#42 Gear Street

[theguitarchannel]

Scott Elliott from Chernobyl Studios interview at 42 Gear Street #42GSFour

Scott Elliott from Chernobyl Studios interview at 42 Gear Street #42GSFour

Scott Elliott is a metal oriented guitar youtuber. He was one of Henning Pauly’s guests at the 42 Gear Street event. I had already met him at several shows, including MIGS and Padova. Here he is in interview in Henning’s garden in Germany. Scott Elliott interview Audio version available on The Guitar Channel Radio for premium subscribers Until the next interview, keep on playing the…

[kittyit]

"The suffragettes are instructive. Their tactic of choice was property destruction. Decades of patient pressure on the Parliament to give women the vote had yielded nothing, and so in 1903, under the slogan 'Deeds not words, the Women's Social and Political Union was founded. Five years later, two WSPU members undertook the first militant action: breaking windowpanes in the prime minister's residence. One of them told the police she would bring a bomb the next time. Fed up with their own fruitless deputations to Parliament, the suffragettes soon specialised in 'the argument of the broken pane', sending hundreds of well-dressed women down streets to smash every window they passed. In the most concentrated volley, in March 1912, Emmeline Pankhurst and her crews brought much of central London to a standstill by shattering the fronts of jewellers, silversmiths, Hamleys toy shop and dozens of other businesses. They also torched letterboxes around the capital. Shocked Londoners saw pillars filled with paperthrowing up flames, the work of some activist having thrown in a parcel soaked in kerosene and a lit match.

Militancy was at the core of suffragette identity: 'To be militant in some form, or other, is a moral obligation, Pankhurst lectured. 'It is a duty which every woman will owe her own conscience and self-respect, to women who are less fortunate than she is herself, and to all who are to come after her.' The latest full-body portrait of the movement, Diane Atkinson's Rise Up, Women!, gives an encyclopedic listing of militant actions: suffragettes forcing the prime minister out of his car and dousing him with pepper, hurling a stone at the fanlight above Winston Churchill's door, setting upon statues and paintings with hammers and axes, planting bombs on sites along the routes of royal visits, fighting policemen with staves, charging against hostile politicians with dogwhips, breaking the windows in prison cells. Such deeds went hand in hand with mass mobilisation. The suffragettes put up mammoth rallies, ran their own presses, went on hunger strikes: deploying the gamut of non-violent and militant action.

After the hope of attaining the vote by constitutional means was dashed once more in early 1913, the movement switched gears. In a systematic campaign of arson, the suffragettes set fire to or blew up villas, tea pavilions, boathouses, hotels, haystacks, churches, post offices, aque-ducts, theatres and a liberal range of other targets aroundthe country. Over the course of a year and a half, the WSPU claimed responsibility for 337 such attacks. Few culprits were apprehended. Not a single life was lost; only empty buildings were set ablaze. The suffragettes took great pains to avoid injuring people. But they considered the situation urgent enough to justify incendiarism - votes for women, Pankhurst explained, were of such pressing importance that we had to discredit the Government and Parliament in the eyes of the world; we had to spoil English sports, hurt businesses, destroy valuable property, demor-alise the world of society, shame the churches, upset the whole orderly conduct of life. Some attacks probably went unclaimed. One historian suspects that the suffragettes were behind one of the most spectacular blazes of the period: a fire in a Tyneside coal wharf, in which the facilities for loading coal were completely gutted. They did, however, claim responsibility for the burning of motor cars and a steam yacht."

- How to Blow Up a Pipeline, pg 40-42

[nikkeora]

High Enough (Without the Mary Jane)

summary; 'in every other universe, gwen stacy falls for spider-man. and in every other universe, it doesn’t end well'. you don't want to be a mary jane anymore.

or, in which you were the mindy s. mcpherson to miles's prowler

pairing(s); e-1610! Miles Morales x fem!reader, e-42! Miles Morales x fem!reader (r is referred to with she/her pronouns, no physical description.)

warning(s); fem spanish terms are used ('hermosa' etc.), reader’s hand is smaller than Miles’. author can’t write action sequences for shit.

may be ooc but we haven't seen a whole lot of p!miles yet so there isn’t really much to go off of

implied/mentioned parental issues with reader, not proofread, written (mostly) at ao3 hours

a/n; according to google the sinister 6 of e42 are doc oc, vulture, electro, rhino, sandman and scorpion, although i've seen some other ppl say that the eastereggs are vulture, rhino, scorpion, sandman, shocker, kraven and electro. i'm going w the google one, maybe kraven and shocker are their own thing. also they're prolly rich aholes since their signs are on buildings n stuff, so that's what i went with.

also reader was sent to earth 42, but like, a few days before 1610 miles arrives, kind of like how gwen was sent to 1610 a week before she found miles

Miles — or, who you assumed was Miles, anyway — took you back to his place, going out of his way to avoid alleys where there weren't many people around and sticking to the bigger streets. You found it kind of weird. Back home, you and Miles used to cut through backstreets and even some sketchy buildings all the time to make it home before curfew.

You felt him steal glances at you the whole walk, and you’d be lying if you didn’t do the same.

This version of him just felt so.. different.

Once the two of you reached your destination, he let you up the stairs first before quietly calling for you to stop once you reached his floor. You hesitated for a moment on the steps. It was a higher level than Miles’s flat back home, and the building had looked a lot different from what you’d seen just half an hour ago, even if it still felt familiar. You’d chalked it up to the multiverse doing multiverse things at first, but he was starting to act a little off.

Having been around your Miles for years, you knew all his tells. You could see how his weight shifted on his feet as he unlocked the door. You could see he was overall standing straighter and more tense. You could see the hesitation before he turned the key.

Miles was lying to you. And he felt guilty.

But what were you going to do?

This universe was new to you. Sure, everything seemed just about the same, but it was all so foreign at the same time. There where skyscrapers you’d never seen before, new graffiti on the streets of the same couple people over and over again - all of whom you were sure you’d seen somewhere before but couldn’t quite grasp where. The sight of buildings blocked by yellow tape and more in the process of repair after seemingly being burned down or blown up were common in this world, like it was an active war zone or something.

You really didn’t have a choice but to follow along.

He opened the door and waved you in, closing the door rather hastily after the both of you.

You took a glance around the room. There were metal bars on the windows, to keep people out or trap them in you couldn't quite figure. There was a DJ setup near them that looked awfully familiar. Hooks hung down from the unfinished ceiling, some holding chains and others oddly shaped items haphazardly wrapped with what looked like brown lunchbag paper. Wires and ventilation just about everywhere, most of the wires leading to either monitors or gadgets you assumed were in the progress of being built. An old, beat up couch and some gym gear by the wall, an open kitchen-slash-workshop area straight ahead.

The only source of light was the neon red from the signs outside the window, and even then the farther bits of the apartment remained a dark purple hue.

Then someone came out of the other room.

“What's this?”

The hell—?

From the shadows, Aaron Davis emerged.

His beard was more grown out then you'd ever seen, and his features looked sharper, almost rougher. His shoulders seemed more broad, though maybe that was the heavy jacket he wore making him look bigger than he actually was.

“¿Tío?”

Miles had taken you around to his uncle's a couple of times, which you now realized was why you recognized this place. Aaron raised an eyebrow at you, surprise flashing across his face before it was quickly wiped out. He looked over you, taling in your appearance.

“Miles.” He asked again.

“I dunno,” the boy replied, stuffing his hands deeper into his pockets and avoiding his uncle's gaze. “Just found her on the way home.”

“Found her?”

Aaron glanced at you, then back to Miles, then back to you, his eyebrows furrowed in either confusion or frustration. He finally looked back at his nephew, the two of them having a silent conversation you couldn’t read.

“…Fine.” Aaron sighed, turning around—

You felt like you were dying, or being born, or possibly both at the same time. For a split second, you were nothing but particles, your skin and bones and just about everything being ripped apart then sewn back together. Your vision was a mix between TV static and rapid fire neon colors, and it was about the same deal with your hearing (which was concerning, since you couldn't usually hear colors).

Miles had taken a step forward, letting you grab his arms to keep you from falling over as he said something you couldn’t quite hear. Aaron had whipped around so fast you wondered how it didn’t give him whiplash, fists at the ready in case he needed them.

“What was that?” Miles’s voice finally got through to you, the high-pitched screaming in your ears dying down. You blinked at him as your mind went blank.

“I don’t—” You cut yourself off. Wait, was it..? Had you just..?

“Complete cellular decay.” You recalled Miles’s countless retellings of the multiversal mess that had happened just about two years ago. “I’m glitching, aren’t I?”

“Right, and you know this because..?” Aaron asked, his hands now at his sides but not eased yet. He eyed your face as if he was expecting you to grow a third eye or something. Honestly, you couldn’t blame him.

“Okay, so, this might sound crazy,” You started, “but I’m from another dimension.

“We had something like this happen back home a while back — except, y’know, people came into our dimension rather than people from ours going somewhere else.

“The people that came, they were glitching, too. Their atoms were displaced and decaying.”

“So you’re saying,” Miles spoke up, his grip tightening around your forearms just slightly. “If you stay here too long—”

“I’ll die, yeah.” You said, the reality of the situation hitting you like a KTX. “Disintegrate, to be more accurate.”

Silence filled the flat as all three of you processed the information. Miles was frozen, his gaze fixated on the spot where your hands grabbed onto him as if he was scared you’d disappear if he looked away. Aaron crossed his arms, his eyes darting from left to right like he was reading some invisible text.

As for you, you felt unreal. Your body didn’t feel like your own anymore, your vision more like looking at the screen of a first-person shooter. Were you going to die here? You didn’t want to die yet. What would your dad think? Would he file a police report? Would Miles’s dad send out a search party to look for you? And Miles—

You hadn’t even said goodbye to him at the party.

You hadn’t said goodbye to anyone.

I don’t wanna die I don’t wanna die I don’t wanna die I don’t—

“Hey,” Miles says, his voice softer than earlier, snapping you out of your spiral. His hands slide down your forearms and slip into your own, giving them a firm squeeze. “No vas a morir.”

You’re not gonna die.

“Te llevaré a casa.” The boy said, his deep brown eyes bore into yours, slowly bringing you back from feeling like you’re looking at a video game to feeling more like you’re lucid dreaming. It wasn’t a total fix, but it’s a start. “I’ll get you home, I promise.”

You took a deep breath, trying and failing to ground yourself more.

“What’s five things you hear?” Miles asked gently, tilting his head and leaning ever so slightly closer to you. You just blinked, overwhelmed with everything.

“Mi vida,” he said again. “Five things.”

You paused for a moment.

Sirens outside.

Yelling from the streets.

Chains clinking in the breeze from the open window.

Aaron shuffling around in the other room. When had he left?

The buzzing of the lights overhead.

“Good.” Miles said encouragingly. “Now, four things you see.”

Miles.

A pan on the kitchen stove.

The DJ table by the windows.

Tio Aaron pulling out the couch to make a sofa bed.

“Three things you can touch here.”

Miles.

The ground if you bent down, you guessed.

Some trinkets on the table just over there, but you’re not gonna touch that.

“Two you can smell?”

Rusted metal. There’s tons of it around; on the walls, the ceiling, tables, even on the shelves. What was that chest plate doing back there, anyway?

That pool smell, which is kinda gross since it came from the chlorine in pool water mixed with all the gross stuff that came from human bodies.

Miles smiled as you said that. “Vuelves a mí, mi sol.” He squeezed your hands again. “One thing you can taste.”

“I dunno, soda? We had a ton of it at the party.” You wiggled your fingers. It was like you were stepping into your body for the first time — nothing was a perfect fit just yet, like a pair of knitted gloves with too much room at the ends of the fingers. You’d have to get used to it again.

It’s then that Aaron called Miles over, the boy reluctantly leaving your side and following his uncle to the other room. He told you to make yourself comfortable on the couch before he went, though, so that’s exactly what you did. The spring cushions feel oddly comforting under you, the familiarity of home twisted just slightly out of proportion.

There’s really nothing to do alone here. You tapped your fingers on your leg. Thankfully, Miles and Aaron came back after just a few minutes.

The first thing the boy said to you, “I’m gonna get you home.” A firmer, more certain repetition of his promise from a minute ago, albeit there’s a bit of a strain in his voice as if it physically hurt him to say it. In a clumsy yet swift motion, he quickly leaned down and kissed your cheek before making his exit rather hurriedly.

You felt the heat rush to your face, your hand coming up almost immediately to touch the spot.

Aaron chuckled and shook his head.

“So,” he said. “You as smart as she was, too?”

-

You tinkered with the gauntlet of a prototype suit that Aaron had dug out of storage somewhere, the man himself working on the main body. The helmet — or was it more of a mask? It was a bit bulkier than Miles's Spider-Man mask, a bit more tech-y. Probably more similar to an Iron Man helmet, now that you think about it, albeit lower in its level of advancement — was plugged into one of the many monitors strewn about the flat.

You'd managed to pry a couple bits of information out of him for the past few hours (during which you hadn't glitched again, thankfully) in exchange for some of your own. So far you knew that this universe’s Jefferson Morales had passed away a few years ago, prompting Miles to take on the mantle of the Prowler to avenge his father’s death — the details of which he stayed frustratingly vague on — and, later on, to keep the city as safe as he could.

“Wait, wait, who’s your Spider-Man, then?”

“Who’s Spider-Man?”

You blinked in confusion. “What? You don’t have a Spider-Person?”

“What, like, a part-spider guy? Nah. Scorpion’s mostly bug though, that count?”

This dimension didn’t have a Spider-Man. That was why the city was so overrun with bad guys.

You gave him a general rundown of the whole ‘radioactive spider’ thing and moved on.

Your own variant, who was Miles’s best friend and had helped make a lot of his gear, had disappeared a while after the Prowler started taking out some bad guys that were a step above villain-of-the-week, the ones who had all sorts of shady connections. Hearing about your presumed death was a strange experience.

“We know they took her,” The older man had said, jamming his screwdriver into a faulty part of the suit. “But the cops are all in on it ever since the Cartel bought ‘em out. Declared her dead after less than 24 hours.”

Oh, speaking of, apparently there was a team of villains bringing Gotham to life in New York, Brooklyn being the heart of it all. How fun.

The Sinister Six Cartel, as the Bugel had dubbed them, was the one Aaron and Miles believed to be behind your variant’s disappearance. The two were certain that the Cartel had worked out a connection between you and the Prowler. The nail on the coffin was when they sent a body double of you in the Prowler’s direction to mess with his head just a couple months ago, complete with some sort of Face Off style mask that made it possible for the fake to look exactly like you. It was only a day or two before Miles figured out it was a setup, but it had shaken him up pretty bad.

“I thought you were another one.” He’d admitted. “But then you did the whole glitchy thing. Looked horrible, by the way, real nasty. It hurt much?”

“You have no idea.”

In return, you told him about home. You told him how Miles’s dad was up for a promotion, practically Captain already. You told him about your Miles’s art and how he made a mural of him after his death. You didn’t go into too much detail about the ‘death’ part, focusing more on the peaceful aspects since it was so clearly missing from his every day life. You couldn’t really read this Aaron Davis that well since he was more guarded than he had been back home, but you could tell he appreciated it; especially the parts about his brother.

You also told him how Miles and the other Spider-People who were sent to your dimension had worked out a solution to fix their situation, and gave him a brief summary of the whole ordeal, the details of which he texted Miles since he hadn’t given you a chance to tell him about it when he left so hastily. He said something you couldn’t quite make out as he did — you caught the words ‘lab’ and ‘property’, but that was pretty much it. He only waved it off as nothing when you asked him about it.

“How’s my dad?” You asked, pushing your hand into the gauntlet to test if it worked right. It was a near perfect fit, which made you wonder who exactly it was for, since Miles’s hand was bigger than yours. “Is he doing okay? After the whole ‘declared dead’ thing?”

“He’s holding up, just like the rest of us,” Aaron replied, checking on the monitor. “Your mom — her mom’s been sticking around. Grief brings people together and all that. They’re trying therapy.”

A weird feeling bubbled up inside. While it was good to know at least one version of your parents were trying to reconcile, it bothered you that your absence had prompted it. Was that what was happening right now back home? Had your disappearance magically brought your parents back together? Had it even been long enough for that to happen, or did time flow equally throughout the multiverse?

…

Would it be better for them if you just didn’t go back at all?

“Oh.” You said, nodding slightly as you flexed and wiggled your fingers in the gauntlet, watching the way it moved. It was a lot thinner than the claws that adorned the Prowler’s hands from what you’d spotted here and there in the flat, built to be stealthier in the way it functioned. There were no clunks or clinks, just soft whirring noises that sounded almost like a cat’s purr. “That’s good, I guess.”

It was worse this time around, which you didn’t even know was possible. You felt yourself being split in a billion different directions, parts of you re-atomizing not quite in the right places. You’d never known the feeling of having space between where all your joints were supposed to connect, but now you did, and it honestly made you want to die. Not really. Well…

-

Miles came back sometime before dawn. You heard the door opening slowly, almost like he was trying not to wake his parents up as he was sneaking in past curfew. Not that he used the door ever since he could climb walls, but still.

He crept into his uncle’s flat, even leaving his shoes at the door so he wouldn’t make too much noise. He was making his way to the other room when he looked at you on the couch, only to flinch in surprise when he saw your eyes were open.

“¿Qué haces despierto?” He whispered, his shoulders tenser than earlier from the split second of adrenaline. “It’s late.”

“What are you doing that you have to sneak in?” You whispered back. The boy just shrugged.

“Oh, you know…” He trailed off, looking around to avoid your questioning gaze. “…Stuff.”

You rolled your eyes. “That has gotta be the lamest excuse I’ve ever heard.”

Miles huffed, shuffling over to you and sitting down on the floor in front of the couch, facing you. “Yeah, well, I asked you first. Why’re you up, hermosa?”

You sighed. “Can’t sleep.”

“Why not?”

“Oh, I don’t know, the thought of my impending doom, maybe.”

A couple beats passed by without a word from either of you, a bit of awkwardness hanging in the air, though it was accompanied by a familiar sense of comfort.

“Do you trust me?” Miles asked, his hand reaching out to gently grab a corner of the blanket draped over you.

“Probably.” You replied. You hadn’t known him long enough to trust him just yet, as much as you wanted to. The corners of his lips tilted up just a bit in an almost smile.

“Then trust that I’ll do whatever it takes to get you home.” He said. “I already lost you once, I’m not letting that happen again.”

-

The next day was pretty uneventful. For the most part, anyway, if you don’t count the random glitching throughout. You were advised heavily against going outside since the Cartel had eyes everywhere, so your area of activity was limited to the flat. Miles had evidently snuck back out after your little talk the night before, which made you feel a tinge disappointed since you wanted to get to know him better. Fortunately, Aaron said you could help with the suit again.

The TV played in the background as you tapped on the keyboard, giving the helmet a few final touch-ups as the sun set outside the window. J. Jonah Jameson jabbered on about this week’s biggest disasters and lamented about how ‘if only there was a hero to save this city’, which made you snort.

“He’s gonna switch up real quick if a hero does show up,” You remarked to Aaron, who looked at you questioningly. “The guy hates Spider-Man back home.”

“What, Jameson?” He said, raising an eyebrow. “Nah, he’s the biggest Captain America fanboy out there. Loves heroes an’ all that.”

He thought for a moment. “Pretty sure Miles saw him at Comicon that one time too.”

“What’s a Comicon?”

Unfortunately, you never got the answer as you heard the lock on the door slide open. You spun around in your chair to greet Miles as you knew he was supposed to be coming by sometime in the evening, but your friendly smile quickly faded as his expression turned to one of shock, catching a glimpse of what the two of you were working on.

The boy froze as he stared, wide-eyed, at the suit. “Tio,” He said, looking at Aaron as he clenched his jaw. “What’s that doing out?”

“She needs a suit.” The older man answered simply.

“What?” Both you and Miles asked, though you could tell it was for vastly different reasons.

“We need to get into Alchemax to get her home, and we can’t do that unless she has protection.”

“Which is why I came here to make a plan!” Miles shouted, his hands moving animatedly, the way your Miles's always did when he got upset. “Eso, eso no le pertenece. ¡No es para ella!”

They had a back and forth as the pieces came together as to why Miles was so upset.

The suit was supposed to be for you.

His you.

You were, essentially, fixing up a dead girl's clothes to wear.

“The Cartel isn't stupid, Miles,” Aaron tried to make the boy see his point. “Even if we somehow made a distraction big enough for the big ones to leave base, there's still gonna be someone left to guard it. Would you be able to live with yourself if she got hurt? Or worse—”

“Don't.” Miles's nails dug into his palms, leaving dark cresent moons in their wake. Aaron sighed.

“If she got hurt, you'd feel like that's on you. If you got hurt protecting her 'cause she doesn't have anything to protect herelf with, then I'd feel like that's on me.” He said, his features softening as he reasoned with his nephew. “This is the best bet.”

“We could build her a new suit—”

“And take what? Couple days? A week? Two weeks?”

He glanced at you, Miles following his gaze towards you as well. You knew what was implied. The only people you knew this happened to had gone maybe over a week before the glitching became a real problem, and they were superhuman. Who knew how long you had?

“She can wear mine. We have a ton of old ones, I'll just take one of those—”

“I'm not gonna let you get hurt for her, kid.”

“Don't call me that.”

They went back and forth for a while, and eventually Miles went to the other room to cool off and think things through. Aaron sighed, wiping a hand across his face.

“No offense.” He said to you.

“None taken.” You replied, not really knowing what to do. It felt wrong for you to be tinkering with something that was so clearly not meant for you, even if it was for a variant of yourself.

You could hear Miles pacing the other room, muttering to himself.

“Maybe I could...” You trailed off.

“You could try talking him into it,” He suggested. “He'll listen to you more than me right now.”

“...Should I, though?” You couldn't even begin to imagine what Miles was feeling. All this multiverse shit was too damn complicated.

“Look, kid, I know it's weird.” Aaron said, shoulders sagging just a bit. “But this—” he pointed to the suit— “is the best way to make sure no one gets hurt. Trust me.”

There was something he wasn't telling you, but he didn't have to for you to know what it was. Miles thought you were alive, somewhere out there. You knew it was entirely possible that he blamed himself for your disappearance, as it was your own version of him's go-to for anything and everything that went wrong. The shadows under his eyes, that look whenever he saw you... you wondered how many nights he'd spent outside, looking for some trace of you, a new lead to follow. Especially since your arrival.

Aaron thought this was the best chance Miles would ever get to let go of you. To get some sort of closure by sending you home.

“…I'll try.” You finally agreed, getting up from your seat and shuffling to the other room. You hesitated before going in, but the lack of a door made it awkward to linger, so you just bit the bullet and walked inside.

