly. "You have what you asked for, after all, no?" He spread his arms. "I am being very generous, all things considered. You have stolen from me, after all. I could just pry the knowledge out of your head and be done with it."

I saw her chew restlessly on her lip, but without the ear bud I didn't know if there was an ongoing plan, if she was winging things, if everything was going to hell in a handbasket. Jessamine looked both frightened and mutinous, but she wasn't making a peep.

"You'll let all three of us go. You won't do anything to stop us, or to hurt us."

"On my power I swear it. Provided you deliver the correct portrait to me."

"And you won't have anyone else stop us or hurt us, either, like him, or them." She gestured at Stone, then glowered at the Russian mobster and his companion.

"Ah, clever princess," Koschei smiled. "They will not." He glanced back. "I'm not even entirely sure while the young prince is still here."

"We're still willing to put a bid on the portrait," Fedorov assured him mildly, tucking his hands in his pockets. "Unless you have decided not to sell?"

"Oh, no, no, I prefer to keep that portrait as far away from my person as possible."

I wanted to yell. I wanted to scream the obvious trap at her. I wanted to launch myself at Koschei and shake that smarmy, condescending smirk off his face. But he had Jessamine, Stone had Parker, and I was choking on black, poisonous magic. Not to mention I had every reason to believe this was still part of Ford's plan, whatever that plan might be, but without my ear clip or Parker's bud I had no way of knowing if we'd gone off the rails half a dozen death threats back. I was about ready to sell my soul, or at least a kidney, for any information.

That was when Nate Ford stepped out of one of the yachts and hopped lightly down onto the dock, and I realized I hadn't been worried enough before. "Well, you're in luck," he said mildly, a slightly rumpled, harmless-looking man. "Because it's not even on the grounds anymore."

THIRTY SIX

You ever get that feeling in the pit of your stomach, when you thought you knew the shape of your life, the world and everything else, and then one little thing goes out of whack and the entire house of cards comes tumbling down?

It felt a little like that, watching Ford come up on us. Though from the look on Koschei's face, he was feeling a whole lot more of it. "You." For a moment I wished I could pack all the conflicting emotions the Russian wizard put into the one tiny word, but then again that would mean I'd fucked up nearly as badly as he had and you know what? I was good.

"Me," Ford agreed, walking up calmly. "The sensible one, you said."

"I am allowed an occasional lapse in judgement." Koschei was trying hard to stick to that smarmy avuncular cheer but it was cracking hard at the seams.

"Are you? 'Cuz you've piled up, uh, a number of lapses tonight -"

"Where is my painting?"

"A painting," Ford replied, "is just about any sort of paint you put on a medium. Canvas, paper, wood. A portrait is specifically a painting of a person, or persons."

"I am aware of the difference," Koschei ground out.

"Are you?" Nate nodded politely at Fedorov and Sophie. They both nodded back minutely. He gave me a very level look where I was, still sprawled on the boards of the dock. He didn't even glance at Parker, but his eyes lingered on Jessamine. It struck me then: the curator was the only person there not in the con who could link Sophie to the rest of us. Ford was no longer gambling on her being innocent of what was going on; he was outright betting she'd help.

"Sir, I would prefer to believe you sensible a little bit longer," Koschei ground out. "I want my painting back or I will have to start turning you and your allies," he gestured at Parker and me, "inside out as creatively as I can."

The mastermind made vague appeasing gestures. "Ok, ok, no need to get violent. Alright. So, uh." Ford paused to think for a moment; the man's showmanship was flawless and I was absolutely taking notes. "Let's do it this way: you give me proof that you still have Grandmother lined up and ready to go into her cage - uh, your cage. And I give you the portrait."

The silence turned into a nearly solid thing, broken only by the surf outside and the gentle lapping of the waves against the pillars of the dock. "She," Koschei's voice had turned hard and dark. I felt that finally something of the real Blackbird, the creature behind the fairy tales, the real monster, was coming to the surface, poisonous and deadly, "is ready."

"Is she?" Ford said with a deceptive apathy that was nothing but ice under the thinnest of veneers.

Koschei stared at Ford. Ford stared at the water. The Blackbird suddenly shoved Jessamine at Stone and gestured to the surf, drawing up a perfect, thin sheet of motionless water. He spun his hands in a circle, partitioning off a piece the size of an ornamental mirror. He murmured in Russian, then spoke sharply, making the water ripple.

He'd summoned a perfect scrying circle while still keeping me gagged. And he hadn't even hesitated, or paused to gather up his strength or focus his will. I had to keep reminding myself that, no matter what happened, if it came to a throwdown with Koschei he'd be punching down, and I'd need every counter I'd prepared for it.

Koschei spoke twice more, sharper and sharper each time.

Ford rubbed idly at his cheek.

Koschei threw the mastermind a brief, and entirely murderous, glare, passed his hand over the rippling surface, stilling it again before he called out once more. This time, the rough voice of a leshy answered him. Koschei and the leshy spoke in Russian, the wizard's tone growing angrier the longer the conversation went on. In the end he let out a furious yell and the water went flying in every direction when he threw his hands out in a fury. "What," he hissed at Ford, "have you done."

Ford seemed to ponder that question carefully. "You're going to have to be more specific. Last I checked you had like seven plans going off tonight, and I only accounted for four of them. You know, the ones I was interested in." He shrugged indifferently.

