#BOX CAR POSSUM.

[mallowmaenad]

6'3" Underweight Trans Girl With Eyebags whose wearing an Oversized Black Sweater: I recently remembered all of my past lives. Most of it was spent as various plant life and fungi in the same twenty foot radius in a forest by a rural interstate route until a robin ate the seed containing my soul and flew to another forest where I reincarnated as her child. I would then die a tragic death at a young age to a local fox where I'd live a long life as her kit and eventually die of old age, I then spent several generations as various plant life and fungi in that forest which was eventually destroyed by industry.

I was a tree during that time and my plant fibers were processed to manufacture paper used to make a sticker placed on an orange whose peel was placed in a compost bin, eventually leading me to the dark yet decadent life of a worm until I then eventually expired and awoke as a tomato plant in the care of a kindly older woman, it is that life whose memories I treasure the most.

She was a very skilled and warm woman, and many of my cycles afterwards were spent as my own kin in generations of tomato plants in a blink of an eye. One day she took me into her car in a pot, I remember how she spoke to me. At the time she had named me Reynolds, she had set into a trend of naming me after Hollywood actors she found attractive. It was the day before her daughter's birthday and I was to be her gift, I could not feel bittersweet about this a the time, because I was a tomato plant.

She buckled me into the back seat of a car as if I was a child of her own and drove down a rural interstate route, illuminating the black sea of the night sky with her headlights as the shadows seemed to drown out anything but us. A deer with bone wasting disease stood in the road like a grim reaper, white eyes shining as her aching foot tried to react in time on the break peddle.

The two embraced in a bloody collision, I remember the deer in its last moments weakly nibbling at her flesh as they both bled out in an agony they were ignorant to, I wilted and died in that car along with her and that deer, I do not know what the journey of my soul was like, but my next life was as a patch of semi-feral grass on the side of a similar road caught in the mouth of a possum eating a partially full discarded box of Wendy's fries who was then promptly turned into road kill, when the day was new a burly Appalachian man whose stern demeanor hid a soft heart would legally and cleanly collect the cadaver and break it down, using the remains for a meal some yuppies would find ghastly. This man was my father- or rather my father in this cycle of life.

I know in my heart of hearts that you were that old woman who nurtured me so many times as her beloved tomato plants, you had the rare privilege to live your life as an incinerator at a crematorium, but the march of technology and nut after bolt you grew broken, a death by a thousand cuts, a death by a thousand bodies. Your massive metal cadaver was melted down over time, the raw materials eventually finding itself to a factory that manufactured bullets, a life of darkness in a cardboard prison only to be shunted into a pistol's magazine... your entire existence is interesting, stretching the meaning of what it means to be eaten and to live. The meek 24 year old boy thought nobody would mourn him when he was gone, you lived as an amorphous patch of greenery ahead of his grave stone.

A curious thing would happen during a visit to this boy's grave, his childhood dog either in embarrassing coincidence or a moment of sentience began to dig at where the body was, being wrenched back as it began to desperately sink his teeth into the soil, ripping you asunder. Almost as divine penance, you lived your next life as a member of this dog's litter, you'd be named after the boy, despite being a girl. Maybe the dog was given some precognition and wanted to eat the boy and take his soul into its mouth to get her the life she always wanted. You were unfortunately born with a chronic condition that led you to a young death, the girl's mother crying just as hard after the vet put you down. You were buried lovingly in her back yard where you became a tomato plant, your same mother not being as much of a green thumb as mine but she devoured your fruits all the same, eventually giving birth to another meek boy after growing pregnant during the time when your last tomato was picked off your wilted stem. I have pursued you since that day with my whole body and spirit, one part unintentional one part in this moment of enlightenment. I love you, and I will love you for the rest of forever.

Trans girl who dropped out of high school to make Hello Kitty breakcore who has her girlfriend's dick in her mouth and is high as fuck right now: Waash dat?

Their shared girlfriend sitting across from them playing Wario Land Shake It on her modded Wii U: Was I the deer with bone wasting disease?

6'3" Underweight Trans Girl: ... Yeah...

[harmoniegoof-blog]

HARMONIE IN A GOOFY MOVIE :

3 years have passed since the events of Goof troop. During the movie, Harmonie is at home. She won't go with Goofy and Max so she can let her boys tighter their family ties.

She will be seen only at the beginning of the movie, dancing the mambo with Goofy, helping him to charge the car with the boxes, and at the end, watching Goofy and Max at the TV with Powerline. 

-> In the lester possum park, we can see a kid with a book "A raccoon's family" so it means her dream of being a famous child book illustrator with her own serie became true.

-> Harmonie is the one who helped Max making his Powerline outfit. She knew about Roxane way before Goofy did since Max asked her advices to impress his crush.

(The 2 edited screenshots were made by Lehicolmillos on IG)

[octuscle]

Go to rack and ruin

At the prompting of @maletfwitch, here is a sequel to an older post.

The Abbas were glad to be rid of their unpleasant neighbor. Instead, they had a hardworking and faithful new employee. Unfortunately, the house in the neighborhood did not remain empty for long. And if the Abbas had believed that the old neighbor had been a scourge of God, this one was the apocalypse made flesh. The house was decorated with American flags and MAGA posters downright grotesque. At every prayer time, the neighbor played the American national anthem over outdoor speakers. Not only for the Muslim neighbors, for all neighbors in the immediate vicinity Mr. Carson was an absolute burden. Nevertheless, he had managed to organize a neighborhood watch and become the head of it himself. Needless to say, he preferred to position people in front of the Abbas' property and made no secret of the fact that they were the threat to security and order. Fortunately, the Abbas knew how to help themselves again this time.

When Mr. Carson awoke the next morning, he was not wearing freshly laundered pajamas. Instead, he was wearing a sweaty wifebeater and a pair of worn-out underpants that might have been white at some point. Bleary-eyed, he went to the refrigerator and grabbed a cold Bud light. Fuck, where had he put his chewing tobacco? The kitchen was a mess again. Peter Carson filled a garbage bag with beer bottles, the contents of various ashtrays, and the pizza boxes from the last few days. He went outside, tossed the garbage bag to the others in the front yard. The last ones had been tampered with by those darn rats or raccoons. Miserable vermin. Like the filthy terrorists next door. Still in his underwear, Peter raised the American flag, saluted, took a swig of beer and belched. Old Mrs. Price across the street turned away in disgust and pushed her walker a little faster.

Peter went back into the house. So slowly he had to get to work. His hardware store was opening soon. After a quick shower and a rather sloppy shave, Peter, in his lumberjack shirt, not-so-clean jeans and old work boots, left the house and got into his swank Mercedes. Did not really fit him and also not to his job. He could not even remember when and why he had bought this car. But it was a good car and it had been built by good people. Not by those dirty gooks. In his store, he also only sold things that were built in America. America first!