The room in question was more of a faux-veranda (which explained the no-door thing); a long, narrow space separated from the main living area by a sheet of drywall, with one of the wider walls filled with shelves of CDs and albums and the other decorated sparingly with old band and movie posters along with Miles-brand stickers.

“So...” You said, fiddling with your hands as you took a look around the area. You gestured at one of the stickers on the wall. “Did you make that?”

Slowing to a stop to face you, Miles nodded, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his jacket.

“Cool.”

You both stood there in silence for a moment, you working out what to say and Miles trying to come up with some other solution to the problem. The boy had an unhealthy obsession, that much he knew, but he just couldn't bring himself to let go of it. Not when you could be out there, just waiting for him to find you.

“I don't want to push you,” You started hesitantly. “But.. I think your tìo may be right.”

“I know that.” He looked at his feet as if the dirt on his shoes was suddenly the most interesting thing in the world, the sight of him reminisent of a little kid getting scolded by his mother. “I know that.”

“I can't say I understand.. whatever's going through your head right now,” You said, taking a step towards him. “But he just wants what's best for you.”

“What's best for me is finding—” He cut himself off when his eyes met yours, frustration and confusion and stubbornness and sadness and who knows what else all mixing into a big mish-mash of conflicting thoughts inside of him. He clenched his fists, tilting his head up as he tried to think clearly. To his dismay, his throat closed up, the familiar sting of tears pricking at his eyes.

“I need to find her.” He muttered, putting a hand over his eyes in an attempt to stop his tears from falling. It didn't work. “I need to find you.”

“And you will.” You were sure of it. Aaron and Miles were both so sure that their you was alive... she had to be. “But right now? Right now, I need you to help me out.”

He looked at you, his gaze almost spaced out for a moment. You wondered if he saw her in you — if she had the same haircut, the same eyes, the same accent...

You could tell he was frustrated by the way that the scrunch above his nose wouldn’t go away. Hesitantly, you reached out, wiping away the tracks stray tears had left on his cheeks. He stiffened for a moment.

“...Fine.” He finally muttered, a hand coming up to grab your arm, though he seemed unsure if he wanted to push it away or pull it closer. So he just held it in place, his thumb brushing over the inside of your wrist, the edge of your palm. His posture relaxed, just a bit. “Okay.”

-

Two days later, it wasn't too dark when the plan set into action.

Security at Alchemax — once belonging to Kingpin, now in posession of the Sinister Six Cartel — was thinnest sometime around six to seven pm, when dinner breaks, shift changes and the checkout of regular scientists were prominent.

Miles and Aaron had each set up time bombs at multiple smaller warehouses the Cartel used for storage, each coordinated to go off within minutes of each other. With little to no heroes or police in the way, the Cartel had no reason to keep their lesser important stocks well-guarded, which made it easy to sneak explosives into some of the shipments, support beams and pipes.

Once the explosions were set off, Aaron would use some rip-off Mysterio tech to make projections of some new vigilante gang, with each fake member leading the forces of the Cartel away from Alchemax. During this went on, Miles would sneak you in and to the Super Collider (which, surprisingly, had not been scrapped since its change of ownership) through the vents—

“Wait, wait, isn’t there like, a tunnel that can get us directly to the Collider?” You’d asked, remembering what Miles had told you when he first told you how he became Spider-Man.

“It got sealed off.” Aaron had said. “Some sort of supercharged electromagnetic thing. They did that with all the major underground entry points. Can’t shut it off without blacking out half of Brooklyn.”

“Or getting fried.” Miles had said. “The generators powering each point are all hooked up together a single system, como una mente colmena. You attack one of ‘em directly, all the others shoot a billion bolts of energy into you. And we don’t have time to hack into and get past the firewall to shut the thing down.”

—which you would navigate by memorizing a blueprint of Alchemax that had been conveniently leaked in a mass Cartel server leak a couple months ago. Miles would then plug in the goober he, Aaron and you had made using information gathered via Aaron's 'friends', and send you home.

It was a simple mission. Maybe a bit too simple, but you didn't really have much a choice when you were on a time crunch with limited information. Besides, Occam's razor.

“Copy?” Aaron's voice asked from your earpiece.

“Copy.” You answered, followed by Miles from his own communicator.

“A-6 is a go in 3.. 2...”

Boom.

A couple blocks away, a cloud of dust shot into the air. The building you and Miles were on the roof of shivered slightly as storage unit A-6 blew up.

“A-27.”

Boom.

“C-15.”

Boom.

From your vantage point, you had a clear view of what was going on at Alchemax without the risk of anyone down there catching a glimpse of you. You could see the non-combat scientists scrambling to get to their cars and the armed guards being led by weirdly dressed villains in the direction of the explosions. Although you supposed you weren't quite qualified to comment on the 'weirdly dressed' part at the moment, since you and Miles weren't much better in your respective suits.

Speaking of, Miles hadn't talked much ever since he first saw you wearing the suit. His responses were short if he even gave one, although you could feel him sneaking glances at you when he thought you weren't looking.

Miles fixed the gauntlet on his hand one last time before shuffling closer to you. “Ready?”

His voice sounded strange to you, his actual voice coming through your earpiece overlapping with the voice coming through his modulator.

“Mhm.”

“Going in.”

You hooked your arms around his shoulders and his arm wrapped around your waist, holding you tight as a grapple shot out of his gauntlet. He used it almost exactly like how Miles used his webshooters, although his actions were a bit more... forceful? Rougher around the edges, if that made sense.

As your feet left solid concrete, the city sped by underneath the both of you, a pretty blend of neon and gray. Your suit prevented you from actually feeling the air whipping by, but a fraction of the wind managed to seep through the cracks, sending a chill down your spine as your stomach dropped at the sudden decline.

For a moment, gravity seemed to disappear. The laws of physics no longer felt like they effected you in any meaningful way. Anything and everything that had been weighing down on you — this whole situation, Miles, demanding schoolwork at Visions, your parents and their myriad of problems — no longer held you down.

It was exhilarating.

Your 'flight', so to speak, was over almost as soon as it started. You tucked your legs as you reached the roof of the Alchemax building, separating from Miles and rolling to lessen the impact. Surprisingly, the move came quite naturally to you, even without practice. You chalked it off as something you'd learned when you were a toddler, when your mom used to sign you up for all sorts of extracurriculars. You were pretty sure martial arts or something had been one of them; maybe you'd learned it there.

Your heart pounded as the sudden rush of adrenaline faded away, and you found yourself wishing it didn't. The thrill was addicting, as was the freedom that came with it. It was like a rollercoaster, or watching How to Train Your Dragon in 4D for the first time, only a hundred times better.

Miles had never taken you swinging. He'd never exactly told you why, always brushing off your request with something like a 'maybe later' or 'I can't right now', but you knew why.

Swinging together was a him and Gwen thing.

And you were fine with that.

What, like you were gonna be jealous about something as small as that? Pfft. No way. Nope. Nada.

“¿Estás bien?” Miles asked, pulling you out of your thoughts. You nodded in confirmation.

The two of you pried open a vent using the gloves of your suit, which was easier than you’d expected it to be. To your surprise, the claws that extended from them were very useful.

“We’re in.” You muttered as you crawled into the duct, hoping Aaron wasn’t having any trouble on his end. He’d been awful quiet… Then again, no news is good news on a mission, right?

Miles crawled in after you. “You remember the way?”

“Yeah.”

Together you made your way to the underground levels of the building, miraculously avoiding any possible dead ends or mouse traps. That musty smell of mold and concrete reached your senses as you reached the deeper parts.

There weren’t many people at the Super Collider, thanks to the diversion and timing. Miles gestured for you to stay put as he swiftly dropped out of the vents, knocking out the few guards there one by one with relative ease. It was strange seeing him fight; so similar to yet completely different from him. You were doing as told and observing from the vents until you saw one of the last three people — a scientist, by the looks of it — sneaking up on Miles from behind while he was preoccupied with the two other guards.

You quickly dropped down from your spot, landing behind the guard and catching him by surprise as he whirled around with his weird-techy-science gun. Dropping to the ground, you swept your leg under his, toppling him over and knocking the weapon out of his hands. You were about to knock him out when—

“Peter Parker?”

Are you kidding me?

You were certain it was him. This Peter was scrawnier, his hair more sandy blond than Peter Parker’s back home (before he passed, anyway), and he wore thick, black-rimmed glasses that perched awkwardly on his slightly crooked nose. But the ID that read ‘Peter Parker’ in big bold letters around his neck was a pretty solid indicator.

“…Yes?” He almost squeaked out.

Meanwhile, Miles had dealt with the two guards, stepping over them to get to the console. “Sácalo y entra ahí.” He called, fumbling a little as he tried to figure out which buttons to push to fire up the Collider.

“We have a bit of a situation..” You said, pulling Peter up by his arm and dragging him to the console as well.

You gave him a hushed explanation of your unwillingness to hurt the guy, and how you believed he was genuinely a good person. After all, this universe was almost the same as yours, right? Peter Parker couldn’t be that different here…

“And besides, he probably knows how to work this thing. It’d be helpful.”

Miles sighed. “…Fine, I won’t knock him out,” He agreed. Turning to Peter, he asked, “How do you start the Collider?”

Peter gulped, everything in his body language screaming ‘I want to run away’. “You- you need codes,” He stammered out. “Approval codes, from—”

“Don’t care.” Miles cut him off, giving him a brief glance at the goober. “Just start it. ¿Lo pilla?”

Peter nodded hastily and got to work, pressing buttons and switching levers as you made your way down to the Super Collider. There was a catwalk that ran from one side of the machine to the other, connecting the two mechanisms. If you got to the middle of it, you could jump off and into the portal once the Collider was at full output. Sure enough, its huge metal plates clinked and clattered as they slowly sprung to life.

This was it. You were finally going home.

Just then, you heard a thunk along with some choice words in Spanish, and looked over to the source to see Peter out cold on the ground.

“He got to the panic button!” Miles said, scowling to himself as he plugged in the goober, praying that this plan would work out in the next minute or so. Bubble-like particles appeared at the two points of the machine that faced each other, the noise it emitted now making it so that you could only properly make out what Miles was saying through your earpiece.

The Collider whirred and sputtered as the bubbles grew bigger and brighter, eventually bursting into two beams of light that met each other in the middle, creating one big sphere with a bunch of little bubbles going in and out of it and surrounding it. The sphere grew larger and larger until it collapsed in on itself, sprouting thin, curvy lines.

The thing grew bigger and bigger until it was about the size of a person, you could feel it starting to pull you in. You just had to wait for Miles’s go ahead—

Ow.

What the hell?

You were suddenly sprawled on the ground, something having tackled you at what felt like a hundred miles an hour. That something — or rather, someone — skid to a halt just a few feet away from you, dragging a hand across the tiled floor and leaving… scratch marks?

Scrambling to your feet, you crouched in a defensive stance as you looked over the newcomer.

There wasn’t a single inch of skin showing, their suit covering the whole of their person. The suit in question was mostly white, with some gray sprinkled in here and there. It reminded you of Eve from Wall-E or a Stormtrooper, maybe a mix of both. Strangely enough, the mask was just a blank slate; a sleek, white panel with no features or details, kind of like one of those LED face masks.

Overall it was kind of… boring? It didn’t inspire fear nor did it seem very imposing or something of the sort, which you’d think would be a priority for a villain organization. If anything it was bland, the only thing that stood out from the suit being its hands which donned gauntlets that looked similar to yours, but slimmer and more polished, more accurately described as gloves rather than gauntlets. They had claws just like yours, albeit they looked sharper, a bit more gnarled.

“Miles?” You called, your heartbeat quickening. “What’s going on?”

You heard a grunt from his end. You didn’t look to see what was happening, not daring to take your eyes off of your attacker, but you guessed that backup from Peter’s panic signal had arrived.

“What’s going on?” Aaron echoed, his voice slightly fuzzy. Before you could answer, your attacker lunged. You managed to doge a full on body slam, but they grabbed your arm instead, using it to flip you over their body and knocking the wind out of you.

You writhed as you hit the ground, managing to rip your arm out of their grasp and landing a kick on their ankle, causing them to stumble. You took the opportunity to get up and put some distance between the two of you, though you didn’t get far before the lunatic started chasing you. They jumped at you again but you turned around at the last second, and as you were pushed back with their claws digging into your shoulders you kicked both of your legs out into their stomach just as your back hit the ground, sending them straight over your head.

“Tìo, get your nephew, now!” You shouted, rolling away just in time to avoid a punch that landed on the floor where your head had been just a second ago. “It all went to shit, get him out!”

The pull from the Collider was getting stronger, tiny scraps like bolts and papers flying through the air and towards the beam of light. You raced back to the catwalk but were once again stopped by the 29th century Stormtrooper. You yelped as you felt something grab the back of your neck, sharp claws piercing through your suit and digging into your skin as your head was thrown harshly against a metal beam.

And just like that, you were on the ground. Again. What was this, like, the third time? Fourth? Great. Just fantastic.

I’m not even supposed to be here, you thought, grabbing at your opponent’s wrists as their hands wrapped around your neck, slowly choking you. They were stronger than you were, faster, clearly more skilled. What were you thinking? You’re not a fighter — you couldn’t beat them, not like this.

Why was the universe so intent on making you miserable? You were just trying to get home, maybe not die. Not dying would be nice. But no. You couldn’t have nice things, could you? Not your own life, not Miles, your own damn parents were happier in a reality where you weren’t in the picture—

A sudden surge of anger made you lash out. The universe could go fuck itself. You weren’t dying like this. Not when your ticket home was right in front of you.

Your gauntlet caught your attacker’s mask, knocking it off.

You knew that face.

It was the same face that looked back at you every time you looked at a mirror.

Well, not exactly, you supposed. There was a certain roughness in her features, the same as how Miles looked different from Miles. But you’d know those eyes anywhere. But they were… what’s the word, fuzzy? Unfocused? It was like her body was on autopilot while her brain was off in Hawaii or something.

The thing you did next could’ve won you the prize for ‘smartest dumb decision of the year’.

In all your oxygen-deprivated brilliance, you retracted your mask.

It might shake her, was your reasoning. It would confuse anyone to see a doppelgänger in a fight.

Or, you know, it could go totally wrong and she could punch your face in. But you were already getting choked, so, what was there to lose?

And it worked.

Her eyes shifted back into focus as her grip slackened, and you quickly shoved her — or is it you? yourself? — off, gasping for air. You could vaguely make out the outline of a giant scorpion-guy going one-on-one with Miles, who seemed to be holding out pretty well. He was favoring his left hand though, when usually he used his right.

“I— wha—? Where—” You heard from your left. Your alternate universe counterpart looked around the lab, her eyes wide and movements jerky like a wild animal on drugs.

You were about to say something when a loud buzzing came through your comm, which had evidently been damaged in the whole head-beam connection thing. Miles’s voice came through in broken pieces.

“Col— get..t— ov-rload—”

The Collider. The goober could only force an incomplete system to run for so long. Your time was up.

Wonderful.

A flash of blinding light came from the machine as it malfunctioned. The goober could only make an incomplete system work for so long. You were just able to get your helmet back on before everyone in the vicinity was pushed back in an explosion. Was that Aaron—?

After your temporary blindness wore off, you made out the aftermath, a high-pitched ringing in your ear as you dazedly looked around. The glass that separated the control area from the Collider had been shattered, the Scorpion twitching as he tried to get to his feet — did he have feet? Now’s really not the time — There was no sign of Miles or Aaron anywhere, which was either very good or very bad. You decided to believe it was the former for your own sake. A short distance away from you was another you, that one unconscious but still breathing, from the looks of it.

Grabbing your variant, you ripped open a vent on the wall before the Scorpion could take notice of either of you, shoving her in before following suit and placing the vent cover back on. You had to get out of here. Fast.

[oneforthemunny]

yayo |older!dilf!eddie munson x reader| part 1

prompt: when your younger sister calls you to pick her and her friend up, it leads you to meeting her dad.

reader is of age, 25 or 26 in this story. Eddie is 42. if this isn't your thing, don't read, but everything is consensual.

contains: age gap, language, drinking (more in later chapters)

this is part one of a series I'm hoping to do. hope you enjoy. minors dni plz.

"Hey," It was Madeline, her voice small and quiet. You sat up, running a hand down your face. "I need you to come get me. Please."

"Why?" You were already up, yanking your phone from the charger and kicking around the discarded clothes in your dark room for your shoes. "What's going on? Are you ok?"

"Why?" You were already up, yanking your phone from the charger and kicking around the discarded clothes in your dark room for your shoes. "What's going on? Are you ok?"

There was a loud cackle from the other end, in the background of the call that had a loud crashing sound following. "Yeah, I'm fine." Madeline huffed. "I just- Brie, please, just get down- can you come get us?" Madeline hesitated. "We're kinda fucked up."

You paused, phone balanced on your shoulder and cheek as you wrangled on your tennis shoes. "Are you serious?" No answer. "Maddy, it's a Wednesday. A school night, cmon-"

"-I know, God." Madeline sighed. "If I wanted a lecture I would've called Mom and Dad." The classic 'little sister' whine lilted in her voice that had your eyes rolling into your skull, shoulders tightening with annoyance. "Just please?"

"Send me your location." You huffed, locking the door to your small apartment.

"Thank you." You could practically hear her smile, triumphant and smug. You always helped her out. Of course you did. What else were older sister's for?

"I'll be there in a few, ok?" You started your car, the steering wheel cold from the night chill. Turning up the heat, you shifted your phone to the other ear. "I'll text you when I'm close."

Madeline was huddled right where she said she would be. On the sidewalk in front of the house. She stood, arms clasped over her chest to keep herself warm. A girl sat beside her, swaying on the concrete sidewalk.

Madeline spotted you, grabbing her friend by the arms to lift her up. You watched the girl stumble in your little sister's arms, shuffling towards you. "Thought it was just you?" You asked, craning your neck to look at the two climbing into the backseat.

"Brie needed a ride." Madeline said, giving a pointed look to the intoxicated girl, who rested her forehead against your window. "She just lives down the road. I just didn't want her to walk like this." Brielle was barefoot, hair and makeup smudged from the humid atmosphere of the party. She looked like a mess.

You rolled your eyes. "She better not throw up." You mumbled, throwing your gear shift into drive.

"I would-I would never." Brielle slurred, eyes glassy and dazed as she looked at you.

Brielle had been around for a while, her and Madeline becoming friends their freshman year. You'd been out of the house for a while before then, but you recognized the name- when it was tossed around at family dinners and the occasional tag on Facebook or Instagram.

"Her house is right up here."  Madeline pointed towards the small neighborhood on the right.

Bloomington Lane, the street sign shined in your headlights, faded gold writing on the black post. The houses were quaint, not quite white picket suburbia, but nice. Madeline pointed to the mailbox marked '505', the black pavement of the driveway with a car cover that sheltered a pick up truck.

"Shit," You hissed, eyes bulging as you pulled in the drive.

Underneath the porch light in a cloud of smoke sat an older man, curly hair disheveled and illuminated in the light, arms crossed furiously in a utility jacket. He lifted his gaze, sharp and challenging, brown eyes narrowed pointedly as he stood.

"Oh, shit." Madeline whimpered, sinking into the back seat. "That's her dad."

"Are you fucking kidding me?" You hissed, head whipping around to glare at Madeline.

"Brie, Brie, you gotta wake up." Madeline shook her friend frantically, who didn't move, mouth opened in a snore and still pressed against the cool window.

You rolled down your window hesitantly as the man loomed over you. "Hi," You squeaked, trying to mask your nerves under his intimidating glare. "I, uh, I-I'm just bringing Brielle home."

His eyes cut from yours to the back seat, scoffing as he ran a hand down his face. "Jesus fuckin' Christ, she's drunk?"

The tone of his question made your heart hammer, shrinking into your seat. "Yeah," You nodded carefully. "I, uh, I just came and got them. I'm Madeline's sister, and-and she called me to come get them, and well, I didn't want her to walk home or anything so-"

"I'm so sorry, Mr. Munson." Madeline chirped, cutting off your anxious rambling. "I tried to get her not to drink so much, and I stayed with her the whole time so nothing bad could happen."

"Mr. Munson" clenched his jaw, eyes softening the slightest bit at your younger sister. He didn't speak, just reached for the door handle, yanking it open.

You cringed, a warning barely escaping your lips as Brielle fell forward slightly, but he caught her before she did. "Oh, let me help you-" You were unfastening your seat belt before his harsh glare met yours.

"No." He barked, hauling her out by her shoulders, Brielle slack in his arms. "I think you've done enough." He hissed, eyes cutting into yours then back at Madeline's. She looked down, avoiding the glare as he supported the dead weight in his arms, grunting and moving towards the house.

"I-I'm sorry, again." You said nervously, heart fluttering with nerves. You didn't even know why you were apologizing, you didn't do anything wrong. But you just felt like you should, especially with how upset he was.

The older man looked over his shoulder, a hard glare thrown your way that had your face flushing, before he slammed the front door so hard you were surprised the glass didn't break.

You turned to Madeline as you began to back out of the driveway, brows furrowed. "You owe me big time for this one."

***

You rolled your neck slowly, working out the kink that was slowly starting to form in the base and ache. After the events of the night before, followed by a full day of teaching hyper seven year olds, and finishing with an agonizing shift at the local cafe- because let's face it, that school didn't pay shit; all you needed was a hot bath to soothe your stressed muscles.

Instead, you wrapped your apron tighter around your waist, pushing any stray hairs behind your ear before you escaped the shelter of the break room. "Hey, before you come back here," Lily moved from behind the espresso machine, steam flying over her face. "Some guy is asking for you in the corner booth."

You paused. "Some guy?" You repeated, lifting a brow. "Who? Oh, God, it's not Billy again is it?"

Lily shook her head. "No, someone else. Asked if you were working, and I told him I'd send you his way when you got back from your break." She replied, filling another ceramic, white mug. "Will you bus the tables while you're out there? Just whenever you get done."

You nodded, grabbing the rag and spray bottle before scanning the sitting area. There was only a few people lingering. It was a Thursday night. A pair of college students, hunched over their laptops and books, nursing their flat whites like it was a life line. An older woman reading a book by the window. And a scraggly looking man in a pair of coveralls, greased stained hands cupping the steaming white mug.

Mr. Munson.

The realization came over you in a wave that crashed and made your stomach drop. Why was he here? How did he even know where you worked? Oh, God, he was going to bitch you out for last night, you just knew it-

His gaze lifted, meeting yours. He didn't look mad. You stayed staring, eyes wide, until he gave you a small smile. Just barely lifting his upper lift in a way that most others would've missed.

You trudged the few feet towards his booth, knuckles white and gripping the cleaner. "H-Hi, Mr. Munson," You greeted, stomach flipping. "I, uh, can I get you anything?"