"Who are you?"

"I -"

"WHERE IS SHE?!"

The lights flickered and faltered, the glass on the nearby windows of the boat-house's wraparound porch rattled. The yachts rocked uneasily in their moorings. Willing to find any port in a storm, Jessamine pressed a little closer to Stone, who looked down in mild surprise. Fedorov shifted to put himself between everyone else and his companion.

I tightened my grip on my wand. When Stone had thrown me down, all of my weight and all of the golem's momentum had come crashing down on the zip tie with which I'd been restrained. It had snapped. I was loose except for the wizard's peace-knot on the thumb and index of my bad hand.

"She's right here," Ford declared mildly. "I mean, she's been here all along. I thought you'd - well, she was your teacher for centuries, probably more depending on who you ask," Nate sounded politely disbelieving, and vaguely embarrassed, as if Koschei had grabbed the wrong fork at a fancy dinner and were trying to butter toast with it. "You haven't figured it out yet?"

Slowly, unwillingly, the poison green gaze turned to the only woman on the docks that he could not account for.

Ekaterina Yegorov laid a gentle hand on Fedorov's shoulder and spoke in soft Russian, and very much not with Sophie's voice. He dipped his head courteously and stepped back and for the first time in who knew so many centuries master and apprentice faced each other off.

[adamwatchesmovies]

Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker (2006)

Most movies are obviously good or bad. Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker (or simply Stormbreaker in certain regions) has what it takes to entertain young teens but its low points are subterranean. I hesitated to call it a miss until I saw the villains. This adaptation of the book by Anthony Horowitz is derivative of every spy movie you've ever seen. Even if you can forgive that, there’s no way you can take the bad guys seriously.

Orphaned at a young age, Alex Rider (Alex Pettyfer in yet another bad YA Novel adaptation) is recruited by MI-6 when his uncle (Ewan McGregor) is killed in action. His mission? Pose as a contest winner and get close to billionaire Darrius Sayle (Mickey Rourke) to find out the real reason he created “Stormbreaker”, a computer system he claims will change the world.

It’s ridiculous to believe a 14-year-old would be recruited by a government agency but that’s part of the fantasy. Turns out Alex has been subconsciously trained by his uncle for years. He can stand toe-to-toe with ruthless thugs (in cleverly conceived action scenes by John Woo that are unfortunately not convincingly shot). He just needs the chance to prove himself. Then he’ll have the opportunity to get his revenge… and save the world too. In Bond-like fashion, Alex is given a variety of amusing gadgets disguised as everyday “kid” objects. A yoyo, a pen and a Nintendo DS (available in stores now!). Those are pretty cool.

Whenever Stormbreaker starts winning you over with its teenage charms, a disappointment is unfortunately right around the corner. When they introduce Mickey Rourke’s Darrius Sayle, you’ll be flabbergasted. With pimp-like clothes, a cane, a ponytail and blue eyeliner, he looks like a caricature. You think that’s as bad as it’s going to get but then Missi Pyle as Nadia Vole opens her mouth. Her accent is so bad and cartoonish it’s like she’s in a comedy sketch.

And then, there are the contrivances and coincidences, not to mention the poor planning. Sayle has a personal vendetta against the Prime Minister (Robbie Coltrane) so he’s filled the Stormbreaker computers with a deadly virus. Not a computer virus; a green liquid that will kill millions of children when his old enemy presses a big red button as part of the launching ceremony. Said big red button is encoded to launch the virus only if the Prime Minister presses it. This means Sayle couldn’t release the virus (the literal virus. I can’t get over it) even if he wanted to!

This sort of logical head-scratcher isn’t alone. It’s accompanied by a double-whammy of bumping into the right person, at the right time. To prevent the big button from being pressed, Alex desperately needs help. Who happens to be at the ceremony providing security? None other than the soldiers he was training with a week ago. The authorities must’ve had a great deal of confidence in them considering their first mission is this high-profile. Alex uses one of their weapons and destroys the button. His evil scheme down the toilet, Style runs away. Alex goes to pursue him but oh no! Traffic! How could he possibly catch up? Well by asking his school crush, Sabina (Sarah Bolger) for a ride! She just happens to be riding a horse right outside the building! Sure, why not?

Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker is not a Harry Potter ripoff in the same way as the Billy Owens or Percy Jackson franchises but it’s pretty clear it wanted to cash in on the craze. An orphaned boy who discovered he belongs to a secret organization, access to special powers/resources, a film series whose leading man is destined to grow into a hunk for the girls, action scenes to appeal to the boys, a twist on an old formula to make it fresh (in this case, James Bond). Yeah, it fits. Unfortunately, this first chapter has none of the metaphorical magic needed to have lasting power. Plus, it’s just not a good movie. Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker is yet another mid-2000s flick that ends on a note promising a sequel that never happened. (July 31, 2020)

[mariasklodowskastwixbar]

13. First fandom you ever wrote for?

22. Do you listen to anything while you write?

31. Do you have any OCs? Tell us about them!

Tysm for the ask!! I am kissing you on the mouth, anon

Ask game link

The first fandom i wrote for was Warrior Cats. I still kinda remember it. Squirrelflight was the leader of Thunderclan (because I was based), Twigbranch was deputy (I accept Ivypool as well), and I think Jayfeather was still the medicine cat, I don't remember that part. It was about Sparkpelt's kit (before she had canon kits) named Heartkit. I don't remember her warrior name tho

I listen to the exact same song over and over again that gave me inspo to the fic or chapter. Sometimes I'll even name the fic after it lmfao.

