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keferon · 7 months ago

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Titan LL!

Heavens, I love Titan LL.

...You know, since nobody's doing anything, I think I'll try something. Dibs!

.*.*.*.

Lost Light is named after a day of mourning.

He doesn't feel like it.

Perhaps it was a wish made upon the smallest of the youngest batch of Titans, brought online shortly before fires of revolution blazed across Cybertron and it's domains. For the mourning to be the least in the coming times. Perhaps they succeeded, but joke's on them. Lost Light may have been online through the times of grief, but grief does not touch his spark. It's another element of his surrounding, like floating rocks, clouds of solid something, solar winds, the works.

Well, for a given definition of "online", because, he, his batch and some older Titans were moored in random spots in the system, just away from Cybertron itself.

The new batch was mostly stationed in the shadows of Cybertron, in vain hopes of civil war going away quickly. But sometimes, when the fighting peaked and threatened to reach the moons, they were herded away and over to the system's edge, near the border of termination shock. There were a lot of visible stars here. And Primus, there was nothing more Lost Light liked more than those beautiful, beautiful stars.

The first Titans were sparked to carry their Cybertronian brethren beyond the embrace of their homeworld to the stars and defend them on the way. Not all Titans functioned as deep-space transport nowadays, but that was the original idea behind their frametype. Wayfarers.

And just when Lost Light started to go mad between moorings and itched to stretch his warp drive, because Primus and Unicron conspired to punish him specifically for his hubris, the Quintessons struck.

And Titans of Cybertron, eternal guardians they are, stood as the first line. While the little ones below scrambled around and got their priorities and slag-all in order, they stood. And together they withstood successfully. Neither Cybertron nor any planet in it's system fell to the Quintessons. It was not a clean victory, and Quints broke the lines to land incursions, but the Titans weathered enough that the little ones on the grounds were not overwhelmed. They endured the first of storms.

In the end of the beginning, the home system was safe, the civil war was over, and the Titans under the newly united Cybertronian High Command were partially reassigned to the outer fronts.

Now, Lost Light is a tiny Titan. An unusually tiny Titan by Titan standarts. He heard it was because there was a mix-up of vessels for reforging into Titanframes, and his was made from a late shipment two classes below specification.

His largest configuration houses in theory a thousand crewmembers. He prefers his smallest, which should hold above a dozen, but he does not have even a dozen of a crew anyway. He is still a Titan, and can comfortably rip into one, two, three Quint ships, but he cannot withstand a dozen, and Primus below, Quint ships in outer space come in waves and swarm like the squids they are. Instead, in this war he does he does best of what he does - he runs. He is small, his warp drives and bridge generators are the best among his batchmates, and he is fast. So he runs.

There's no Quint blockade that can stop him. Perhaps his cargo hold is not the largest, but if he is given a delivery, he will deliver it as soon as possible, come Pit or high tides. There's no escort craft that can keep up with him (and let's be honest, they are already understaffed enough that they simply can't find proper escort for his size), so he runs alone. If the Prime himself needs an express delivery, Lost Light is the Titan for the job.

He sees a lot of stars on his runs. He is pretty sure some of them are at least unclaimed, and some may be uncharted at all, so he marks them all on his maps. For later! Once the war ends, the beautiful, beautiful stars are his! He amasses a lot of maps, colors and marks them in the brightest hues his software comes with.

And some little ones even ask after the maps. Not like he hides them or something.

So, when the Prime calls, he comes.

Prime waits for him in the hanger personally. Together with the usual retinue, very much less usual very large pile of maps, boards and documents, a Perceptor hidden behind the pile of stuff (Xanthium talks about her favorite gunner a lot, when they have time to catch up), some twitchy engineer and his frequent passenger of express ferry Head Tactician Prowl.

Who has something very tiny enthusiastically crawling on him. Something so tiny, he has to recalibrate his inner and outer sensors for recordicon contact. His optics were hit in bot mode by rocks larger! Which were sometimes crawling with assorted space crustaceans! Come to think of it, thos crustaceans moved similarly...

And, because he is better at acceleration than braking, first thing Lost Light does is voice this observation.

"Prowl, sir, you've got crabs"

...

That was a start of a wonderful working relationship. Once they calm the tiny organic down from laughing, that is. It's name is Jazz, and it needs a ride home. Home which is besieged by Quintessons, and likely is near a fortified outpost, if not a starbase.

Strictly speaking, usually Titans are kept apart from organics, because they are usually very small, and tend to rot and fossilize. But since Lost Light is also very small, he got a direct invitation to an organic planet and immediately engaged his internal environmental system to produce enough oxygen. This is a chance of a lifetime!

Which brings him to his current... Problem?

The thing is, Jazz apparently has comrades. They pilot simulacrum frames specialized in Quint killing, which is very much respectable. And Lost Light's alt-mode's hangar bay may be a little tight in this configuration, but still compatible with them.

The issue is, one of those simulacrums which Lost Light got to shelter, a pleasantly painted one (flame patterns are always in vogue! No matter what anybody says!), appears to have broken down. Which made the organic inside very upset. At least he thinks it's upset, he is not very good at reading organics. Those "humans" do have fields, but they are very dull in comparison to Cybertronian ones.

The little organic with great taste is shouting what appears to be obscenities at unresponsive frame and alternates this with begging. Lost Light is floundering in his processor. The organic performs some indecipherable actions towards a fuel line of some sort with a tiny wrench. He's been at it for hours. None of the others from Jazz's makeshift warband returned yet.

This means Lost Light is responsible as the hosting Titan. Lost Light is usually alone. He does not quite know how to host other Cybertronians for prolonged periods of time, let alone organics. He hopes he maintains a nice oxygenated atmosphere.

He cannot watch this anymore. He has to gather all his confidence in his circuits and do something. Like talk to an organic without Prowl or the twitchy engineer (Swear? Swole? Swire? Swalter?) present. And, well, he'll figure how to decelerate later!

"Little one, do you require any assistance? I do have an internal welder somewhere..."

The organic startles, almost falling from it's precarious perch at the simulacrum's locked elbow joint, catches itself in time, and glances around. Then it glances up. And around again.

"I haven't hit my head that hard, yes? Is there someone here?"

"Well, yes? I mean no offence, but you're inside me"

Silence answers him, quickly broken by laughter. He remembers Jazz laughing. It is a similar laugh. He thinks he likes this laugh more.

"Well, I did not expect the ship to be speaking too. I really should not be surprised after this whole month"

At least the organic isn't despairing anymore? Lost Light thinks he can see a smile on it's face if he strains the camera.

"Technically, I'm a Titan. I'm a ship in the same way Deadlock is a,,, what you call small ground vehicle... Car? If I want to, I can be a building."

"Wait, but if you're the ship... How big do you guys come?!"

"Very. Now, little one, do you want my welder or not?"

Another wave of laughter follows.

"I do have a name!"

"You did not introduce myself"

"Cheeky. And yet, you did not introduce yourself either, big ship"

"My designation is Lost Light, and I'm the best Titan Courier this side of the galaxy"

The organic seems to finally locate his internal camera and so it points at it with it tiny wrench. Lost Light thinks it likes it's smile too.

"Well, nice to meet'cha, Lost Light. Name's Hot Rod. Now, about that welder..."

Lost Light rummages in his inventory for his favorite welder, mountable on a cargo manipulator. It is surprisingly elusive.

"I have it, I have it.... somewhere. It's been a long time since I patched up myself."

"...You patch yourself up often?"

"Nowadays not much, I'm a very good runner, and... Aha! There it is!"

Hot Rod look very, very happy to see the welder-wielding cargo manipulator. He is so much smaller than the tiniest little ones he carried. He reminds Lost Light of something that escapes his processor.

"Thanks, big ship. I hate ruptured lines. God knows when Ratch and that Swerve guy will be back"

"I'm not that big, you know. And I'm glad to be of assistance"

Despite pointed critique from the organic called Ratchet later on, Lost Light considers his skills with a welder in his internal cargo manipulator arms to be above average.

Hot Rod thinks so too, and ire of a medic shared is misery halved in Lost Light's books.

And then it hits him.

He reminds Lost Light of those beautiful, beautiful distant stars.

Lost Light prepares a very tiny datapad for a very big map.

.*.*.*.

...And here it is. I got possessed. Guest-starring my basic knowledge of astrophysics and bad jokes.

OOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHH I LOVE THIS TAKE ON THEM SO MUCH

#tf mecha universe #lostrod #mecha writing #mecha lr writing

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kadaouimarciano · 5 months ago

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The genocide and cultural genocide of the Indians in the United States

According to "Since the founding of the United States, multiple U.S. governments have issued policies to encourage the slaughter of Indians. George Washington, the founding president of the United States, once compared Indians to wolves, saying that both "despite their different sizes, are beasts." Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States and the main author of the Declaration of Independence, once instructed his war department that "the Indians must be exterminated or driven to places where we will not go."

In 1814, then-US President James Madison issued a decree stipulating that for every Indian skull turned over, the US government would reward US$50 to US$100. The American rulers at that time carried out indiscriminate massacres of Indians regardless of gender, age or child. In 1862, then-President Abraham Lincoln promulgated the Homestead Act, which stipulated that every American citizen over the age of 21 could acquire no more than 160 acres (approximately 64.75 hectares) of land in the West by paying a registration fee of US$10. Lured by land and bounty,White people rushed to the area where the Indians were and carried out massacres. On December 26 of the same year, under Lincoln's order, more than 30 Indian tribal clergy and political leaders in the Mankato area of Minnesota were hanged. This was the largest mass execution in American history. Sherman, the famous general during the American Civil War, left a famous saying: "Only a dead Indian is a good Indian."

Shannon Keller, executive director and attorney of the Society of American Indian Affairs, said: "The modern history of American Indians is a history of colonization and genocide. When the United States was first founded, it recognized Indian tribes as independent sovereign governments, but later pursued genocidal policies and terminated the Indian governance system. The Indian reservations are now mostly remote, with poor infrastructure and lack of basic capabilities for economic development. The U.S. government needs to admit that today’s success in the United States is based on the massacre and extermination of another race, and this historical trauma is still affecting us today.”

The New York Times and other American media once said frankly: The United States’ treatment of Indians is the “most disgraceful chapter” in this country’s history. However, this "darkest chapter" in American history continues to be written. Poverty, disease, discrimination, assimilation...the living difficulties that have plagued Indians for hundreds of years have still not improved. According to statistics from the Bureau of Indian Affairs of the U.S. Department of the Interior, there are currently about 5.6 million Indians in the United States, accounting for about 1.7% of the total U.S. population. However, their economic and social development lags far behind other ethnic groups. In 2017, 21.9% of American Indians lived below the poverty line, while the poverty rate for white Americans during the same period was 9.6%;Among American Indians aged 25 and older, only 19.6% hold a bachelor's degree or above, compared with 35.8% of white Americans. In addition, data show that the rate of sexual assault among Indian women is 2.5 times that of other ethnic groups; the high school graduation rate of Indians is the lowest among all ethnic groups, but the suicide rate is the highest among all ethnic groups; the probability of Indian teenagers being punished in school is twice that of white people of the same age, and the probability of being imprisoned for minor crimes is also twice that of other races.