"No, I'm ok." He greeted cooly, pushing his curly bangs back with his hand. "I just- I wanted to thank you for getting Brielle home safe last night." He started, fingers tapping on the mug. "I didn't mean to be a dick or whatever, I just-" He took a deep breath in. "You go to say goodnight to your kid, and they're gone, and- I know you don't get it, you're too young. Maybe one day when you have kids of your own..." He shook his head, laughing softly. "I just... thanks. Thank you for bringing her home safe."

You blinked, surprised. You were expecting a bitching, a threat maybe, but not an apology. "It's really no problem, Mr. Munson." You said.

"Eddie." He corrected, a half smile that made the corners of his eyes crinkle and dimples deepen underneath the smattering of salt and pepper facial hair that covered them. Your eyes trained on his lips, plump and full as he ran his lower lips across the bottom one.

"I hope you don't think this is weird." Eddie motioned to the space between you. Your heart leapt. "Showing up here. I'm not- I asked Brie where you worked, because I just wanted to say thank you."

You nodded, returning the smile. "I, uh, I'm glad Brielle got home safe." You said, unsure of how to continue the conversation. "She's really sweet. Her and Maddy are really good friends."

Eddie nodded. "Yeah, they are. I'm glad." He paused. "That she has friends, ya know? Brie's always been real good at making friends. Real talkative." He grinned.

You blushed. You weren't sure why his gaze was making your cheeks heat, but you couldn't help it. "Yeah? Madeline's the same way. She'll talk to anyone. I wish I was that way sometime."

"Yeah, me too." Eddie looked down at his hands. You looked to. His fingers were calloused, bare. Your eyes lingered over the ring finger on his left hand, finding it absent of anything besides the small, faded ink etching on the knuckle.

"Listen, I, uh, I really feel bad for being such an asshole last night." Eddie started. "I'd really like to make it up to you." He paused, eyes searching your reaction. You watched him carefully, blinking as your heart hammered. "I'd like to treat you to dinner if you're free. Just to show my appreciation for keeping my girl safe."

Say no. You have to say no. This man is your little sister's friend’s dad. You can not go out with him, he's way too old for you to be doing that. Your mind raced, mouth running dry but your hands sweated, clammy around the plastic bottle you clutched in your hand.

"Um, I-I, sure." You blurted, heart stuttering in your chest so fast you thought it might stop. "Tomorrow? I don't have to work here. I mean, if you're free. I don't want to impose-"

"Tomorrow works." Eddie grinned.

"Great." You let the breath you were holding out, matching his smile. "Oh, um-" You turned, grabbing a napkin off the table behind you, fishing out a pen out of your apron. "I'll give you my number, and you can just let me know where to meet you-"

"C'mon, sweetheart," Eddie cooed, cocking his head to the side slightly. "I'll pick you up."

"You-You don't have to do that." Your cheeks flamed, shaking your head as you jotted down your number. You couldn't meet his gaze, sure your flush and nerves would be obvious.

"'Course I do." Eddie grinned. "I'm old school." He pocketed the napkin in his coverall pocket, shrugging on his utility jacket. "You have a good night. Don't work too hard now, ya hear?." He winked, jokingly. You let out a nervous laugh that spilled out of her chest, cheeks heating. Eddie smiled back. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"Bye." You waved, the rag in your hand flopping against your wrist. You watched him walk out the door, heart hammering as the glass doors closed behind him.

Tomorrow, you thought, turning on your heel to quickly wipe down the booth he was in.

[thatsonemorbidcorvid]

Murphy’s death was just the latest in a seemingly endless, parade of crimes against women that have horrified the country.

Two weeks after Murphy went missing, another woman was killed in Ballarat, a city with a population of just over 100,000, in a separate and unrelated case. Rebecca Young, a 42-year-old mother of five, was allegedly killed by her partner in a suspected murder-suicide.

On 5 April, in bushland near Ballarat, a car was set on fire. Inside it, police found the body of a 23-year-old named Hannah McGuire. Her ex-partner has been charged with her murder…

On 22 April: 28-year-old Molly Ticehurst; 23 April: 49-year-old Emma Bates; 26 April: 30-year-old Erica Hay; 29 April: 78-year-old Joan Drane.

It was the death of Samantha Murphy that prompted a sense that something in Australia was very wrong.

The 51-year-old mother of three left her home in Ballarat in regional Victoria to go for a jog at around 7am on a Sunday morning in early February and did not return.

Murphy was not the first woman to be killed in Australia this year, she was the twelfth. The country followed along as police conducted extensive searches of bushland near her home, appealed for information and released CCTV showing her setting off for her run wearing exercise gear, and with blonde hair pulled back into a messy ponytail.

More than one month later, police arrested and charged a 22-year-old man with her murder. Her body has still not been found.

Murphy’s death was just the latest in a seemingly endless, parade of crimes against women that have horrified the country.

Two weeks after Murphy went missing, another woman was killed in Ballarat, a city with a population of just over 100,000, in a separate and unrelated case. Rebecca Young, a 42-year-old mother of five, was allegedly killed by her partner in a suspected murder-suicide.

On 5 April, in bushland near Ballarat, a car was set on fire. Inside it, police found the body of a 23-year-old named Hannah McGuire.

Her ex-partner has been charged with her murder. The deaths are all separate and unrelated. Here, in the space of two months was another death of another woman in the same small city.

The grief bubbled over, prompting an urgent conversation about violence against women and what will be done about it. Especially pressing is the situation faced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, who are disproportionately affected by family and domestic violence.

On 12 April, hundreds of Ballarat residents marched in the streets holding signs asking for the names of the women to be remembered and demanding action to end violence against women.

And then, the next day, on a balmy autumn Saturday afternoon in Sydney, a man entered a shopping centre in Bondi Junction armed with a knife. He murdered six people, five of them women. Twelve people, including eight women, were injured, including a nine-month-old baby girl whose mother was murdered in the attack.

Police announced they would investigate whether the killer, who was shot dead by police, had deliberately targeted women and children. But it seemed they had already reached a conclusion on that matter, with the New South Wales police commissioner Karen Webb, saying videos of the attack “speak for themselves”.

“It’s obvious to me … that the offender had focused on women and avoided the men,” she said.

There were vigils; surfers made a heart with their boards out past the break at Bondi beach; the prime minister granted residency to two men who had fended off the attacker and praised the heroism of the female police officer who – without backup – chased the murderer through the centre and when he lunged at her with his knife, shot him dead.

And still the deaths did not stop.

On 22 April: 28-year-old Molly Ticehurst; 23 April: 49-year-old Emma Bates; 26 April: 30-year-old Erica Hay; 29 April: 78-year-old Joan Drane.

And with the relentless drumbeat, fury and grief erupted across the country.

In people’s homes, at barbecues and cafes, in furious editorials in the newspapers and in segments on radio and television, the same questions were being asked. Why are women still not safe to go for a morning jog, to take their baby to a bustling shopping centre, to exist in their own homes without being killed.

According to the Counting Dead Women Australia project, run by researchers from Destroy the Joint, 28 women have died this year – 27 of them alleged to be at the hands of men. This compares to 15 by this point in 2023, 18 by the same point in 2022, 14 in 2021, 16 in 2020, meaning that even excluding the Bondi stabbing attack, the numbers this year are high.

“It’s time we started talking about it not in terms of just ‘violence against women’,” Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young told Guardian Australia’s Australian Politics podcast. “This is the terrorising of women in their homes and on the street. Women don’t feel safe.”

Figures indicate Australia does have a particular problem with intimate partner killings.

In 2022-23, while the overall homicide rate was lower in Australia (5.6 deaths per million of population) compared with England and Wales (six per million), Australia had nearly double the rate of women killed by a current or former partner, with 34 intimate partner homicides against women in Australia and 35 in England and Wales, despite Australia having a population nearly half that of England and Wales.

The country’s Labor prime minister, Anthony Albanese has declared violence against women a “national crisis”, convened an emergency meeting of national cabinet – the meeting of all the premiers of states and territories, as well as the federal leadership – and on Wednesday announced a $925m package to help victims of violence leave abusive relationships.

Albanese said on Wednesday the suite of measures was “a further step forward” but that he could not be satisfied when a woman was killed in Australia, on average, every four days.

There is a palpable fury in the air. In the last weekend of April, thousands of people took to the streets in 17 rallies across the country, calling for greater action. But there is fear too, that nothing will change.

“I find myself saying [in media interviews] please don’t forget about us next week when the news cycle moves on,” says Karen Bevan, CEO of Full Stop Australia, a sexual, domestic and family violence response and recovery service.

“This isn’t the first time that there’s been a coalescing of national conversation around issues of gendered violence, sexual assault, domestic violence. We’ve certainly had other moments.”

In particular, Bevan is thinking of 2015, when Rosie Batty, whose 11-year-old son Luke had been murdered by his father at cricket training the year before, was made Australian of the Year. Her advocacy catapulted family violence to the top of the public conversation, for a time.

“She, in a moment, changed the conversation,” says Bevan. “And I don’t think her moment was a flash in the pan either. I think she created extraordinary change.”

Since then, changes in the public conversation, media reporting and in the legislative space have made a difference, says Bevan, pointing to the introduction of affirmative consent laws, the passing coercive control legislation, reform of family law, and a review into the funding of legal aid services.

“The other piece we can’t ignore here is that we have a more receptive political environment to the conversation,” she says, of the Labor government, which announced tackling domestic violence as a key priority when it came to power in 2022.

“I do think it matters that governments aren’t only saying ‘thoughts and prayers’, they are also doing things,” she says.

But, there are still huge systemic issues: a national housing crisis and a drastic underfunding of refuges that means women choose between remaining in a violent relationship and homelessness; a lack of funding for women seeking legal help; a scarcity of services particularly for rural and Indigenous women. Experts have also pointed to bail laws, inadequate and sometimes downright harmful policing practices, to show there is much that needs to change before women are safe.

On 1 May, thousands of people turned out in parks, on foreshores, on the lawns of Parliament House for candlelit vigils in honour of all women who were the victims of violence.

Antoinette Braybrook, the CEO of Djirra, an organisation that provides support to Indigenous women experiencing family violence, spoke of the country’s grief in a video ahead of the events.

“Tonight we light not one candle but many … for every woman, for every Aboriginal woman, whose life has been violently taken. For our children, our future, who will never again be embraced by their mum’s love. For every family who has lost a mother, sister, daughter, auntie, grandmother.

“We want you to know we will never give up on our fight for women to live a life free from violence.”

[octuscle]

Hey, bro. Can you grow me into a BIG football playing bully? Like, I want the ground to shake when I walk. Big dumb bully jock.

Bruh, you are 42 years old and work as a department manager for a legal protection insurance company. Don't you think this request comes a little too late? But okay, anything you want. Is it okay if I start the transformation right away? I mean, there could be some unpleasant developments. Is this an important meeting you're sitting in right now?

It starts with you calling your boss "bruh" all the time. And that you're watching football games on YouTube on your phone while your colleagues are giving their presentations. When the meeting is over, your colleagues look at you reproachfully and leave the meeting room shaking their heads. Your boss just barks a "2:00 in my office" as you pass by.

Now it's 11:00. You scratch your sack and decide that it's not worth sitting down at your computer before the lunch break. So you head off to the gym. A little pumping and then a few chicken breasts for lunch. No one notices whether you're working or not anyway.

It's 2:30 p.m. when you show up at your boss's office all sweaty. You're still wearing your gym clothes. You met some of your old pals at the gym and forgot about the time. Fuck, your boss shoots the door down. He tells you that you are taking a lot of liberties for a young professional. But he would have been young once, too. And asks if he can give you a blowjob. Hehehe, what worked at university with the professors obviously still works on the job.

After work, you meet up with your pals from the gym at the sports bar. Watch football, eat a steak, drink beer. And maybe a little fuck in the bathroom. You're pretty drunk when you stumble out onto the street. On the way home you pass your old school. A place of great triumph. And a place of great defeats. If you think about it, of more defeats than triumphs. Fuck, it feels so good to empty your bladder filled to bursting at the teacher's entrance.

Fuck, how did you get into your bed. And why did you sleep in your gear? And why is your roommate in your bed. In his lacrosse gear. Anyway. Practice starts in an hour. And if you're late, you'll have to blow Coach again. So you better hurry up!

Your pic found @testoster0ne 

[littleone]

Earth-42 miles as a caregiver!<3

•miles tries very hard to keep his prowler business away from his little he dosent want them to get involved in any danger or be scared of him he dosent want that he wants to be the best caregiver for his little baby

• he can be a little overprotective at times but it’s only to keep you safe his universe is very dangerous and he doesn't want his little one getting hurt.

•he will SPOIL you lots ! If you want a new plushie you’re getting it ! A new paci? You got it ! A new onsie ? You’re getting it ! He dosent care if you think you don’t deserve it you are getting it no matter what.

•he’s constantly watching you like a hawk to make sure you don’t hurt yourself or get into any trouble if you reggrese under ten he will have you hold his hand when you cross the street or while doing anything really he just wants to make sure his baby’s safe.

•he will keep anything you make him he will hang it up in his room to proudly show off his baby’s artwork!

•he will always make sure your safe and comfortable no matter what is someone’s makes you sad or unhappy he will be very mad (not at you tho) at the person who made you upset he will comfort you and reassure you and take you away from the situation telling you not to worry your pretty little head and how your to little for that.

•he always and I mean always makes sure your in bed before 9pm he will always tuck you in and read you a bedtime story and tell all your stuffie friends goodnight and kiss your forhead and tells you to have sweet dreams and will even plug in a little nightlight incase your scared of the dark ! (Which is okay I’m still scared of the dark lol)

•if he’s working on his gear for his vigilante suit or if he’s working on his gauntlet he”ll have you sit on his lap or be in the room with him.

•he will call you cute nicknames like baby ! Mi amor little one ect!

• he’s not the best at when your upset or crying so he just sits by your side and hums a little lullabie his mama used to hum him when he was little if you wanna hug or to be held he will definitely hold you and make sure your okay

•he will draw with you color with you he loves anything you draw or make him ! It’s okay if you color outside the lines that’s fine ! You’re still a kid !

•he calls you as often as possible he loves hearing your little voice and giggles ! He always promises to get you somthing while on his prowler business he always follows though with his promises getting anything your little heart desires! Anything for his little baby !

•he loves talking to you ! And making sure you feel safe and comfortable! His favorite thing to do is have you in his lap curled up while he had his arms wrapped around you and he gives you little forhead kisses and headpats !

•he understands that littlespace can be scary at times or when you invoulntery reggrese he’s more then happy to take care of you and comfort you he dosent mind taking care of you.

•if he’s busy or has to go on a mission last minute he might ask Gwen or ganke to help babysit you

•he gets a little flustered when you cal him dada/daddy but he’s okay with it!

•he loves u lots! He will always make sure ur safe and comfy

•If you reggrese rlly little and need padding like pull-ups/dippers he’s okay with it! He will always help you and make sure you’re comfortable! If anyone makes you feel bad about needing padding he will make sure they don’t see the light of day again

•he has autism (facts) he can get a little off task but he always has everything on him that you might need ! Like tethers pacis fidgets etc)

•I feel like he’s great at cooking if he dosent have somthing you want he will gladly get it for u! •will def take u out on spray painting dates! •I feel like he will play peak a boo with you since his mask can go from seeing miles till not seeing him he loves hearing your little giggles and smiles! •if you reggrese rlly little one to four he will def put u down for bed like rlly rlly early like 6pm or 5pm

my baby needs sleep so they can have good dreams hmm *gives your forhead a little kiss and tucks you in*

I love you all sm! Make sure to eat and drink water!<3

[krylov-space]

Changing to a 43 teeth chain wheel for a shorter gearing.

The 595n 955i Speed Triple originally has the 18/42 teeth gearing identical to that of the 955i Daytona with 147 hp and a v-max of 260 km/h. At nominal 120 hp and roughly 225 km/h top speed sans fairing the original gearing is way too tall. The 43 chain wheel should provide better drive and also less wear on the chain. With a 106 pieces chain the excenter has to be turned into a forward position for the chain to have the required minimum of slack, which somewhat lowers the back a bit more than anticipated. On top, the shorter gearing needs to be approved by the TÜV to keep things street legal.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Where is the country-destroying migrant surge that was supposed to come after Title 42 ended? Why has no one taken your guns? Why isn't Hillary Clinton locked up? So many questions.

By Rex Huppke

Last I checked, there are approximately 3,756 Republicans running for the GOP presidential nomination, and the vast majority of them – particularly the Donalds Trump and the Rons DeSantis of the world – want voters to know they should be terrified.

Terrified of what, you ask? Oh, I dunno. Socialism. Marxism. “Radical” teachers. Mickey Mouse. Drag queens. “Others.” Pretty much everything, it seems. All the fears. (I’d add spiders to that list, but that’s just me, a liberal scaredy cat.)

Fearmongering is a tried-and-true Republican Party tradition and with the 2024 election cycle about to kick into full gear, it’s mongering season.

REPUBLICAN FEARMONGERING, AND SOME QUESTIONS ABOUT WHY FEARS ARE NEVER REALIZED

So I have a suggestion for GOP voters, from the MAGA loyalists to the (three remaining) moderates to everyone in between. The first GOP presidential debate will be Aug. 23 in Milwaukee. At that event, you should demand answers to the following fear-related questions:

Why is “her” – the Hillary Clinton character in the “Lock her up!” chant – not locked up? Former President Donald Trump was supposed to do that, yet “her” walks free.

Why haven't we been literally invaded by umpteen South American migrant caravans?

Where is the country-destroying migrant surge that was supposed to come after Title 42 ended?

Why aren’t there violent MS-13 gang members on every street corner?

Why haven't the tyrannical Democrats taken our guns?

Why hasn’t Obamacare been repealed?

Where is the GOP health care plan? (Coming in two weeks, I’m sure of it!)

Why, with godless, devious Democrat Joe Biden as President, are Americans still allowed to say “Merry Christmas”?

Why did the COVID-19 vaccines work? Why did they not contain tracking chips that allow the government to monitor us?

Why has the economy not collapsed and why has the American way of life not been destroyed?

Why is there not, as Michigan gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon promised in 2022 before not becoming Governor, “a drag queen in every classroom, indoctrinating our children”?

Why haven’t drag shows turned all Americans into drag queens?

YEARS OF FEAR, WITH SO FEW RESULTS – IT'S ALMOST AS IF THEY'RE MANIPULATING VOTERS

Why are America’s big cities not actually dystopian hellscapes?

Why is the murder rate declining when we’ve been told repeatedly that crime is spiraling out of control?

How come our children are able to watch Disney movies without turning gay?

Why are Americans still allowed to speak English?

Why are we still able to hold dear all the things we hold dear?

I WAS SPECIFICALLY PROMISED WIDESPREAD SOCIALISM. WHAT THE HECK?

Why has nobody come to confiscate our guns? We have actual buckets filled with guns in the basement and bullets everywhere and not a single damn Democrat has come to rip them from our hands, cold and dead or otherwise.

Why has virtually everything a Republican candidate or Fox News talking head ever said to instill fear in our hearts wound up being either total nonsense or, at best, an almost bizarre overexaggeration of a relatively minor issue?

Why has America not been transformed into a socialist wasteland?

Why, for the last time, do we still have all of our guns?

You deserve answers to these questions, my Republican friends. Because often, in this big and confusing world of ours, there are inescapable signs that suggest you’re being lied to.

Learning to spot them is an important life skill. Off you go.

[theguitarchannel]

Orange Amps, interview with Charlie Cooper, son of the founder of the British brand

Orange Amps, interview with Charlie Cooper, son of the founder of the British brand

It was during 42 Gear Street that I had the pleasure to meet Charlie Cooper, son of Clifford Cooper, the founder in 1968 of the legendary British amp brand Orange Amps (orangeamps.com). A great opportunity to learn more about this iconic manufacturer that supplies Jimmy Page, for example. Interview Charlie Cooper from Orange Audio version available on The Guitar Channel Radio for premium…

[straight4joekeery]

Teach Me How To Love In Your Own Lyrics

(Part four)

Prev. Part one

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Steve, STEVE”

“What? What’s wrong?” He panicked. Oh. Oh no. He’s back. But there’s no way. Surely after 7 years he couldn-

“It’s 10 o’clock!”

Oh. “Huh?”

“It is TEN and I have to be at the airport by ELEVEN!! We over slept!”

“Shi-” he wasn’t gonna hear the end of this one.

“HURRY GET UP, LETS GO!!” Steve hopped out of Eddie’s bed without any delay.“We stayed up ‘PARTYING’,” he air quotes, “out of all things” Steve grabbed a few bags that he was sure Eddie needed and set them in the living room. “We’re gonna be late I knew it. I’m gonna miss my flight. I can’t go on tour. Oh my god I can’t go on-“

“Eddie it’s fine. I promise. We will make it and you will survive. Just go put these in my car.” He handed him some luggage and sent him on his way. He threw on some ‘airport appropriate clothes’ and fixed his already perfect hair. He grabbed the remaining bags locked the doors and ran so fast you would have thought a serial killer was chasing him. Eddie ran to take the bags so Steve could start the car. He still had the same exact stupid red Beamer. (Hey, it still ran fine so no complaints here.) Eddie jumped in the car before yelling at Steve to go. “Okay! Okay! Who’s house first?”

“I had a really strong feeling that this was going to happen,” nice going Steve, “so I told them to all go to Jeff’s.” Perfect only one stop. The airport was only about 20 minutes away so they should be fine. People in Hawkins don’t really have lives outside of work so the roads were empty. So Steve sped. What? It was only like 42 miles over the speed limit.

Eddie was visibly nervous. He was shaking really badly and you’d think he was trying to pry his nails off with his teeth. “Hey,” Steve placed his hand on Eddie’s leg to try to get him to calm down, “it’s going to be alright. On the bright side at least we woke up before eleven.” It made Eddie smile a bit so he’d mark that as a ‘you rule’.

“Thanks Steve,” Eddie grinned, “if we don’t make it you’ll drive us to cali right?” He joked. Steve didn’t know that though.

“Probably, when’s your first concert? Would we make it in time? That’s like a 3 day drive right,” you could see the gears turning to try to figure out the distance.

“Steve I was kidding,” oh, “you’d actually do that though?”

“For you? Of course I would,” he’d drive across the world for Eddie actually, but he’d never admit that. He smiled looking Eddie’s way. Oh no. He just realized he hadn’t taken his hand away yet. He removed it quickly. But not to quickly. That would probably make it even weirder. Eddie probably hated him now. When he comes back from tour he probably won’t talk to him. What? Why is he so worried about this? It’s even weirder that he freaking out. I mean, it’s just bros doing bro things. I mean after all they’re just friends. Right?