Too many ocs. Basically all my fic is about ocs. I didn't like writing canon characters initially because I saw people get harassed for mischaracterizing their blorbos, which is probably why I wrote so much warrior cats fic. Every character can be an oc if you just set it in the far future or in a completely original clan. Anyway, the ocs I've published fic about are as follows

Jerzy Majewski- the sole survivor of fallout 4. A bi trans man who was married to a trans woman named Maryanna and had a son named Stefan. He carried the pregnancy. He sides with the Railroad and ends up in a relationship with Nick and Hancock and raises Synth Stefan. He's a very nervous, catholic guilty man who is just going through it 24/7. After blowing up the Institute, he tries to commit suicide by wandering off into the Glowing Sea, which only serves to turn him into a glowing one. Something something Jesus metaphor

Sabatino Romeo- the courier of fallout nv. A queer trans man who fully believes he is the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. He was raised in a freaky cult in oregon where his mother was a nun, but burned at the stake for getting pregnant and giving birth. Because no father came forward, she was scornfully referred to as the 'virgin mary'. So obviously, that makes Sabatino Jesus. Gets shot by Benny, la de da, sides with Caesar's Legion. Is married by Caesar to Vulpes. Gets renamed to Phoenix Invictus. The two of them take over the legion together and become the Lords Caesar/Caesar Invictus + Caesar Inculta

Vale Columbo- the medic of team Leverage. Was married to Eliot 3 years before the start of the show and neither of them acknowledge it until season 4 hooray. She was a doctor for Doctors Without Borders but was injured and forced into retirement, the injury is what caused her and Eliot to tie the knot from a legal perspective. She is related to Columbo, as in Peter Falk Columbo. It never actually shows up in the story beyond 'oh yeah my dad was a cop' I just thought would be funny. She's bi and eventually comes out as genderqueer in the time between leverage and redemption (at which point he'll begin going by he/they)

Nico Valentino/Pyre- member of the JLU. He's a meta human from 1470s Italy who was killed and later brought back to life in the 2000s by his power. She was purchased by CADMUS to be a funky fresh living weapon (classic) and went on various retrieval/assassination missions for several years before getting kidnapped (but it's ok this time) by the League. They're initially put off by the League members (obviously) but comes around to Batman and the Vigilante eventually (and the others after that), they develop a crush on Vig in particular. It uses any/all pronouns because it doesn't really have a conscious connection to a 21st century American idea of gender and is attracted to all genders in turn.

[polgarawolf1]

Right. So this is one of the (too many to go into here) reasons why I actively dislike Brotherhood, because honestly, ex-weapons dealer ex-smuggler Dex really should be too canny/too knowledgable about the rest of the galaxy to fall for Palpatine's propaganda shill and the whole thing with Satine not knowing what's actually going on in the rest of the 'verse during the war just . . . doesn't hold up for me, at least not in the long run, given the people we know she knows and talks to (starting with Padmé, who is personally familiar with entirely too many of the atrocities actually being carried out by the Separatists and doubtlessly hears about an awful lot of the rest of them from Anakin and Ahsoka. Of course, this is also why the whole storyline with Mina Bonteri in SW: TCW shreds my poor little heart, because, you know, ditto. You cannot convince me that the reason why Dooku ends up killing Mina isn't because Padmé outright told her about several of those atrocities and Mina believed her enough to start to look into gathering evidence to present to the Separatist Senate so that Dooku would be removed from his position of power over them. The show makes it seem like it's because Mina's trying to push for peaceful talks as a means to end the war, but I truly and deeply believe it's at least as much because Dooku can sense that Mina no longer trusts him and he knows that Padmé probably spilled the beans about a lot of the sheer awfulness going on that's being actively kept from the majority of the Separatist Senators and their people).

FYI, this is also why I vacillate a lot on Satine's stance during the Clone Wars. On the one hand, yes, she's obviously the only one who gets that the game (the war) is rigged and, thus, that the only proper response is to refuse to engage (i.e., to not to play). On the other hand, we all know that she has to know (if only because of her non-Mandalorian friends, like Padmé and Obi-Wan and Ahsoka and . . . well, the list just goes on) that Mandalore isn't by a long shot the only system or people suffering and that the Separatists are amassing a list of war crimes longer than the spaces between the stars and that neutrality in the face is evil is NOT neutrality (or at least it's not just neutrality). It's complicity. It's tacit approval. It's a complete and utter failure of morality, of caring enough to do something, even if it's just to take a firm stance, one side or the other. It's bloody well choosing the side of the oppressor. And it's not just our own history that has taught us this: the history of the GFFA teaches us this, too, over and over and over again, which means she has no real excuse, at least not once she's learned more about what the war is truly like. The fact that she's right about the war being a rigged game does not save her from being a moral coward about refusing to involve herself and her people with the atrocities being committed during the Clone Wars.