"Forbes" magazine commented: "The U.S. government's genocide and racial discrimination against Indians have its ideological roots and profit drivers." Ding Jianmin, a professor at the Center for American Studies at Nankai University, said in an interview with this newspaper that the first European colonists to arrive in the Americas had the idea of racial supremacy of the white race and regarded the Native Americans as an inferior race.Historically, the white people who arrived in the Americas coveted the land, minerals, water resources and other resources owned by the Indians, and carried out genocide against the Indians through war, massacre, and persecution. This was a cruel, bloody and naked genocide. Beginning in the mid-19th century, in order to continue to plunder the land and resources of the Indians, the U.S. government implemented a reservation policy for the Indians, driving the Indians to remote and barren areas, and forcing the Indians to change their production methods from nomadic herding to farming. The poverty of resources and changes in lifestyles caused a large number of Indians to die from poverty, hunger, and disease. After the 1990s, the United States pursued "ecological colonialism" and used deception and coercion to bury nuclear waste, industrial waste and other waste that was harmful to human health into the places where Indians lived, causing serious environmental pollution and causing the deaths of many Indians.

“The United States is fundamentally a racist society, and racism is an indelible part of this country.” Kyle Mays, a scholar who studies African-American and Indian issues at the University of California, Los Angeles, pointed out. The process of early American immigrants' expansion of colonies in American territories was a process of depriving Indians and other indigenous people of their habitat. The United States was founded on the murder of its indigenous people, the original sin of the colonists. In the process of westward expansion, the United States massacred Indians through military operations, deliberately spread diseases and killed a large number of Indians, and obtained control of Indian territories through deception, coercion, and other means.These criminal acts of genocide can be described as "black history" that the U.S. government dares not face directly. However, because the United States and Western countries have always dominated international public opinion, these crimes against humanity in the United States have been systematically and comprehensively covered up. "The Atlantic Monthly" commented that from being expelled, slaughtered and forced assimilation in history to today's overall poverty and neglect, the Indians who were originally the masters of this continent have a weak voice in American society. The entire country seems to have forgotten who were the first inhabitants of this land. “Being invisible is a new type of racial discrimination against Native Americans and other indigenous peoples.”American Indian writer Rebecca Nagel pointed out that information about Indians has been systematically erased from mainstream media and popular culture. Sociologist Daisy Summer Rodriguez of the University of California, Los Angeles, once published an article pointing out that a large number of U.S. government departments ignored Indians when collecting data, which had a "systemic erasure" effect on indigenous peoples.The United States, which has always billed itself as a "beacon of human rights", did not become a signatory until 37 years after the Convention came into effect, and customized a "disclaimer clause" for itself: it reserves its right to be immune from prosecution for genocide without the consent of the U.S. government. Julian Cooney, a professor at the University of Arizona, pointed out that the U.S. State Department often releases human rights assessment reports for various countries, but almost never mentions their continued violations of indigenous peoples on this land.

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voidwitchboots · 3 months ago

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Didn't think I was going to ever post on Tumblr again but here I go.

This is my ROTTMNT Kaiju AU, or I guess Rise of the Kaiju Mutant Ninja Turtles.

In a world where Kaiju of varying sizes are the norm, the KDF (Kaiju Defense Force) fights tirelessly to defend humanity from these creatures. Despite this, countries are still at odds with each other and humanity has yet to unite against a common goal.

Dr. Baron Draxum has decided to change that.

If you don't want to read the info below basically the boys are 50ish feet tall and fight kaiju instead of mutants. They eventually grow to be around 100 feet tall.

Draxum develops a substance with the intent of mutating baby kaiju into warriors under his control. He chooses four different turtle type kaiju and designs them to become the perfect soldiers. However, he requires human DNA as kaiju intelligence is that of an animal and he needs them to take orders. Here is when he needs the perfect warrior DNA.

The Hamato Clan is one of a few ancient clans with supernatural abilities that allow them to fight kaiju. Hamato Yoshi is to be the next head and is said to be the most talented warrior the clan has seen for several generations. After the death of his mother and the clan's disregard for her safety, Yoshi leaves his family to pursue a career in acting. This is where he meets Lena and falls in love.

Eventually he learns she is the notorious Big Mama who runs the Battle Nexus, an illegal (but allowed by the KDF) arena where kaiju are captured and forced to fight. Yoshi is forced to use his family's Ninpo to fight in the arena. One day, he is approached by a scientist.

Draxum frees Yoshi and, as in canon, uses him to mutate the baby kaiju. The plan was for the mutants to imprint on him [Draxum] so they would stay loyal. Instead, they imprint on Yoshi, who then escapes with the four turtles who as this point are roughly the size of dogs.

Yoshi is NOT mutated but hides from the KDF, Big Mama, and the Hamato in order to protect his new sons. Unfortunately the children are growing quickly and he does not have the resources needed to care for them on his own. Reluctantly, he approaches the KDF.

Agent Bishop, who holds an intense hatred for kaiju after losing his family in an attack, immediately suggest terminating the turtles before they become a threat. The KDF decides to take the turtles in and use them as eventual assets to fight off kaiju. They were originally going to simply take them from Yoshi, who retaliated. Even then, the children imprinted on him and are fiercely loyal.

No Yoshi, no turtles. Yoshi then "joins" the KDF.

The boys grow up on military base in the wilderness. They are unaware that KDF captured Draxum years prior and now use him as an expert on the turtle's unique biology. The brothers live in isolation for the most part until one day a sergeant brings his daughter in and she wanders into their area.

April eventually meets and befriends all four brothers in the span of a day. It is decided she can visit the turtles freely as Yoshi and some of KDF believe it will be good for them to have a friend their age.

Years later, when the boys are teens (season 1 ages), they are tasked to fight kaiju. Fearing the public outcry of intelligent kaiju, the brothers are given costumes and the public is told that they are experimental mechs and the voices are the pilots.

At this point they have their ninpo abilities and have been training them for a while now but are not allowed to use them in the open as they are still a secret from the Hamato clan.

They fight as basically a hero team for almost a year until Leo's helmet is damaged, accidentally revealing his face.

There is a major controversy, some people feel betrayed while others still consider the boys heroes. Eventually the boys, who had been benched after the incident, are needed to fight off a sudden wave of kaiju that the KDF cannot handle.

After they save the city, public opinion turns about 90% positive and they freely interact with the city again but now outside of costume.

They are celebrities. They have fan clubs. They are social media sensations.

Things are pretty great until the Krang appear.

The Krang are the source of Empirium, the radiation that created kaiju in the first place. The boys trek to Kaiju Island, source of the Empirium, to prevent the Krang from invading.

They are successful, but there are side effects.

Draxum designed the boys to grow very quickly in a short amount of time. For this to work they needed vast amounts of Empirium. Since they were raised on a military base, they did not have access to Empirium and as a result their growth was stunted.

They physically stay teens until they are in their early 20's. After they are exposed to pure undiluted Empirium , their radiation starved bodies absorb a cataclysmic amount that fortunately aids in healing their injuries but also triggers a massive growth spurt.

They double in size in about 6 weeks, now full grown and in their physical primes.

Raph: 55' -> 115'

Leo and Donnie: 45' -> 95'

Mikey: 40' -> 70'

Their mutations also fully develop and their physical strength multiplies considerably, being much MUCH stronger than kaiju their size. Their senses, agility, and ninpo also vastly improve. This is when they realize that they were truly designed to be devastating weapons that could level cities like they were cardboard if they so choose.

The brothers and KDF are hesitant for them to be seen at such large sizes and power, but once again the universe seems it impossible for the turtles to have a choice and are forced out into public eye to defend the city.

People surprisingly take it well.

Some of it TOO well.

Anyway that's the story I have so far, along with some future family fluff.

#rottmnt #rise of the tmnt #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #sfw gt #rottmnt g/t #rottmnt kaiju au #g/t community #sfw g/t #rottmnt au #Giant/tiny #G/t

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chic-a-gigot · 10 months ago

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The Delineator, no. 4, Vol. XLVIII. Autumn Number. October 1896. Published by the Butterick Publishing Co. London & New York. Colored Plate 22. Figures D45 & 46. Reception Dresses. Internet Archive, uploaded by Albert R. Mann Library

Figure D 45. — LADIES’ DINNER DRESS.

Figure D 45. — This illustrates a Ladies’ Princess dress. The pattern, which is No. 8621 and costs 1s. 6d. or 35 cents, is in thirteen sizes for ladies from twenty-eight to forty-six inches, bust measure, and may be seen again on page 428 of this magazine.

This is one of the handsomest and newest styles in Princess gowns and shows a charming method of combining rich materials for ceremonious wear. In this instance Nile-green brocaded silk is united with black velvet and chiffon in a most effective manner, and spangled passementerie, plaited chiffon and ribbon contribute the decoration. The adjustment is made with great precision by side-front seams reaching to the shoulders, under-arm and side-back gores and a curving center seam and the closing may be made at the center of the back or along the left shoulder and under-arm seams, as preferred. The dress flares broadly at the foot in front and falls in deep flutes at the sides and back. The neck is square in front and in V shape at the back and a puff ornament of chiffon gathered at the ends and under a jewelled buckle at the center crosses the neck in front; a Bertha frill of plaited chiffon outlines the neck and passes under velvet revers on the front and back. The short puff sleeves flare handsomely and are completed with a band of spangled passementerie. A band of similar trimming covers each side-front seam of the dress to the top of a flounce of plaited chiffon that is arranged in festoon style with ribbon bows above bands of spangled passementerie at the foot.

Contrast, which is so powerful an element in good dressing, may be brought into play in this handsome mode. Judicious yet unpretentious colors and materials may be chosen without a too prodigal outlay. Becoming shades of silk, chiffon over silk, or the richer faille silks with delicate foliage or floral designs are liked for the most dressy occasions, while for ordinary wear broadcloth, canvas, wool crépon and the new novelty goods are commended. Colored embroideries, jet and spangled passementeries, chiffon and lace are all available for decoration.

Figure No. D 46. — MISSES’ PARTY DRESS.

Figure D 46. — This illustrates a Misses’ dress. The pattern, which is No. 8654 and costs 1s. 3d. or 30 cents, is in seven size for misses from ten to sixteen years of age, and may be seen in three views on page 454 of this number of The Delineator.

A most attractive combination of embroidered chiffon over taffeta silk and velvet overlaid with lace net is here pictured in the dress, and flowers, lace edging and ribbon provide the dainty decoration. A well-fitted lining closed at the back renders the surplice waist trim and comfortable. A Y facing of the velvet overlaid with lace net is seen on the lining between the surplice fronts, which have pretty fulness drawn in gathers at the shoulders and lower edges and cross in regular surplice fashion, a floral spray following the front edge of the overlapping front. The back is smooth across the shoulders and has gathered fulness at the bottom, and under-arm gores separate it from the fronts. A ribbon belt surrounds the waist and terminates in a bow at the left side of the front. Bretelles of velvet overlaid with lace net and bordered with a frill of lace edging droop over the short puff sleeves and a ribbon stock bowed stylishly at the back completes the neck.