“It’s this street right here,” Eddie pointed at a street sign, snapping him out of his thoughts. It read, “Shirley road.”

“Okay,” Steve turned. He saw his band mates waiting out side and pulled up to them. He got out and took their bags.

“Thank god!” Jeff yelled

“We thought you’d never come!” Freddie said while he shoved his suitcase in Steve’s arms. Gareth just gave him a death glare as he handed Steve his stuff. Sometimes Gareth can be scary absolutely horrifying. Steve saw his face and checked his own pulse to make sure Gareth didn’t just explode him with his mind or something. They all jumped in the car simultaneously yelling at Steve and Eddie.

“I’m sorry!!” Eddie yelped, “you realize this tour means as much to me as it does to you. Now just please be quiet,” Eddie paused, “and hey why don’t you thank Steve for being so so generous and driving us?” Oh. That was… sweet? He obviously started blushing like a schoolgirl.

“Sorry,” Freddie mumbled

“Sorry Steve,” Jeff said. Jeff was the nicest one out of the three, so you could tell he meant it. Gareth said nothing. He however would not say anything about because he would 100% be murdered in his sleep.

“It’s no problem at all,” he smiled at Eddie. Eddie tried to smile back but he’s so stressed again he kinda forgot how. Of course this sends Steve into another spiral. He’s still mad at him isn’t he? Oh my god Steve you’re so stupid. He grips onto the steering wheel until in knuckles go white.

They spent the next 10 minutes of the ride in silence besides the tape that Eddie put in before they left.

“Sooo, how’s everyone feeling?” Steve said to break the silence. Freddie and Jeff agreed they were both super excited. Gareth… still wasn’t speaking.

“Honestly? I’m terrified.” Eddie said with another fake smile.

“Why? You guys are great.”

“It’s not that I think we’re gonna do bad! I know we’re going to be amazing! I don’t know. 3 months is kinda a long time,” he sighed loudly, “I get like horribly homesick,” he frowned.

“I’m sorry,” he didn’t want him to be sad, he had to cheer him up at least a little, “did I tell you literally all of my students love you guys? James is going to your concert.”

“James? The one that you said like never speaks?”

“Yeah,” he laughed, “was very passionate about you. Almost passed out when I said you guys went to Hawkins high.” And… oh thank the lords above who have blessed him on this fine evening (morning? He didn’t even know anymore.) This not only made Eddie smile but also Gareth. Steve might live to see another day after all!! “We made it!” Steve says as they pulled into the airport. He checked the time and, 11:10 they can’t easily make it (because they are so so cool and famous and are practically Royalty) but they have to run. Thankfully, tsa doesn’t take hours here.

“Okay rockstars! Let’s goooo!” Gareth spoke for the first time. They all scrambled out of the Beamer and ran to the trunk. Steve popped it open and grabbed a handful of random luggage. There was… a lot, all instruments considered. Once everything was out they all ran. Steve walked with them as far as he could without a ticket.

“Hey man, sorry for being… rude?” Gareth said putting his bag on the luggage belt.

Steve laughed, “it’s fine. I’d be mad at me too.” Gareth actually smiled at him. Oh thank the heavens above he doesn’t hate him. “And uh.. good luck. You’re gonna do great.”

“Thanks dude,” he said as he was walking away.

“Hey,” said Eddie from behind

“Hi.”

Eddie took a long deep breath before walking up to Steve and wrapping his arms around his neck. “I’m gonna miss you. Like a lot.”

“Yeah? Me too. A lot,” he laughed as he wrapped his arms around the other man’s waist. Although neither would ever admit it, they were both crying.

“Okay I have to go or I’m gonna be late,” he backed up. He sniffled and wiped his tears away, “see you in… three months,” he said rolling his eyes.

“Three months,” he sighed, “bye Eds.” He pulled him in for one last hug. (What? It’s not weird. They are friends. And plus he’s leaving for THREE MONTHS.)

“Bye Stevie,” they stayed like that for a while until Gareth yelled at them, “Okay now I really have to go,” he laughed. They said goodbye one last time before Eddie ran. He turned around before walking up to tsa to wave. Steve waved back.

He had to go. He ran back to that stupid car and opened the stupid door. He sat down in the stupid seat and closed the door. He stared to cry. He cried his stupid eyes out until he couldn’t breathe.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” he muttered to himself. This is the first time Steve had actually cried since he was eight. Why? Why was he doing this?

He remembered back to his dads words, “kid quit your crying!” He yelled, “crying is for emotional sissies who will never be able to care for themselves. You will get nowhere from crying. It won’t magically make your problems away!” God he hated him. But he was right. Crying wasn’t going to make Eddie come back. He felt so pointless without him. He was his other half since the day Robin left. He missed her. If she was here she would tell him that everything was going to be okay.

This was so stupid. Steve was so stupid. He was crying for nothing. Speaking of, why on earth was he crying. He didn’t cry when Robin left permanently, why is he crying now. He thinks. And thinks. Thinks about how they are different. They aren’t? Because remember Steve and Eddie are JUST friends. Steve cried more at the stupid thought. Why? Why is this hurting him? It’s not like he wants them to be more then friends. (Right?) That’s weird. Plus Eddie isn’t gay.

“YOUR’E SO STUPID,” he yells to the top of his stupid lungs. He has to remind himself that they are just friends again. Plus he Eddie wouldn’t want that. Because it’s the truth. The stupid stupid truth. Right?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Next

MWAHHAHAHHA. FEAST MY CHILDREN. Im so evil. My goal is making at least 2 people cry. If you didn’t? Don’t fret! There’s still more 😉. Anyways. This one’s pretty goooooddd. Part count is still 9 or 10. So so sad for little baby Steve. Anywayssssss comment or reblog if you want to be tagged! I will say I hope you enjoyed but if you did you’re a psychopath 😘. Also lmk if I made any mistakes I only read over this once. Also don’t come at me for the airport anatomy. I haven’t been in one in a year and it was also 5 in the morning so I was very much not awake.

I’m also really sorry if you asked to be tagged and didn’t get tagged, tumblr is like not letting me tag a good portion of my people. if you are not able to be tagged I will message you! Let me know if you don’t want me to do that if this happens. (Also make sure you have your tags on!)

Tag list: @idea-less-author @queerbeansworld @asbealthgn @vecnuthy @jehneeg @steve-themom-harrington @bird-with-pencils @artiststarme @piningapple @lfaewrites @azreadytodie @thequeenrainacorn @pastel-dreamscape @importanttimemachinenerd @swagaliciousmarie @mightbeasleep @krazyperson @milkshakeflower @fando-random @bumblebeecuttlefishes @swimmingbirdrunningrock

Also it’s so annoying that I only get 30 tags. That’s where I truly express myself :(

[slxughterhaus]

.::. ALL JUST GEARS .::. Calpernian "Odd" Harker

Citizen profile loading. . .

Profile loaded.

This citizen profile brought to you by our WONDERFUL sponsors.

NAME: CALPERNIAN HARKER ALIASES: ODD, CAL, MR. HARKER, THE HYDRA AGE: 42 YEARS OLD. [OCTOBER 13TH] GENDER/PRONOUNS: CIS MAN HE/IT SEXUALITY: PANSEXUAL // PANROMANTIC (MASC PRESENTING PREFERENCE) // OPEN MARRIAGE HUMAN // HOST: HUMAN (AT LEAST, SOME PIECES ARE STILL) OCCUPATION: HOST OF THE HOLO-SHOW "SLAUGHTERHAUS!!!" AND 'SEMI RETIRED' COWBOY. AFFILIATIONS: NONE, BUT HE HAS A NUMBER OF LUCRATIVE CORPORATE SPONSORSHIP DEALS SO HE'S CLEARLY BIASED.

.::. SAW THROUGH THE SELFISH .::. going deeper.

PERSONALITY: SHOWBUSINESS ISN'T FOR EVERYONE, BUT IT'S PERFECT FOR ODD HARKER. THE SPOILED, FILTHY REMAINS OF WHAT HAD ONCE BEEN AN AMERICAN BOUNTY HUNTER WHO'S WORK BROUGHT HIM TO JAPAN FIFTEEN YEARS AGO, THIS EX-COWBOY'S CHARM IS SHINY AND POLISHED TO A PERFECT SHEEN, INTENDED TO LULL THOSE WHO MIGHT ERR TOO CLOSE TO TRUSTING HIM INTO A FALSE SENSE OF SECURITY. THE CHARISMATIC 'MAIN' HOST OF SLAUGHTERHAUS!!! IT IS ODD'S ELECTRIC APPEAL, SMOOTH WIT AND EFFORTLESS CULT OF PERSONALITY THAT GOT THE HARKERS' FOOT IN THE DOOR OF THE FAME MACHINE- HOSTING THEIR MONSTROUS TAKE ON 'ENTICING ENTERTAINMENT.' A MAN WHO COMMANDS A ROOM, EVEN WITHOUT DISPLAYING ANY OF HIS SUBSTANTIAL, IMPRESSIVE CYBERNETIC MODIFICATIONS, ODD'S LOVE OF THE FINER THINGS AND EFFORTLESS DRAW ARE MATCHED ONLY BY HIS SAVAGERY, AS MARRIED TO SILVAINE'S TWISTED IDEALS OF WHAT VALUE A LIFE MIGHT HOLD HIS MASOCHISTIC INVENTIONS AND TASTE FOR SUFFERING IN OTHERS IS FED WELL.

AESTHETIC: SEVEN POUNDS OF FLESH IN HUNDREDS OF POUNDS OF STEEL || THE ID FREE OF THE EGO A MINDLESS THING SMILING THROUGH PERFECT TEETH || THE CLACK AND RATTLE OF FALSE PANELS MOVING BACK INTO PLACE AS THE BEAST RETREATS- THE SWEET TANG OF BLOOD ON SYNTHETIC TONGUES || THE ONE HEAD SEVERED THAT GREW BACK MORE VICIOUS THAN THE HYDRA COULD HANDLE.

KNOWN CYBERWARE: IT IS EASIER TO DESCRIBE THE THINGS THAT ARE NOT CYBERNETIC ON ODD HARKER. THEY ARE AS FOLLOWS: ONE (1) HUMAN BRAIN, HUMAN SKELETAL STRUCTURE/BONE, 40LBS ASSORTED INTERNAL ORGANS. CYBERPSYCHOSIS ALL BUT PROMISED SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN CIRCUMVENTED BY BEING A SOULESS PSYCHOPATH BEFORE THE AUGMENTATIONS AND A SELL-OUT CELEBRITY SHILL AFTER.

HISTORY: PLEASE PAY THE 10000 YEN FEE FOR ACCESS TO SEALED RECORDS THROUGH THE SLAUGHTERHAUS!!! FAN CLUB! [Input Payment Information]

[Plaintext Doc for mobile friends here!]

.::. BUT SAW NO SOUL .::. connections.

THE FABULOUS PRIZE: YOUR LIFE.: A WC for a previous contestant who survived SLAUGHTERHAUS!!! who came out the other side a little... cracked. You endured, you struggled, you bear scars and stories and trauma you'll never unravel. The wild eyed, vicious hosts were right, you're thankful for your life in a way you never considered before. Did you apply to the show for a life-changing operation? Money to get you off the streets? Something else you thought worth a pound of flesh? Or were you forced to participate? No matter what, you won your show, you could live a life trying to forget what you endured. You've found yourself seeking out Calpernian, instead. You've seen the thing lurking underneath, a beast of augmentation tucked beneath a shiny veneer of fame and fortune- Curiosity surfaced, not fear. You want to get closer- for any reason that might be.

CYBERH-EX.EXE: Unlike the other ex connections listed under 'additional'- this ex was long term, and recent. While the Harkers are not secretive about their open marriage, Odd was secretive about you. It was for your sake, he insisted, the public eye would frown upon anyone else on his arm not noted for their depravity, and you... were something good. A cherished part of his life slowly turned coveted- possessed. He did his best, to restrain overprotectiveness- but like the dragons he shares a name with, Odd's personality didn't allow for a relaxed grip on the life you shared. You parted ways. His fondness for you remains, despite it all, and where most are met with cold bloodthirst, a cut of meat to feed to the grinder- something softer lives in cold steel, when you give him the time of day.

FROM OUR FABULOUS SPONSORS: a connection to Odd through SLAUGHTERHAUS!!! this person has long been the go-between for their company and the producers of SLAUGHTERHAUS, long enough to have formed a tentative friendship to the Harkers themselves, whatever that may entail. For you, it's been the benefit of seeing how the 'upper crust' live, expensive dinners, fabulous vacations, cars, jewelry, anything the heart might desire- all for being someone Odd and Silkie have taken an interest in. But fame and favor are fickle beasts, and a falling out between you and the company has left you destitute, and of no use to the Harkers, if they find out, cutting you off from the high life... Time to play cover up.

SEVER ONE HEAD: a connection for a solo or cowboy who made an attempt on Odd's life at one point- Bounty Hunters aren't known for not making enemies- and be you one with a legitimate beef from his time as an active cowboy as well, or simply somebody to whom the almighty yen speaks volumes, you've met Calpernian on the grounds of intent to kill- and barely escaped with your life. You were satisfied, however, with your work, Odd left a sparking, shattered mess of cybernetics and flesh, seemingly dying-verging-on-dead. Imagine your surprise- and that of your possible client- when the Hydra seemed unharmed in time for the next broadcast of SLAUGHTERHAUS. That sparking heap was Odd Harker- there's no questions about that- And now he knows someone wants him dead... and his avenue to who, is through you. Things just got a little more... 'hercules' 12 labors' in Tokyo.

ADDITIONAL CONNECTIONS

Siblings: He's probably got a few of them.

Exes: He's got a lot of these, it's no secret Silvaine and Calpernian are not beholden to each other, and they've both had a number of high-profile relationships.

Ichibangase/Eisher Employees: They'd know Odd- the man's a living testament to the kind of augmentation that can be pulled off- albeit a particularly extreme amount of it not recommended for the currently sane.

Friends from back when the Harkers were Cowboys

Friends from their time in America 15 years ago.

[thelensofyashunews]

Sexyy Red Shares Highly-Anticipated "Get It Sexyy" Single, Prod. by Tay Keith

After taking over the charts and dominating the cultural conversation in 2023, Sexyy Red is back with "Get It Sexyy," her first new single of 2024. The song features booming production from Memphis heavy-hitter Tay Keith, who collaborated with Sexyy Red on her biggest hits to date. On "Get It Sexyy," the two Highsnobiety-profiled close friends make a formidable pair once again. Tay Keith's instrumental is perfectly tailored to Sexyy's playground chant flow, providing a tuneful 808 drum break that guides the rapper's hook, and supplementing with rattling hi-hats and dramatic strings to give weight to each X-rated bar. The St. Louis native is as quotable as ever, as she crafts couplets that reflect her inspirational self-confidence: "I'm so f*ckin' sexy, yeah my skin is glistening," she purrs. 

"Get It Sexyy" kicks an already-eventful 2024 into high gear for the 25-year-old artist, which includes a new project on the way and a performance at Rolling Loud California 2024 this weekend. Earlier this year, Sexyy gave birth to her second child, a process that was fictionalized in the video for Drake's "Rich Baby Daddy," featuring Sexyy and SZA. The documentary-style video is one of the most talked-about and viewed music videos of the year, with over 13 million views in one month and multiple days atop the YouTube Trending charts. More recently, Sexyy connected with her close friend Summer Walker for the music video for "I Might," a highlight from Hood Hottest Princess (Deluxe), Sexyy's latest project, which came out in December. 

Hood Hottest Princess (Deluxe) adds 11 songs to her critically acclaimed tape Hood Hottest Princess, earning Best of 2023 honors from The New York Times, Pitchfork, The Washington Post, Billboard, and more. The Deluxe is home to highlights like "Shake Yo Dreads," a booming pump-up anthem for all the dreadheads in your life, the ultra-raunchy "Hood Rats", and the Chief Keef collaboration "Ghetto Princess." Hood Hottest Princess (Deluxe) adds guest appearances from some of the best street rappers in the business, including Chief Keef, G Herbo, and 42 Dugg, and is available everywhere via Open Shift Distribution / gamma.

Fueled by Hood Hottest Princess and its singles, Sexyy's improbable, yet inevitable rise was one of the biggest stories in hip-hop in 2023. The mixtape earned a sterling 8.0 review from Pitchfork, who wrote that the mixtape "sets the tone for what she hopes is the nastiest, sweatiest, and freakiest summer since the smartphone came along" and "...30 minutes of straight-up standing-on-the-table raps. There are a handful of songs on here that are bound to be summertime anthems." Home to other hits like "Looking For The H*es (Ain't My Fault)," and "Hellcats SRTs," blessed with a remix featuring Lil Durk, Hood Hottest Princess made an impact on the Billboard 200, where it reached a peak of #62, and Apple Music's charts, where it peaked at #7 on the Hip-Hop albums chart and #12 overall.

Sexyy's viral rise quickly fomented success on the touring front. After a viral performance at Rolling Loud Miami, Sexyy Red earned an invitation to open on tour for her biggest fan, Drake, during his "It's All A Blur Tour" with 21 Savage. Sexyy's first headlining tour, the "Hood Hottest Princess Tour," sold out many dates within minutes of its initial onsale, including a 3,000-cap show in NYC and a 4,850-cap show in Chicago. The tour criss-crossed the U.S. for dozens of dates–including 24 sold out dates–including a massive sold out hometown show at the 8,000-capacity Chaifetz Arena in St. Louis. In all, Sexyy's first-ever headlining show sold an estimated 70k tickets, making her one of the hottest draws in the genre.

After changing the game in 2023, Big Sexyy looks to cement her status as a cultural icon for her generation. Stay tuned for more announcements. 

[thlayli-ra]

I was inspired by a writing prompt on @sinderellanightwolf 's blog and just HAD to write it down. Let me know what you think!

Kissing Request; 42 (Life or Death kisses)

Pairing - Finn Balor/The Shield (Roman Reigns, Seth Rollins, Dean Ambrose)

AU - Police

Rating - Mature (sexual themes)

Contains - M/M, kissing, fondling, hostage situation

Word Count - 2,076 words

The armed men had rushed in around noon taking as many hostages as they could and barricading themselves into a small windowless room. The police had cordoned off the building and surrounding streets but the SWAT teams had been told to hold back for now - there was no clear way inside and they couldn't risk harming the hostages.

And that was where Finn came in. He was considered one of the best hostage crisis negotiators in the state, revered among his peers. Unshakeably cool under pressure with bags of Irish charm, he had faced countless situations like this before and always managed to de-escalate the situation without a single drop of blood spilled.

In fact, the terrorists had asked for him by name.

Having arrived at the scene and been debriefed, Finn pulled on a bulletproof vest, grabbed his headset and made his way under the barrier tape. He was greeted by three officers, all dressed in full riot gear and holding large rifles.

'Agent Balor,' the largest and broadest of the three greeted the Irishman with a firm handshake. 'Officer Reigns. This is Officer Ambrose and Officer Rollins. We'll be your cover out there.'

'Think of us as your personal shield,' Rollins added with a smirk.

'It's comforting to know I have men like you watching my back,' Finn remarked. 'Have they made any demands yet?'

'Nope,' Ambrose shook his head. 'They refuse to talk to anybody but you.'

'Then let's not waste anymore time,' Finn said and walked towards the building, flanked by the three officers. By now, it was rush hour and the area had gathered a large crowd of onlookers watching the proceedings with morbid fascination. Finn ignored their stares and the heat of the mid-summer sun as he turned on his headset.

'Hello? This is Agent Finn Balor, can you hear me?' No response. 'Hello, this is Agent Finn Balor, is there anybody there? Please respond if you can-'

'It's him! It's him!' He heard an excited voice on the other end of his line. 'Is that Agent Balor?'

'Yes, it is.'

'Say something Irish!'

'Ummm, what's the craic?'

A pause. 'Yeah it's definitely him!'

Finn took little notice of the strange behaviour. Gain enough of a reputation in a field such as his and the weirdos inevitably came crawling out of the woodwork. 'Now that we've established it's really me, let's try and work something out, shall we? Some of those people in there have families waiting for them at home. Let's try and get them back in time for supper.'

'Now listen here,' the voice turned aggressive, 'we have our demands and if they're not met, we're gonna open fire and kill every last person here, understand?'

'I understand,' Finn swiped aside any nerves; this was not the time for them.

'Oh, and we have a monitor in here, we're watching the news coverage so we can see you, Agent Balor and everybody else out there with you.'

The hint of a shiver danced up the Irishman's spine. He was glad of the large armed men around him. 'I have no intention of lying or deceiving you. Please, tell me your demands.'

The line went quiet and the sound of muffled voices rustled in the background. The terrorist was conferring with his partner-in-crime. 'Ok, Agent Balor. Our first demand is...' A bead of sweat trickled down Finn's forehead but he paid it no heed as he waited for their response. '...you must go up to that guy beside you and kiss him.'

Finn blinked. 'I... I'm sorry, can you repeat that?'

'Go kiss that guy to your right,' the voice said again, confirming Finn's suspicions. 'Not just a peck either, make it steamy.'

'You... want me to kiss Officer Rollins?' He eyed the officer in question who looked as confused as he did.

'You want us to shoot these people?'

'No, of course I don't, it's just that-?' His eyes met those of Rollins who shouldered his rifle.

'It's life or death here, Agent Balor,' he said, pulling up the visor of his helmet. 'I'll do my duty if you will.'

The Irishman's heart skipped a beat at the dark doe eyes and pretty face staring back at him. There were certainly worse situations he could find himself in 'Ok, fine. I'll do it. Are you watching?'

'Oh yeeeah, we are!'

Finn rolled his eyes as he walked up to Officer Rollins. Put on the spot, the pair awkwardly grasped one another by the shoulders before leaning in. Finn flinched momentarily as Officer Rollins' mouth found his and closed his eyes, the two of them standing rigid with their lips flattened against the others.

'Come on Agent Balor,' the voice in his ear chastised, 'this aint some high school church dance. Use a little tongue.'

Rollins was the first to comply and opened his mouth, his hot breath steaming Finn's skin, masterfully engulfing the Irishman's full lips. The grip on his shoulders tightened and Rollins turned his face, deepening the passionate kiss even more. Finn was left stunned when Rollins' tongue slipped between his lips, the soft caress enough to draw a needy groan from his throat.

'You're obviously enjoying yourself Agent Balor,' the voice teased. 'He must be a very good kisser.'

Finn couldn't deny it; Officer Rollins was a master at his craft. Sensual, sweet and attentive. He could do this for an eternity, locked in his embrace. By the time the officer released the Irishman, his pale skin had turned a deep pink.