So. I like Satine - or I like the idea of her, anyway. A society cannot survive on war and warriors alone. Logically speaking, there must also be doctors to patch the warriors up and farmers to keep them fed and weavers to keep them clothed and cobblers to keep them shod and merchants to help get necessites to those who need them and craftsmen to make people's homes and different craftsment to make the ships and different different craftsmen to make weapons and and and and - but I can't see her as a truly moral figure to look up to. In a way, Satine is portrayed as just as much as an extremist (if in the completely opposite direction) as Death Watch, and fanaticism (of any flavor) is just not an attractive look, folks. Plus, every time I think about her being the leader of the Council of Neutral Systems I get metaphoric hives, because it reminds me so much of the United States refusing again and again to openly get involved in two very massive and vitally important European wars until there was literally no other choice (especially that second one, and we still managed to frak things up by not addressing the whole Soviet/Stalin issue when we had the chance to do so and could've saved so many people in Eastern Europe so many years of agony and suffering and death). I like her, but she both exhausts me and disappoints me massively.

(There's also a massive missed opportunity for storytelling here, in rgards to what a strong Mandalore and the Jedi Order could have accomplished by working together, in opposition to both the war and the corruption of the Republic Senate, and it absolutely kills me. But that's a totally different lament for a completely different rant/post.)

FYI, Satine's an awful lot like Padmé Amidala for me, because these two otherwise strong and wonderful female characters ultimately both exhaust and disappoint me in regards to the (lack of) morality of their biggest decisions, even though Padmé's failure is selfishness (even though she clearly knows better) and Satine's failure amounts to a sort of moral cowardice that makes me want to grind my teeth.

Absolutely fascinating that Dex is the one to say that Satine’s push for neutrality isn’t going to help things.  The scene isn’t without sympathy for Satine, as well as it mostly elides the point of ignoring what the Separatists are already doing so you don’t really get a deep conversation about it, but Dex has been treated as a voice of wisdom in this book and, so far, it seems to be saying that neutrality in the face of evil isn’t going to help anyone. Obi-Wan’s defense of her is that, well, Mandalore is different because its entire history is based on warfare, it would undo all her hard work, but it ignores Dex’s point here–she’s not just speaking for Mandalore, she’s pushing other systems into neutrality. And we all remember what Nute Gunray (a leader of the Separatists) did on Naboo, they’re going to do the same.  That is what neutrality means to not fight back against. The scene doesn’t really go hard one way or the other, it even introduces that characters are often biased in what they say (Obi-Wan’s feelings for Satine mean he isn’t always as clear-headed as he should be), it’s a scene that just sort of is, it’s two characters expressing their points of view in a friendly discussion, but it really struck me that Dex blatantly said that her push for neutrality isn’t going to help things. (Personally, I think Satine’s point of view is really, really empathizable for someone whose life’s work is to drag Mandalore away from war, that they’re still so wounded from the centuries and centuries of war, that they probably couldn’t be dragged into this war and I can believe that she feels other systems shouldn’t be joining in because then, what happened to Mandalore, might happen to them, too.  She is intimately aware of the cost of war and has said “no more”, even if I disagree with her, because those innocent lives were still on the line, those planets were still being bombarded with bio-chemical weapons to kill them all, they were still being kidnapped and enslaved, as evil as war is, neutrality isn’t the answer when it’s destroying people.)

[ethereal-blossom]

I'm gonna pitch in officially this time. Can I please get headcannons about Kunikida and Chuuya having to deal with moody teenager/s for a case with a s/o who gets along with the teenagers?

(Also, P.S. for CHERRI, TAKE CARE OF MY FRIEND PROPERLY OR I'LL BREAK YOUR HEART, NOT METAPHORICALLY! )

a/n: seeing your old account made me realize how long ago you requested this😳 but ashdwer this was so much fun writing! i always love your ideas.

🚨warning(s): none

masterlist

kunikida and you had been send on the same mission. the only witnesses of the crime scene? teenagers. unfortunately for your man, it were moody teenagers.

now, kunikida has a bit of experience with the youth because of his previous teaching job and i like to think kunikida has a soft spot for young minds and hearts, but when they act like dazai 2.0 and get in the way of his perfect schedule-

kunikida is fine the first minute. he is professional, calm, responsible and- DID THEY INSULT HIS NOTEBOOK?

wait, it's fine. this are teenagers who just have to get educated on manners, kunikida remembered. he will just have to ask his question again of what they saw and... they made a joke about glasses. his glasses.

dazai flashbacks. kunikida instantly experienced stomach pains, sudden flashes of black and white over his field-

and that was your cue to jump in.

WAIT WHY WERE YOU JOKING ABOUT HIM NOW, TOO??

however, kunikida found himself amazed at how comfortable the teenagers seemed to be around you. your human knowledge -or better said understanding of teenagers- made his respect for you grow even more.

the conversation between you and the teenagers were all over the place: one minute you were discussing the crime scene and then you all were freaking out over that one new horror movie.

still a little annoyed from the way his perfect schedule ran out, kunikida found himself relaxing. hearing you laugh so casually while working things out- his heart fluttered and his cheeks steadily turned red.

when one of the teenagers made their observation vocal about the blushed cheeks, kunikida screamingly denied it.

which made him the target of some moody and cranky jokes.

but all was fine, because you got every detail that you two needed.

you: "did you write that all down, doppo?"

spoiler alert: kunikida had been admiring you so much that halfway through he had stopped making notes.