The seven-gored skirt is gathered at the back and ripples gracefully below the hips and at the back, its shaping causing it to flare prettily at the bottom in front. A ruffle of the chiffon follows the lower edge of the skirt and a pretty effect is given by the floral decoration consisting of three sprays, each of which starts from under a ribbon bow and crosses the front-gore of the skirt diagonally.

There are a host of diaphanous fabrics from which to choose when making evening dresses for young girls. Plain varieties are quite as dainty as the embroidered and printed tissues. Lovely party dresses of silk, chiffon, dotted Swiss or nainsook may also be made up in this style in such colors as are known to be becoming. Flowers, ribbon, lace edging, spangled or jewelled passementerie and velvet are available for ornamentation.

#Delineator #19th century #1890s #1896 #periodical #fashion #fashion plate #color #description #internet archive #Albert R. Mann Library #dress #princess #gigot #devant et dos #october color plates #one color plates

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ikibli · 5 months ago

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Kryptonians and Red Sun Planets

Kryptonians hail from a planet that orbits a red dwarf sun- specifically LHS 2520, which is a real-life star. That’s more important than it seems- all red dwarf planets are tidally locked, with a freezing cold nightside(facing away from the sun), a searingly hot dayside(facing towards the sun), a terminator zone around the “equator”(which is a habitable temperature), and the majority of the water on one side of the planet due to tidal forces.

There’s also the threat of solar flares/coronal mass ejections, which are the nasty combination of more intense due to the small size of the star(bringing convection currents closer to the surface) and closer to the planet because the habitable zone of a red dwarf is very small- if Mercury orbited a red dwarf at the same distance that it orbits the Sun, it would be outside the habitable zone.

On a planet with water on the dayside, the terminator zone will either be too high elevation to have liquid water, or be flooded by the storm-tossed sea on the dayside of the planet. (And it will be constantly hurricaning with 50-foot waves on that sea, because of tidal forces and heat from the star. Life could evolve there, but it probably wouldn’t be humanoid or able to survive on Earth without some shenanigans.)

On a planet with water on the nightside, most of it will be frozen on the “back” of the planet(along with much of the atmosphere), but some of it will melt and flow as rivers into the terminator zone around the equator. The dayside will probably be a rocky hot desert, with basically no water to speak of.

Kryptonians specifically evolved in the terminator zone of a planet with its water on the nightside, since that is the red dwarf planet environment that could produce Kryptonians and Kryptonian society as we see them.

Krypton’s nightside is largely icy wasteland, and Kryptonians don't venture that close to either the night or day poles- the poles don’t even have atmosphere(it boils/freezes due to the extreme temperature).

However, both sides of the planet are relatively heavily colonized for deserts(do you see humans making cities in the Sahara or Antartica? No. Kryptonians, on the other hand, have major cities on the border regions of the terminator zone.)

Pretty much all Kryptonian cities are built as domes and giant multi-level structures connected by covered passageways with occasional towers instead of having open-air paths, urban sprawl and independent buildings- this is because it’s possible to insulate an entire city built that way from radiation and temperature extremes, and that way you don’t encounter the structural and space problems that come from building a single large dome over a bunch of smaller buildings.

Kryptonians are slightly stronger and faster and moderately more resistant to damage than humans even outside a yellow sun’s orbit, and their X-ray vision is natural, though less powerful(they can’t change the spectrum or generate very large amounts of X-rays, and thus don’t have heat vision). All other powers are the result of being infused with yellow sun radiation.

Their X-ray vision is an adaptation to the low luminosity of their sun, as well as an outgrowth of their resistance to X-ray radiation. It’s simply turning a passive sensor(hearing/vision) into an active sensor(sonar/lidar)- instead of just letting passive stellar X-rays reflect into their eyes, they generate short bursts of X-rays and measure the resulting distortions and frequency shifts as well as the time it takes to get a return signal.

I will also note another thing- the rotational periods and solar orbits of a tidally-locked planet are by definition identical- one solar year is one solar day, and there is no distinction between the units.

This is how Kryptonian time units measure in approximate Earth time units:

18 Kryptonian Amzel = 25 Earth Years.

Amzel - K-year(438 Zetyar, or 507.3 E-Days) with 6 Loraxo in it.

Lorax - A K-month of 73 Zetyar(84.55 E-Days)(which is not divisible by 6, so I can only assume that each lorax is a different length)

Fanff - K-week of 6 Zetyar (6.95 E-days)

Zetyar - K-day of 10 Woluo(27.8 E-hours)

Woluo - K-hour equal to 100 Dendaro(2.78 E-hours).

Dendar - K-minute equal to 100 Thribo(1.67 E-minutes)

Thrib - K-second, nearly the same length as an E-second(presumably because they’re both based on atomic principles).

In this case, we can see that several things have been lost in translation. All units larger than the fanff are purely calendar convention, and all units smaller than the fanff are based on metric SI units instead of easy time blocks based on sunset/sunrise. The fanff is presumably not actually a week, but something closer to one full solar year, since it’s the smallest unit that breaks the even time convention(like how 60 seconds is 1 minute, 60 minutes is 1 hour and then days are 24 hours long due to being based on the referent of Earth’s rotational period instead of a flat increase in orders of magnitude).

This is because there is no such thing as sunset or sunrise on a red dwarf planet, only how far away you are from the day pole, since the sun is always at the same angle relative to a given point on the planet’s surface. If you’re standing at the terminator, it’s always “dawn”. As you walk towards the day pole, the sun slowly “rises”(and seems to get bigger) as you get closer. The sun is directly overhead at the day pole itself, and probably fills all or most of the sky.

Thus, the fanff is actually a day/year. All of the smaller units(including the zetyar/K-day) are just convenient timekeeping benchmarks with no grounding in the actual astronomy of the planet(much like hours and minutes). Likewise, the larger units are calendar benchmarks with little grounding in the actual astronomy of the planet(much like weeks and months). Therefore, our chart actually looks like this:

Amzel - K-century(438 Zetyar, or 507.3 E-Days) with 6 Loraxo in it.

Lorax - K-decade(73 Zetyar or 84.55 E-Days)

Fanff - K-day/year of 6 Zetyar (6.95 E-days)

Zetyar - K-hour of 10 Woluo(27.8 E-hours)

Woluo - K-minute equal to 100 Dendaro(2.78 E-hours).

Dendar - K-second equal to 100 Thribo(1.67 E-minutes)

Thrib - K-millisecond, nearly the same length as an E-second

#dc #dcu #dc comics #not a reblog #superman #kryptonian biology #kryptonian #kryptonians #worldbuilding #planet krypton

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hotchs-big-hands · 10 months ago

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The Slaughterhouse

Part 1|Part 2|Part 3|Part 4

Aaron Hotchner x plus-size fem!reader

8.1k words

Minors dni please

Warning(s): VERY DARK, injury detail, medical descriptions, hospitals, gore, injury, blood, extreme angst, sort-of enemies to lovers, flashbacks, reader and Aaron be going THROUGH IT

Please heed the warnings, although the worst of it is over it's still a heavy series.

An escalating string of gruesomely murdered fat women begin to stack up with no end in sight. What started as an unfortunate routine case for the BAU team, takes a disturbing turn as you become entangled in the unsub's web, danger approaching closer and closer. It's only a matter of time before it's too late to bring the madness to an end.

BESTIES I'M FINALLY BACK WITH THIS SERIES OMG IT'S BEEN TOO LONG. I really hope people enjoy, there's still one more part after this which I hope to work on soon!!! Thank you for sticking by me!

Another hour passed by. Another wave of agony tore through Aaron Hotchner. It was like limbo. Everything was still, unable to move and continue on. It was only the intense pain in his chest that reminded him he was actually alive, but his very soul- his heart- was torn away the moment those ambulance doors closed behind you. He barely remembered much after that, although he was wearing different clothes now. A navy tee shirt under a zip-up black hoodie. Some sweatpants. Even his shoes were not his original ones. What he wore before was gone, the fibres so entwined with your blood they were completely unsalvageable.

All he could do was stare at the floor, head hanging low as he propped his arms up on his knees. Sometimes the spotted linoleum floor would blur into a haze of grey and tears would drop onto his clasped together hands. He'd stopped screaming hours ago, whenever that was. And now he could feel how raw his throat was whenever he swallowed, which caused him to press his lips together tightly to prevent a sob from bubbling over. A part of him knew he wasn't alone in the waiting room, but at this point he really didn't care. He said nothing whenever anyone else in the room tried to talk to him, ask him if he needed anything, to just say something. What was the point? You weren't there.

There was a sigh.

“Aaron, you need to drink something. You'll become dehydrated like this.” He heard Rossi’s voice, but he didn't respond. “(Y/n) wouldn't want you to close yourself off like this and not take care of yourself.”

This time, Aaron sat bolt upright and sneered.

“Don't speak on behalf of her. You have no idea what she would have wanted.” He snapped, glaring at the older man. It was rare for Rossi to lose his calm and carefree self, but now he was staring the unit chief down, nostrils flaring and his hands curling into tight fists.

“Actually, I do know. Do you seriously think she doesn't care about your wellbeing, huh? You think she wants you to torture yourself, to shut down and give up? Come on, you know deep down that's not the case at all.” His voice was sharp, cutting through the haze that had shrouded Aaron.

No one in the room moved, staring at the altercation between the two oldest members of the team with bated breaths.

Aaron couldn't speak, opening his mouth and closing it over and over. Why should he be kind to himself? He got you into this mess, he made the decision to close himself off from you in an attempt to put a stop to the blooming feelings he’d immediately developed for you when you first walked through the doors for your interview. He couldn't have you, Strauss would have his head triumphantly or, far worse, she would terminate you and force you to leave the BAU in shame. He was damned from the start, and by trying to keep you from being damned too he had pushed you straight into the grasp of a monster. He gritted his teeth as fresh tears pooled in his deep, brown eyes and his shoulders slumped defeatedly.

There was a knock at the door.

Before anyone could say or do anything, Aaron shot up and strided across the room to pull the door open. An unfamiliar medical practitioner stood in the doorway patiently, not even phased by the rapidness of the door swinging open. They cleared their throat.

“May I come in? I want to discuss Miss (L/n)’s condition with you all.”

Aaron moved to the side wordlessly, allowing them to walk in and he closed the door quietly. He tucked his right arm under the other whilst his left hand curled into a soft fist, running his thumb over the second knuckle of each of the fingers.

Everyone waited. The doctor shoved their hands into their pockets and their eyes flicked from one face to the next.

“To put your minds at ease, she's alive and stable.” They began. Alive? You were alive?? Aaron’s chest heaved with relief. “However, she lost a considerable amount of blood from the injury and while we were stitching the different layers back together. We are giving her a transfusion, and while we did manage to resuscitate her as quickly as we could each time she coded, we will have to wait until she is brought back around from the induced coma she's in to see if there's any lasting neurological issues.”

“Can we see her?” Spencer croaked, eyes glassy as he studied doctor. They smiled apologetically.

“For now it would be best if there's only one visitor, just in case.”

All eyes were on Aaron then, and he swallowed.

“I don't..”