It took him a while to find his voice. 'Is... was that enough for you?'

'That was perfection,' the voice on the other end of the line purred.

'Big guy,' another voice sounded, obviously his partner-in-crime. 'Do the big guy next.'

'No, leave him till last. Do the other one first,'

'Yeah, the guy with the really slim waist.'

'So, now you want me to kiss Officer Ambrose?' Finn confirmed, his voice still breathy from his encounter with Rollins.

'Yeah, yeah. Do it.' Ambrose was already making his way towards him, leaving Finn little time to think. 'Wait, take off his helmet, we wanna see his face.'

'Go on,' Ambrose prompted and Finn slipped the black helmet and visor from the man's head. A tangle of sandy blonde curls tumbled loose from his crown, which he flicked back with a jerk of his head and fixed the Irishman with two simmering blue eyes. Finn barely had time to process how gorgeous the officer was before his face was grabbed by two gloved hands and Ambrose shoved his lips onto his.

Compared to Rollins, Ambrose was sloppy and animalistic, all teeth and spittle as he nipped the Irishman's lips over and over. The grip on his face was strong and unyielding, rugged fingers curling into Finn's beard and gripping it tightly so that he could not pull away. Not that he wanted to! As different as Rollins' and Ambrose's styles were, they were as equally addictive. While Rollins' sensuality stole Finn's breath away, Ambrose's roughness kicked up his heart until it pounded against his rib cage, adrenaline flooding his senses.

Biting down one last time, the nip enough to draw a small bead of blood, Ambrose let go with another jerk of his head, shooting the Irishman a lopsided smirk. Smug bastard! Finn stumbled on wobbly legs, resisting the urge to wipe the dampness from his chin.

'Having fun, Agent Balor?' the voice was cackling now, mocking the once cool, composed negotiator. 'We certainly are.'

'Let me guess, you have one more demand?' Finn asked aloud, looking over his shoulder to spy the largest of the three men. 'You want me to kiss Officer Reigns next?'

'You are so clever, Agent Balor,' the voice cheered.

'And if I do this, you will let the hostages go?' Finn pressed.

'Yes, every one, and we will put down our weapons and turn ourselves in.'

'Then I'd best do it, hadn't I?'

Without being instructed, Finn lifted the helmet from Officer Reigns' head, finding to his delight another handsome face, with tanned skin and a strong jaw. His lips looked as delicious as fruit freshly plucked from the bough and Finn wasted no time in capturing them. The larger man parted his lips to let Finn in, wrapping his arms around the Irishman and grasping him firmly.

'Grab his ass!' the voice commanded and before Finn could ask who the order was directed at, Reigns' hands moved to his backside and cupped both pert cheeks in his giant palms. Finn pulled his head back and gasped when large, strong fingers began to knead the tautly muscled flesh, in return hearing something like a tiger's growl rumbling in the pit of the larger man's throat.

Reigns pounced, taking possession of the Irishman's lips once more, sucking them into his warm mouth while his tongue explored them further. Reigns clearly enjoyed being in charge and Finn happily gave his body over to the officer, succumbing to the larger man's raw domination. One hand fell away from his backside to grab a fistful of his short, dark hair, tugging until the Irishman hissed. Reigns had done this before and knew exactly what he was doing - the force on his hair perfectly weighted between pain and rapture. Finn whimpered like an excited puppy.

'Oh Agent Balor, the noises you're making,' the voice whined down his ear. 'You're making us very jealous. We left you the best for last, didn't we?'

Finn couldn't answer; his mouth now belonged to Reigns. He could barely even reciprocate but the officer didn't care. Between the hand in his hair, the hand on his ass and the tongue in his mouth, Reigns was getting enough from the Irishman to satiate his desires.

When he finally pulled away, Finn felt dizzy, as if he'd just been through an out-of-body experience and had abruptly returned to his senses. He swiped a hand through his sweaty hair, reality jarring back into focus when the butt of his palm hit his headset.

'Is that it?' he said, remembering the job at hand. 'Did I meet your demands?'

'Ohhh, that and more, Agent Balor,' the voice sang. 'Look towards the door.'

Finn turned around and was hit with a wave of relief when the double doors to the building opened and a crowd of wide-eyed hostages fled to freedom. At last, the SWAT team rushed inside while the police force attended to the survivors. The line in his ear went dead, replaced by loud static. Removing his headset, he was suddenly hit with the full force of his condition. He was breathless and lightheaded, his lips bruised and his chin dripping. Glancing around at the mass of faces watching him in an almost voyeuristic fashion, he felt as if he was naked. He absentmindedly popped up the collar of his leather jacket in a feeble attempt to hide from their gazes.

'Good job, Agent Balor,' it was Reigns who spoke, Rollins and Ambrose falling in line behind him. They didn't seem fazed by their strange day in the slightest. 'The terrorists have been arrested and not a single hostage hurt. I'd call that a success.'

'Aye, sure,' Finn hushed out through trembling lips.

'Here,' Reigns held out his hand, a card between his two fingers. 'Call any time, if you need mine or...' he glanced back over his shoulder with a sly grin, '..all of our services again.'

'Thanks,' Finn said, taking the card. 'I'll bear that in mind.'

The three men left and Finn stood alone, staring down at the card when he heard his name being called. Turning around, he saw two men in handcuffs being shoved into a police van. 'Thank you, Agent Balor! Until next time!'

'WE LOVE YOU!' the other one hollered before he was wrestled into the van.

Finn shook his head in disbelief. What a day! Now, he'd head back to his office and write up the paperwork. Then it was straight home for a shower (a cold one, preferably) and a beer (even colder). Before walking away, however, he looked down at the card Reigns had given him, rubbing his tattooed hand over his slick chin. He'd be sure to keep this little treasure safe - he had a feeling he'd be needing the boys before long.

Maybe for a personal assignment next time!

[lullabyes22-blog]

Forward, but Never Forget/XOXO - Ch: 17 - Grounded

Summary: Zaun is free—and must grow into its unfamiliar new dimensions. So must Silco and Jinx. A what-if that diverges midway through the events of episode 8. Found family and fluff, politics and power, smut and slice-of-life, villainy and vengeance.

AO3 - Forward, But Never Forget/XOXO

FFnet - Forward, But Never Forget (XOXO)

Playlist on Youtube

Fanart, Meta, Snippets

Chapters: 1| 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |8 | 9 | 10 |11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54

CH 17: Silco and Jinx. A pitch-black comedy with a pinch of magic.

HEAVY TW: Suicidal ideation, discussions of suicide, attempted suicide.

Secondary tw: violence, disturbing adult behavior among adolescents, depictions of mental illness.

cw for drug use, jumpscares, and the aftermath of war.

If I've missed any tw's, please drop me a PM!

I love and I hate it at the same time you and I drank poison from the same vine ~ "Daylight" – David Kushner

The young bootblack trudges home.

His workbag is slung over his small shoulder. His bones ache in the mizzle hanging like translucent curtains over the cobblestones. It's been a long day. Hellishly long. The explosion in the lower-zones is over. But fear hangs in the air like a persistent chill.

Like after the war.

It wasn't so bad after the first few months. They started tearing down and rebuilding the broken bits in the city, like a stage set from one of those street plays. The web of merchant alleys in the Sumps were pitched with colorful tents, strands of lanterns and chaotic booths. Shops started opening in the Promenade, their doors releasing the aroma of fresh-baked scones and candied carvernfruit. Entresol ran thick with somber suited-up men and women filing in and out of skyscrapers—what his grandpa calls The infernal machines of bureaucracy.

The boy takes it to mean literal machines. All steam and gears and pulleys, powering the city. He doesn't mind it. There were people out on the streets again. Hundreds of shoes stomping through the sludge across the pavements. Dirty shoes mean coins.

By the month's end, he'll have less chances to make coins. There is talk of public schools, and compulsory education for urchins under fifteen. He dislikes the idea of school. Grandpa has promised him there'll be new games to play. But playing outside is better.

Not tonight.

All the streets are emptied. Folks are only allowed to get food from the grocer's, and return home. The street-corners are full of whispers. Firelights—Jinx—The Eye of Zaun. The boy isn't sure what any of it means, except that the city has fallen dark again. Blackguards patrol in chem-suits, carrying guns.

They aren't here to play. Their guns aren't toys.

Under the flickering halo of a street lantern, the boy stops to roll a cigarette. Grandpa warned him not to tarry. Trouble's a-brewing, he'd said. Finish yer work, then sling yer hook.

But it's good to be out, if only for a few minutes.

The boy licks the edge of the paper, and takes a slow breath of the sticky April night.

"Diesel strain, hm? You're having yourself a time."

The man looming from the fog is tall. Taller than Grandpa. His face is like Grandpa's too: all wrinkles and scars. But only on one side, hidden under unruly twists of dark hair. He wears a long coat, the hem clouded with dust, like the tips of his boots, which have metal winking on the toes.

His smile is a sharp thing. But his one blue eye lingers gently on the boy, as if he might be thinking of some other child from long ago.

The stare is unsettling. The boy thinks of a fly caught in a spider's web. He likes spiders. He keeps a big fat one—Billy-O—in a shoebox under his and Grandpa's bed, and feeds it dead bugs.

This is different. This isn't a spider—but something spookier—unfolding out of the dark and blocking his path.

Hastily, the boy tucks the unlit cigarette behind his ear. "I'll be off, sir."

"Do. It's dangerous at this hour."

There is no sinister game of hopscotch. The man sidesteps smoothly, letting the boy go. Close-up, the boy glimpses the man's other eye from behind the veil of hair. It shines with an otherworldly glow: ember and shadow. The boy's heart plummets. He takes off like a shot. Giddiness is a thin cover for undiluted terror.

Death darkening the door—as Grandpa says.

Daring a glance over his shoulder, the boy looks for the strange man.

The streets are empty.

The streets are empty, but Silco is at home.

He's always at home, no matter what part of Zaun he's in. The city's spirit throbs in his bloodstream. Outrunning it is like trying to outrun his own skin. Still—it's been a long time since he's gone from the zenith to ground-zero. He has a view of the cityscape's glittering tapestry through his office window. But it's different from being in the thick of it.

Right in Zaun's bazaar of the bizarre.

Slipping out of his headquarters was easy, even with the doubled guards, and tripled surveillance. When Silco first had the building renovated, he'd ordered it designed the way illusionists build the trappings of their stage. There was the façade: an Art Noveau showcase of steel-framed glass. Then there was the inner sanctum: a warren of trap-doors and tunnels.

His network was privy to the barest blueprint. Silco kept a skeleton crew on permanent shift, guarding each escape hatch. The rest of the labyrinth was his own to traverse: his memory the skeleton key. For a man whose trade is trickery, home was an architecture of vice. Sliding panels to practice eavesdropping. Escape-chutes to deploy ambushes. Every brick a conspiracy and every bolt a ruse.

Silco's fondest wish was that he'd one day give Jinx the tour. Show her that the artistry of the lie was just as essential as the mechanics of the crime. Power could be neither bought nor sold. It was the system of pulleys that gave the machinery the impetus to keep spinning.

Tonight the machinery has seized up. The gears have stalled. A suite full of dead bodies and deadheaded braids—and he was powerless.

He must make things right.

The hatch from the Chancellor's penthouse suite disgorged Silco to the subterranean endpoint at the bottom floor. From there, a twisting shaft that led out beneath the roadways. The stairwell echoed hollowly under his boots. Overhead steel rumbled and dust trickled. The darkness exhaled like a pair of lungs. The space Silco emerged into was an unfinished service passage at Entresol central district—grease-slicked cinderblocks and rough-hewn floors. He'd made a show of hiring the most talented stonemason in his network. But it was an entirely different breed of workmen who built this passageway.

He kept it as they'd left it. No torch or chem-light.

The path to freedom was as black as coal.

The passage terminated in a vault door. Silco worked the combination: 1-0-1-0.

Jinx's birthday.

The night air was hot and sludge-thick. Silco stepped into an ambit of light cast by a gooseneck streelamp. Mizzle fell, droplets alighting on his hair and shoulders. Old piss-stains rose wick-like up the walls like flames. The old alleyway reeked of rot. Silco knew the odor well—the same smell from when he was a boy, trailing after Vander to chase vermin for the ratcatchers.

He took it in stride. It was the reek of life.

A few louts anointed with booze were scattered on the cobblestones. At Silco's footfalls, they staggered to their feet. They didn't look like vagrants. More like scavengers—eyes sharp in skeletal faces—wearing vagrant's clothes.

"Arright, mate?"

Silco nodded.

"Had yer fill of the lights, eh?" One man clapped Silco's shoulder. "Lost yer way?"

"Close enough."

"Don't we know it!" A chorus of laughter. "Let's get you home, eh? We'll help you find the right track."

From inside his coat, the man withdrew a flask. There was an unmistakable whiff: tequila, sea-salt, slime. The sum total of every despair-inducing organism in this city.

That, and a shot of kerosene.

The man grinned—false bonhomie hiding bottomless malice.

"One sip," he said. "It'll make your night."

His companions circled closer. Their laughter ebbed. Their violence pooled in Silco's mouth. Heavy, salty, electric.

A taste he'd missed like his basest self.

Silco's eyes drifted up to the man. His lip curled, exposing serrated teeth.

"Don't I know it," he said.

In a blur, he smashed the flask into the man's jaw. The crack was as wet as the night.

His victim reeled, blood frothing from his mouth. He dropped in a heap. His companions froze in their tracks. The exchange had taken less than five seconds. Less time than it would've taken them to stick a pocketknife into Silco's gut.

It was a favorite tactic of water-rats—muggers. After dark, they preyed on suckers in the blind spots. Once upon a time, they'd been fine sport for Silco to practice his own knifework on.

Now it felt like picking bones off a plate.

In the aftermath, Silco stood, arms loose at his sides. His bad eye glowed red in the refracted lamplight.

"Off," he said. "Else I'll use you for kindling."

The remaining water-rats scattered.

Silco poured the swill from their flask into a dumpster. The fluid soaked the scraps of paper and discarded empties. He struck a matchstick, and let it drop. The stuff ignited with a whoosh.

Let the blackguards chase a pyromaniac tonight. It would keep them off his back—and out of the way.

Flames nibbled at the periphery of darkness. The silky laughter of fire gathered into a roar. Silco strode off without a backward glance.

The thoroughfare was a haze of motorcars and smoke. Oil-slicked puddles showed distorted reflections of pedestrians hurrying home after the curfew. Most wore hats, filtration masks or scarves in case of a Gnasher. Only a few stragglers went barefaced.

Bad weather was a sneak-thief's best friend.

Silco tugged the collar of his coat high, donned his own mask, and melted into the crowd. At Bridgewaltz, no one stopped him. At Emberflit Alley, blackguards crisscrossed the district, but gave him an indifferent berth. At Drop Street, he blurred into the scenery.

A scarred raw-boned man is no rarity in the Undercity. Even with his disguise, most don't recognize Silco by sight. His face isn't well known. Only his voice—and designation.

The Eye.

Chin low, shoulders high, Silco allows his features to slip now into a mask of flat-eyed vacancy. His body surrenders to the flow of the passing crowd. Small steps; slow movements.

Just a little fish in a big pool. Nothing to see.

Beyond the neon ripples of Entresol, the Sumps are chokingly quiet. Streets are scudded with low-lying smog. In the glow of a lantern, Silco takes his bearings. He is in the southern quadrant—a long way from the Oshra Va'Zaun tunnels. He has a half-night's worth of ground to cover before the network is alerted to his disappearance. There will be sentinels at every shortcut; guards in every bolthole.

Fortunately, Silco's sonar is guided by a different map.

Janna performs an act of gracious negligence by camouflaging his silhouette down the rooftops. He slithers without sound from parapet to plinth. Vaults the gaps between signposts like a phantom. The wind whips his hair in his eyes; cold, sharp, bracing. Silco welcomes the sting. He'd been naturally fluid once. But now he lacks the lightness of his younger days. Worse, his bad eye has skewed his depth perception. Momentum bleeds into vertigo. His arms and legs feel cooked. More than once, he has to recalibrate the distance between two points—lest he take a fatal tumble.

Age makes fools of everyone.

And yet the southbound journey holds a bittersweet catharsis. All the time overhead has dulled his sense of scale. His world has become a machine with a single gear: the endless grind. No rest, no respite. Just a mind fine-tuned to run and keep running.

Roof-runs are different. There is an art to keeping one's balance. It requires a sure step; a steady head.

An eye on the horizon.

Silco remembers the horizon of six years ago. Himself and Jinx, hand-in-hand—racing down this very stretch of rooftops. He remembers how they'd kept seamless pace with each other, her small hand folded through his. His shadow; his comet-tail. They'd race together across the crazy jumble of rooftops: teetering like tightrope walkers across the asymmetrical shingles, darting like moths around the gaseous radiance enrobing the gables, skittering like spiders down the storm pipes. He remembers squeezing Jinx's hand whenever she'd make a particularly spry move. Her giggles were like a blue ribbon, unfurling out and out into the night.

In those moments, dizzied with bittersweet kinship, Silco counted himself the luckiest bastard in the city.

(And I squandered it.)

Six years. A long time to keep an eye to the horizon. An eternity, even for the sharpest man. Silco was ready to give his own lifetime up for the return on investment. But he'd neglected the simplest fact of all: Jinx was never meant to be an investment. He'd done the damage, and reaped the rewards. Left her an orphan; made her a killer. And he'd known the cost, hadn't he? The rot creeping in the cracks. The reaper's silhouette darkening the door. He could outwit a dozen devils. But no conman can escape the consequences of his cut. No smooth-talker can talk his way out of the truth.

Nobody can ride the tide of denial forever.

(Forgive me, Jinx.)

Silco sinks deeper into Oshra Va' Zaun's bowels. Down the fire-escape of a shuttered station. Past the chrome glaze of a rusted turbine. His reflection travels the panes of cobwebbed metal like a shark under ripplets of water. His boots hit the dirt with no sound.

Leaning forward, palms on knees, Silco catches his breath. His brain pulses on adrenaline. The surge is familiar: a sparking song of nerves.

Call and response.

(Are you here, my lovely?)

The explosion site is cordoned off. Blackguards scuttle in the shadows like roaches. But Silco knows a dozen tortuous passages from his mining heyday. Jinx was fond of using them for games of hide-and-seek—with Firelights as her quarries. The tunnels were littered with their bones.

Now they are vaporized. Like everything else.

The perimeter of Jinx's hideout is a scorched crater. The catwalks are incinerated into charred rubble. The turbines are reduced to misshapen exoskeletons. The air reeks of a doused firepit. The leftover heat from the blast still radiates off the caverns. Now and then, pebbles skitter, presaging a more sinister collapse.

A similar sensation creeps through Silco.

Not dread.

Grief.

This hideout was his first gift to her. His acknowledgement of her specialness. Her acknowledgement of him as a father. By blowing it up, was she excising their bond? Or did it signify something deeper? Like Jinx spiriting off with Hex-gem. Like Silco setting foot in Zaun's depths. A return to the base elements—shadows and bilgewater for him, magic and gunpowder for her.

Mostly, he wonders if it's a trap. If Jinx is luring him out to deal the death-blow.

He's ready to chance it.

He creeps through the ruined hideout. Most exits are blocked off. Some lead to cul-de-sacs choked with debris. Others void into antechambers of noxious trapped gases. Only one tunnel remains intact. Silco peers through. It is barely large enough to squeeze through. The dimensions are pure darkness, thick and unending.

Silco steps back, taking a breath. A faint prickle of something ripples around the aperture, like the leftovers of a fireworks display. Blue motes glitter at the edges off his sightline.

The aftermath of a blast from the Hex-gem.

He doesn't hesitate. When it comes to Jinx, concern outweighs caution. Switching on his chem-light, Silco crawls into the tunnel. The inside is slimed with dampness and pitted with holes; some coin-sized, others the wide as hubcaps. Their interior yields a grainy dimness, giving no sense of depth.

Silco crawls on, alert for sounds. All he hears is a hollow whispering. Where it could be coming from—?

A spiky shimmer darts through the air. Silco squints. It is a dragonfly. At least it resembles one. But its carapace is glossier. It gives off a maddening whine, zipping by Silco's ear. He slaps it against the tunnel wall. The little bastard crumples like tinfoil.

A raspy croon floats in:

"Peek-a-boo."

A pair of hands flash out of the hole closest to him. They snatch his leg with astonishing strength. Silco makes a sharp involuntary sound. His chem-light skitters from his hands. The last thing he glimpses is a ghost-white face surfacing out of the darkness. A pair of eyes glow pink as cherry-bombs.

Jinx.

"Shoulda known it wouldn't be easy."

"What—?"

Then she yanks and Silco plunges into space.

He feels himself falling: a giddy weightlessness. It lasts no more than an eyeblink. He hits not ground but water, its icy shock sucking the breath from his lungs. He thrashes, disoriented. A little hand seizes his wrist. Then he is swept away—not by an undercurrent but Jinx's unyielding ferocity.

Out into an unknowable darkness.

Silco has grounded Jinx once—and only once.

It was also the only time he'd nearly struck her.

Jinx was thirteen. Her first teenage autumn; a milestone. Zaun had a rite of passage for each. Nothing like Piltover, where bored adolescents celebrated the trappings of maturity by sneaking off to indulge in vices like alcohol, sex or drugs.

Most sumpsnipes were already acclimated with such unsavoriness.

And worse.

In the Fissures, each coming-of-age was marked by something else. A test of courage. At seven, sumpsnipes came together in packs and leapt across the jagged firmament of rooftops, every iron spire and rusted stairwell beckoning with a broken neck. At ten, they swarmed any Topside automobile left carelessly parked in the alleyside, stripping it down to the bone with homemade chisels and gemmies. By sixteen, most had joined gangs, each with their own bloodthirsty initiations: maraudings, maimings, murders. By the Big Nineteenth, if they'd not already slugged a shot of gutrot hooch, cut a chem-baron's purse, ridden the Rising Howl, and cased a Topside joint for a smash-and-grab, they hadn't truly achieved their majority.

Thus, by the Big Nineteenth, the majority of sumpsnipes were dead.

The thirteenth-year marked the turning point. For those who survived it, childhood was done.

Jinx's childhood was already dead and buried.

At the edge of Zaun's outskirts, equidistant between Factorywood and the Sumps, sat a massive turbine, grimed with decades of filth. Large as a crater, with rotor blades the size of boats. It was part of a defunct structure known as the Treatment Stump, that once purified the foul-smelling run-off from Factorywood's smelteries. The whole complex was as primitively derelict as the rest of Zaun's infrastructure.

A monument to rust.