it only made you more amused and kunikida's cheeks a brighter red.

chuuya was thrilled to be on a mission with you and especially because it was an easy one. the only thing you had to do was get some information out of some citizen bystanders.

the plan was clear in the executive's mind: ask what the port mafia needed to know and if they refused to answer... well, the fists would do the talking. maybe he could even take you out on a date afterwards.

the plan was aborted once chuuya saw the teenagers.

chuuya isn't that hot-tempered when he-who-shall-not-be-named-in-chuuya's-presence is out of the picture but nevertheless, there are some vulnerable spots in chuuya's pride.

his height. we are talking about his height.

chuuya started to feel a bit on edge when one of the teenagers looked him up and down while he was in the middle of his question.

instead of a proper answer to his question, the same teenager made a remark about his height...

the diSresPect. your man froze for a few seconds.

okay, teenagers were a bit rebellious. he could make a big deal out of it or he could handle this quickly so he could take you out on a date.

then somebody made fun of his hat.

pride = hurt. it was an arrow shot through his heart.

dazai flashbacks triggered chuuya's hot-tempered character.

lucky for everybody, you were there.

you stole chuuya's hat and placed it on your head. you joked around with the teenagers while giving chuuya a playful look.

you sly-

chuuya always melted when you wore his hat and he knew you were aware of it.

and now you were using it as a weapon against everybody in the room. not only did you calm down your man, but you entertained the moody teenagers.

chuuya still felt a bit hurt during the interrogation, but he couldn't stay mad when your eyes sparkled the way they did like now-

was he smiling?? he totally was.

and when you touched his shoulder for a short second, he felt a rush of warmth spreading through his veins.

and when you had all the information you needed, chuuya gave you a big compliment of how well you had dealt with the moody teenagers.

you: "you were so going to freak out, weren't you?"

chuuya: "they made fun of my height and my hat!"

"the audacity."

[theamberwizard]

i’ve been thinking about black widow and the red room recently, as one does, and i’ve got a lot of thoughts about the effects of the red room on widows who’ve escaped. couple things, just before i begin: i would recommend having watched black widow before this because there are implied (?) spoilers, i use way too fancy language while i write and i don’t have an editor cause this is mainly to catch her off guard, so, uh, whoops sorry

trigger warnings: TW: child abuse TW: restricted eating/starving yourself TW: dehumanization TW: death of a child

so yeah, enjoy my list of 10 personal headcanons about how the red room fucks you up on all the levels.

1) black widows cannot sleep in. like, they wake up at 5:00 am every day. it’s not a physical thing, at least not as far as they know, because they can negate that by just going to bed two hours or less before 5:00 am just from their lack of sleep. if, however, they go to sleep at a fairly normal hour they will, like clockwork, wake up at 5:00. this stems from them doing it every single day of their life since they got indoctrinated in the red room. if they didn’t wake up at 5:00 am ready for more training or missions, for any reason, they would be tortured. sometimes physically, sometimes mentally. eventually, all the widows would get that message. they still can’t shake it. because of that, natasha will often refuse to go to sleep at a normal hour, trying to force her body into submission, trying to rid herself of the painful memories that accompanied sleep and waking up afterwards. only clint knows why, because each day in that vent, natasha would snap up at 4:00 am. she had to explain to him that she just wasn’t accustomed to budapest time, and that actually, it was 5:00 am in russia.

2) for months after escaping the red room, widows practically cannot eat. in the red room, they were fed mushy messes of meals, filled with only the necessary nutrients that they absolutely had to have to survive. most widows can only get down one meal, maybe even a snack if they push it, until they throw it all up. they have to slowly eat slightly more each day for weeks until they can get down a normal intake of food. even then, it’s hard to push that, and every widow relapses into throwing up in those early stages. however, this isn’t normally a problem for most widows until a couple weeks into their life with freedom. that’s about the time that they make an acquaintance, who will eventually pluck up the courage to ask them why every time said friend will eat near the widow, the widow will lean over and whisper: “careful, that’s your whole ration today and i don’t want to do extra training.”

3) each “class” of widows had an extra mentor teacher in their early red room years. this was an older widow, someone who’d been falling behind in her recent missions, and with a look that the red room deemed “motherly”. their sole purpose was to be the person each widow got attached too, the parental figure. they were nice, they were helpful, they taught many different basic techniques. then, one day, the red room would have another older widow, (one already introduced to the children as the metaphorical “bad cop” of this scenario) come in and inform the mentor that she had failed her latest mission and proceed to, in front of thirty eleven year-olds, shoot the mentor. the mentor widow would not die that day- the red room refused to waste such a weapon- but the class of up incoming widows would be informed that she had. the official purpose of this exercise was to demonstrate to both the trainees and the trainer the consequences of failing a mission. the unofficial purpose? that would be the last psychological effects the mentor’s “death” would have upon the class, making them learn what happened to attachments in the red room. the day natasha’s class experienced this was the day she cut off all contact with her sister. the day yelena experiences this is the day she first another widow- because yelena killed that mentor with her own bare hands before the informant ever finished the announcement.