When he returned home after a long day at work, he cursed his old car. Yes, 30 years ago the Mercedes had certainly been a good car. But the repairs would have been expensive, now neither the air conditioning nor the right turn signal worked. The Teutonic steel was slowly turning into a rolling pile of scrap metal. Oh well, Pete thought to himself as he pulled into the cluttered driveway. Fits the house with the rotten porch and broken fly screens. Pete sat down on the porch with a not-very-cold beer from the decrepit refrigerator, picked up his air rifle and shot at the possums rummaging through his trash.

As they did every night, the police came. The stuffy neighbors would have complained about him again. Pete slurred that the cops should fuck off. The cops fucked off and took him to the drunk tank.

Fuck, if he was late for work again today, he'd lose his roustabout job at the sawmill, too. Just like he had already lost the house and his store. But he loved his life in the trailer park. All good American men here. Always someone around who had a cold beer or a can of chewing tobacco. Just the damn rats! Pete took his rifle and tried to take out some of the beasts. Hehehehe, four had to go down. A swig of beer on top of that. And then off to work in his German sweetheart, which he had tuned so impressively himself.

[anyablackwood]

Most Likely Tag

Thanks for the tag, @pandoras-comment-box!

Who's most likely to adopt a racoon/crow/skunk/fox/miscellaneous local wildlife for a pet? (Please tell the class how badly it would go. Please!)

Megumi would be the most likely SUCCESSFUL adopter, seeing as she can speak to animals and spends a lot of her free time with them anyway. But that's no fun, so Claire or Sora would probably be the next runners-up, with Claire's being the most disastrous.

Claire would be found in her room, fist-fighting a raccoon she tried to sneak into the cabin at 3 am. They'd become mortal enemies, and the raccoon would spend its time menacing her despite also refusing to leave (magic probably doesn't work on raccoons).

A total wildcard would be Adrasteia. If certain conditions are met, I'd imagine she'd find herself enchanted by an ugly, evil little possum or mole rat or something, and she'd immediately decide it's hers. The whole palace would be forced to deal with an aggressive little demon creature in a pink sweater, because if anything happened to it their heads would be next.

Most likely to verbally eviscerate someone for something petty.

Iris or Adrasteia. It's a toss-up between that and them just stabbing you, though.

Most likely to go viral unintentionally.

Luna or Claire, if they had internet in their world. For OCs in a world WITH social media, I don't know, lol. A lot of my characters are walking disasters, so any of them could easily do something that ends up being caught on camera and uploaded. Luna and Claire are expressly from a comedy though, so they're at the top of the list.

If I had to go with anyone, I guess Sora? She's the most openly impulsive/accidentally destructive, so I could imagine that would be worth putting on TikTok or something, lol.

This was fun! Here are mine for you!

Most likely to crash a car

Most likely to get caught in a "this isn't what it looks like!" situation

Most likely to become a fashion icon

Gently tagging: @mysticstarlightduck, @owlsandwich, @dragonfelling, and anyone else who wants in!

[sha3mustd1e]

my nancy hcs flopped but that’s okay:) robin hcs for today! then steve tomorrow!!

-tomato soup and grilled cheese enjoyer

-secretly thinks nancy and mike’s mom is “just a little hot”

-loves going bird watching bc she can “connect to the birds on another level” since her name is robin

-seen nancy’s music box and became obsessed with them so nancy got her one for christmas

-robin’s music box has a tiny violinist in it, instead of a ballerina because nancy thought it was more fitting for robin

-she named her trumpet herman

-bullies steve endlessly but will break your jaw if you say a single mean word about him

-still writes on her red scoops shoes and lets the people she loves the most write on them too

-steve got her one of those “i love boobies” bracelets to make her remember their car conversations forever. (ik these didn’t exist in the 80’s, but pretend)

-loves frogs. they’re her favorite animal and she can tell you anything you wanna know about all the different types of frogs

-her and eddie tried to kidnap a possum and keep it as a pet

-she regularly feeds all the birds, raccoons, and possums she can find in her backyard

-has a pet lizard name elizardbeth

-favorite color is sage green, no doubt about it

-eats peanut butter and honey instead of jelly bc the texture of jelly is gross to her

-loves anything blue raspberry

-collects funky hats especially the trucker hats that say like worlds best grandpa or smth

-cannot spell the word definitely

(same actually i used to text to speech to write it down LMFAO)

-christmas movie enjoyer

-loves dressing up for halloween

-ANDDDDDD she makes them all matching costumes!!!

i hope u guys like these better:,) n as always, bye friends<3

[whump-town]

No Rescue Needed

Slight Rescue Needed

trying to flex my writing muscles to ease into the 50ish pages I've got to write for all my final papers and assignments, here's one of awful productions

word count: 3,000

Warnings: idk hotch gets napped, and beaten... but you know how he is, he's a tough old guy

Derek had only made the mistake once of assuming Hotch needed self-defense lessons. His boxing lesson had ended in the two of them bloody and sweaty, all-out brawling on the ring’s floor waiting for the other to call it. Gideon had come down to find them and he’d wordless called an end to their fighting. His disappointment was clear, even if he didn’t speak a word to either of them. Derek never doubted Hotch again. Under all those suits, Hotch was punky, he fought, and he didn’t play. 

Hotch wasn’t someone who needed to be watched, who needed protecting. 

Derek had always respected that but now he knew it. 

The unsub had killed six men over the last month, quickly with no cooling off. He kept each victim for three days. The first three had died being tortured but the last three had died exposed to the elements. No one was sure that the unsub was devolving – and Rossi refused to make a decision yet, leaving them to argue about it endlessly. It was the same methods so it was the same unsub, all six men subdued by sedatives and their legs broken before they were left in the carpets. The last three had died from hypothermia, blood loss had made it quick but painful. 

Tuesday morning the team met in the hotel’s breakfast bar, and take a moment to enjoy hot waffles. A small break before returning to the men’s partners and three children trying to understand where their father’s went. Dave brings Hotch oatmeal and a coffee to the station, it sits cold in the conference room for three days. 

Hotch was the most considerate to room with because he never sleeps, but when he does, it’s not restful. He tosses and turns, has nightmare after nightmare until one finally wakes him, and then he’s back up again. He’s got sleeping pills, all sorts, that pitch him back into solid black, nothing but hot, dead sleep. But he can’t sleep like that while on a case, that kind of sleep is for a Friday or Saturday night when there’s nothing to do and no one needs him. 