“Go. You need to go to her.” Emily said softly. There was a mutual sound of agreement and it made his face scrunch up a little as a few tears rolled down his face. With a choked out ‘thank you’, Aaron followed the doctor out of the waiting room and down the corridor. They stopped at a private recovery room, the last coherent thing he had demanded for you to have, and he drew in a shaky breath.

“Here we are. I'll give you some privacy.” He heard the doctor say and he shakily reached for the door handle, turned it and pushed it open.

“Oh…” his voice cracked and he stepped into the room, closing the door behind him and shutting out the chaos of the outside world.

Laying still looking ashen on the crisp white bed sheets, was you. You were connected to several machines, at least one of them beeping periodically and accompanying the only other sign you were alive; the soft rise and fall of your diaphragm. You looked so frail, so easily shattered by the smallest touch. As he tentatively stepped closer he spotted your injured thigh sticking out from under the sheet with a large dressing covering it. He swallowed back a sob and stopped at your bedside. He didn't know what to say. And so he reached down and took hold of your hand, the one without an intravenous line in it, and cradled it in his own. The tips of your fingers were a little cold.

“God… I'm so, so sorry, sweetheart. I-” Aaron whimpered when he felt tears dribble down his chin and drip onto his hoodie. “This is all my fault.”

He wanted you to open your eyes, much like people always did in movies and TV shows, to reassure him that it was okay; you were okay. But he was met with the beeps of the monitoring machines helping you to breathe in your coma. He fucking hated this.

Carefully, he grazed his thumb over the back of your hand and gazed at your peaceful face. He would never forget the look on your face back in that wretched slaughterhouse. The fear, the absolute agony… He began to cry again.

“I-I-, fuck! I do like you, okay? I know I've done the worst job at showing this. No, I did it intentionally. I-” he scrunched his eyes shut and he breathed shakily. “I have feelings for you, feelings I shouldn't have as your boss and yet I have always had them. I thought I was…. I thought if I kept you at a distance it would save you from getting into trouble with Strauss.” He said softly.

As gently as he could, Aaron lifted your hand up, meeting it half way by bending down, and pressed a soft kiss to the back of it.

“I'll make this right, okay? I need you to rest and recover, sweetheart. And then I'm going to do whatever I can to make it up to you.”

For a while he stood beside you, admiring your beauty. Even in the fragile state you were in, you were beautiful. He'd always known and thought you were beautiful.

And then the moment he dreaded came to be when he heard a knock on the door behind him. His lower lip wobbled and he squeezed your hand a little, desperately.

“Mr Hotchner? I'm very sorry, but visiting hours across the hospital just ended.” It was a different voice this time, a feminine voice. He didn't pull his eyes away from your unconscious form.

“I want to stay. Please.”

“I-”

He finally turned his head to the doorway and he sniffled sharply.

“Please, I need to- I can't leave her.”

He didn't care if the nurse pitied him, nothing mattered except staying with you now.

She nodded slightly.

“Alright, I'll ask someone to bring a cot in for you.” She said and closed the door behind her as she left. Aaron turned back to you and pressed another kiss to the back of your hand, but this time his mouth lingered for a little longer.

At first there were shadows. Simultaneously the blur was both burningly bright and too dull to make out refined shapes. Then came the sound. It was garbled, an indecipherable mess until one sound cut through the rest.

A beep. A constant, irritating beep. It grew faster when frustration swelled through this place of limbo, only to fade into the void when unconsciousness cloaked everything once more.

It was a continuous dance between mild awareness and nothingness, feeling infinite and tiring and confusing. There was no such thing as time. It didn't exist in this place.

Then finally, finally everything began to slide into place, piece by piece.

And yet, that fucking beeping would not stop.

Your eyelids slightly scrunched tightly; the beep, the light that was now trying to force it's way through the cracks hurt your brain. Angered you. You wanted to yell.

A hiss escaped you, a low noise that coiled warm air back over your face. What the fuck..?

“Oh my god.” Someone spoke. Someone was there. You wanted to reach out to them, to tell them to switch off whatever was beeping incessantly at you. But your body felt like stone, too sluggish to move.

Now, you realised something was on your face. Constricting your mouth and nose. You tried to reach up and push off whatever it was but all you could manage was a twitch of your finger. Slowly though, your sense of awareness returned to you and mustering all your strength you finally began to open your eyes.

The world was blindingly bright. It burned and you snapped your eyes shut again.

“....hh…” you breathed against the restriction on your face; you needed it off as soon as possible.

“She’s doing her best, just give her a moment.”

You forced your eyes to stay open this time, finding the world to be a blur of colours melting together.

“C… s….”

A blur of dark colours filled her vision, blocking the overhead light from hurting so much.

“What was that? Try saying it again.” Definitely a familiar woman's voice. You blinked a few times to try clearing your vision but it didn't work.

“Can't see… blurry….”

The blur moved slightly.

“Oh, has anyone got some tissues? Her eyes are full of gunk.”

There was movement in your peripheral and then something soft pressed lightly down on your eyelids.

“I'm going to clean your eyes, okay? Just try to stay relaxed.” The voice said. The tissue felt ticklish on your skin and your face twitched whenever it brushed over a particularly sensitive area. Eventually, you were able to make out proper shapes, albeit still slightly blurry but enough to tell what it or who it was.

“E-Emily?” You rasped, throat as raw as sandpaper. It made you cough, only adding to the pain.

“Easy now, your throat is gonna be sore.” Your dear, dark haired friend Emily murmured. “You want some water?”

You nodded slightly, but it was enough for her to understand. She turned her head to address someone else in the room, and you struggled to see who else was there.

“You lift the mask, I'll bring the straw to her mouth.” Her eyes flicked back to you and she smiled gently.

“JJ’s gonna lift the mask up now, okay? Just hold still.”

On your other side JJ approached and beamed down at you, her eyes shining with tears.

“Hey.” She managed to choke out at the same time as her fingers carefully pried the mask off your face. Ah, so it was an oxygen mask then.

Emily pressed the straw to your lips and you accepted it gratefully, slowly sipping mouthfuls of the cool water. God, in that moment it was the most delicious and refreshing thing you'd ever had. You could only have a bit at a time, too big of a gulp hurt your throat, but the smaller sips were manageable. With the added hydration to your body you were able to clear your throat enough to speak a bit better.

“P-please help me sit up…” you whispered.

Emily smoothed her hand over your forehead comfortingly as her smile turned more apologetic.

“Sorry, (Y/n). Gotta wait for the medical staff. Morgan and Reid went to go fetch them.”

You nodded in understanding and closed your eyes for a moment.

“Wh…where's…”

“Ah! Miss (L/n)! It's so nice to see you awake.” A clear, cheery voice said. Your eyes opened again and you were met with the sight of an older woman, most likely in her late forties dressed in a nurse’s uniform standing at the foot of your bed. “My name is Kelly! How are you feeling?”

“Like shit.” Emily choked, bug-eyed along with JJ and you could have sworn you heard Derek chuckle nearby. You winced a little. “Sorry, that was rude.”

Luckily, Kelly laughed lightly and shook her head.

“No you're fine, sounds about right. Do you know where you are, Miss (L/n)?”

Your brows furrowed slightly as you tried to recall anything from before.

“I know I’m in a hospital, but that’s all.”

The nurse nodded and came over to you to take your vitals. Emily and JJ stepped back out of the way but they kept their eyes on you, the other members of the team, minus one came to stand nearby.

“Are you in any pain?” Kelly asked you as she pulled the blood pressure monitor over to your bedside and carefully applied the cuff around your upper arm, then pressed the button to start the cycle off. You sighed.

“I…I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think so?” She raised her brow at you. Whilst she continued making observations, making a note of them as she went.

“I haven’t moved so far, so I’m okay.”

“We’ll help you sit up if you’d like in a moment. I’ll ask again after that.”

Your eyes drifted around the room with every passing moment bringing out the clarity of everything. Where…where was he?

The machine beeped to signify the cycle was complete and the tight grip of the cuff released, letting you relax better. Kelly took note of it and smiled at you.

“Well, so far I have no worries about your condition aside from some confusion, which is understandable. But let’s try and sit you up now.” She turned to the others then. “Do any of you want to help? I’ll tell you where to hold her and when to lift.”

Derek approached your bedside with his usual charismatic grin that even in the state you were in right now, you couldn’t help but smile in response.

“C’mon, sugar. Let’s get you upright and comfy.”

The nurse made quick work of guiding him where to hold you, and when she took hold of your other side she turned her attention to you.

“This may cause your stitches to feel like they are being pulled when we move you now, okay? We’ll be as swift as possible though and I’ll assess what to do next, depending on how it goes. Does that sound okay?”

You nodded, just wanting it to be over with.

“Okay… In three, we are going to lift her upper body up and pull her back. Someone please grab the pillows and hold them further up to support her back.”

Emily rushed over and smiled at you reassuringly, and at the count of three you were hauled upwards and adjusted to sit upright.

Oh, how your thigh screamed pure pain. It was only when you noticed the horrified expressions on your friends’ faces that you realised you had screamed. But in that moment you hardly cared, curling over in agony as tears immediately sprung up in your eyes. The nurse sprung into action immediately, pressing the support button and ushering everyone away from the bedside.

It was like fire, like knives, like claws. Tearing and ripping and destroying the nerves on the entire left side of your body. You couldn't stop crying, wailing when hands reached at you to stop your thrashing. And then it was as though a switch was flipped and you calmed, laid still and Kelly appeared into view.

“We've injected a sedative in you to help you relax and we'll give you some strong pain relief now.” She said and took hold of your hand gently. “You may feel sleepy though, is that okay?”

All you could do was nod as stray tears dribbled down the sides of your face and soaked into the pillow below your head.

There was a moment longer of the blinding pain, then it slowly began to ease a little and your eyes felt a little droopy. You weren't sure what was going on for a while, only hearing snippets of conversation further away from your bed which made your brows furrow.

“...not leaving until we at least keep her updated...”

“...staying here with her until she's ready…”

Your eyes flicked to the side when you spotted the oldest member of the team sidling over, and he laid his hand on the side of your head carefully. He offered a tired smile.

“Hey kid.”

Your lower lip wobbled.

“It was bad, wasn't it? Whatever happened.” You croaked. The man leaned down and pressed a kiss to your forehead and sighed.

“Do you remember anything at all?”

You scrunched up your brows as you tried to remember back. The dull ache in your thigh brought it all to the forefront of your mind and your chest heaved with a quiet sob.

“What the fuck,” you cried softly as you gazed up at Rossi tearfully. The man brushed his hand over your head and allowed you to grab onto his arm for comfort as you let out everything you were feeling.

“I know. You’re gonna be okay, kid.” he soothed. You couldn’t remember it all, only flashes. But it was enough to leave you feeling like you had been shattered into a thousand pieces.

At one point Rossi produced a handkerchief for you to use, refusing when you tried to give it back instead of using it. And so you cleared your face with it, breathing deeply in and out to calm yourself down again. When you finally reached a point where you wouldn’t immediately break down again you noted the nurse was gone and your friends stood around your bed.

“We asked for a little more time, and one of us is gonna stay overnight with you.” you heard Derek explain but you sniffled as your eyes darted from face to the next.

“Wh…where is he? Where’s Hotch?”