4) towards the start of the red room’s history, there were several attacks on the red room. the first ever attack was from a local police station who had been getting complaints of loud wailing, and, upon further investigation, realized what they were dealing with. they brought several other police and militia groups from nearby towns. the immediate action that was taken was to throw the littlest girls they had at the attackers. it stopped the police in their tracks, obviously, because you really don’t expect to come across thirty little girls while searching through a building of highly trained assassins. the red room then sent their fully trained widows and killed everyone. including the girls. the red room then found that footage from their cameras (because of fucking course they have cameras) and then showed it to the next batch of widows, just to show them how disposable they were.

5) yelena and natasha almost caused a whole fucking mutiny within the red room just because of their names. in the red room, you see, widows do not get names. they instead are bestowed with numbers, and even those are a twisted class ranking. they all wore little name tags with the numbers on them until came natasha and yelena came in. yelena, having just seen her mother get shot, complied almost immediately and was addressed as number 42. on the other side of that coin you have natasha, who had already been in the red room and remembered every gruesome detail, and went “fuck you my name is natalia.” upon hearing of this (word gets around fast in the red room. every girl must know they are being listened to at all times, and no secrets can be kept from the red room,) yelena too announced her name to the class.

6) this was met with blanching from every child in that class, because how on earth can you be called by a word? no, they thought, we are numbers, we are weapons, we are not people and we cannot have our own words, for we are not worthy. but secretly, internally, they wished for a name. slowly, they began piecing syllables together until they formed a coherent name, and for the first time in the red room’s long history, they didn’t have weapons. not anymore. they have two full classes of human little girls. the red room officials heard of this, obviously, and took to the only method they had now. violence. the classes were rid of the named girls, yet natasha and yelena were kept alive. they were kept alive to be ostracized, to be the girl the others pointed at and said “she’s the reason all my friends died.” they were kept alive so they could watch the carnage they had unwittingly caused just by saying their own names. and the worst part? well, the worst part was when the teachers accounted for those kills, and made them top of the class. yelena will never forget the day the teachers stood her and her sister up in front of all the widows-in-traning and told them what a good job they had done, how those tactics were sure to help them graduate. i mean, you’re practically a shoo-in if they rest of your class was killed by your school.

7) the red room could never fully stop the names, and so they decided to make a system, and the names would be the highest reward. they told the young, impressionable girls that while maybe outsiders such as natasha and yelena got names at birth, you had to earn them here. if you are to become a spy, you will take on the name of you very first official alias. if, instead, you become an assassin, you will take on the name of your very first official kill. of course, in reality, the widows couldn’t actually address each other with their new earned names, and instead used “team leader” or other such titles. but it became a small comfort for them, thinking of themselves in third person, with their very own names. in some small part they weren’t fully weapons anymore, no, they were people again. natasha took on the name natalia, because in her mind that life in ohio had been her first mission, even if she hadn’t known it. yelena took on yelena as well, but in her mind that little girl in ohio who was sitting in the backseat, caring only about which song they played, that girl had to have been yelena’s first true kill.

8) the names system worked well in the red room, but when you escaped it caused some serious problems. most would have to announce themselves to the russian government, saying they had been flying under the radar their whole life and never became registered. then, they’d give a non-russian name, and their whole ruse would fall apart. unfortunately, this was the least of their problems, because many a widow would someday meet a relative of their very first kill, and when they introduced themselves as the person they had killed all those years ago, the families and friends would often figure them out.

9) one of the biggest parts of the red room’s brainwashing was their little catchphrases they used. ironically, a lot of them were eerily close to boy scout mottos- “be prepared,” an iconic scout motto, versus “there is no safety, only preparedness,” the most frequently used phrase within the red room. when widows then escaped, the most small phrase could set them off. some unknowing widows even adopted little boys in their new lives, who often became boy scouts. the ensuing misery is something you can imagine yourself.

10) after clint helped natasha to escape, she immediately died her hair blond.  clint asked why, of course, and she didn’t tell him. (what, you thought i’d have another cute clintasha moment? never.) this was partly because she hadn’t admitted it to herself, though, because natasha couldn’t remember her sister without remembering all the suffering that came with her.

11) when the widows were smaller, more susceptible to the conditioning, the red room would stage infiltrations. older widows, ones who were closer to retirement, would come in in different uniforms, sometimes the uniforms of UN officers or local police, sometimes different organizations, all different types. the most recent uniforms made yelena sick looking at them, because each time the older widows would pretend to be the avengers there would also be one pretending to be her sister. each time she saw the fake natasha she wanted to break that widow’s neck because that’s not how my sister tilts her head, you’re doing it all wrong. you should be doing it like this, you shouldn’t be doing it at all, i should be doing this, i know my sister. each time those exact thoughts went into her head, and each time all she really wanted was for her sister to be there, for natasha to do her little head tilt upon seeing yelena and take her hand and say “you’re safe now, i promise,” and for natasha to be telling the truth. the only problem was that deep down inside herself yelena knew that this could never actually happen while yelena was still in the red room, because while yelena was still in the red room she knew that she would look at natasha telling her she was safe and tell her in return that there was no safety, only preparedness, and then murder her sister in cold blood.

[lexosaurus]

Going Angst Week 2021: Family/Friends

Read: [1: Birth] [2: Instinct]

Continuation of the No One Knows AU plotline.

---

Everything had changed since the accident. The biological differences were obvious. He glowed, his hair inverted, his eyes turned green, he had ectoplasm running through his veins, he was cold, he didn’t need to breathe as much in human form—the list went on. 