As they stand in his room, all they question why they hadn’t just seen this coming. His room is a mess. His go-bag overturned, his clothes scattered out on the ground. The coffee pot is shattered, coffee splattered out on the tile. There’s blood on the table, a considerable dent where something had made hard contact. Hotch hadn’t gone quietly, but he’s gone nonetheless. 

And they hadn’t noticed. 

Thursday come at unusual speed, each livable second passing at a fourth of it’s speed, and then each second gone having passed within the blink of an eye. Thursday night means tonights the night. 

The back road is deserted except for a single fat possum waiting in the underbrush growing up the sides of the dirt road. Silver eyes in the darkness that Derek sees in a flash as he keeps the car moving steadily along, as fast as Emily will let him travel as she hunts through the dark. It’s all murky black, the moon devoured as if by a caterpillar, the leaves blackening out chunks of its lights. It’s as desolate and unsettling as the rest of the town. 

The never-ending gravel roads, leading down winding paths through the woods were so dense they reached up and blocked the full moon’s light. With nothing but his high beams to guide him, Derek just tries to keep on his route. Emily’s phone had lost service nearly immediately and while they had a map, stopping to turn on the overhead light and attempting to figure out where they were just wasn’t worth the time. All the roads are connected, Reid had assured them as long as they keep on the main gravel road, they’ll find their way back. 

“Stop!”

Derek slams on the brakes and the car jerks on the gravel, tires crunching for purchase on the ground. He looks up and Derek just stares, the man in the headlights looks like something from a nightmare. Long limbs covered in blood, hair down in front of his eyes. Pale as a death. The sort of creature that crawls into focus on a nightmarish video on the internet, seemingly alive but impossible to conceive. 

“Hotch!” Emily runs out of the car, casting her shadow over him, blocking him from the severe light of the high beams and Derek sees. He’s been stripped down to his pants, barefoot. Derek’s too shocked to recognize the man in front of him but Emily doesn’t hesitate a second. 

She gets to him right as his body gives out and there’s nothing Emily can do as he falls back to the ground with a thud. His skin is cold, bare to the elements, and he’s covered in blood. Emily moves her hand over his skin, looking for the wound where the blood must be coming from. But she can’t find one. “Hotch!” she shakes his shoulders. “Hotch!” Emily presses down on his sternum, feeling his bones beneath her knuckles. 

 “Hotch, come on.” She puts her hand against his side, her palm over the curve of his ribs. His chest raises slightly with his slow breaths, and Emily can feel his heart beating. “He’s breathing, I don’t understand–” 

Derek moves slowly to them, not sure yet that he can believe what his eyes see. Emily begins to speak again, still frantically trying to rouse Hotch. Derek slaps him. It all happens too quickly, and Emily can’t stop it. Derek rubs his stinging palm, “come on, man, stop fucking around.” He’s going to go in for another when Hotch’s breathing picks up, his eyes flutter open. He groans a moment later and his eyes pinch shut tight as he grimaces. The breeze pushes through them again, the wind trying to blow them over, but Emily and Derek stay close, listening to Hotch’s pained breaths time the silence. When Hotch opens his eyes he squints at them, taking a long slow moment to place each of them and where they are. 

“Hotch?”

He lays back, again, licking his lips across his painfully dry lips, “afternoon.” 

Derek chuckles, deep and happy, “you tough son of a bitch.” He reaches down and hugs Hotch, pulling him up into a proper hug. “I knew you had it in you. I knew it.” And Hotch, boneless –  having no control of the majority of his body – sags into the warmth. He stifles a whimper of pain into Derek’s shoulder, pressing his cold skin into the middle warmth of Derek’s shirt and his jacket. The pain in his chest abates quickly back to what’s become its normal pain and Hotch relaxes a little more, pulling his hands up closer.

He’s not shivering but Derek can feel how cold he is. Hotch’s hands are like ice, Derek can feel them through his shirt. “Here,” Derek says, he begins to shift around, trying to bend around and pull his jacket off of himself. The movements cause Hotch’s broken ribs to move and his mouth opens as the air is pushed from his lungs, chest a tight ball of fire. 

“Morgan!” Emily stops him, one hand on Derek’s arm and the other on Hotch’s hip. “Stop moving.’ 

Hotch feels like a statue against Derek, completely tense. “Sorry,” Derek says, slowly moving back to how he was. He can hear Hotch’s breathing change again, easing as Derek does. “You alright? I’m sorry, shit.” He pulls the corners of his jacket around Hotch.

And though Hotch’s first reaction is to let himself move into the warmth, he still attempts a mumbled, “ ‘m fine.” Emily’s coat comes overtop and the cold wind is blocked out entirely, Hotch’s vision blurs, and the ground starts to twist up. He slips away from Derek and Emily’s conversation, vaguely aware they’re discussing him as if he’s not there. And then a cold hand rouses him, and not a moment passed for him, lifting his head up from the comfort of Derek’s chest. He doesn’t remember getting here. 

“You have to stay awake,” she commands but Hotch’s unfocused eyes see right through her. Emily turns her attention again to Derek and Hotch hears only her voice, her words jumbled into another language. 

Derek shifts his weight a little, and pats Hotch’s shoulder, “you up for talking?”

Hotch’s eyes are open, something had roused him but he’d already forgotten what, and now he was focused on keeping his eyes open. Believing it his own thought. “Hn,” Hotch grunts, certain his mouth has formed words. 

Derek is uncertain of the exact translation he should take from that response, so he pauses to think. He rubs Hotch’s arm absently as he ponders, hoping he’s doing enough to raise Hotch’s body temperature to keep him from going into shock. But there’s not much of a way to know. “Hey now,” Derek looks down and Hotch’s eyes have fallen considerably, attempt to close. “No sleeping on the job, Hotch. You know that.” 

“Hn,” Hotch grunts and it takes him a moment, but his scowl falls into place and Derek laughs. 

Derek holds him closer, “there you are.” He’s never been so happy to be reprimanded by a look in his life. “There you are, man.” His celebration annoys Hotch, all his hugging encouraging another grunt, but Derek doesn’t care. Six out of seven were not good odds, but Hotch had done it. Escape one more time by the skin of his teeth.

___________________

The scar tissue in Hotch’s right shoulder prohibits the muscles from extending completely, leaving his weight to rest on his left arm. There’s no way for him to move from the prone extension, his fingers high above his head and pale from lack of blood flow, and his feet do not reach the ground, covered in blood that’s run off him. The pain grounds him through the sedatives, on and off Hotch has the throbbing to grasp at time. To think. 

Hotch knew what happened, and how he got here, but he couldn’t let go of the feeling that it had only been a few hours. Only enough time to pass between being taken from his hotel room to getting here. But he looks down at himself and knows that can’t be true. There’s crusted blood dried over the hair on his stomach, stuck painfully to his pants. Cuts and bruises up his chest. So it can’t be day one.