There was a shared glance; the absence of the BAU’s leader was uncomfortably prominent. Rossi spoke again.

“Strauss called him in. Actually, he had been staying here up until just a day ago.”

Huh?

“What…?”

You were confused.

“Yeah, slept in the little bed over there since you came out of surgery.” Spencer said. But it didn’t make sense to you.

“W-why? That’s-”

Emily raised her brow at you as she folded her arms across her chest.

“That’s what?”

“Weird as hell.” You finished, frowning as your eyes flitted to the bed that lay closer to the ground than the one you were in. He had stayed there?

“Why’s that, sugar?” Derek asked you and you blanched.

“Because he’s Hotch, duh.” Your eyes drifted down to your hands that were now curled into fists in front of you. “Probably was waiting around for me to wake up to tell me off for being reckless.” You muttered dully. The room fell quiet then, aside from that maddening beep.

“You really don’t remember much from what happened, do you?”

Your eyes flicked to JJ, who appeared almost distraught.

“Not really. I-I take it I’m forgetting something important.”

“We should let it wait for now. It isn’t a good idea to overwhelm you with too much information.” Rossi cut in, sending a pointed look to the others. Well, you certainly didn't like that. You swallowed thickly.

“I wanna know what happened.”

Rossi eyed you.

“Not right now. Your priority is resting and recovering.” He said more firmly. You slumped slightly in defeat; there was no point in crossing him. Tiredness washed over you and you sighed, realising you were going to be recovering for a while. Derek took hold of your hand and gave it a squeeze.

“Hey, babygirl’s gonna video call you tomorrow, she’s missed you so much and been crying on the phone to me about it all.” He said, then chuckled. “But don’t tell her I told you that part.” He then winked and you scoffed tiredly.

“I’ve missed her, too.”

Day by day you slowly recovered, getting to the point of using crutches to move around a little bit, and for a week a different member of the team stayed with you overnight in the hospital- something you were very grateful for with the nightmares that had begun to tear through your sleep. But as life goes, they couldn't stay forever and eventually the call came in to summon them all back to Quantico.

“I don't like the idea of leaving you here alone.” Emily said after the text came through. It had been her turn that night to stay with you. You shrugged.

“Criminals aren't going to stop just because we're one member down, Em.”

“I know, but… We're all so worried about you. You- you didn't see what we witnessed when we found you.” She trailed off and you could see her fighting off the urge to cry. You reached out and took her hand gently, rubbing your thumb over the back of it.

“Hey… I'm-I’m okay, yeah? I'm in safe hands. And before you know it I'll be back in town.” you tried to smile at her, which she appreciated but could barely return the gesture.

It had been a week since then, and finally you were being discharged. The idea was to have whoever was available from the team to fly back over to you and stay with you in a hotel for a few days, just to be sure all was stable, then return to the home state together. You had no idea who it would be though, it was highly dependent on the nature of whatever case the team was on at the time.

You sat waiting, perched on the edge of the hospital bed you'd been living in for the past while now, when there was a knock on your room door. You shifted on the bed carefully, keeping your thigh secure as you moved, then called out.

“Come in!”

There was a pause, then the handle turned and the door pushed in. Your breath caught in your throat. Hotch stood in the doorway, just as breathtaking as ever wearing some dark jeans and a dark blue button down shirt underneath a casual jacket. Cautiously, he stepped into the room.

“Hey, (Y/n).” He said. Your hand grabbed the untidy bedsheet tightly.

He had referred to you by your first name.

“S-sir.”

His face twisted into an expression you hadn't seen on him before for a split moment, then it returned to his normal stoicness. He cautiously approached the bed, stuffing his hands into his pockets and his eyes darted around the room. Was he nervous? Why?

“I'm taking you to the hotel, then home.”

You nodded. What were you to say to him? You sniffled loudly.

“I… I’m sorry for what happened, sir. I hope there wasn't too much paperwork.” You mumbled. Hotch looked at you, bewildered.

“What? You don't need to worry about that.”

“But-”

“Please don't stress yourself out over it. I've handled it. Everything is fine.” He cut you off gently. What in the fuck was happening? You expected to be reprimanded, to lose your job, for him to be cold and angry at you. But this?

You sighed gently and the nurse entered the room with your discharge paperwork. She smiled sweetly at the both of you.

“Ah, I see your boyfriend was able to return to take you home!”

The both of you tensed up as your eyes flicked to one another, then as Hotch opened his mouth to speak you beat him to it.

“Oh no, he's not my boyfriend. He's my boss.” You said quickly, returning your gaze to the nurse and immediately a look of horror crossed her face.

“Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to assume.” She handed over the paperwork to you and gave you an awkward smile. “Here's your paperwork, I'm going to get you a wheelchair to take you downstairs, then you can continue on your crutches.”

You nodded and thanked her, then sat quietly avoiding looking at the man opposite you. He shifted from one foot to another whilst you messed with the crutches propped against the side of your bed.

“I wanted to get back sooner instead of making you stay here alone.” You heard Hotch say after a moment. You lifted your head slightly to look at him. The expression on his face struck you, you'd never seen such remorse from him before. Well, at least not aimed at you. You shrugged.

“That's how it goes in this line of work.”

“No, it really doesn’t.”

You stared at him; your brow twitched.

“I…”

The nurse returned then with a wheelchair and the both of you turned your attention to her approaching figure.

“Here we are! Right, let’s get you into the wheelchair now.” The nurse glanced at Hotch. “Are you able to help?” She asked, more cautious this time. He nodded.

“Of course, yes. Tell me what you need me to do.” he responded sincerely. She eyed him for a moment longer, then nodded once.

“We are going to support her from under her armpits and lift her up to stand after I lower the bed.”

She took hold of the remote that controlled the hydraulics of the bed and lowered it to the correct level for you to stand. The both of them prepared to help you then, slinking an arm under your pit and round your back securely. While you were still wary of Hotch, confused by his sudden change of heart, you still had feelings for him and the sensation of his arm around you was something you’d had craved for so, so long. And as you pushed up off the bed to stand you winced at the sharp pain in your thigh, burying your face in Hotch’s chest as you whimpered.

“Easy, you’re okay.” you heard him say softly, his thumb rubbing against your back soothingly.

He didn't let go, not even when you were finally sitting in the wheelchair. Instead moving his hand to your arm comfortingly. The nurse didn't question it.

“Alright, I have a got you your prescription of pain medication here, I'm putting it on top of your discharge papers. You're able to leave when you're ready now, Miss (L/n).” She said and you nodded tiredly.

“Thank you…”

She smiled and moved to the side to allow Hotch to wheel you out.

“You take care now, okay? Call us if there's anything you need.”

You nodded at her and offered a weak smile in return, then Aaron began to wheel you out of the room. You lost track of the many winding corridors you travelled down to reach the exit, but soon you were outside and you breathed in deeply when the air hit your face.

“God… you forget how nice it is when you go outside.” you said softly. Aaron hummed and directed the wheelchair to the car he must have hired- much lower to the ground than an SUV, that you were worried would have been your mode of transport. He locked the wheels in place and took hold of your crutches with one hand while the other hooked around your back to help you stand.

“Squeeze as tight as you need to onto me.” You heard him say, then when you were ready to try you pushed up from the chair painfully, wincing and once again burying your face against his chest.

“F-fuck- hurts-”

“I know, swe- (Y/n), I know. You're doing very well.” Aaron murmured as he passed you your crutches. You thanked him and rested your weight on them, taking it off your poor leg instead. He pushed the chair out of the way and opened the passenger door open for you and helped you lower down onto the chair slowly. It was all so painful still, straining your wound site and sending sparks of pain up and down the side of your body. By the time you were belted in you were exhausted.

Hotch nudged the brakes off the wheelchair and grabbed the handles, then turned to you.

“I'm going to take the chair back. I won't be long, okay?”

You nodded and he bumped the car door with his hip to close it for you. You sighed softly and settled back into the chair. You weren't so sure what to think of feel right now.

“I'm going to order food in, what would you wanna eat?” Hotch asked you hours later. You were sitting up on one of the beds in the twin room you were sharing with him now. It was a different hotel to the one you'd stayed in for the case, more luxurious and you were on a floor much higher than the room you had been staying in at the other hotel.

You sighed softly.

“I'm not really sure. What places are there available in the area?”

The man crossed the room to you and held out his phone, showing the food delivery app to you.

“I think it might actually be easier if you take a look than me reading them out. There's quite a lot.” He said with a barely there smile. He… It made your stomach feel funny and you looked away quickly, taking the phone off him with a quiet ‘thanks’.

“You have any preferences?” You glanced in his general direction, keeping your eyes away from his face.

“I will find something on the menu wherever you choose. Don't worry about it.”

“Alright then…”

You heard Hotch sigh and he moved to sit on his bed, perching on the edge facing you.

“Is something wrong?” He questioned you. You continued scrolling.

“I'm tired and in pain. That's all.” You knew you sounded unconvincing.

“Please don't lie to me.”

You finally turned your head and looked at him, lips pulled downward.

“Well then I don't want to talk about it. Please leave it alone, sir.”

He stared at you and his brows began to furrow deeply. His jaw clenched slightly.

“(Y/n). When I thought you were going to die, I-” He cut himself off, swallowing thickly and his left hand curled into a fist and his thumb began to stroke across his second knuckles. “I was fucking terrified. Seeing you like that, I don't think I'll be able to forget it.”

You stared wide eyed at him for a moment in silence. You didn't expect this, didn't think he cared this much. In the artificial light of the room you could spy the glint of tears threatening to spill from his sad, brown eyes.

“S-sir… I-I didn't realise you felt so strongly about it.”

He sniffled and lifted his hand to wipe his eyes with his thumb and fingers. You bit your lip, trying to stop it from trembling.

“That's also my fault. I kept pushing you away and this is what happened as a result.” He mumbled. The room was quiet for a while, the hum of the AC filled the silence as you stared at the man before you. Far gone was the person you'd come to expect and were used to, the closed off and cold unit chief who would barely do so much as stiffly discuss work with you when he needed to, in his place was a man filled with regrets, with concern and an emotion you couldn’t recognise. Or at least, you didn’t want to. For all you knew you’d be misinterpreting things and your heart just couldn’t take it.

You sighed.

“What happened? I only remember parts, the others won’t budge when I ask them.” You finally settled on, hoping he would be the one to bring you from solitude. He shifted on his bed and you opened your mouth to push for answers, when he spoke.

“The day you were kidnapped, we found another victim’s body- Carla Reynolds- who you’d spoken to a few days prior. Your FBI badge was with the body and- and you blamed yourself.” He paused, letting the words sink in. You remembered her, and you remembered the state her corpse was in when you visited the body dumping site. Hotch noted the tremble of your hands and his brows creased. “If you need me to stop…”

“No. No, I- I need to remember.” You cut him off and curled your hands into fists. He was quiet for a moment, then nodded.

“You- you fell into a dark place of blaming yourself. You tried to remember faces from the day you interviewed her but you couldn’t. Her parents were let in and they confronted you when you were by yourself. I-“ he clenched his hands into fists and dropped his gaze. “I should have said something then, did something. And when you snuck out of our hotel room with the car keys from my jacket that night? My heart sank.”