A tributary forking away from the Pilt sat under the treatment plant, corrosive with waste effluents. Upriver, at the Promenade, it was a smooth blue vein. As it snaked lower, past Entresol's Canal Zone, it narrowed, a lurking serpent of foulness, twisting ever downward along the Sumps until it finally reached Factorywood. There, it pooled and collected in a toxic bog at the Treatment Stump, before spiraling lower into the caverns of Oshra Va'Zaun, and merging with the underground river that spat out into the Deadlands.

On their thirteenth Name Day, sumpsnipes anxiously gathered at the edges of the Treatment Stump's turbine, watching the blades whip around, feeling the foul backdraft on their skins. The speed seemed sluggish at first glimpse; only up close did it betray its dangerous velocity.

The sumpsnipes would hold their breaths, gather their courage—then leap fluidly onto the blades.

Done right, a sumpsnipe landed feet-first, and became one with the rotors' rhythm. Jumping from one blade to the next, a spray-can in hand, they'd emblazon its surface with gang insignias, a multicolored impasto to mark the passage of generations. If miscalculated, the sumpsnipe fell through the gap between the rotors—and straight into the churning spume.

A handful of boys and girls did fall. Some drowned. Others were crippled for life.

When Vander was a boy, he'd made the leap successfully. So had Silco.

The trick was to center your focus not on the rotors but their rhythm. To learn it, without letting yourself become hypnotized by its inexorable whirr. You must not fall into the vortex; you must ride it. Once your feet hit the blades, you were safe, in the eye of ordered chaos. The rest was a joyride.

Nothing in Jinx's life was a joyride.

She'd leapt under Silco's watch. Not a milestone but an initiation. The first jump—and the first kill.

A chem-punk was fastened to the rotor. A snitch. He'd been caught slipping intel on Silco's Shimmer strongholds to the Slickjaws. During the last raid, Silco had lost twelve men. Six were taken captive and tortured to death. One was a girl, only fourteen. The Slickjaws had sown her mouth shut, taken her eyes, and left the rest of her splayed in a butchered wreckage outside the Drop.

Jinx had found her corpse.

Afterward, she'd made it her mission to smoke the snitch out. Her methodical approach was no different from Silco's. She'd used stealth instead of subterfuge, but otherwise she'd followed the same strategy. She'd infiltrated one of the Slickjaws' hideouts. She'd tracked their visitors. She'd watched for patterns. Then she'd followed them deep, and cornered the snitch—a Blind Man's bluff turned dead-man's-hand.

Silco had received him hogtied like a prize. TRAITOR was branded on his forehead with blood-red ink.

Jinx had tiptoed coyly up to Silco. "Do I get a reward?"

Silco had put a hand to her cheek. His touch wasn't tender so much as thoughtful. Eyes aglow, Jinx leaned into it. She was always like that: a black cat twining around him, mrrrowing for affection.

Silco had little patience for affection. Jinx was proving his sole exception.

"I'll do you one better, child."

"Huh?"

"You're a fast learner. But you're still not equal to the crew." He'd given her a solemn look. "You've been my little shadow. But shadows must shed their skin."

Jinx had giggled, but there was a brittle edge to it.

"What d'you mean?"

"You trapped the snitch. You captured him, alive and breathing. The Slickjaws will know you for an enemy. They will hunt you."

Jinx bit her lip. Old doubts clouded the clearness of her eyes.

"But...I-I'm not a fighter."

"You're not." He'd smoothed a hand through her hair. "You're better. You're a planner. There is no situation you cannot think your way out of. But sometimes, it takes more than guile to outmaneuver danger. Sometimes, it takes blood."

Jinx's breath wavered.

"It's time," Silco said. "You're ready for the first taste."

His eyes had passed from Jinx to the snitch. He lay on Silco's floor, bound hand and foot, mouth sealed with duct tape. At the intensifying burn of Silco's stare, he began to whimper.

"Let's make it a special one."

At his side, Jinx hadn't made a sound.

Now the snitch was spreadeagled to the turbine. A spit-soaked gag was wadded between his jaws. Bullseyes whorled across his scored skin. Silco's crew had taken their time on him, beating him and branding him. But they'd left him intact.

He was Jinx's quarry. Her treat.

Her kill.

"Two steps," Silco said. "Make the leap—and put a bullet in his brainpan."

The crew were present for the initiation: Sevika, Lock, Ran and Dustin. They'd joshed and jostled Jinx, but none dared push her toward the rotors. Not in Silco's presence. Sevika spoke matter-of-factly of how best to do it: time the rotor's sweeps and jump a split-second in advance. Don't look the target in the eye. Just take aim and squeeze the trigger. And if Jinx was too chickenshit, hey, she could put if off—put her acceptance into their world off—for another year.

A cruel goad. Jinx should've been too clever to fall for it.

Her defiant streak always outmatched her cleverness.

Glowering, she'd elbowed past the crew. Silco can still picture her. Perched like a cat at the edge of the railing, Puff-Puff in hand, the wan moonlight plating her pale skin. The backdraft from the turbine ruffled her bangs and stirred her braids. Goose pimples rose on her arms. The crew encircled her and began the traditional chant:

"Let 'er rip!"

"Let 'er rip!"

"Let 'er rip!"

The whole time they shouted, louder and louder, Jinx didn't take her eyes off the chem-punk. She took a breath, steadied her spine and bit her lower lip. Her body was static; her brain was the opposite, its fierce workings lighting sparks in her eyes.

At the last moment, she glanced up at Silco. The small nod he gave was rewarded with her smile at the highest wattage.

She leapt.

The crew fell silent. It was instinctual. Like watching a comet fall. One heartbeat Jinx was crouched on the railing. The next, she was perched crosslegged on the rotors.

One arm lifted, languorously. A pert middle finger aimed skyward.

The crew blinked. Then the cheers began. Sevika rolled her eyes, then grudgingly clapped along. Silco stayed just outside their half circle, his expression unreadable save for a small smile.

Inside his chest, pride stirred.

But this was half the test. The most critical was yet to come.

Jinx traipsed up to the chem-punk. He squirmed against his bindings, emitting high-pitched shrieks against the gag. Without any perceptible shift in expression, Jinx cocked Puff-Puff. Her eyes were blank as distant moons. They beheld her target the same way, as if he were a fragment of space-junk caught in her orbit.

Do it, Silco thought.

It was but one of the hundred steps to forging her into polished perfection. To peeling away the moony-eyed child to expose that tungsten chilliness that Silco knew was at her center. Power was a commodity in their world. By dint of its nature, supply was limited. All scarcity came with cost—be it a rival chem-boss putting a bullseye between your eyes, or a treacherous ally sticking a knife in your back, or greedy underlings seeking to steal your throne from under your feet.

They all wanted to own what you possessed.

They all took without paying the price.

Silco had taught Jinx the language of knives. He'd showed her the intimacy of violence, not just as a display of force but a measure of skill. Now she needed to master the final lesson. Anyone in the Undercity could wield a weapon. Anything in the Undercity could become a weapon. But at its core, a weapon was neither a toy for showy enjoyment nor a tool for sanctified self-defense. It was the purest and most absolute means of death.

He wasn't making Jinx a killer. He was teaching her the cost of survival.

About its winners—and losers.

Do it.

The chem-punk let off a choking sob and began to cry.

Jinx stared back. Her visage stayed empty. But Puff-Puff wavered in her grip.

The crew began muttering to themselves. Was this going to presage another meltdown? Ruthlessly competent as Jinx was with gadgetry, she had yet to learn that bloodwork was a different beast entirely. There was no room for error in the business of life and death.

Maybe, the crew whispered, she's not cut out for this business?

Maybe she was as they'd always suspected: a loose end.

Silco kept his peace. His focus was on Jinx. Every muscle in her body was tensed as if for rupture—or release. Her blue eyes, flat as mirrors, held a liquid sheen.

Tears were trickling down the chem-punk's cheeks.

Softly, Silco said, "Quick and clean."

Jinx's head jerked up.

"If you make a kill," Silco said, "do it right."

Jinx swallowed, once. Nodded.

"Finish it."

All hesitation fled Jinx's features.

In a practiced one-two, she took aim—and fired. The bullet slammed into the chem-punk's forehead. Blood splattered. His breath hitched in his lungs. His feet drummed the rotors.

He subsided into stillness.

Jinx released a shuddering sigh. With a well-aimed kick, she sent the corpse tumbling over the rotor's edge.

Down into sucking blackness.

Meanwhile, within the whirling blur of the rotors, Jinx's body flowed like graceful script. Armed with a spray-can, she decorated the surface around the blood-splatter with her monkey motif, trippy slashes of green overlaying deep-red. Then, like a little girl in a game of hopscotch, she danced from one rotor to the next, before somersaulting up and over the railing to land amid the crew.

They cheered louder than ever. Jinx grinned like a child with a Name Day cake. For the first time, she felt like she belonged in their circle.

Then Dustin made the error of errors: "Guess the cannery made good practice, huh?"

In hindsight, Silco should have slit his throat. It would've saved him a night of trouble.

Silence crept in. Sevika glared as if, by means of some anatomical freak-accident, Dustin's arsehole had pinwheeled where his mouth should be. Ran's jaw swerved to grinding teeth. Lock's features resolidified to stone.

Jinx stared, her face frozen around its previous gleeful expression. Her eyes seemed to turn inside out, like something old and rusted was unhinging. A cold electricity flowed in. Memory. Pain. Hatred.

Dustin shrugged. "Just saying. Li'l Miss already has a mighty fine body-count. I bet once she hits the Big Nineteenth—owfuck!"

In a flash, Jinx's boot hit his kneecap. His bad kneecap; the one she'd cracked two years ago with a mallet. In the same blink, she unscrewed her body from gravity, and backflipped onto the railing. Her stare held a fierce emptiness. She eyed the whipping rotors, but seemed not to see them.

Silco edged closer. "Jinx—"

To this day, he's not sure what happened. Maybe a pall of shadow fell over the scenery. A trick of light. A shift of wind.

Whatever the case—Jinx vanished.

Her shape spilled off the railing, and disappeared into a gap between the rotors. Swallowed by a dark so pure it was like staring into everlasting night.

Or death.

The crew stared, their heads cocked at quizzical angles. Like the first time Jinx had jumped, they seemed not to comprehend what they were seeing. Below, the turbines roared. Above, the space was paradoxically quiet. Then Sevika said, "Fuck," and it was like a ghostly susurrus from the depths.

A call to arms.

Adrenaline sliced through Silco. He whipped forward. He would've vaulted the railing and taken the same trajectory as Jinx at suicidal speed.

Sevika's arm caught him around the waist.

"Silso—don't!"

"Let go!"

"She's gone."

Gone.

Like a lost toy.

Gone and Jinx didn't belong in the same sentence.

Rage tore through Silco's ribcage. His elbow jerked, catching Sevika in the gut. She grunted; he broke free. For the first time since his boyhood, he was gripped by a mad tangle of impulses. The hot rush of horror like a buried river, the high-pitched buzz of fury like vultures circling a carcass, the cold slither of ruthlessness like a sea serpent riding a storm's waves.

His eyes cut mercilessly into the crew. "Find her."

Sevika argued, "Sir, there's no way she'd survive that fall—"

"Find. Her."

The crew had no choice but to obey.

The entire night, a search party combed the path running parallel to the tributary. Lackeys sprinted through the darkness. Torches shone. Every so often voices called a chorus of nicknames—Ghostberry? Bossgirl? Li'l Miss? The Pilt's soft lapping soaked up the cries.

Silco and Sevika covered the southern bend, where the spume churned through the turbine's filters and spat the waste into the soil itself. Nothing but sedge and sludge for miles. At the horizon, a streak of green smog bisected the moon. To the north, the Bridge arced against the surreal cupola of the sky. Squares of light from the warehouses at Factorywood glowed.

Silco's boots splashed through puddles shimmering with toxic hues. The runoff from the dump sites boiled off the vista. If Jinx had washed up on these shores, there's no way she'd survive. She'd have quaffed up the poisons and choked to death. A vision slotted through his mind: Jinx floating facedown, braids drifting like blue snakes, blood pooling from her open mouth.

Dead minutes after her first kill.

Lost our girl already? said a voice inside Silco's head—a gravely voice that he'd stopped hearing since he'd stabbed Vander.

Teeth gritted, Silco blocked it off.

Jinx wasn't dead. He knew it in his bones. Like him, the child was maddeningly unkillable. It would take more than a rusted turbine to cut her down to size. But her being lost was tenfold worse. She could be anywhere. Trapped in a factory cesspit. Despoiled by toxic spume. Strangling in stray wires.

He ordered Sevika to search the eastside. Silco took the west. His eyes kept a careful scan; his body moved in a deliberate rhythm, limbs loosening the way they always did when he was near water. Yet inside, something raked him like a broken spur.

It wasn't fear. He'd tasted that many times before. Mastered it and made it his own. This was different: edgeless and yet ordinary. Part of it was a generalized concern: Jinx was his brightest asset. He was responsible for her safety. The other part was irrationally specific.

Jinx was more than his asset. She was his.

His.

Silco's feet flashed through the bristling trash, navigating between coils of rusted metal and shards of bottles that scattered the river bed. He left the subdivisions and dumpsites behind. The darkened water of the streambeds gave way to something purer and yet dense with minerals. Instinctively, he was cutting a path parallel to the Oshra Va' Zaun caverns.

Down to the Deadlands.

They were a stretch of wasteland between the ore-mines and Zaun proper—a raw patch without a blade of grass or a speck of steel. The vista was hellish desolation: dead trees fossilized into gnarled silhouettes; sludgy pools choked with carcasses; a soil of chalky ash suited to funeral pyres. The name itself—Deadland—had its origin in the toxic gas pockets that leaked from the caverns.

The place was a death-trap, all the more lethal for its isolation.

Once, the Deadlands were home to the castaways of Oshra Va'Zaun. After the early settlers came, it became a squalid pit of cannibalism. Bones buried under blackened cairns; desiccated corpses nailed to posts like scarecrows. Here and there, rock formations loomed: less mountains than obelisks, thrusting up from the scorched earth as if some titanic spirit had roused itself from the mire.

The obelisks were carved with runes beneath layers of dust. Curses, lamentations, blessings—nobody could decide.

In Silco's boyhood, the Deadlands were forsaken except by wagons en route to the mines. On the outskirts, a string of bunkhouses were erected: less abodes than makeshift shacks. A network of tram lines crisscrossed the terrain. Others, collapsed beneath the weight of rock-falls, were ghost-tracks tracing live veins of riverwater—still pumping, and miraculously pure.

When Silco was younger, he and Vander would follow the route on hot summer days. They'd find the deepest, bluest pools to wash the grime off their skins. For Vander, it was an adventure. Silco simply wanted to be in the water. The streams soothed him like nothing else could.

By late noon, the skies would open into downpour. Silco and Vander would take refuge in the caves. They'd carve out shells of dried cavernfruit, and use them as bowls for rainwater. Other times they'd catch fish, and smoke them over a small fire. Afterwards, bellies full, they'd drowse side-by-side. The rainfall would blend with the rise-and-fall of Vander's breaths.

Back then, the Deadlands were Silco's favorite place. He loved how the wind whistled across the wastes. He loved its wildness and eeriness. He loved how, when the clouds broke and the sun shone, everything gleamed as if it coated in diamond dust.

At night, he and Vander counted the stars from the peaks of obelisks. Nestled together, they'd talk of tomorrow, until sleep came.

Now, the Deadlands were no better than burial grounds. A place where even the desperate gave up their last-ditch hopes. Bodies lay piled behind the rocks; bones rattled in the winds. The tram lines were skeletal husks, sunken deep in the soil. The bunkhouses were an expanse of collapsing sticks.

Only the obelisks stood whole—stretching up to break the sky's pall.

Unerringly, Silco's boots found the old path. If he kept going further downstream, he'd rediscover the old railway trestle where he and Vander used to jump off for a swim.

Silco's mind wasn't on swimming.

"Jinx? Jinx?"

A pressure gathered behind his ribcage. He was breathing raggedly, but it had nothing to do with exertion. How, he wondered, was he going to liberate the Undercity—birth Zaun into being—when he couldn't even safeguard a damn girl? Especially this girl, who'd proven such a godsend, a bona fide miracle. Who'd restored color to the edges of his world, while the rest of him dangled over the void, empty-hearted.

What would he do without her?

Dread congealed. Until that moment, he'd not understood how dangerously far he'd fallen under the child's spell.

(Is that fatherhood?)

That's when he heard it. A soft snuffling. At first Silco mistook it for the wind. Then it took a familiar shape. Crying. Scrambling to a halt, Silco cocked his ear. The sound was coming from somewhere behind an overhang of jutting obelisks. Water rippled; moonlight caught the zipping shapes of river-dwelling fish along the shores, their scales distorted by pustules.

Silco followed the sound, until it separated itself from the ambience of barren nature. His boots slipped on wet stones. Catching his balance, he rounded the bend.

There was Jinx.

She sat on a large boulder, cross-legged and toying with her braids. Sniffling, she skipped flat stones across the shoreline, each one bouncing eight or nine times before it sank. Silco crept toward her on silent feet. Like the folklore of hunters who chance upon Celestials, he was half-convinced the little imp would vanish if he startled her.

Two steps. Four steps. Ten.

At the crunch of boots on silt, Jinx spun. By then, Silco had hemmed her in: his body on one side, the water glittering behind her. His voice was a coiled garotte.

"Where have you been, Jinx?"

She flinched. Tears shone on her pink-mottled cheeks. The rest of her was bone-dry.

"I-I crawled out through the vent," she mumbled.

"What vent?"

"The one under the turbine." She sawed a hand under her nose. "It's part of a conduit. Most of 'em crisscross under the old Oshra Va'Zaun caverns. Some go to the Sumps. Some go here."

"Do you know where 'here' is?"

She tossed her head, defiant. "Sure I do!" Then, in a Powderish fit of doubt. "Mostly."

"You got lost, didn't you?"

Lip bit, Jinx fiddled with her braids.

Silco felt the skin tightening at his temples. His palms twitched. He stuffed them into his pockets.

"Did it occur to you," he said, deceptively composed, "that I might wonder what happened?"

She tipped a shoulder. "I figured you'd just leave. Not like it's the first time I've lit out."

It was true.

Restless pest syndrome—Sevika called it. Now and then Jinx would catch a twitchy case of wanderlust, and take off wherever little jumping beans did: the caverns, the turrets, the scrapyards. In boyhood, Silco used to be the same. Sometimes, he still went to ground, as it were. Took a day off to reconnoiter in blessed solitude. It proved harder the higher he rose in the Undercity. His absences would rouse Sevika's territorial instincts. Like a dragon she'd sink in her teeth and not loosen her grip unless he gave her a metaphorical kick in pursuit of privacy.

Jinx was harder to shake off. She followed him everywhere. To narrow her margin of persuasive tactics (including and not limited to tying him to chairs), Silco planned his absences at the last minute, when there would be no room for negotiation.

Jinx would sulk. But in her way, she understood.

They were loners at heart; misfits who'd learnt to befriend their own isolation. Even after years of communal living, neither of them had quite gotten the hang of belonging to a pack.

This was different.

Silco edged closer, his temper climbing to red. "Child, you'd drive a saint to murder."

"Huh?"

"Do you know what kind of filth wanders the Deadlands? You're lucky I found you before someone else did."

"I wanted to be alone, okay?! That stupid Dustin. He—hey. Why're you lookin' at me like that?"

"I thought—"

"What? I was dead?" She let off a burbling laugh. But her eyes flickered nervously. "I was just—"

She cried out when Silco snatched her up, so sharply she couldn't evade. His arm moved in an instinctive arc—the surge of momentum vicious in its familiarity. He'd have slapped her head clean off her shoulders. Same way he'd done numberless lackeys who'd crossed him.

But at the last second, he felt her flinch. The tautness of her body. The rabbiting of her pulse.

Rage gave way to a different reflex. He shut his good eye, shut it tight and dragged her against him. As soon as her small body was in his embrace, his breath seized. His arms became a stranglehold.

"Owwww!"

"You're grounded."

"What—?!"

"Don't ever do that again!"

Nearly breaking his own maxim—We don't hit each other—and he wonders what would've happened if he'd carelessly struck her. The same way Vi had. The same way Vander had.

The capacity was in him. The desire. The rage.

Yet it was eclipsed by a disorienting enormity of terror. How could one child leave him so out of his depth? What did it mean, that she held in her hands the power to undo him so utterly?

(Is that fatherhood?)

Jinx shivered against him. Fear gave way to confusion. A stillborn swat was still a swat. After Vi, she was terrified of screwing up and reliving the same violence at someone else's hands. Except the violence boiled not because of her presence—but her absence. Jinx's mind couldn't reconcile the contradiction. He saw in in the frantic tangle of her emotions: her liquid eyes, her pinched little chin, her trembling lip. He felt it in the crazy thubbing of her heart: a cadence that matched his own.

For a moment, Silco couldn't speak. He just gathered her in closer, his face in her hair.

"Don't, Jinx."

"D-Don't—?"

"Don't disappear like that again."

Jinx craned her neck. The brightness in her eyes spilled from the corners to streak her cheeks. "Wh-why should it matter to you?"

"I—"

"You're n-not my dad. I'm not your kid. So why—"

"Why?!"

With a snarl, Silco swept her in again. But it was all right. She wasn't shrinking away. Her strong skinny arms were wrapping around his neck, and she was burrowing closer, their foreheads together, cold on hot, an inarticulate melding of relief.

It was a relief. Just a misunderstanding. His murderous little sprite was safe. By his side.

Right where she belonged.

(Is that fatherhood?)

(Is it?)

Everything hurts.

A spectrum of hurts. Silco's eyes open, and show him a brighter spectrum of moons—where in hell am I?—cycling around in a pinwheel before they resolve into one. A susurrating echo laps at his ears. He twists his head, trying to see where it is coming from. Tries to leap to his feet, but his body is immobile.

He is chained, padlocked and bolted.

Fuck.

The air holds a chill of mineral wetness. Silco shivers in his drenched clothes. Shafts of moonlight slip through a dappled scudding of clouds. With effort, he cranes his neck. He is sprawled on the spine of a steep ravine. The surrounding landscape is all grayscale: powdery grit, monolithic stone, scoured underbrush.

Like the inside of a skeleton's mouth.

The whispery echo persists. Cocking his ear, Silco recognizes it. The river Pilt. He is somewhere north of Oshra Va'Zaun's mines. They peel away into a cratered expanse of flatland and oxbows that run parallel to the river's shores. The verge where civilization gives way to wilderness.

The Deadlands.

Threads of moonlight hang in the air. He hears the reverberation of the river. Beyond that bleeds a profound silence. The silence particular to desolation: the creatures barely alive, the earth barely alive too.