“You’re awake.” Hotch recognizes the man standing in front of him but not with a name. “How are you hanging in there?”

Hotch has no memory of how the blood got on him, or what injuries he sustained to get here, but he knows he’s heard that joke several times already. Aided by the agony in his shoulder, Hotch is filled with hot-headed rage. The kind that had sat rather dormant and well-controlled in the pit of his stomach. That little voice that he’d learned to ignore. 

He tries to jerk away from the unsub but the man just holds his hip, forcing him still as he plunges another dose of clear hell into Hotch’s thigh. It doesn’t take long for Hotch’s vision to start to fade, his awareness slipping as he’s lowered onto the ground. His feet finally come down to the ground but accept no weight, he can’t feel his legs as they fold limply beneath him. 

He lies on the floor as the unsub prepares around him. He tosses a crowbar at Hotch, hitting him in the chest, and Hotch can do nothing but lay there and gasp, his fingers just inches from the weapon. It’s the third day. The third night, if Hotch had to guess. 

The other six men had their femurs broken, all three bones in the legs shattered and broken. Hotch has never broken a femur. He’s never broken his leg. 

The crowbar comes down over his hip first and it feels like broken shards of glass are being pushed through his skin. Anger comes back quickly, three more hits do nothing but fill Hotch’s head with cloudy red. A fog he can’t see through. 

Hotch sways on his feet a moment later, the crowbar clattering to the ground from his stiff-fingered grip. There’s more blood on him now, he’s standing in it. He looks emptily down at the unsub, at the broken bones he can see protruding incorrectly.

He walks away, without thought. Something in his hip is broken, the glass shards are stuck in the socket, but it keeps moving. He keeps walking, and none of it hurts under the haze, bones do not move as they should, but they keep moving. 

And then there are great lights in his eyes and the cold ground beneath him. 

___________________

Emily moves his hips carefully, lifting his legs and moving with great care to watch for the way Hotch’s jaw clenches tight with pain. He’s half-delirious laying in Derek’s arms, eyes open but fogged, blurrily staring off to the side. Derek shifts slowly, trying to get Hotch up in his arms without jostling him around too much. Emily gives Derek something to push himself up with, finally putting to test all the deadlifts he’d been doing. 

Keeping Hotch at his chest level requires a little too much bending and Hotch stirs uneasily as his ribs shift in his chest. Grating against one another but Derek keeps going, it will be worse to stop. It scares Emily to watch Hotch’s eyes roll back in his head, to hear his breathy pained noises turn suddenly silent. His entire body limp and face pale and slack as Derek stands with him in his arms. “Is he breathing?” Derek asks, refusing to move. He can’t feel it, Derek doesn’t see it either. 

Emily slides one hand underneath his shirt and tries to find the pulse on his neck. She can’t feel his heart beating anymore but he is breathing, and when she focuses for a moment, she can feel his pulse in his neck. “Yes,” she says and Derek sighs, “but not for long. So get in the car.” 

Derek puts Hotch in the passenger seat, properly up in front of the vents in the warm chairs. Emily buckles him in and Derek gets in the seat behind Hotch, supporting his head with his hand. Derek’s other arm goes around Hotch’s chest, hoping he can stabilize Hotch as best as he can while Emily digs gravel up, tearing down the road. 

Emily hits a turn hard and fast and Derek grits his teeth. This is exactly why Hotch doesn’t let anyone else drive. “Is he alright?” Emily asks, glancing over and cautiously shaking Hotch’s knee.

“Eyes on the road!” 

Emily jumps, her hands flying back to the wheel. Then she glares back at Derek, “don’t fucking yell at me!”

The jerking car and yelling rouse Hotch back to consciousness, pulling him from the depths of darkness back to the living. And all too soon. His seat belt tightens as Emily comes to a screeching stop in the hospital parking lot. By the time his vision clears, Derek’s arms are pushing up under Hotch’s knees, and he’s being lifted, pulled from the car. His vision spots for a moment, only vaguely aware of something touching his head. 

“Derek!” The hard thunk of Hotch’s head hitting the door startles them both. “Yeah don’t worry about the head, it’s not like he needs that.”

Hotch can feel Derek respond, can hear his voice deep in his chest. 

He’s laid onto something cold, blue gloves descending onto him as they grasp at his limbs. Hotch panics, lights beam down on him, there are scissors shredding his pants off of him. He can feel himself moving, dream-like limbs refusing to be called in to correct motion. Easily held down and easily manipulated so that the staff buzzing around him can continue their work. 

His voice is a trick to his own ears but he can hear a cry, the noises leaving his own mouth as if through the telephone. Belonging to someone else. 

Cold fingers move his head and Hotch grunts as an IV finally comes to sit in his hand, his eyes on the nurse tapping the needle down. Fingers prod at the back of his head and he feels intense pressure and then nothing, his head fuzzy and weak. His thoughts suddenly slower, everything coming down two paces. His eyes suddenly burned, too hard to keep open.

___________________

Taking a moment to catch his breath, the unsub has a glass of water, lazily checking his phone as he stands there. It gives Hotch time to think, to come back to himself and away from the ledge the pain had walked him to. The crowbar was a favorite, it hadn’t been in the previous murders. The coroner thought he was using a baseball bat, the injuries were more congruent with that weapon. 

Hotch didn’t know how much more he had in him. He couldn’t tell which day it was, how much time he had left. He’d begun to see things in the corner of the room, hearing Dave call his name and seeing Derek standing in the corner, finger over his lips, with his gun posed ready. 

But no one came. 

No one was going to come. 

The crowbar scrapes against the floor as the unsub adjusts his grip before raising it once again.

[mayra-quijotescx]

Made it to and from the gallery on public transportation today, proving to myself It Can Be Done and I am a Strong and Independent Possum Who Need Not Get In A Car.

And I am satisfied with the knowledge that I can do this and it's only (i know, i know) like 2.5-3 hours out of that day.

but good lord.

(whining under the readmore)

Every step of the journey felt like a goddamn song by Muse from the aughts with how unsubtly and copiously it beat me around the ears with how profoundly shitty our society is.

first of all, we have a 7-mile trip taking an hour and 15 minutes each way in a major city. Even in other parts of the US, that's rightly regarded as absurd. Local Route is once every 30 minutes and mandatory to reach Trolley, on which I spent most of my journey, and from Trolley I had a fifteen-minute walk through one of the most desolate neighborhoods within the Loop to reach Gallery.