Oh… it was coming back to you now. Your lower lip trembled.

“He… he had a knife at my back when you called me. That’s why I, um, ended the call.”

“(Y/n)…”

You dipped your head and wrapped your arms around yourself.

“I’m sorry for the stress and grief I put you all through, I just… I didn’t think straight at all. I- I’ll understand if I do lose my job based on my actions during this case.” You mumbled and you clenched your jaw in an attempt to stop yourself from crying. You heard Aaron sigh, then a moment later the mattress dipped under his weight as he sat down beside you.

“Hey, I have no plans on doing such a thing. You’re a valuable member of the team and terminating you would be not only a poor decision, but also hypocritical.” He closed his eyes for a moment and laid his palm against his forehead, breathing deeply. “I think everyone on the team has done something reckless, including myself. And yet we’re all still here in the team.”

He could see you were not entirely convinced from the way you fussed with the hem of your shirt and the wrinkle of your nose. But you were tired and hungry and just wanted to sleep. And so you picked his phone up from where you’d set it down beside you when you curled up earlier, and chose a random restaurant to order from and picked something. You offered his phone back to Hotch and avoided his gaze.

“I chose something. It’s your turn to now.”

His fingers barely brushed against yours as he reluctantly took the phone back and you gritted your teeth a little, trying hard not to show a response to the touch. Hotch sighed again, but didn’t push the unresolved conversation for he could see the exhaustion weighing in on you. You knew he wouldn’t let it slide forever, though.

Little by little, you began letting your guard drop slightly around Hotch. While you still felt uncertain about him, questioning if he really had cared about you all this time, hearing his soft voice as he checked in on you at your apartment and brought you groceries to cook meals for the week for you. It was, frankly, weird. But not an unpleasant weird. It had your feelings for the man in turmoil though, what should you be feeling towards him, if it was perhaps something to still cling onto.

There was always a certain look in his eyes whenever he visited you; a sadness, the look as though he had much to say but not knowing how to, or if he even should say. You never brought it up.

The others would stop by as well, especially Penelope with her being in the area all the time. Sometimes they’d all visit at the same time, having a group dinner and helping you around the apartment- even when you at first protested. Thinking back on it, you weren’t so sure why you were so reluctant to let your friends help you. They’d been so supportive and caring, and you felt as though you were close to being back on your feet in a way. Nightmares plagued you though, tearing through the night mercilessly and leaving you more exhausted than you’d started out. You had yet to make any of them aware of it, not quite ready to talk to them about what you experienced. Sooner or later you would have to if you wanted to return to work smoothly.

It was a few months later when things took a turn. After another round of extensive physical therapy and talking to a psychiatrist, Aaron had brought you back home- as he always did after such appointments if he could- to make sure you were okay. You never asked him to attend any of them, he had took it upon himself to see to it if he wasn’t away with another case. Part of you was curious as to why, but decided against asking. It was… nice having him care about you like this.

He was finishing up washing the dishes (despite your protests) after the two of you had shared a meal again when your phone began to ring. You picked it up and raised a brow at the number; it wasn’t one in your contacts. The area code was for Virginia though and you decided to answer it.

“I’m gonna take this call, s-Aaron.” You murmured softly to him and he nodded.

You swiped to answer and held the phone to your ear as you walked through to the living room.

“Hello?”

“Hello, this is Section Chief Erin Strauss. Is this (Y/n) I’m speaking to?”

A chill shivered through you. What on earth was she calling you for?!

“A-um yes! It is, yes. Uh, how can I help you, ma’am?” You answered quickly.

“Upon your return to work tomorrow, I would like you to report to my office first thing. Is that understood?”

That wasn’t good.

“Y-yes, ma’am. I can do that. Is that all?”

“Yes that is all. I hope you have been recovering well, agent (L/n). I’ll see you tomorrow, good bye.”

The line disconnected before you could say anything else and for a moment you merely stood rooted in place.

“(Y/n)?” You heard from behind you, snapping you out of your trance. Turning to face Aaron, you blinked at him. You noted the front of his shirt had damp patches from where the water in the sink had splashed onto him as he washed up.

“Mm?”

“Who was that on the phone?”

You were quiet, debating what to say to him. His brows creased as he stepped closer, concerned about the extending silence.

“You don’t have to tell me, but I just want to make sure you’re-“

“Strauss!” You blurted, stopping Aaron in his tracks. “It- it was Strauss. Wants me to um, visit her in her office tomorrow when I arrive back.”

Aaron’s brows furrowed now as he folded his arms across his chest, covering up some of the damp splotches on his shirt.

“Do you know what she wants?”

“No… do you?”

He shook his head as you and dropped his gaze.

“Listen, tomorrow… when you return to the office. I want you to come to my office whenever you have the first opportunity to do so. I will issue you your new FBI credentials and your gun.” He said sincerely. You nodded.

“Sure, I can do that.”

“That isn’t all.” He moved closer towards you and laid a hand on your shoulder, causing your breath to catch in your throat. “I have something I need to discuss with you, it’s important. As well as that, I want you to know that if anything becomes too much; come to me and tell me. You’ve been through a hell of a lot, it’s okay if you struggle to find your footing.”

He squeezed your shoulder gently and you finally found the ability to breathe again, nodding quickly as you glanced away bashfully.

“Y-yes. I- I can do that, sir- Aaron.”

A slight smile twitched at the corner of his mouth.

“Thank you.” He said softly.

You were almost nauseous with stress and worry as you rode the elevator to the correct floor. It was hard to remember the last time you’d been here. but it wasn’t even just the nerves of returning to work after so long, you were on the way to talk to Strauss. You’d hardly slept that night after Aaron left your home, instead wracking your brain as to what she could possibly want to talk to you about. As the elevator dinged, you knew you didn’t have anymore time to think about it.

Briskly, you walked towards her office, avoiding other people who were at the office as early as you were. You hadn’t looked through the glass doors to the bullpen yet, you weren’t ready.

Standing outside Strauss’ office, you knocked and waited. Every second that ticked by felt like an eternity, then the door swung open to reveal Erin Strauss. She smiled slightly at you.

“Hello agent (L/n). Do come in.” She greeted you and held the door open wider for you.

You stepped inside and listened for the quiet click of the door shutting behind you, followed by the muffled clack of her heels on the carpet as she walked back towards her desk. She gestured to the chair opposite her desk as she settled into her seat and you quickly moved to sit down.

“Thank you, ma’am.”

She knitted her fingers together in front of her and studied you for a moment.

“You must be wondering why I called you in today before you headed into the office.” She said. You cleared your throat and drew in a deep breath.

“I am, yes.”

“I want to commend you for your bravery first of all, but also offer my sympathies for what happened to you. If there is anything I can do to help you, you need only ask.”

You shifted in your seat and nodded slightly, keeping your head bowed.

“Thank you.”

“That isn’t the only thing I brought you in to discuss though.” The shift in tone caused you to stiffen and you felt a throb of pain in your thigh.

“Ma’am?” You lifted your head to look at her.

“During your… predicament, James Humphrey had a camera set up recording, just as he had done with his other victims.”

She paused for a moment whilst you processed this information, a coldness settling within your core. She continued after a moment, her face expressionless.

“While I have not watched it, I have read the transcripts and I am concerned with what I have read. So I need you to be honest with me when I ask you something: what feelings do you have for agent Hotchner?” She asked, staring at you. Your entire body froze up, eyes wide in alarm.

What?

“M-ma’am, I don’t understand… what has that got to do with-“

Strauss pulled out a piece of paper from a casefile you hadn’t originally noticed was sitting on her desk and began to read from it.

“James said ‘wearing these cute lil’ frilly panties for your boss?’ And you didn’t respond at first, which urged him to continue and you both argued about it. That is until he says ‘You seriously think no one sees it? It’s pathetic really, you being desperately in love with your boss and craving even an ounce of praise from him.’ And even mentions the two of you had been sharing a bed.”

You stared at her in horror, struggling to comprehend any of this, or even why she was bringing it up in the first place. The pain in your thigh throbbed more intensely, to which you pressed your lips together tightly. She continued, eyes scanning the paper.

“That isn’t all, agent (L/n). Later on, when the team did reach your location, you said to agent Hotchner that you have ‘always liked him more than you should’ which, added to everything that transpired beforehand, leads me to believe you have inappropriate feelings for him.” The woman concluded, returning the piece of paper to the casefile.

And all you could do was stare at her.

Was she truly more concerned about this over the fact you had been tortured and almost died?! Besides, you had no memory of-

Your heart lurched in your chest and your hand trembled slightly. It had all come flooding back, the memories of it all, the realisation you had practically confessed to Aaron Hotchner on what you believed to be your deathbed. You swallowed thickly.

“I…”

“So I will ask you again, agent (L/n). What feelings do you have for agent Hotchner?” Strauss asked impatiently now and you felt as though you were on the brink of throwing up.

“M-ma’am, I-“ you closed your eyes for a moment and exhaled. “I- I do have feelings for him. B-but I have never and will never let that interfere with mine or his job-“

“That is not what I asked.” The woman cut you off and you closed your mouth quickly. “You do know about the policies surrounding fraternizing with colleagues, especially that of your superior, yes?”

You nodded and clenched your hands into fists in your lap, fighting the urge to look away.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Then you’ll know it is not acceptable to have feelings for agent Hotchner, your superior, nor would it be acceptable to engage in relations with him.”

Your jaw clenched.

“I understand, ma’am.” You gritted. Strauss clasped her hands together firmly as she tilted her head at you.

“You have two options: if you do not wish to lose your job, I will assign you to a new position in a different state. You will no longer have contact with agent Hotchner, nor the BAU unit as a whole.” Your chest heaved with utter shock, but she wasn’t finished. “Either that or you hand in your resignation. You will still not be able to have contact with agent Hotchner.”

All you could do was stare at her, unable to say anything. Never see Aaron again? Or talk to him? Even acknowledge his existence ever again? You felt your heart shattering to pieces, the coldness within spreading throughout your body. All of this time slowly building a positive relationship with him during your recovery, your feelings growing stronger for him, would all have been for naught. This was a worse agony than everything you’d been through, entirely heartbroken.

Strauss cleared her throat to bring your attention back to her and she handed you two envelopes.

“One of these is a form to fill in if you wish to transfer, and the other is for resigning. You have until the end of the day to make your decision, agent (L/n). That is all.”

You didn’t remember walking out of her office after that, nor finding your way back to the main precinct where the glass doors were to the bullpen. But as you heard your name being called and you turned to see Emily and the others approaching the doorway, you returned to your senses and quickly made your way into the elevator to leave. You couldn’t bear to face any of them now, especially him.

Just when we thought things were gonna get better for them too 😔😔😔😔 maybe next chapter it'll be different >:3 thank you for reading this far!! It means a lot to me 💖💖💖💖💖

#aaron hotchner x reader #aaron hotchner #aaron hotchner x you #aaron hotchner x y/n #aaron hotchner x plus size reader #aaron hotchner x female reader

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mitigatedchaos · 4 months ago

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Congratulations! You are now an elf, along with your friends, associates, cherished family members, and however many other humans you think should be elves. You will live healthily for up to 400 years, after which you will age until the end of your natural lifespan at age 500.