But the psychological ones were easily more terrifying.

And nothing scared him more than the way his friends and family were treating him as of late.

He knew that deep down he would never be able to match the way he acted when he was fully human. But that didn’t mean that his heart didn’t skip a beat every time someone shot him a worried glance, every time someone asked if he was alright, every time he caught himself doing something wrong. 

He wasn’t human anymore. He wasn’t even sure what he was now, and Vlad seemed to have too much fun emotionally torturing him to give him a straight answer.

“You up for a movie tonight?” Tucker asked, leaning across Danny’s desk. 

“Hell yeah,” Sam said. “My house?”

“Oh, you know me too well. What do you think, dude?”

Danny realized that both teens were looking to him for an answer.

He wanted to stay home. Hanging out with either of them meant there was a chance they would see him slip up, and he couldn’t have that.

“Sure.” He hoped his voice didn’t sound too pained.

“Perfect!” Tucker clasped a hand down on his shoulder.

Danny tried not to duck away.

“So we’ll go to Sam’s after dinner. I can bring snacks. Anything you want in particular?”

The thought of eating anything was nauseating. “No. I’m fine.”

“Alright, I’ll just bring the usual then.”

But Danny should have known that something was up. After all, it had been a while since they’d done a movie night. And lately, Sam and Tucker had been acting...oddly. 

Well, that was nothing new. Danny thought that as time went on, they’d forgive him for being a bit jumpier than usual and everything would go back to normal. 

Except, of course, it didn’t.

The past few weeks had been especially hard. It seemed like they constantly had something to say, but never did. The worried glances had only increased, and the silent conversations seemed to only grow.

Danny had been trying his best to act normal, act human, but it seemed like the more he tried, the worse they’d get.

So of course, in between the first movie and second, the elephant in the room finally stomped all over Danny’s metaphorical floor.

“Hey, Danny.” Sam glanced over at Tucker. A moment passed between the two before Sam nodded and turned back to Danny. “We really need to talk to you.”

Dread pooled in his stomach. He knew exactly where this was going. “I can start the next movie if you want?”

“No, Danny. Listen, can you just sit down for a second?”

His ghostly instincts were begging him to run, but his human side forced him to sit down.

“Listen, we know that...well, Jazz told us about the lab accident.”

Danny could have sworn his heart stopped beating.

“She said it was pretty serious? And she was surprised that you hadn’t told us?” Sam fidgeted with her black rings. “We didn’t say anything to you because we wanted you to be the ones to confide in us.”

“That and we didn’t want you to get upset that we were talking to Jazz about you,” Tucker interjected.

“Right, and Jazz only told us because she was worried. And honestly? We’re really worried too.”

Any oxygen left in Danny’s body was sucked out of his throat like a vacuum.

They’d found out. They knew the truth, they knew he was a freak of nature half ghost and they were going to out him, they were going to tell his parents, they’d tell the school counselor, and Danny would have no one and he’d have to run away to become Vlad’s apprentice and he’d change, he’d be corrupted, he wouldn’t make it out alive.

“I’m just wondering why you didn’t say anything?” Sam asked, her violent eyes brimming with concern.

“I…” Danny’s mouth felt like it was lined with cotton. He tried to swallow, but it was like swallowing sand. “I didn’t want you to worry is all.”

“Yeah, and we get that,” Tucker said carefully. “But, I mean, we’re your best friends. And dude, you’ve been...well…”

At Tucker’s helpless glance, Sam took over. “You just have been acting really off lately.”

“Sorry.”

“No!” Sam nearly leapt out of her seat. “Danny, don’t apologize. It’s not your fault. I mean, hell, if I nearly died in a lab accident I’d be acting off too. It just, you know, it explains a lot. It must have been really terrifying.”

Danny didn’t trust himself to say anything. 

How much of his personality had shifted because of Phantom, and how much had shifted because of the accident? Were his ghostly instincts really creeping up that much into his human form? 

Would he ever be the same again?

Did they know?

“Is there anything you wanna talk about?”

“We’re all ears, dude.”

He had so many questions he wanted to ask, but he couldn’t say a word. Not without outing himself as Phantom, and that was bound to backfire on him in the worst way possible.

Oh god, he was acting too suspicious. He needed to save this.

“I’m good.”

There was a beat of silence.

Sam leaned forward. “Danny...I don’t mean to sound like Jazz, but bottling stuff up isn’t—”

“I’m fine!” Danny snapped. “I didn’t say anything and I’m sorry, but you know it’s not every day like you’re nearly electrocuted to death in your parents’ ghost portal.”

“Is that what happened?” Sam’s eyes grew wide. “Oh my god, Danny.”

“Holy shit,” Tucker agreed.

Danny threw his arms out. “Ta da! I survived, I’m fine. Nothing to talk about.”

“Danny, I—”

“No.” His tone was final. “Drop it, seriously.”

Another beat of silence passed, and then Sam finally sighed. “Fine, but I’m telling you as your friend that if you ever need anything, we’re here for you.”

He wished he could have trusted those words. But he knew they were nothing more than a farce.

It would have been cruel to hold onto false hope.

Still, he tried to smile. “Thanks.”

Even though he knew he hadn’t fooled anyone.

---

Maddie’s POV

Maddie watched her son from across the kitchen table, just as she’d done every night for the past several weeks. Quietly, as inconspicuous as possible, always watching.