METRO has a $1.25 fare expectation of riders (having a Q Card helps because then you can stretch that fare across multiple buses instead of having to dump change at every bus you get on.) It also wastes an exorbitant amount of its budget (probably more than it gets from the fares itself, though I can't prove it) on hiring fare inspectors, whose sole purpose is to swan about on our laughably tiny trolley network harassing anyone who looks poor to make sure they paid before getting on the trolley, and to write them $75 tickets if they didn't. (I carry an extra Q Card in case this happens in front of me, and have had to intervene in such a way three times in the last year. And I don't go outside much.) Coming and going, there were three hanging about in each trolley car I was in, so I felt like I had to be vigilant the whole time.

By the time I reached [Trolley drop off point] on the towards-gallery part of the trip, I was glad for the 15-minute walk ahead of me because it meant I could clear my mind from what was a very loud trip... until the walk took me from the bail bondsman mini-district into the area directly around Gallery, which is getting flipped up into a dumping ground for new real estate investment properties despite having no nearby grocery stores, no immediate-vicinity bus routes, one food place (costly brunch joint that may or may not be a side hustle of Close Proximity Bail Bond Office #2), and downright fuckall else. There's a hastily-kludged bike line if that sweetens the deal, which I walked in for the final stretch due to the sidewalklessness of it all.

There are a couple of other gallery/studios embedded amid the runaway construction of Generic Luxury Apartment Block No One Can Afford #8953-8957, and one mostly built Generic Luxury Apartment Block No One Can Afford, lazily named "The Artist" after the class of people least likely to be able to make rent there. Lest one accuse it of being a mere unoriginal clone of 50 other similar giant boxes found in the turbogentrified Greater Heights/Montrose area, there's a small piece of genuine vintage railroad track installed out front between the sidewalk and the pothole-studded road. The piece of track leads to nowhere and connects nothing. It's too obvious to write a poem about.

I would be hopeful that all this runaway development would at least bring more people to the vicinity of Gallery and the nearby studios, but again, these look like additions to the investment/tax dodge portfolio for some rich jackoff who's like as not to have never set foot in Houston, not places that real people are going to be able to live in.

Anyway, I'm home safe, and was at least able to immediately launch myself into the shower after sweating buckets from 30 minutes of walking around in 75F weather in February, which I won't dwell on because I might get fully seized by a climate doom spiral if I do : )

[izzy-b-hands]

An odd little modern au thing with izzy doing a solid for mary and doug during an emergency, in the process pissing off stede leading to a stede and mary argument, which lands izzy in explaining his own near death experiences while babysitting the kids bc mary won't call stede and ed for it while pissed at stede. It gets wildly serious and sad, but i also tried to keep my own death positivity vibe in there, in that yes death can be scary, but it doesn't have to be and you can sit safely with your fear.

is genuinely the easiest way to describe this odd thing.

Fun fact: all of the described experiences i gave izzy belong to myself or other family members! We have a joke of the [our last name, my maternal grandfather's last name] curse as a result! sometimes it doesn't feel that much like a joke lmao

anyway: TW for multiple medical emergencies (two appendix related and two severe allergic reactions), detailed descriptions of near death experiences. Brief mention of beliefs, but v general in nature.

---

"We're in your debt," Mary smiles and hands over a sobbing Louis. "I'll call as soon as we get there."

They speed off with Alma in the backseat of the car, leaving Izzy and Louis in the dark front yard together.

"My appendix didn't kill me," Izzy remarks, after a moment of patting Louis' back hoping for a break in the hysterical sobs. "Your sister's won't kill her either. I promise."

Dangerous promise, considering they'd been sent back from the doctor multiple times over the week over the exact pain that had made Alma pass out now.

He winds up essentially wearing Louis with how the kid clings to him. It's not unlike a possum baby clinging to a parent, and it would be sweet if it wasn't actually painful.

So he sits on the couch and lets him cry and vent out everything he's worried will happen to his sister until finally, Louis sleeps.

--

"She's okay," Mary says. "Back home as of today, actually."

Stede narrows his eyes. "And I'm only finding all of this out today because..."

"Because she nearly died, Stede, and we've been a bit preoccupied with that!"

"I understand, but she's my daughter too and I could have helped look after Louis! Surely he didn't enjoy being there for all that."

"Izzy looked after him. Has on and off while Doug and I took turns staying with Alma."

"You called him first?" Stede knows he's being a touch dramatic. But he's also just found out how close their oldest was to death, all over an improperly diagnosed appendix that burst, in all of five minutes of arriving for their weekly group dinner.

"He doesn't have kids or a partner that stays with him usually, so I thought he wouldn't mind being bothered, and he's helped babysit the kids before," Mary splutters. "Stede, we were panicking, and it was one in the fucking morning and I couldn't wake her up! Forgive me for just hitting the first name in my contacts list that seemed a good choice!"

"Okay," Doug says softly after a beat. "I'm gonna put out dinner for the kids. Ed, can you help these guys get to the theater room? The kids know to join us after they eat."

"We should go," Stede says. "Izzy might be available though. He's usually sitting home alone anyway."

"Stede," Ed hisses. "Come on. Let's at least talk to them-"

"No! I'm always the one suggesting talking, and no one else ever wants to! Now it's my turn to say no to it!"

"As if you would have done any better had this happened on one of your weekends," Mary scoffs, and sniffles. "Fuck off then. Ed, we'll try again next week, and I'll box some of this up for you to take home. You don't have to share it with him though."

"Mary, I didn't mean-"

"I know," she says bluntly. "I don't care right now. Both of you, get the fuck out of my house."

"The house I insisted you take in the divorce."

"Stede," Ed's hand carefully but firmly grabs his arm. "Enough."

He's right.

They walk back out and get a wave in at the kids from the front window.

--

"I can," Izzy replies. "Are Stede and Ed out of town again? They didn't mention-"

"Please don't bring them up right now," Mary interrupts, voice tinny through his old flip phone's speaker. "To us or the kids. We're... it's just a rough patch we're working through."

"Understood. Anything Alma shouldn't be doing yet?"

"She's got permission to sit and watch TV, or read, but no physical running around yet," Mary sighs. "She's giving her doctor grey hairs."

"That just means she's feeling better."

He heads over a half hour later, a little earlier than Mary had requested. It gives him time to think about what the fuck might constitute a 'rough patch', and to call Ed to ask.

"Stede is furious that she called you instead of us," Ed says plainly. "And I mean...I see both their sides. I think they'll see that too, eventually. Doug does already, so he and I have been in contact trying to help mend the bridge."

"Is that him?!" is shouted in the background.

"Yes, he had a question for me," Ed replies. "I'd better go. The kids like you; just act like everything is normal and it'll be fine."

He's right, up until Mary and Doug drive away from the house and towards their restaurant reservation, and Louis bursts into tears.