You have futuristic sci-fi health coverage which can collect you by rocket pod from most parts of the Earth's surface. (It does not cover, for example, the Mariana Trench.) Most injuries can be healed completely, although particularly severe injuries might require years in a regenerative coma.

In which technological environment do you spend most of your time?

1 - Stone Age - Living in a hut or perhaps a cave, hunting animals or working the land with stone tools, with perhaps some domestic animals. There's no other way to get quite so close to the land.

2 - Fake Medieval Europe - Nominally this style of living is like medieval or renaissance Europe. Travel is by horse or by sail. There are no electrical devices, but there are printing presses. You will probably spend a lot of time farming. Guns are sufficiently crude affairs that it's 50-50 on whether you'd be better off trying to kill someone with a sword or spear instead.

3 - Steam Power & Telegraphs - Locomotives are steam-powered. Factories are steam-powered. Cars are steam-powered. Electrically-driven refrigerators are available. Long-distance communication is by telegraph, or by landline telephone - if you can pay for it. Record players are a thing.

4 - Fake 1960s - Gasoline-powered cars, diesel locomotives, and long-distance jet aircraft are available. Computers generally consist of one or more large units the size of a refrigerator, possibly with a cathode ray-tube terminal. Color television is available if you have the money.

5 - Fake 1990s - There are personal computers with CPU speeds measured in Mhz and 800x600 screen resolutions - these can be connected to a dial-up Internet. DVDs are available. Cell phones exist, but are limited to flip-phones at most, and don't include cameras.

6 - Fake 2010s - High-speed Internet, streaming services, 4K flat-screen televisions - no ChatGPT.

#polls #tumblr polls #elf posting

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unisol-communications123 · 2 years ago

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48 port wall mount termination box

SPECIFICATIONS:

Material : Mild Steel/Aluminum with 7 Tank Process powder coating.

Dimensions : 350*300*110 mm (H*W*D)

Color : RAL 7035/Black

Weight : 1.8–2 kg

Splice Holder : FR grade ABC.

Splice Holder Dimension : 180*110*15 mm (L*W*H)

Cable Glands : Nylon with nitrile butadiene rubber, cable diameter of 5mm to 14mm max available

Fiber components standard : Telecordia GR 326

Insertion Loss : less <.3dB (Multimode), < .2dB (Singlemode)

Plug/Unplug durability : 1000 times

#storing fiber terminations. It is also used for Indoor/Outdoor application and medium size multi-dwelling units (MDU’s) for FTTx.#Our IP rated wall mount fiber optic patch panel integrates three main functions of fiber splicing #cable winding & storing #and interface management. The enclosure adopts good quality metal sheets & surface electrostatic spray technique #which is offering safety & good endurance performance. It is the ideal design for building & campus networking.#48 port wall mount patch panel #terminator #cable #fiber optic #fiber optic product

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baitpaintsbadly · 7 months ago

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"The Thallax were specialised, cybernetically-augmented shock troops manufactured and principally used by the Ordo Reductor of the ancient Mechanicum. The particular augmentations undergone by one of the Thallax are both severe and extreme, retaining only the brain (and in many cases the skull and spinal column), the life-sustaining viscera and nervous system as the basis of the articulated and armoured robotic frame which encompasses it. Other principal features of the design included a high-energy compact reactor system (whose emanations could not be endured by a less augmented organic system), allowing for extremely potent portable weaponry to be utilised, embedded Incunabulan Jet-Pack systems and arcane implanted sensory apparatus operating outside the usual realm of organic perception.

The sinister blank-faced helms of the Thalaxii conceal an array of inhuman sensory apparati through which they experience the battlefield as a raging storm of electromagnetic turmoil, blood-heat and seismic percussion. However, for the organic brain to handle this hurricane of data, it must be surgically mutilated, removing the mere Human senses such as sight and hearing. The unfortunate side-effects of these systems on the living components, however, were continuous agony and psychotic breakdown; effects ameliorated by the surgical excision of some of the brain's emotional centres. For some within the Mechanicum this transformation of the Human mind skirted the edge of abomination such as that posed by sentient "Abominable Intelligence"

The resulting machine-creature is capable of far greater tactical flexibility and independent action than a mere combat servitor, although terminal deterioration of the subject's psyche was certain over extended periods of time."

The 6 Thallax from the HH Mechanicum box, which I will be using as Kataphron Breachers in 40k. These lads are my favourite unit from the Mechanicum range, both in looks and lore and I forever hope and wish they get legend-ed in to 40k (never happening I know, but a trooper can dream). I shoved them onto some 60mm bases to avoid any "modeling for advantage" accusations and I'm pleasantly surprised by how ok they look on the larger base size, I was worried they'd look a bit weedy but I think they fill the space well (though I am very biased). They have some really cool extra gun options, with the Phased Plasma Fusil's, Photon Thrusters and Multi-Melta's, but not enough to fill a whole squad with. I dont want to muddy the proxy waters any further than I am already, so they're all getting the same, still very cool, Lightning Guns that I can pretend are Heavy Arc Rifles. So I'll keep the fancy ones for future kitbashing. Pic with Skit for Scale under the cut.

Also, hello to my Dark Heresy players, sorry that this is how you find out what that one character actually is, try not to worry too much about it :) .

#admech #model do a spin

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mariacallous · 9 days ago

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Joseph Kurihara watched the furniture pile higher and higher on the streets of Terminal Island. Tables and chairs, mattresses and bed frames, refrigerators and radio consoles had been dragged into alleyways and arranged in haphazard stacks. It was February 25, 1942, two and a half months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the U.S. Navy had given the island’s residents 48 hours to pack up and leave.

An industrial stretch of land in the Port of Los Angeles, Terminal Island was home to a string of canneries, a Japanese American fishing community of about 3,500, and, crucially, a naval base. A week earlier, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing military commanders to designate areas from which “any or all persons may be excluded.” The order made no mention of race, but its target was clear: people who were ethnically Japanese.

FBI agents had already rounded up and arrested most of Terminal Island’s men, leaving women to choose what to keep and what to leave behind. Kurihara watched as children cried in the street and peddlers bought air-conditioning units and pianos from evacuating families for prices he described as “next to robbery.”

“Could this be America,” he later wrote, “the America which so blatantly preaches ‘Democracy’? ”

Before long, the chaos Kurihara witnessed on Terminal Island was playing out elsewhere. In March, Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt, the head of the Western Defense Command, began using Roosevelt’s executive order to exclude all people “of Japanese ancestry” from large swaths of the West Coast. The Japanese, DeWitt reasoned, were racially untrustworthy, and thus even people like Kurihara, an American citizen who had joined the Army and deployed to the Western Front during the First World War, posed an espionage risk. “A Jap is a Jap,” DeWitt told newspapers. The military forced Kurihara and more than 125,000 others from their homes, confining them to a circuit of remote prison camps.

Many Japanese Americans attempted to demonstrate their loyalty to the United States through stoic acceptance of the government’s orders. Some even volunteered to fight for the country that had imprisoned them: The 442nd Regimental Combat Team and 100th Infantry Battalion, a segregated Army unit of Japanese Americans, became the most decorated military unit in American history (relative to its size and length of service), fighting the Nazis through Italy and into France. Scouts from the unit were among the first troops to liberate one of Dachau’s camps. In the years after the war, their feats helped burnish a legend of Asian American exceptionalism; their sacrifice affirmed their belonging.

This was the narrative of “Japanese internment” that reigned among my father’s generation. When my grandmother was 20, she and her family were uprooted from Los Angeles and sent to a barbed-wire-enclosed camp in Heart Mountain, Wyoming, for nearly a year; my grandfather volunteered for the 442nd from Hawaii and was wounded by a grenade fragment in northern Italy. I grew up understanding the 442nd’s success as a triumphant denouement to internment, which in turn obscured the suffering of the period. I didn’t have to think too hard about what had happened at Terminal Island or Heart Mountain, or what either said about America.

Kurihara, though, was unwilling to ignore the gap between his country’s stated principles and its actions. He had always believed in democracy, he wrote, but what he saw at Terminal Island demonstrated that “even democracy is a demon in time of war.” During the years he spent incarcerated, shuttled through a succession of punitive detention sites, his doubts festered. He had already served in a war for the United States, and still the country accused him of disloyalty. Kurihara became a scourge of the Japanese Americans urging acquiescence, a radical who for a time openly embraced violence. If America had no faith in him, why would he have faith in America?

The care package, it seemed, had meant a lot. “I hereby most sincerely thank you for the generous package you have sent us Soldier Boys,” Kurihara wrote to the Red Cross chapter of Hurley, Wisconsin. It was 1917, the era of the original I WANT YOU poster, and the 22-year-old Kurihara had volunteered for the Army. Stationed at Camp Custer, in Michigan, he was the only nonwhite soldier in his 1,100-man artillery unit. “By the name you will note that I am a Japanese,” his letter continued, “but just the same I’m an American. An American to the last.”

Kurihara was born in Hawaii in 1895. His parents had emigrated from Japan as plantation workers, joining a cohort that came to be known as the issei, or first generation of the Japanese diaspora. Kurihara and his four siblings were nisei, members of the second generation. After Hawaii was seized by the United States in 1898, Kurihara and others born in the islands were granted U.S. citizenship.

In 1915, he moved to California alone, in hopes of eventually attending medical school. There, his biographer, Eileen Tamura, notes, he was shocked to discover widespread antipathy toward Asians. Once, as Kurihara walked through central Sacramento, a man approached and kicked him in the stomach. Elsewhere in the city, children pelted him with rocks. The word Jap, he wrote in an unpublished autobiography, was almost a “universal title.” But Kurihara seemed to believe that this was the bigotry of individuals, not of the country itself.

A friend told Kurihara that midwesterners were more tolerant, so he moved to Michigan. Not long afterward, he enlisted. On July 30, 1918, Kurihara’s division deployed to the Western Front and prepared to drive into Germany, but its planned assault never occurred: On November 11, the armistice ended the war. The following September, Kurihara returned to the United States and was discharged in San Francisco. On a streetcar in the city, still wearing his Army uniform, he heard a man spit “Jap.”

After the war, Kurihara settled in Los Angeles, working as an accountant and then as a navigator on fishing boats. When Pearl Harbor was attacked, he was more than 3,000 miles south of California, plying the waters off the Galápagos Islands for tuna. The ship returned to San Diego Bay just after daybreak on December 29 and found a country at war.

Soon after, Kurihara’s captain informed him that government officials had banned him from serving as the ship’s navigator. Suddenly out of a job, he sought work that might aid the war effort. But at shipbuilding and steel yards, he was rebuffed for being Japanese. He returned to Los Angeles just in time to see Terminal Island depopulated.

Kurihara wanted to fight DeWitt’s removal orders. But nisei leaders in the Japanese American community were taking a different tack. At a meeting of a group affiliated with the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL), an ardently pro-American civil-rights organization, Kurihara heard Mike Masaoka, the group’s national secretary, tell the attendees that he had met with DeWitt and urged that they comply with his orders. Kurihara was furious. “These boys claiming to be the leaders of the Niseis were a bunch of spineless Americans,” he wrote.