Ever since the lab accident, he’d been….different. Jack hadn’t noticed, but to Maddie the changes were far too obvious. The dropped spoons, the flash of green behind his eyes, his limbs losing visibility without him even noticing, their ecto-inventions that always seemed to go off around him.

One day, she even saw him walk through his bedroom door.

At first, she thought it was just a simple case of possession. But there were telltale signs of possession, one’s that Jack, for all his enthusiasm, always failed to take into account.

Sure, Danny’s eyes flashed green every so often, but most of the time they were blue. Human blue.

And then there was his personality. In cases of possession, the ghost would be completely controlling the body. But in Danny’s case, he was still very obviously Danny. Still the sweet boy she always knew him to be, but he was just...different. Jumpier. Scared.

Like he knew he was living a lie.

And then, just a few weeks after Danny’s run in with the portal, a new ghost appeared. 

Of course, Maddie didn’t make the connection at first. The ghost was obviously new, and didn’t seem to have a grasp on its powers. Its fighting was laughable, its ectoblasts nearly always missed, and it seemed to constantly forget about its core powers.

Not to mention, its hair was white. Danny had black hair.

But then the ghost gave itself a name: Danny Phantom. And that was when Maddie decided to take a second look at it.

It was Danny’s height and build, its voice sounded similar to Danny’s, it seemed to know all of Danny’s classmates, it used a Fenton thermos, it wore a hazmat suit that looked eerily similar to the ones in their basement closet—not to mention that Danny’s hazmat suit had gone missing recently.

On its own, one small correlation didn’t mean anything. But when the little similarities kept piling up, then Maddie had to draw some sort of conclusion.

Just what was the conclusion though?

The Danny across the table had gone to school like any other human child, he’d eaten his meals like anyone else, he’d hung out with his human friends, he talked with his human family. On paper, he seemed normal.

Human.

But his grades were in a downwards spiral, Jazz had expressed concern about him and his friends, he’d been breaking curfew, and there were times when she’d peak into his room at night to find him gone.

He could have been just experiencing trauma from the accident. Maybe he was rebelling. There were so many explanations for his behavior that didn’t involve ghosts.

But then he’d do something ghostly or a weapon would beep around him or Phantom would fly nearby, and her red flags would be raised once again.

Maddie learned long ago to trust her red flags.

The Danny across the table took a bite of his salad, and his face immediately scrunched up.

Maddie felt sick.

He swallowed, and Maddie could see his eyes watering. “Is there something wrong with the lettuce, Mom?” 

She feigned innocence. “Hmm?”

“I don’t know,” he prodded a carrot on his plate. “Something just seems off.”

“Tastes fine to me,” Maddie said. “I just bought this lettuce today. Jazz, is yours okay?”

“Yeah,” she said.

Maddie suppressed a grin. She could always count on her “facts and research only” daughter.

“It could be the dressing? I used a new brand tonight. It’s healthier than the other stuff.” 

That, or it was the small amount of blood blossoms she’d blended into the vinaigrette. 

“Maybe.”

But it couldn’t end here. She needed to know. She was a scientist, she had to see the experiment through.

“Eat the rest of your salad, honey. I’ll buy the other brand tomorrow, okay?”

Danny carefully put another forkful of salad into his mouth. He gave a small wince, but swallowed. 

“Good boy,” she said. “I have fudge in the fridge for when you’re done.”

“Oh, fudge?” Jack exclaimed. He shoveled the rest of his salad into his mouth. With a mouth full of food, he said, “Thanks, Mads! You’re the best!”

“You’re welcome sweetie!”

Jazz made a face. “Gross, Dad.”

Jack laughed and bantered back at his daughter, but Maddie had already tuned out of the conversation. Her only focus was on Danny, whose face was now just too flushed to be healthy. Still, he forced himself to eat.

There was just no question. No doubt about it.

No matter how Maddie looked at it, this was proof enough.

Danny Fenton wasn’t human. The portal hadn’t nearly killed him, it probably did kill him. And now here he was, pretending to still be a part of the family while using Phantom to distract them from the fact that he was a ghost.

It was a truly elaborate ploy. And if Maddie was anyone else, his plans probably would have worked.

But she was Maddie Fenton. She had a PhD in ectobiology. She’d been researching ghosts for twenty years.

Dinner ended, and the children went upstairs to do homework. Although, if Maddie looked, she was sure Danny wouldn’t actually be in his room. And if she went outside, like she’d done in nights past, there was no doubt she’d see Phantom soaring through the skies.

But she knew. She knew. She knew.

She slipped a white business card out of her jacket pocket, grabbed her cell off the counter, went into her bedroom, and dialed the number. 

It rang once, then twice, then stopped. A deep voice sounded from the other line. “Maddie Fenton? I figured I’d be hearing back from you. Have you made your decision?” 

“Yes.” Her voice was mechanical, as if she’d only called about a malfunctioning weapon. “I have. I agree to the partnership.”

“Excellent. And the terms are to your liking?”

“Yes.”

“Understood. We’ll be in touch tomorrow to sign the official contract. Will your husband be involved in this, or are you working alone?”

Maddie closed her eyes. “The contract will be for my name only.”

“All right, then. We’ll talk tomorrow. You won’t regret this.” 

“I know.”

---

<previous / next>