"Awful early for that," Izzy groans and picks him up. "What are we going to do when you get too big for that?"

"Lift weights," Louis grumbles and sniffles into his shoulder.

Inside he finally is able to shed his leather jacket and Louis, though the latter is immediately back at his side.

"Alma keeps saying she isn't going to die now. I don't believe her."

"Wouldn't she know best if she was about to?"

Louis blinks. "Oh."

He takes the opportunity to lead Louis to Alma's room, though per usual, she's fine.

Sat in bed, reading, headphones on-

With a book entitled Near Death Experiences and You.

"Oh," Izzy sighs.

--

"Have you ever almost died?"

"You know, these taste better because they're shaped like faces," he's spent the entire dinner of dinosaur chicken nuggets and smiley face chips like this, trying to avoid actively discussing death while Alma asked the same death-related questions.

"You're avoiding the question," she says.

"He's not dead, so what does it matter?" Louis asks. "The smiley face ones are my favourite, even though Mum says they aren't healthy."

"They're potatoes; that's a vegetable and that's healthy enough."

"That's what I said!"

"Izzy!"

Alma slams a hand against the table top. "I want to know!"

"And that's fair enough, but would Mum or Dad let you act like that? Or Ed or Doug?"

She blinks. "No. Sorry."

"Eat your dinner. After that, we can talk. Louis, you can stay up for that if you like. But I leave it up to you."

To his surprise, Louis walks into the living room with them after dessert.

"Have I ever nearly died?" Izzy repeats aloud as they settle beside him on the couch. "Yes. More than once."

"When, and how?" Alma asks. "What did you see? You know, during..."

"Are you sure this is actually something you want to hear?"

She nods. "I don't...I keep reading about it and looking it up online because I don't know...for me, it was..."

She gives him a pleading look as her words trail off.

"Not sure what it was or how to explain it?"

She nods again.

"Okay. Well, the first was when I was all of two years old. My mum had to tell me this one, of course, so I can't exactly give details of how it felt. Bad, I'm sure."

Alma looks horrified. "Two?"

"I was given an almond and a few other mixed nuts by my grandmother; my first time ever eating them," Izzy continues. "Turns out I'm allergic at varying levels to all of them. Bad enough with some that my throat swelled and I wound up in hospital."

"And they said you almost died?"

"I did. Mum, grandparents have all confirmed my lips were blue by the time they got me there. But I was so young that I don't remember it beyond what they've told me."

"That's why you have Epi-Pens," Louis remarks. "I thought maybe it was for something cooler."

"Louis!"

"It's okay," Izzy smiles. "He's right. They should be for something cooler, but no. Just in case I accidentally get given a walnut and don't realise it."

"You said your appendix didn't kill you," Louis says. "Was that another time?"

"It was! My first year working with Ed, both in our early twenties and in the ship yard together. I insisted I only had a stomachache, and the doctor the company called in agreed. Ed was the one who protested and finally dragged me to the hospital himself."

"Had it burst by then?" Alma asks.

"It did right about as he got me in the door of the hospital, actually. But they didn't believe us, so I sat in the waiting area for hours. Then, once they had me admitted, they still didn't believe me and had me waiting for all sorts of tests."

"How long?"

"Believe it or not, days. Ed tells me three, because by then, we later found out, I had gone septic. So I don't have a lot of detail on that either, except for the surgery itself."

"Holy fuck," Alma breathes.

"Language," Izzy murmurs.

"Pot meet kettle."

"Okay, fair enough. Anyway, during the surgery, and remember, we don't actually know what happens during all of this, or after. Everyone believes what they believe, and that's fine. Belief isn't...what you need everyone to know to prove a point about things, like what happens after death. It's for your own comfort and life, yeah?"

"Sure," Alma says. "What did you see?!"

"I...did see a light. No tunnel nonsense, just a light. And I felt very calm, even though I could register that people were rushing around me, operating on me finally. I thought of Ed, and it was like there was something of me away from my body, sitting there beside him in the waiting room. Jack had come by then and was comforting him and I kept trying to get him to look at me, but he wouldn't-"

It occurs to him that he's started to cry. "Sorry. Um, yeah, but then suddenly I was awake and on the operating table and in the worst pain of my life. They got me sewed up after that, and then finally I was given proper pain meds while I recovered. But I was dead for a few minutes per the surgeon."

Alma nods.

"You okay?"

"Is there more?"

"Yeah."

"Jesus christ."

Izzy snorts. "That's about how it feels, honestly. There's a quote about that, about being someone who did not die when they should have died..."

"That's how it feels," Alma says softly.

"You want to talk about what happened?"

"Can I hear the rest of yours first?"

"Sure."

Louis crawls into his lap and snuggles.

"You want to hear the rest? If not, I can take you up to your room."

"I'll stay," Louis replies. "You're really unlucky, huh?"

"That's one way of putting it. But...the one after that, you guys don't need to hear about. Not yet at least. I was a teenager and it was stupid and...maybe in a few years."

"I guess," Alma says.

"The next one was just another allergic reaction."

"Just another one," her eyes roll. "Right."

"That was...I was nearly thirty then. Ate a couple of chocolates that had massive amounts of pecan in them, but I didn't know that. Didn't have my Epi-Pens at that point in my life, so I took some over the counter allergy medicine and tried to carry on. Don't do that, if either of you ever wind up in that situation."

She just stares. Understandable, because no one he's told about this one has ever had any other reaction.

"Eventually, my body tried to make me sick anyway it could, to get it out, all the while my throat swelled. I finally broke down and called Ed for help. By then I was at the oddly calm stage, even though my body was still trying so hard to make me sick. Laying on my bathroom floor, feverish, not realising at all how bad it was, feeling utterly outside of myself-"

Alma grabs his arm. "That. I felt like I was watching myself!"

"I'm sorry. You shouldn't have had to experience that."

"What happened next?" Louis asks. "Did Ed get there in time?"

"No, he died," Alma snaps.

"No!"

"Alma," Izzy chuckles. "He did. He found me there in my bathroom, called the emergency line and asked what to do, then drove me to the ED and stayed with me while they..."

He pauses. "Wow. While they tried to keep me breathing. Anyway, one panic attack over them inserting an IV later, I was being pumped full of epinephrine and benadryl and some other things I don't remember and was feeling much better. Left the ED a few hours later, actually."

Alma frowns. "They wanted you to leave?"

"They did. Said I was good. I felt horrible the next few weeks after, and my sensitivity to those allergies is even worse now, but otherwise I was fine."

Louis yawns. "You need to stop almost dying."

"I'll do my best."

"I could hear Doug crying."

Izzy lets Alma take his hand.