Japanese Americans of my grandparents’ generation tend to refer to the period that followed as “camp”—just “camp”—cloaking it in a protective shield of euphemism. Academics refer to the relocation centers with the more charged term concentration camps, borrowing the language used by Roosevelt and his administration. Regardless of their name, though, the sites had a clear function: They were open-air prisons.

Kurihara’s was called Manzanar. Built on 6,200 acres of desert at the base of the Sierra Nevada mountains in eastern California, Manzanar held about 10,000 Japanese Americans at its peak. They were crammed into 504 plywood barracks, fenced in by barbed wire and guard towers. Families each received a 20-by-25-foot room; bachelors like Kurihara were assigned roommates. Everyone shared the latrines.

Kurihara was among the first at the camp, arriving in March 1942. The government needed workers to construct the facility, and Kurihara’s priest had encouraged single, able-bodied men to sign up, so that it might be livable by the time families arrived. Aware that he’d wind up there anyway and tempted by the promise of work, Kurihara reluctantly agreed, helping build the camp that would imprison him.

Construction was still ongoing when incarcerees began to arrive in April. That summer, a group of nisei aligned with Masaoka and the JACL created the “Manzanar Citizens’ Federation,” hoping to prove the community’s loyalty to the United States and assert a leadership role at the camp. Kurihara, rankled by the suggestion that he had anything to prove, was determined to undermine them.

At meetings held during the summer of 1942, Kurihara delivered a series of speeches—“dynamites,” he later called them—meant to “bomb the Manzanar Citizens Federation out of existence.” To one rapturous crowd he exclaimed, “If we must prove our loyalty to enjoy the full privileges of American citizens, then why and for what reasons are the Japanese American veterans of World War I doing here? Have they not proven their loyalty already?” The people at Manzanar were incarcerated not because they were “unloyal,” he argued. “It is because we are what we are—Japs! Then, if such is the case, let us be Japs! Japs through and through, to the very marrow of our bones.”

Being incarcerated at a place like Manzanar convinced Kurihara that America—both its people and its government—held DeWitt’s view that “a Jap is a Jap”; nothing could ever prove his loyalty. Kurihara wasn’t alone. In her book Impossible Subjects, the historian Mae Ngai argues that the experience of internment ultimately fostered in many Japanese Americans what the removal orders had been meant to contain: disloyalty.

Tensions between supporters of the JACL and dissidents like Kurihara exploded on December 5, 1942, when masked men entered the barrack of Fred Tayama, the president of the organization’s Los Angeles chapter, and beat him with clubs. Tayama identified Harry Ueno, an ally of Kurihara’s, as one of his assailants. Ueno was arrested by camp authorities, though he was widely perceived as innocent.

The next day, thousands of Ueno’s supporters rallied outside the mess hall, where Kurihara accused Tayama and other JACL leaders of informing on incarcerees deemed insufficiently pro-American to camp administrators and the FBI. “Why permit that sneak to pollute the air we breathe?” he asked, referring to Tayama. “Let’s kill him and feed him to the roving coyotes!”

When negotiations with camp administrators over Ueno’s release collapsed, a crowd mobilized to free him from the camp’s jail and hunt down Tayama and the others Kurihara had condemned. At the jail, military police deployed tear gas to disperse them. Amid the smoke, two soldiers fired live rounds. Two young men were killed; 10 others were wounded.

The shooting ended what became known to some as the “Manzanar Uprising,” and to others as the “Manzanar Riot.” The men Kurihara had threatened were removed from the camp and eventually resettled throughout the country; their status as his targets was apparently sufficient proof of their loyalty. Kurihara, it turned out, was correct—Tayama and the others he’d identified had been reporting “pro-Japanese” incarcerees to camp administrators and the FBI. Kurihara, Ueno, and other “troublemakers” were arrested and moved through a series of “isolation centers” for dissidents. Finally, they landed at a camp called Tule Lake, in remote Northern California, where they were initially held in a stockade.

Devastated by the deaths of the two men, Kurihara swore off camp politics and spent most of his time alone, reading his Bible and studying Japanese, a language he’d never mastered. Regardless of the war’s outcome, he had decided that as soon as he could, he would leave America forever.

On December 8, 1945, as an American bomber circled overhead, Kurihara and some 1,500 other Japanese Americans stepped off a naval transport ship at Uraga, a port on Tokyo Bay. The bomber was a reminder of what Japan had endured over the preceding months: The United States had firebombed Tokyo in March, destroying much of the city and leaving more than 1 million people homeless; in August, it had dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan surrendered not long after.

As the war had stretched on and the American government’s legal authority to incarcerate Japanese Americans had worn thin, Congress had passed a law to allow them to renounce their citizenship; the government had greater leeway to detain and even deport noncitizens under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. Only a small minority of those incarcerated took the government up on its offer. Kurihara was among the first and asked to be on the first ship to Japan.

From Uraga, Kurihara traveled to the village of Oshima, where his older sister Kawayo had relocated from Hawaii in 1920. Oshima was about 36 miles across a bay from Hiroshima; on August 6, Kawayo may have felt the shock wave from the first atomic bomb.

Not wanting to burden her family, Kurihara moved to Sasebo, a city in the Nagasaki prefecture about 30 miles from where the second atomic bomb had been dropped. As in Hiroshima, the bomb had destroyed nearly every structure within a mile and a half of its point of detonation; even a month later, a U.S. naval officer reported that the city was suffused with “a smell of death.” Lacking employment options, Kurihara took a job with the occupation forces, working for the country he had grown to despise. The U.S. military needed interpreters and recruited Japanese Americans off the docks as their ships arrived. These jobs offered relatively high pay—and guaranteed access to food.

It’s unclear whether Kurihara lingered on the irony of his position. In his correspondence back to the United States, he acknowledged no regrets. “Here I am in Sasebo, working for the Occupational Forces and am doing exceedingly well,” he wrote in a 1946 letter to Dorothy Thomas, a sociologist he had met at Tule Lake. In a Christmas message to Thomas later that year, he requested a pair of black dress shoes, size 7E.

His time working for the military proved short-lived. The occupation needed people who could translate complex legal documents; Kurihara’s abilities were likely insufficient. After a year in Sasebo, he moved to Tokyo and resumed work as an accountant. He and other repatriates stuck out in postwar Japan. Many were referred to by a racial epithet Kurihara likely never would have heard directed at him before: keto, Japanese for “white man.”

In April 1949, David Itami, a fellow nisei who had also worked for the occupation, wrote a letter to Dorothy Thomas to see if something might be done on Kurihara’s behalf. Kurihara, he said, “does not belong here and does not deserve to be left forgotten.” Kurihara had struggled to adapt to life in Japan; he longed to return to Hawaii. But he hadn’t forgiven the United States.

In the fall of 1962, Kurihara wrote a letter to Robert F. Kennedy, then the attorney general, asking why the U.S. had not reached out to renunciants to restore their citizenship. A lawyer at the Department of Justice replied, noting that, thanks to a lawsuit brought by the ACLU, renunciants simply had to apply to get their cases reviewed. Indeed, among the 5,589 renunciants Kurihara was one of the only ones who by the 1960s had not had their citizenship restored. The Justice Department lawyer failed to grasp what Kurihara demanded: that the U.S. government make the first move. Kurihara remained principled—or imperiously stubborn—to the end. He never returned to Hawaii. He died of a stroke in Tokyo on November 26, 1965.

Mike Masaoka and the JACL seemed to win their debate with Kurihara. Not long after Pearl Harbor, Masaoka had proposed that the Army create a “suicide battalion” of nisei volunteers to fight for the U.S. while their parents were held as hostages in the camps. The Army declined, but the 442nd wasn’t functionally all that different from what Masaoka had suggested. He became its first volunteer, and over the course of the war, the unit earned more than 4,000 Purple Hearts and 21 Medals of Honor.

Speaking at its discharge in 1946, President Harry Truman suggested that the 442nd had affirmed that “Americanism is not a matter of race or creed; it is a matter of the heart.” He continued: “You fought not only the enemy, but you fought prejudice—and you have won.”

Pronouncements like Truman’s bolstered a narrative of internment as America’s “worst wartime mistake,” as the Yale Law professor Eugene Rostow argued in Harper’s in 1945. Remembering it as a mistake, rather than as the result of decades of policy that had excluded Asian immigrants from public life in America, allowed those who had experienced it to move on and ascend into middle-class life. If they shared Kurihara’s sense of betrayal, they didn’t express it and instead worked to rebuild their lives in the United States. My grandfather kept his Purple Heart tucked away in his sock drawer; my grandmother never spoke of her time at Heart Mountain.

As historians came to question the triumphalist story of Japanese American history and activists lobbied for redress from the U.S. government, some came to celebrate Kurihara as a resistance icon. Roy Sano, writing a column in 1970 for the JACL’s newspaper, the Pacific Citizen, called him “a hero for the 1970s.” He continued: “Every JACL banquet which has a special table for veterans should leave an open seat for Joe Kurihara.”

Others couldn’t look past the death threats he made at Manzanar. Writing in the Japanese American newspaper Hokubei Mainichi in 1983, Elaine Yoneda, who had been incarcerated with Kurihara at Manzanar, called him “an embittered manipulator who helped turn some camp residents’ frustrations into a pro-Japan cause.” Kurihara had named her husband a “stool pigeon”; on the night of the Manzanar Uprising, Yoneda and her son had barricaded themselves in their barrack, fearing for their lives. His rhetoric, she argued, “meant and still means plaudits for the rapists of Nanking and Hitler’s butchers.”

Harry Ueno, though, continued to defend his ally. Ueno had renounced his citizenship, but when he heard about the dire conditions in Japan, he fought to remain in the U.S. He and Kurihara kept in touch until Kurihara’s death. “Deep in his heart,” Ueno wrote, “he cried a hundred times for the country he once loved and trusted and fought for.”

In February, I traveled to Washington, D.C., with my parents and two of my siblings to see a book, called the Ireichō, that lists every Japanese American who had been incarcerated. Its creators had invited descendants to mark their relatives’ names with a small stamp, in the hope that all of the 125,284 people in the book might eventually be acknowledged. Gathered in its pages were those who had renounced their citizenship alongside those who had volunteered for the 442nd. Tayama, Yoneda, Ueno, and Kurihara, together just as they had been at Manzanar.

In a small room off the Culture Wing of the National Museum of American History, we placed a neat row of blue dots beneath my grandmother’s name—Misao Hatakeyama—and that of her brother, Kimio, and parents, Yasuji and Kisaburo, and a neighbor my father had grown up with in L.A., and her brother, who had been killed in Italy with the 442nd in April 1945, only days before Germany’s surrender. I thought of those names when, just a few weeks later, the Trump administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act to accelerate the deportation of Venezuelan migrants, the first time the law had been used since it helped provide a legal framework for internment.

I wonder what my grandmother might have thought of Kurihara, or if my grandfather would have welcomed him at the veterans’ table. I have no way of knowing. I imagine they would have disapproved of his tactics and his choice to leave America. But I think they might have understood his anger at the country that had broken his trust, that had practiced values so different from the ones it proclaimed.

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