The not-sound is terrible. Silco has become accustomed to the vibrant soundtrack of Zaun. He is surrounded by clamor all day long now. The drone of construction, the screech of traffic, the skirls of music. And while it can be maddening, it is life.

This is the opposite. The forsaken silence he'd once loved, and now loathes. Not even Vander's ghost is here to console him.

From the gloom: footsteps.

"Wakey, wakey, bats and bake-y."

Jinx looms over him. Her moonlike faces recoalesce from five to three to one. Relief is overpowering. She is alive. Silco's heart pounds in his chest; so wildly he thinks it might break through his chains.

"Jinx—where have you been?"

"Needed a change of scene."

"A change of—?" His scowl bridles. "What are you playing at? Every blackguard in the city is looking for you!"

"Oh. Them." She snorts. "Chasin' their tails. Bunch of morons."

In the half-shadow, her eyes are strangely sparkless. The contours of her face seem off. Silco squints. But she has already moved out of his line of sight.

He strains against the chains. His ankles are manacled together, arms tied behind his back, wrists at an uncomfortable twist. After Stillwater, he'd grown adept at slithering out of whatever restraints he'd been manhandled into. It was a simple matter of disjointing a thumb or dislocating a shoulder.

Except Jinx knows his history. The bindings are doubled and tripled. She's taking no chances.

Chances on what? Why is she out here?

"Jinx." He's in such turmoil he can barely string three words together. "You need to come home."

"Home?"

"Back to headquarters."

"Fat chance."

"What?"

She hovers back into view. Silco stares closely at her. She is a disheveled mess. Dressed in her street clothes, much-frayed and dirt-smeared, jacket around her body, boots at her feet. Her skin under its milk-and-freckles is flushed in ugly pink chameleon patterns. The old childhood mottle of distress. Her hair bursts in blue shards around her skull as if zapped by electricity.

Silco squints as if blinded. Then he remembers.

Gods.

Her hair. She'd butchered it.

Butchered the guards. Blasted her hideout to kingdom come. Now she's lured him out, with a prankster's whimsy that is pure premeditation. That's how Jinx operates. A method to the madness. She can seem deceptively ebullient for long stretches of time. Lull everyone in her periphery with a sense that all is well. Meanwhile the disconnect between inward and outward cracks into a molten chasm, so all her ghosts spiral out.

Catching fire—then exploding into catastrophe.

This is a catastrophe. A failure on Silco's part to spot the signs. Any chance of a goodbye kiss? Sweet Kindred, he'd been so stupid last morning. Why didn't he just cancel his meetings and stay with Jinx? Just tell his love and pride without wielding it like a blade up the sleeve? He knows he'd done that. He'd done it for years, done it again despite vowing to change, so no wonder—no wonder his poor girl—

"Jinx." He speaks with a quiet forcefulness. "We need to talk."

"Reaaaaally not in the mood."

"I know you're upset with me—"

"Upset?" The sulky softness of her face sharpens—a maniacal mask. She stays crouched close, her body giving off a peculiar hum like a tuning fork between strikes. "Why would I be upset, Daddy?"

"You tell me."

"You haven't figured it out? You're smarter'n that."

"Not about this." Silco folds without resistance. "Please, child—talk to me."

"I am talking to you." She glowers. "What's today?"

"It's—"

Bloody Sunday.

The whole city knows that. He can't puzzle any significance beyond that. It's not the Day of Ash—that's in September. It's not Jinx's Name Day—that passed in tandem with Progress Day. It's not the day they met—a date that also holds the dark privilege of being Vander's death anniversary

"I confess," he says. "I can think of nothing."

"Exactly!" Jinx snaps her fingers so rapidly sparks leap off them. "That's the first word that pops into my head when I wake up lately. Nothing. Well. Second word. The first is Fuckin.' Another day of doing fuckin' nothing!"

"I asked you to come along with me—"

"And do more fuckin' nothing? Pffff. I'd rather be a ghost. Ghosts can do whatever they want, right?"

"Is that why you blew your hide-out up?"

"No." A reflex of guilt twists her face. "I mistimed the explosives."

"What?"

"The explosion was gonna go off later. You'd be at HQ. You weren't supposed to be down here."

"You had this all planned?"

A nod.

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Your hideout. Your braids. Your drawings." Silco drags a jittery breath. "Jinx, what are you doing?"

Jinx dips a finger into the hollow of his throat, where water collects. She dabs her wet fingertip down his scarred cheek like a tear. Her eyes glow dully; two doused embers.

She whispers, "Thought that was obvious."

"Far from."

"I'm saying goodbye."

Silco's mouth opens. No words come. A mineshaft collapses inside him, a thunder of dust and a blackness that tastes of fear, a cold edgeless fear like nothing he's ever known before. Not on the day Jinx vanished between the turbine rotors. Not on the night he'd found her at the Bridge, death a gasp away.

No.

No.

Silco's whole body is one throbbing heart. His struggles redouble against the chains

Jinx watches him with a strange subspecies of pity. Her hand cups his jaw. Their eyes meet. Silco's own are wild and blasted; hers are eerily calm. Leaning in, she touches their foreheads together. Old intimacy reduced to a sad mockery of leavetaking.

"Poor Silly," Jinx says. "I wasn't gonna do it this way."

"Jinx—please—"

"I was gonna break it to ya gently. After our twelve o' clock talk. I even wrote a script. See?"

From her pocket she digs out a scrap of paper flecked with paint, and unfolds it. Clearing her throat, she recites with mock-solemnity:

JINX: Dear Silco! Thanks for all the laughs and lessons and lunacy. I had fun being your Jinx. You showed her how to come into her own. And together, you showed Topside. You showed 'em all! But now it's time to skip the light-fantastic. There's no place for Jinx in Zaun. But there's a place for me in the After. Don't be sad. We'll see each other someday—when Ol' Hungry stops striking twelve!

SILCO: I understand, child. Good luck and fare thee well.

JINX: You were an okay Dad.

SILCO: And you were an A-Okay daughter.

JINX: I wish we'd met sooner. We had a lot in common—besides murdering our brothers and all. Our time together was too short. Ex-oh-ex-oh…

She falters, and bites her lip. Despite the cruel lampoon, her grief is palpable. "There's more. Mostly you lecturing me to dress warmly for the After. Then we hug and bid each other adieu." She smiles, but it has too many cracks. "You want that hug now?"

"Jinx." It's an effort to move his lips. "Untie me."

She shakes her head, a scolding side-to-side. "You can't have it back yet."

"Have what back?"

She reaches into her pocket and comes out with a glowing blue sphere. The Hex-gem. A single ray of moonlight pierces its interior to scatter in glittering fractals through the air. Jinx holds it overhead, turning it over between nimble fingers.

"On principle," she says, "I oughtta take it with me. Finders, keepers."

"Jinx—"

"It was my gift to you. But it talks to me."

"Jinx—I don't care about the gemstone. Just untie me. Please."

Her smile deepens. But there are layers of darkness in her eyes. "You're such a good liar."

"I'm not lying!"

"Pffft." Jinx mimes a hoop shot with the gem, then attempts to twirl it on one finger like a baseball. "The only reason you're even here is 'cause you thought I'd use Gemmy to blow up your precious Zaun."

"I'm here to take you home."

She makes a derisive sucking sound between her teeth. "Home? What's home where I'm not wanted?"

"I want you home!"

"Sure—but you don't need me! If you just want me around as salad dressing while you're playing First Chancellor—if you just want me in the background, then you don't really want me. You never did!"

It hits like a blow to the chest. "How can you say that?"

For the first time, emotion crackles in her eyes. She begins pacing, flinging the gemstone rapidly from hand to hand. "Because it's true! Every day since the war ended, you've told me over and over and over again that you don't need me—all without saying a word. Take it easy, Jinx. Don't rush, Jinx. No pressure, Jinx. The same thing you say to a sick doggy before you take it out back and shoot it!"

"Jinx, I never meant to—"

"The only thing I was trained for. The only dream I had. The only way to prove myself. That was all tied up with Zaun." There are tears now, bright and gelid, glossing the rims of her eyelids. "Now Zaun's real, and everybody's just, Thanks for your service, now fuck off. And do what? Retire? Go on hiatus? Take a vacation? What's left for Jinx?!"

Silco stares at her. His damp clothes are heavy as the chains folded around his body.

Not as heavy as the grief.

He knows the parameters of Jinx's insecurities as intimately as his own. His are enough to fill a room; hers are enough to crowd a castle. But that's different from seeing them up-close—a raw reality of carnage.

The suite splattered in blood. Her braids amputated. Her hideout jellied.

All things he could've prevented. He'd seen the patterns in their private life and yet refused to connect them. He'd isolated her for the sake of letting her rest (kept her on a short leash). He'd shaped a stable daily routine of cooking, conversation, cuddles (stabilized the surface while her inner-wounds festered). He'd given her a room with a locked door (when Jinx's ghosts are most attracted to things with locks.)

Worst of all, he'd waited for her to come to him. As a father, he should've sought her out first. It is his duty to check in with his child as often as with his crew. More—because Jinx is fragile. Jinx needs him. The onus of Jinx's welfare—tonight's utter shitshow—is all squarely on him.

Shame congeals. His words come choked.

"Jinx—forgive me. I never meant for things to go this far—"

"Yeah, sure. So sorry you're barely ever around. It's all just Zaun, Zaun, Zaun. You're behind the scenes. You're in the spotlight. Got a real sweet life going for yourself, don'tcha?"

He swallows hard. "Jinx, listen to me. This is important."

"Oh, piffle." She peers through the Hex-gem as if through a crystal ball. "Don't bother making excuses, Mr. I'm-too-busy-for-you. They won't work. So you might as well spare yourself the drama and let it happen. It shoulda happened a looooong time ago."

"Don't say that." He tries to meet her eyes, to force a connection. If not for the chains, he'd claw at her, sink his teeth into her. Anything to keep her. "The city needs you. Our people need you. Not just because you're the brightest mind we have—"

"—and look where that's got me, huh?"

Silco's fists tighten against the manacles. "But because you're our future. Without you, Topside has won. They've destroyed us before we've even rebuilt. Like they've destroyed everything before. But not you, Jinx. You're stronger than they are. Stronger than this. You still have your entire life waiting for you."

A sudden rage lights Jinx up from toes to the tips of her bristling hair. "A life—to do what? Join the blackguards? Attend soirees as First Daughter? Do scutwork as your private secretary? You say my whole life is waiting for me—but that's not my life. Nothing since Vi walked away from me has been my life!" Her mouth quivers; she crams her thumb into it. "She knows it too. That's why she didn't say goodbye. She left. Again."

It takes Silco so long to connect the words that Jinx could slap him twice before he finishes.

Again.

Fuck.

She knows Vi was here.

Their stares meet. Silco's calm fractures.

"How—" he rasps, "How did you—?"

"How'd I figure it out?" Jinx's smile is glitteringly sharp. "Oh, y'know. Bugs on the sill. Bats in the attic. Her name got whispered down plenty of secret corridors. Rumors passed from ear to ear until they reached mine. And mine are pretty sharp now, if I do say so myself." A shrug. "Also, the blackguard blabbed."

"The blackguard..."

"Yeah. One of 'em was really into my swimmy time." She twirls her mangled hair and pastes on a little girl smile. "Chatty fella. Especially after I promised not to shoot him... anyplace fatal."

Silco utters a frustrated sound. "That fool."

"Hey! No harshin' on the dead! At least—I'm guessing he's dead. I let him live. No way you'd do the same." Her smile fades. "He told me... Vi was at Entresol a few weeks ago. She'd brought a drone. She was spyin' for Topside—and that stupid Enforcer girl was working with her." She blinks blindishly. "She came. She saw. She left-right-left. And you knew." She jabs a finger at him. "Liar."

Silco tries a dozen glib excuses that run empty.

"Jinx," he says. "I kept it secret for a reason."

"Let me guess. To protect me?"

"Yes."

"From what? My feelings? How crazy I am?"

Rooted to the spot, he explodes, "From ending up dead on the Bridge! Or have you forgotten how she left you bleeding—or who found you and took you back?"

"Back to Singed's table?"

"Back with family." His shout escalates to match hers. "Real family. Not ones who get you killed and never look back. Yes—your sister was here. Yes—she was working with Topside. Yes—I didn't tell you. Because I could only deal with the biggest crisis—not the fallout!"

"Who—Vi?"

"You." His breaths come ragged. "One glimpse of her undoes all the progress you've made! Just a rumor and you're right back where you started. Worse—because now you're undoing even that." He jerks at his chains. "I won't allow it, Jinx. You've had your tantrum. You've swung the city upside-down and put me through my paces. Now it's time to come back where you belong."

Jinx's face smooths so suddenly into an impenetrable mask that she resembles a mannequin.

"I know where I belong," she says. "It's not with Vi. Or with you."

"Jinx—"

She darts beyond his sightlines. Silco struggles and rolls onto his side. A band of moonlight falls through the clouds. He is greeted by an unsettling sight. He is facing a sheer cliff; its blackness so total it swallows the night. Pebbles skitter down the incline. They drop into the pit, engulfed by silence.

A hand seizes the back of his collar. With dizzying strength, Jinx hauls him up. "Tsk, Silco. This ain't your goodbye."

"Jinx—listen—"

"Shh-shh." She hums, identical in cadence to how Silco would soothe her in childhood, whenever she'd whip herself up into a panicky froth. "It'll be over in a minute. Here's the gem, 'kay?" She slips it in his jacket pocket, as if restoring a toy to a squalling toddler. "I'll put the keys in your hand too. But you won't be able to get loose until after."

"After—?"

After she's offed herself.

Silco thrashes madly. But Jinx's strength overmasters his. Once upon a time, he'd hefted her into his arms as easily as a ragdoll. Now it's the opposite. He's helpless against a girl so tiny she belongs in a music-box. It would be funny—except the Shimer zinging in her veins is no joke.

One false move, and she'll carelessly crack him in two.

She drags him up the cliffside. Gently sets him down against a blunted edge of rock. Silco folds to his knees, rough gravel jabbing against his aching joints. Jinx slips a cold key into his cuffed hands, which flex clumsily around it. With a dozen padlocks around his body, she's reasoned that he won't be able to break loose fast enough.

Kingpins do not possess the talents of Houdini.

Jinx skips light-toed down the cliffside. Shadows pool around a collection of shapes huddled at the edge. Silco squints. For a few pulseless seconds, he can't comprehend what he's seeing. Either it is a negative space that the protective part of his brain has erased from his sight. Or he sees it, and is too paralyzed with cowardice to recognize it.

Jinx hadn't blown up everything in her hideout.

A handful of mementos remain.

All of them are from her drawings. The two grotesque mannequins she'd repurposed into replicas of her dead 'brothers.' Between them are Vander's gauntlets, mottled with rust. The squalid lump of a stuffed bunny is perched between them. The rest is a bric-a-brac of grisly nostalgia. Old toys splattered in blood. Finger-paintings of dead Firelights. Doodled-on bombshells—Whisker, Buttons, Punch.

Everything is piled into an old red wheelbarrow. It is retrofitted with a small motor and heavy-duty tires. The tray is splattered with acid-green graffiti—XOXO.

All of Jinx's history—all of her heartbreaks—ready to tip over the edge.

Like her.

"Jinx, don't do this!"

Shaking her head, looking everywhere but at him, Jinx climbs into the wheelbarrow. Six-dozen sticks of TNT are corded together in a tight bundle. A cheap plastic egg timer—from Silco's own goddamned kitchen—is wired to the fuses and strapped to the dynamite with swathes of duct tape.

Jinx twists the knob with precise turns of her wrist.

"Five minutes," she says.

"What—?"

"You get five minutes to skeddadle."

Five minutes until the wheelbarrow rockets off the cliffside.

Five minutes until Jinx is blown to smithereens.

Five minutes until Silco's universe folds into flames.

No.

Terror seizes him, a bone-deep electricity that sets every nerve center on fire. Earlier, he'd not allowed himself to panic. But it was instinctual self-preservation. The same backlash as against prodding a seeping wound. Now he can feel it engulfing him, a full-bodied convulsion. The surface of his face refuses to harden; his emotions are a wretched nakedness.

It is like the night Vander attacked him at the Pilt. The night the Temple of Janna was bombarded by shelling. The night he'd found Jinx blood-smeared at the Bridge.

He screams: "Stop!"

The unhinged sound rips through the night. Jinx's head swivels. Her eyes are no longer glowing pink. The pupils are dilated, a blackness so absolute it encompasses each iris. It turns her stare into a horrid pit, a hungering for someone to swallow.

Or save her.

That's why she'd orchestrated tonight's nightmarish tableau. Her drawings to presage her plans. Her braids to exorcise the past. Her gun to bid farewell. That's why she'd made him run this macabre gauntlet: two truths and a lie, their old game taken to grotesque extremes. The key is in his hands; her life hangs in the balance.

Tonight is his last chance. The narrowest rescue. A toss of the coin.

And she has put the onus on him.

Him—not Vi, or everyone else who'd ever failed her.

She wants him to prove he is different. She wants to punish him for falling short in every possible way. She wants to show him how much pain he's caused her. How horrendously he's used her for his own end, while failing to see the same end reflected back at him tenfold. The same end that shaped her out of a child and into his shadow, his anima, his apotheosis, so now she can't find a way to unmake herself, except by this.

This.

"Stop! Just—stop!" Silco jerks against the chains. "This isn't the way out!"

Jinx hums in lusterless singsong. "Got a few explode-y buddies that say otherwise."

"Your friends are wrong! So are you! After doesn't square debts or rewrite regrets. After is just that. After."

Jinx stares at him.

"How dare you do this, Jinx? How dare you buy a fool's lie?" A sudden rage boils like acid. "Ending your life won't undo anything! Broken things can't be unbroken. What you left behind will remain—only it will be unfinished because you didn't see it through!"

He watches her face change, the fluid trick of moonlight that makes her eyes spark from despairing holes to fire opals. Her jaw hardens and her mouth folds down. With jerky movements, she climbs out of the wheelbarrow and stalks toward him. "Easy for you to say! You've got something to stay behind for. Zaun's your big dream. Your unfinished story. Now you can write any way you choose!"

"Zaun's nothing without you!"

"Me—who?" She stamps her foot. The soil ripples, a tiny seismic tremor. "Why don't you get it? Jinx is dead! She died at the Bridge. You're chasing her ghost!"

"That's not true!"

"Don't tell me what's true and what's not!" Her breaths come ragged, like she's about to heave up her guts. "Jinx is dead. I am. I never woke up after the night on Singed's table. I never got better. I'm dead, like Vander, and Mylo, and Claggor, and I get deader every day. I lost me after I lost Vi, it's all run out. Sand in the hourglass, and every day I lose more—"

"Child—no—"

"I'm dead, and what's left is a disappointment to you. I always was. Take Jinx away, and it's just stupid Powder and her screw-ups and everyone she couldn't save. Everyone who left her behind." A sob wallops her. "I see their faces. I hear their voices. I can't shut 'em out. Quick and clean, you taught me. Make a kill. Do it right. Except there's no right. There's only wrong. All my life, I've only ever been wrong. And now I've done the worst of it." She holds up a fist, opens and closes it. "I can't get the blood out, Silco. I can't see past it. There's only more and more and more and if I don't stop now—"

"You're afraid you'll never stop." Silco's heart is a wringing rag. Oh Gods, she is sick, sick with wounds. And it's all his fault. "Oh my love. I know. I know it hurts. If I had any idea of how much you were suffering—"

"Don't pretend to understand!"

"I do understand. I—I remember the night I killed Vander. I thought I'd never be able to see my way clear of the blackness again. But you showed me I could. It took time, but we did it together. We'll do it again." He tugs at his chains. If he speaks fast enough, if he pleads hard enough, he might outrun the last few minutes. Might salvage the ruins of his life. "Jinx, listen to me. We're all different now. Zaun is different. Don't take away your future because of your past. You're hurting, you've held it together admirably, but, sweetness, just hold on a little longer. I promise—"

"You're not listening!" Her chest heaves, breaths thick with stymied tears. "I'm tired of holding on! I'm tired of bein' left behind. I'm tired of feeling this way, so trapped and angry and broken all the time. I'm so tired—" She stops, the words dying in her throat. "I'm tired of turning my back on everything you start and I finish."

"Jinx—"

"That's our waltz, Silco. Round and round. You spark the tinder. I burn the house down. You dragged Vander to the cannery. I sent him to his grave. You wanted to tear his family apart. I blew them up." A sick laugh judders through her. "Me and my big booms. You and your big plans. Only, I don't get the happy ending." Her eyes take on a flat sheen. "There's only one end to Jinx's story."

"It doesn't have to be that way!"

"It does." She swallows. "Look, I know what you're trying to say. All the good things I could do, if I stay. You want to tell me that I can find something worth living for. Well. I tried that. And I failed. I tried and tried. Every day, I woke up, and I tried to find a way back to who I was. And the harder I tried, the worse it got." Her sobs come muffled, as if against a pillow. "It's no good. I've lost me. The me you wanted. I wasn't the girl you thought, Silco. I'm sorry."

Silco's muscles strain against the chains. His fingers work clumsily with the key behind his back. "You are what I thought, Jinx. I knew it the moment we met."

"You saw what you wanted to see."

He shakes her head. "I saw you. I saw the bomb, and I saw your potential. But I saw you before everything else, Jinx. You were a skinny little twig. You had patchwork clothes and dozens of clips in your hair and scrapes on your elbows and knees. I remember because it reminded me of when I'd climb the rooftops with Vander and lose my balance as a boy. I was a hopeless clod. You were too. But—" He's been speaking more and more softly; now his pitch is barely above a whisper. "You were also just you. Brave enough to climb up and rescue your sister. Smart enough to build a bomb that took my fledgling empire down in a single night."

Jinx's face is pale where it isn't streaked with Shimmer tears. "That's why you stole me, isn't it? You didn't see a smart, brave girl. You saw a blank sheet. Vi left me, and she left a big-ass label stamped on my forehead. JINX JINX JINX. You wrote in the rest. Just the kind of girl you wanted, all bullets and booms. A monster for Zaun. Now Zaun's real, but I don't think that girl is."

"She's right here."

"Half-right." Her mouth is a dark misshapen heart. "You can keep her bones."

"Jinx—"

"As a souvenir. For Zaun."

"Fuck Zaun."

Shock drains Jinx of animation. Maybe she is incredulous at the profanity passing his lips. He's doesn't curse in her presence. Or maybe her incredulity stems from the statement itself.

Fuck Zaun.

A sentence so improbable it verges on treasonous.

It isn't treason. It is truth.

He'd chased Zaun as his lifelong dream. His be-all and end-all; the Undercity's last shot at survival. It was why he'd fought so fiercely for his people. To make sure they weren't destroyed by Piltover's hubris. He'd given himself to the dream, in ways he'd given himself to nothing else. He'd powered himself on blind ambition. Blind faith. Blind rage.