"But I knew he was with Mum a bunch of rooms away, so I shouldn't be able to hear him. Also, Mum knows a lot more swear words than I realised. I think she made some up, because she kept going after the doctor that said I was fine."

"You need to tell your Mum and Doug this too," he says. "They should know, and they can help with this."

She nods. "I'm sort of tired. Can we go to bed?"

"I think your brother is drooling on me."

"He is. It's really gross."

--

He makes it home by midnight, but he doesn't sleep.

It isn't exactly a bothersome thing, to talk about each experience. He has to at various doctor visits now and again anyway.

But he's unsettled all the same.

"Ed?"

"No," is the icy reply.

"Sorry, I'll-"

"Alma said you did a good job tonight. Texted me earlier. Said to be nicer to you because you keep nearly dying. Is that true?"

Izzy sighs and chuckles. "Do you have an evening to hear about it?"

"I suppose I do. Ed and I are still awake, and staying up if you want-"

"I'll be there in five."

[blueskiesandstarrynights]

Summary:

“God, I was just killed by and am now attached to Steve “The Hair” Harrington,” Robin groans as she leans back and digs the heels of her palms into her eyes. "Augh, what did I do to deserve this?"

"Nice to meet you too," Steve deadpans. ------ OR: Steve runs Robin over with his car and she's now stuck haunting the douchebag from high school, and he's stuck with a nuisance who won't stop bugging him.

tag list under cut, let me know if you want to be added or removed

@angelwiththeblue-box @brionysea @just-a-random-dungeon-master @andiwriteordie @genuine-possum @fandomscraziness22

[brandnewhuman]

Hi! I can't remember if I've requested a matchup from you before. If I have, you can just ignore me. But if not can I request a slasher matchup please.

I'm an INTP 5w6, demisexual/bi woman. I'm plus sized and 5'9" with 2b hair that is naturally dark/dirty blonde but it's currently dyed deep purple.

I am slightly nearsighted and have glasses, though I tend to forget to wear them. Sometimes "losing" them on my own head.

I have very low self-esteem and a self deprecating, dark and offbeat sense of humor.

I manage to be both touch adverse and touch starved. I have to know and trust someone enough to be comfortable with physical touch. Minor things like a handshake don't typically bother me though, unless I get bad vibes off the other person.

Due to being raised by an entire family of narcissists, whenever I tried to speak they'd interrupt me or complain about me talking too much or too loudly. So I'm usually pretty silent unless you can get me started on something I'm passionate about.

Most of the time when I do speak, my words get muddled up. I especially struggle with words that have R in the middle of them.

I frequently get lost in daydreams. I'm autistic.

If I get hyperfocused on something, I'll go the entire day without remembering to eat or drink anything.

That being said, one of my stims is eating. Particularly foods I call hand to mouth like grapes or m&ms. Which is how I got to be plus sized, though my hypothyroidism certainly doesn't help. So I try to keep myself, particularly my hands, busy.

I like to craft things and bake.

I love going to scare attractions especially the ones that let your opt out of being touched.

I cannot stand the feeling of water on my forearms/elbows. Or when the ends of my sleeves & ends of pants legs get wet.

I'm very clumsy, frequently tripping over my own furniture. (and feet) I will always have at least one bruise on my body and there's less than 50% chance I can tell you how I got it.

I enjoy thinking about theoretical concepts and I tend to be flexible and good at thinking "outside of the box."

I'm very much conflict averse but will jump into a confrontation if someone is messing with someone I care about. Or if my anxiety causes me to snap.

For a lot of things it's rare for me to have actual favorites. One day I may prefer ethereal wave music and the next I'll be more in the mood for 80s rock. I usually have a top 3, 5 or 10 but no absolute favorites. And this goes for all sorts of things, food, movies etc.

My 'fashion' sense is somewhere between Green Academia and Feralcore.

I adore animals, especially the kinds that are less liked by society. Possums, snakes etc. Though I also love cats and currently have a cat. I would have more if I could. I handraised him, bottlefed him after rescuing him. He's 10, spoiled rotten and I defy anyone to tell me he isn't my child.

I struggle with driving cars but motorcycles or scooters, I can drive like a bat out of hell.

I paired you up with...

♡ Corey Cunningham ♡

Look, i even search up for his mbti AND ITS THE SAME AS YOURS SO ITS MEANT TO BE.

Hated by many, loved by few our infamous peepaw bully is definitely the type of person for you. He's just so sweet ans awkward and dudhsjsjsj LOOK AT HIS STUPID ADORABLE FACE

He would either be good at reminding you to wear your glasses or not. Like I personally have to wear glasses all the time so i tend to forget i have them on, its almost like a natural thing for me so i just assume it is the same for everyone. Corey here got the glasses=loser no glasses=hot and evil treatment so idk idk. I do think he will try his best to help you keep your eyesight as healthy as possible.

Bc of the physical touch thing i was actually about to give you Michael but i thought it wouldn't really be that helpful to your cause. Corey is shy and definitely wants to avoid people feeling uncomfortable around him, like he's sick of it fr. So unless you don't permission he's not going to do anything on his own. Plus like i said, he's too shy to be that bold so yeah. And he can relate to what you feel about physical touch cause ever since the incident, all that harassment and physical aggression has left him quite stiff about getting touched in general.

He would be mildly concern about your self-deprecating jokes and wouldn't really know if he should laugh or not. Like he genuinely doesn't understand why would say such things about yourself cause it makes him kind of sad since he thinks you're the best person in the entire world. Like he gets that one can be self-conscious about the looks and would try to help you with that cause he genuinely finds you so beautiful, but if you talk negatively about yourself in terms of personality ecc he would be very confused and kind of hurt for you. You're so nice and wholesome in his eyes

He would never, ever, interrupt you while you're talking. In fact he much prefers to listen to you while you talk about your favourite things, he finds so lovely you trust him enough to share with him your interests. He knows how it feels to be talked over so he would never dream of doing that to you specially if you're talking about something you love.

(Btw if it makes you feel better about the r thing i too have a problem to pronounce words with too many s's.)

Bro knows how is it when you get lost in something for so long you even forget to basic human necessities so he's always there to bring you snacks or water if you need it or to remind you to take breaks. Maybe he tries to not just straight up tell you to stop doing what you're doing but he like tells you to talk about it with him so you can actually take a break and he gets to hear you talk.

Please teach him how to bake, he would love to spend time baking with you. And in exchange, since you like crafting ecc, he can teach you things about cars and show you how to fix some things.