Yet here is the flipside of fathering a dream.

Fatherhood.

He'd never wanted to be a father. Fatherhood was a wasting disease. Fatherhood sucked the marrow from the bones. Fatherhood replaced courage with—

What?

Not cowardice, as Silco had one believed. Not the distilled piss and vinegar of disillusionment.

In his bones, he feels it like a steadying gravity. It doesn't weigh him down. It keeps him going. It powers him like fuel and yet enrobes him like lightning. A shock-pink risk. A flowering blue reward. Silco thrives in risk, but it isn't the reward that's worth having.

It is Jinx.

I am a father. The phrase wheels through his mind, shorting it out of reality and into truth. I am a father and there has never remotely been a miracle like her in my life. Someone I love over my own ambition. Someone who turns my thoughts inside-out. Someone who changes my nature in ways even Nature could not change before. I cherish her over anything else. To lose her is to lose—

Everything.

Jinx stands paralyzed. Her silhouette seems to meld with the moonrays, then separate, then meld again. Silco blinks against the disorienting vision. The hours he's crossed crunch up, and threaten to crunch the last pieces of his sanity. He refuses to succumb.

Refuses to let his dream slip from his fingers.

Jinx.

With love like a knife in his chest, he meets her eyes. "I came down here for you, Jinx. I wake each morning and make Zaun strong for you. I come home each night and make plans for you. But if you leave me—it's all for nothing. Your life and mine. I was wrong to expect so much of you. I was wrong to push you so hard. You were only a child. Your whole life I took and bent in my hands." His good eye narrows. The bad one burns without mercy. "But I never bent you, Jinx. You were always you—at your center. You earned your first lessons with Vi, and practiced to perfection with me. But your spirit? Your fury? That was all you. It's why we're such a pair, remember? We were both left behind. So we vowed to show them all. Now we've done what we vowed, and must live with it. We can choose the same as before. Or we can choose different. But if you end it, there's no choice at all."

Jinx's cheeks are blotched. Tears fill her bright round eyes. "I'm t-t-trying to unjinx it. For Vi. For Vander and Mylo and Claggor. All the things I did. The things I couldn't do."

"You're trying to evade it. Evade me. Evade everything they are to you. Everything we are to each other." Silco's tone sharpens in urgency. He can't stand the thought of her lifelong efforts, the blood spilled and the torments endured, ending on the stale note of his daughter's suicide. "You've forgotten what you are. Not just a jinx—bad or good. You're a survivor. A fighter. You've forgotten how courageous you are, or else you'd never come here. Forgotten how special you are, else you'd never bribe me with a Hex-gem in trade for your life. There's no specialness in leaping into hell. Champions have no place in hell, remember? That's my dominion in the After. Yours is Zaun."

Jinx shies away as if burnt. "I don't belong in Zaun, either. I'd never rest there. They—" A sweep of her arm encompasses the mementos in the wheelbarrow, "—won't let me!"

"It won't be that way forever. I promise."

"You make plenty of promises, Silco." Her bleary eyes slit. "They're like bombs. You drop 'em to get what you want."

Silco's throat works; his voicebox is a noose. Duplicity is never far from his surface. But he can't summon it now. In its place is an agony he can no longer conceal. He looks at her, sees his own reflection. She is a fragment, a mirror, an echo of a thousand old wrongs.

A reminder to do better.

"No bombs, Jinx," he says hoarsely. "Just the truth. I owe you that."

"The truth?"

"I promised, didn't I? We'd talk when I got home?"

Jinx breathes in edgy gasps. But she makes no move to stop him.

"The night Vi left you on the Bridge," Silco says. "I made the choice to take you to Singed. Not because I couldn't afford to lose my finest fighter. I couldn't bear to lose you. Afterward, Piltover demanded a parley. Once, I'd never have entertained it. I would have sent back their missive drenched in blood. But after the state you'd been reduced to… I was ready to negotiate peace."

"So why didn't you?" Jinx cries. "Why choose war? We won by the skin of our teeth! If I hadn't fought for you—"

"I'd have lost anyway."

"What?"

He stares at her, the girl whose torment mocks his own. "Don't you see, Jinx? You are my jugular vein in plain sight. All of Zaun knows it. Topside knew too. After leaving you on the Bridge, your sister was taken before the Council. She revealed your name. She understood the damage your loss would do to our operation. To me. The evening of our parley, Talis offered me Zaun. A place at the table. A nation of our own. All on a silver platter—with you as the caveat." He spends his breath in a harsh laugh that feels like his last. "The worst deal in the world? Hardly. I've negotiated worse. But not if you were the cost, Jinx. At the time, I'd rationalized your survival as Zaun's survival. One could not exist without the other. But my motives were more selfish. You weren't theirs to take. Not for anything. You are my daughter."

The words are is undisguised rage, and Jinx can't look away. Her mouth spasms; her eyelashes glisten like wet spiders.

"My daughter," Silco repeats. "All my sacrifices, all my triumphs, all my sins. None of them compare. History is full of fathers who martyr their children for the greater good. Not me, Jinx. I rejected their treaty the same night. No—not rejected. I threw it in their faces and declared war. I'd rather have you than all their laurels of peace. I'd rather keep you at my side in blood and flame, burning thousands for the cost of one, because what's dead is dead, and what's mine is mine. I know that makes me a failure as a leader. But I'll not pretend not to need what I do." His voice drops, quietly ragged. "And I need you, Jinx. Vi may forsake you. The rest may condemn you. But I will always choose you first. Whatever happens... for as long as I live."

The cliffside is all lunar silence. The wind has died to nothing. The air is an oven; it heats the airless pit of Silco's chest.

Jinx does not move.

"You—" She swallows. "You chose me?"

Silco's lips fold tightly; he can't trust his voice. His life is a dirge of lost loves. He's learned to reveal nothing, to trust no one, to take the blows like a man and riposte tenfold like a monster. Jinx is the sole exception. The only one to turn his weakness into strength. He'd fought to keep her from Piltover. Now, he'll fight to keep her.

Fight to the last drop of Shimmer in his veins.

"I am choosing you now," he breathes. "You, Jinx. Nobody else."

Jinx's knuckles wedge against her temples. Tears streak her cheeks in pink contrails. Her lips stir; her whisper is syllabic and strange. Not for him, but the furor inside her skull. The awful specters that she's had to chase out with gunfire and grenades. As strident as Silco's own specters are silent. As restless as Silco's own refuse to let him rest.

Now they are here. They have faces. They have form.

Jinx whispers: "The two of you. The three of you."

Silco watches in silence.

Her voice grows stronger, more urgent. She says a name, then another, then another, her pitch dropping to a lisp Silco hasn't heard since her girlhood. He doesn't need to know who she's talking to. He doesn't need to know what she's asking. He knows her better than himself. He knows her better than Zaun.

Fuck Zaun.

He doesn't need a dream. He has a miracle. He has a daughter.

"Vander—"

"Claggor—"

"Mylo—"

The wind picks up. It rustles the cracked soil and tosses Silco's hair into his eyes. It is electric and tastes like rain.

"I can't go with you," Jinx says. "Please. I need—I need more time."

She isn't speaking to Silco. She is beyond his world. Her grief is the conduit. Through it, she's speaking to her family—to the future they left behind. To the past they still haven't forgiven.

Because Jinx has never forgiven herself.

Silco's heart throbs like an open wound. He breathes, once, twice. His face is streaked with wetness.

It isn't rain.

"I'm sorry," Jinx whispers. "I'm so sorry, Claggor. For all the things I couldn't do for you. I'm sorry, Mylo. For all the times I lied to you. I'm sorry, Vander. For all the times I didn't tell you I needed you. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Please." She sags, shoulders bowed beneath her mangled hair. "Please forgive me."

Silco's fists tighten. His right hand is cramped around a key that he no longer needs. The metal is hot and slick as blood.

The wind picks up.

Jinx breathes, "Vi."

The final syllable. The trigger. The explosive release of every wound she's ever sustained. Every gunblast. Every grenade. Every death.

Jinx's shoulders tremble; her voice rises to a fever pitch.

"Vi—I'm sorry—Vi, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry—"

The sobs bubble out, first softly, then in a broken hitching flood.

Collapsing to her knees, Jinx weeps.

The sight tears at Silco. Every fiber of his body is frantic to hold her. The key clicks into the padlock; he gives one good jerk against the cuffs. They drop. A heartbeat later, the chains give way, their weight collapsing off his body with a jangling chime.

Three minutes in total.

Kingpins do not possess the talents of Houdini. But any miner worth his salt can parse a hairline break in the heaviest chain. And for a man whose trade is trickery, a weak link is the only key he needs.

Silco stumbles to his feet. His stiff muscles enrage him. But the pain is welcome. It jars his body loose; it sharpens him up.

Jinx is still crying, shivery and loose-limbed as a kitten. But the jostling wrenches her attention. In an eyeblink, she springs up. Puff-Puff materializes in her hands.

She takes aim. His center of mass is right in her sightline.

"Stay back!"

Silco smiles—less at this turn of events, than at the gun-toting bane of his existence. "Or what? You'll shoot?"

Jinx fires.

The bullet whisks a centimeter past Silco's scalp. It strikes a boulder near his head, spraying splinters.

Silco throttles back a wince. He walked right into that one.

"Jinx," he says quietly. "Your aim is better than that."

"That was a warning shot!"

"It was an empty threat. I've taught you better."

She lets off a sound between a snarl and a sob. "Next time, I won't miss!"

Silco's smile, edged and bitter, softens. "I know."

"I mean it!"

"I know."

He draws nearer. Jinx whips around. The gun is still in her hands. It feels trivial. Just a toy. The real danger is Jinx. Her lovely face is trapped in a hideous transformation. It can either warp into the marionette mask of the Shimmer-demon. Or it can liquify into the beleaguered visage of Powder, a girl who oozed wretchedness like a cut vein.

Two creatures opposite and yet overlapping; born from having no control over their life.

"Don't," she says. A warning, a plea. "Don't."

"I'm not leaving without you, Jinx."

"I can't—"

"You can. It's your choice. You've always been free to make it. Stop acting like you don't deserve it."

"No! No no no no..." She is still sobbing; tears sluicing down her cheeks. But he is no longer the enemy she is struggling against. "It's not done yet! The goodbyes aren't finished. They have more to say. They need me to stay until—"

Until she's ready to say goodbye for real.

"You don't need them," Silco says gently. "They are only shadows, my lovely."

"They're everything! They're all I have left! If I can't fix them—I can't fix anything!"

"There is no fixed. We have to do it ourselves."

"Please. Please."

"Unless you'd like me to join you?" he says. "So we're all together. All of us in the After."

Jinx rears back as if he's slapped her. Their eyes meet. No bluffs; no bullshit. Either she comes home, or they exit hand-in-hand. Anything else is negotiable.

Including Zaun.

Jinx's gun clatters to the ground. A minute ago, she'd been a force of destruction. Now, sobbing and shuddering, she most resembles the little girl he'd first met in the rain.

Gods, she is still there.

Not Powder. Not the Shimmer-demon.

The spirit he'd fallen so purely in love with. The wildfire shining off her. All that strength and fragility and wonder. His little blue comet. His child. Yet it makes Silco sorry, to see her so beaten-down, beset by so much misery. Everything in him yearns to console her. Help her heal, or, failing that, absorb her grief.

Jinx sways, and Silco snatches her up. She doesn't resist. Her sobs are so fierce her whole body quakes. They hurt Silco in a way even war never could. He cradles her skull into the crook of his neck. Her heart is racing at double-time. So is his. When the emotional reaction finally hits him, it is violent as a gutting. Even though there's a torn space in his chest where there should rationally be relief, what he feels is a raw terror that makes him retch.

She nearly left.

She'd be gone and I'd be alone.

Silco's embrace tightens. She's dangling on tiptoe, the way he's holding onto her. Her eyes are squeezed shut. Her hands clutch fistfuls of his coat. It is a posture of turmoil so childlike that Silco nearly sobs in turn. Poor precious girl. How difficult it must be for her. How difficult it has always been. How little worth she's set in herself, not just her achievements and brilliance, but the astonishing, adorable incongruity that is Jinx.

He wants to speak. But the emotion is a crippling physical ache. And at the same time it is so perfect to have her back in his arms. She smells of her nightmarish ordeal—grit and gunpowder. But also so bittersweetly of home that he can't bear to let her go.

Except—

Against his chest, Jinx breathes, "Thirty seconds."

"What?"

"The timer."

"Gods—"

Reflexively, Silco snatches Jinx closer. But she's already broken loose. Not to abandon him. She pivots and swings a powerful kick at the wheelbarrow.

Jerking, it careens down the cliffside. Hits the edge, and tips straight over.

Plunging into darkness.

Thirty seconds.

Not enough time. The blast-zone is too close.

When the explosion comes, it rumbles like thunder and plumes like lava. It tears through the night, fire and ash billowing up and out of the chasm to blot out the moonlight. A shower of gritty black dust whizzes through the air. Flames balloon in a widening radius. The whole ravine jolts.

Jinx has already snatched Silco's wrist. Her fingers, fiendishly strong, clamp into his bones. Silco is swung into motion.

Then they are racing together, their boots pounding the rocks before everything whites out. Crash and thunder at their heels. Blistering heat giving chase. There is never anything stealthy in fire's pursuit. It charges madly, devouring everything in its path. The earth quakes beneath them. Jinx leaps clear of a crack widening under her boots. Silco stumbles and steadies and keeps motoring. His muscles boil; his nerves buzz. Adrenaline with a leftover froth of Shimmer.

Enough to last the distance?

It fucking better.

He and Jinx scramble up the incline. Embers billow in their wake. Thirty yards, twenty, ten. The obelisks, with their runic inscriptions, are a hazed silhouette against a burning heaven. A doorway glowing with promise. Jinx's palm finds Silco's. Their fingers lace together. She's leading the charge, but her eyes are locked on the horizon of his own.

His little comet, a blazing blue glory.

"I love you," she gasps.

They race hand-in-hand.

A gust of blistering wind buffets them. The flames rush closer, a maw that swallows everything it touches. Silco's lungs are acrid with smoke. Jinx is coughing raggedly. A cough like a miner's wheeze.

They keep running.

Five yards.

Four.

Three.

The obelisks beckon.

Two.

The runes are in reach.

One—

They leap, but it's too late. The flames have caught up to them. The cliff's edge is crumbling away in a slurry of soot. Jinx falls, and takes Silco with her. Her shriek is lost in the firestorm.

They fall together.

Through redness.

Through blackness.

Through nothing.

Then the world reorients itself.

Without warning the thunder ebbs and everything else sucked into silence before the silence turns itself inside-out in a shimmering blue-pink ether.

An eye of madness.

A burning pool.

A fusion of magic.

Before Silco's eyes, multicolored lights pop, and then he is falling not backwards but forwards into a portal, except it isn't a portal but a luminous web in the center of his mind, at the crux of his choices, and he sees—

Flash: A burning alley, Vander's corpse, a girl in the rain, and he kneels but doesn't take her in his arms, doesn't promise her the world on a pike, only encircles her to seize a fistful of blue hair and twist her neck bare, her face locked in horror as his blade slices across the pulse of her pale throat, blood sheeting her skin as her eyes go blank, Silco's own future blanking out with them, a barren vista with no freedom in sight, Zaun a stillborn death, his own life forfeit in a devil's bargain with no hope of redemption, and then—

Flash: the alley again, the girl in his arms, his voice crooning in her ear, and he takes her and keeps her, but their love is different, a bitter aftertaste at once rotten and unnatural, a perversion of family where she is nothing more than meat to devour, a means to an end, until sanity breaks and they glut themselves on each other's bones, two monsters cannibalizing their own, and in the echoing wrongness of the aftermath, he feels himself cracking in half, nothing but raw appetite left behind, a creature of feral impulse that will destroy anything it touches, and then—

Flash: the alley licked with flames, the girl sobbing in the rain, only she isn't a stranger, she is his own child, a legacy of his and Nandi's union, and now Silco cradles her close, and keeps her, and loves her purely, in blood and in truth, except she isn't Jinx, because Jinx wasn't born in this scenario, the exact genetic prerequisites failed to coalesce, but Silco doesn't know this as he nurtures her, and he doesn't know that when the sun rises on her sixteenth year, she will die screaming in agony, a corpse riven by Enforcer's bullets, because her cleverness isn't enough to spark Zaun's birth, because lightning only strikes once, and it's Jinx who is his lightning in a bottle, his child born without a drop of his blood but with the same shard of his soul, his comet, his treasure, and then—

Flash: Jinx as she is, except her body is a prism, fractured shards of light refracting off her skin, her eyes aglow, her beauty a rainbow in a rainstorm, except he isn't sheltering her, she is shielding him, a luminous talisman caught in her hands, a lance made of fire, and she is burning alive, but she unafraid, her laughter ringing true and sweet with the taste of victory.

And then—

He stumbles out of the web, the unlived lives brushing ghostlike at his skin before he falls free. The knowledge fades with him, nothing but an echo in his mind, a shadow at the corner of his eye. The explosion in the ravine is the same, relentless spume putting distance between its quarries.

He and Jinx are no longer in the same spot. They are at a craggy stretch of a plateau. The moon shines against the disturbed clouds in a welter of light. In the distance, the obelisk looms over a burnt landscape. The skyline around it shimmers with the wink of hundred glass windows. Or are they portals?

Between one breath and the next, they fade, until all that remains is the night sky.

Jinx skids to a stop, chest heaving. Silco trips and falls to his hands and knees. His lungs work like bellows. He coughs, throat burning. In that moment, he regrets every belt of whiskey and every lungful of cigarette he'd imbibed in the interceding years since meeting Jinx.

"By Kindred," he gasps. "Never again."

Blue particles fall like dust-motes—a glittering haze. The Hex-gem nearly burns a hole in his coat pocket.

What was that?

A lapse of sanity? Or the crux of miracles?

Something cannonballs into him.

Jinx.

She is on him, a keening flurry of blue and white and pink. The force knocks Silco backwards. Nearly a replica of their first meeting, her arms locked around his neck, sharp knees digging into his ribs. His body answers instinctually. Folding her close, he squeezes her small shape closer, his face in her hair, his reassurances drowned in the flood of her crying.

No—not crying.

Laughing.

Jinx's teary face is pressed against his neck. He feels the imprint of her lips. Her whole body ripples in broken burbles.

"Jinx—what—?"

Silco sits up. Jinx's laughter swells and bursts—giddy peals of gratitude.

The sound sends a dozen conflicting shocks through Silco. Simultaneously he wants to crush her in an embrace—and take her over his knee and belt her until she hollers. He can scarcely breathe; the rage building up in his bones is a whiplash so enormous it makes the near-swat on her thirteenth Name Day seem tame in comparison.

How could she be so reckless? How could she dare leave him?

Yet his instinct, deeper and more merciless than even his rage, sings with a heartsick delirium at having her back. His entire psyche is blasted open by her, this little blue meteor with not an ounce of his lifeblood, yet whose gravitational pull commands every iota of his being.

He holds Jinx for a long time, until her laughter ebbs. Dragging in a breath, Silco holds it for a moment, then loosens his embrace.

Jinx raises her head. Her face is a blotched mess of tears. Yet her expression holds a short-circuited sweetness that is entirely at odds with her doomed designs for tonight. This girl is new to him—a stranger. Someone mysterious. Someone enchanting. Someone he loves, despite all the danger she has brought upon them both.

His daughter, no matter what.

Their eyes meet. Jinx quirks a grin. "Silly."

"Child."

"That was fun, huh?"

"Speak for yourself."

He smooths the tangled hair from her forehead. It needs combing. Her luminous little face is smudged in dirt, the cheeks sticky. She needs a face-washing. Not to mention a bath, and a change of clothes. They both do. Except it is the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere.

Miles to go before they reach Zaun. Miles before they are anywhere close to home.

Silco doesn't care.

Home isn't far off. Home is right here.

Slowly, Silco shakes his head.

(Vander.)

(You bastard.)

(You could've warned me.)

Against his will, Silco slides out a smile. A tiny, crooked smile that barely lasts, and yet is designed to get under even the thickest skin of a runaway teenage girl, crawling around with its crazy-making warning. Jinx pretends not to see it. But her body betrays an antsy jitter. Her features reflect a shift from mischief to squinting suspicion. "What?"

"Nothing."

"What?"

"It's a night for firsts, hm?"

"I—I guess?"

"Here's a second."

To encompass your child in your arms after narrowly losing them. To know the prospect exists always. Today, tomorrow, any day in the future. Is there a more simultaneously blissful and heartbroken feeling in the world? Or a state more ordinary? Shared by thousands across Runeterra.

(That's fatherhood.)

Silco drops a kiss to Jinx's forehead. "My lovely…"

"Yeah?"

"You're grounded."

"Oh fu—"

[theadamantium]

Harri’s Picks: Top 50 Modern Video Games (21st Century Consoles)

Kingdom Hearts (2002)

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015)

Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018)

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (2009)

Kingdom Hearts II (2006)

Escape From Monkey Island (2001)

Bully (2006)

Super Mario Odyssey (2017)

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (2004)

Rock Band 2 (2008)

11.  Red Dead Redemption (2010) 12.  The Last of Us Part II (2020) 13.  Grand Theft Auto V (2013) 14.  Indigo Prophecy (2005) 15.  Sly 2: Band of Thieves (2004) 16.  Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune (2007) 17.  Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (2007) 18.  Bioshock (2007) 19.  God of War Ragnarök (2022) 20.  The Last of Us (2013)

21.  Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End (2016) 22.  Rock Band (2007) 23.  Psychonauts (2005) 24.  Hot Shots Golf 3 (2002) 25.  Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy (2001) 26.  Ghost of Tsushima (2020) 27.  Batman: Arkham Asylum (2009) 28.  God of War (2018) 29.  Winning Eleven 9 (2006) 30.  Spider-Man (2018)

31.  Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (2015) 32.  Elder Scrolls IV: Skyrim (2011) 33.  Cyberpunk 2077 (2020) 34.  Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor (2014) 35.  Grand Theft Auto IV (2008) 36.  God of War II (2007) 37.  NBA Street Vol. 2 (2003) 38.  Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (2008) 39.  Dark Cloud 2 (2003) 40.  Tony Hawk’s Underground (2003)

41.  SSX 3 (2003) 42.  Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury (2021) 43.  LittleBigPlanet (2008) 44.  Horizon Forbidden West (2022) 45.  Middle-earth: Shadow of War (2017) 46.  Gears of War 2 (2008) 47.  God of War (2005) 48.  Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves (2005) 49.  Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception (2011) 50.  Ape Escape 2 (2003)