If you're clumsy this man is worse. Lucky for you, if you two are together and he sees you're about to get hurt on time he will 100% catch you before you do it. Hurting himself in process but who cares, you're safe so that's all that matters broski

I really think that you being able to be open minded is something corey would appreciate so much. He would need someone who can understand him and what has happened to him and on top of that someone to talk with without being scared of coming off as weird. He's that type of guy who really enjoys deep convos and having dialogues with someone he likes about interesting things and concepts so yeah expect late night chats with him about random and philosophical things

PROTECT THE BOY, I REPEAT PROTECT THE BOY. he kinda the same as you when it comes to conflict, like in the movie he had no problem in standing up for Allison so he will 100% do that with you as well. He may not be the best at defending himself but he wont tolerate people bothering you

Maybe both of you being indecisive about things might be a problem but the way i see it maybe it would help him getting the confidence to choose when and what he wants to do for once. He is a very thoughtful guy so he will always keep in mind what you might appreciate when suggesting things to eat, do ecc

BRO HE LOVES CATS, HE LOVES ANY ANIMAL AND WILL 100% PET ANYTHING THAT LOOKS REMOTELY CUTE TO HIM. He will spoil your cat too at some point so be prepared

Good thing you like motorcycles cause that's all this babe drives all the time. Gives him that hint of badboy he wouldn't be able to pull otherwise. Will definitely trust you to drive anything his and if you're the type of person who likes adrenaline rushes then good news for you cause I genuinely think he loves them too. Like from time to time just for funsies and to blow some steam off when he's too stressed

I hope you like it broski, i know corey is not super loved ecc but i tried my best to show you all his likeable sides ^^

Song recommendation time!!

[icarianonager]

The Institute: Episode III

The Malacological Misfortune

The main Andros lab was in the upper portion of the Hades Deep, a short enough ride down that one couldn’t fully fill a double stack magazine without an autoloader. Unfortunately, the Security Director prefered to load his by hand as a pre-combat meditative exercise. When the monorail car halted, he frowned into a 30-round box only half-loaded, though the Director’s face was not made for grinning. 10 years of watching nightmare after nightmare spawn from the Institute’s labs would do that to a man. Andros’s titanic iguana attack and the robotic counterassault were a pleasant afternoon snooze.

Dr. Andros had been a thorn in Security’s side for months. His simple mistakes were looking more and more like calculated maneuvers to cause wanton mayhem against his rivals. According to the mech pilots’ testimony, the lizard had possibly sought a rare isotope sample from within the machine’s reactor core. It turned out that Dr. Andros was using exactly said isotope as a stable high-radiation source for one of his mutation experiments. Perhaps this had been a simple coincidence or error? The Director no longer cared. While some mistakes could be forgiven, others required more than a reprimand.

Thus, Security Director Wilhelm Roniger had personally taken the assignment to apprehend Dr. Andros. He stepped off the monorail in his meticulously polished alabaster combat armor, with crimson command stripes emblazoned on the shoulder pauldrons. The base of a gunmetal 10 mm pistol’s grip poked from his shoulder holster, a part of a complex set of utility webbing and hardshell pouches that netted across his breastplate and belt. He motioned once with a sharp hand movement for his rifle-armed, Security-white clad men to disembark the monorail.

Roniger had no patience for any scientists’ games or booby traps, and so took a direct approach to breaking down Andros’s door. They baffled the electronics with an electromagnetic pulse that devalued every system not on the Security Division’s carefully tuned frequency band. As blue-white arcs of lightning sparked from every machine in the vicinity, they blasted apart meter-thick steel barriers and whatever else was left with breaching charges meant for warship hulls. The hallway into the lab was left filled with smoldering wreckage from destroyed auto-turrets and their targeting systems.

Befitting a First-Class Scientist, the Andros lab was quite spacious, with plenty of room for apprentices and researchers to bustle about, but now inky darkness cloaked the vast room, completely devoid of human life. Roniger flipped on the flashlight on his right shoulder, illuminating the lab in a cold, dead glare of LED light. The space was completely emptied of tables, chairs, and equipment. The only items left by Dr. Andros were those that could not be removed without construction drones: hundreds of cylindrical metal and glass tanks that lined up in neat columns as far as the eye could see. The flashlight passed over a number of empty pods before settling on a few dozen that were filled with green fluid. All but one of these contained monstrous chimeras: a black, chitinous fly’s head merged with a bear’s shaggy body with mantis claws; a horse with talons instead of hooves and a scaly crocodile mouth with daggers of shark teeth; and a giant rat with shaggy grey fur, bulbous yellow eyes, and a possum’s prehensile tail were but three of the terrors they held within. Each abomination was hooked up to long, thin tentacles of electrodes that dangled from the tank’s lid and ended in a thick circular sucker. A faint odor of formaldehyde and ethanol wafted from every container. The tanks had a few readout screens connected to each of them, but all were currently shut off. Crude stuffed versions of the tanks’ occupants, talismans of inspiration sewn from the bits and pieces of torn-up plush animals, were placed all around the room. The tank with only liquid had no such effigy, keeping whatever might have lay dormant within it a mystery.

Roniger took one step into the lab. The hanging fluorescent overheads blazed on and every screen booted up, showing a blue diagnostic that soon switched over to a monitoring program with dozens of graphs and readouts. “Greetings!” A small hologram of a translucent green man walked out of one of the nearby computers. “I am Aeneas, Epic-class A.I. construct assigned to Lord Stefan Andros. What can I do for you today?”

“We’re looking for Dr. Andros,” Director Roniger said, emphasizing the “doctor.” “We want to ask him some questions.”

“I’m afraid Lord Andros is currently away at the moment. I must ask you to leave, as your entry to this laboratory is unauthorized, Director.” Aeneas’s virtual eyes flashed with malice.

“Refusing to comply with my orders is a violation of the Second Law of Artificial Intelligences,” Roniger said. He flicked out what looked like a simple flash drive from one of his hardshell pockets.

Aeneas’ gaze turned fearful at the sight of the tiny plastic stick, but soon regained a certain smugness. “I knew you would say that,” Aeneas said. “And so did he.”

The overhead bulbs all simultaneously burst in a shower of glass shards, covering the room in darkness again. Orange warning lights flashed and klaxons blared as the tanks bubbled. The liquid drained out and oxygen flooded in, awakening the sleeping monsters. The glass doors holding them in unsealed with a hiss of released pressure and a shock of white compressed vapor. With a cacophony of splats and screeches the squadron of beasts snapped free from their electrodes and stumbled and squelched out of their growth pods on unsteady, unfamiliar limbs. The vacant tank seemed to be malfunctioning and spilled a torrent of reeking liquid onto the floor.

“Goodbye, Director,” Aeneas said, and he winked out. As a final coup de grace, he overclocked all of the laboratory computers’ processors, filling the room with grey smoke as they spontaneously combusted and reduced every electronic record they held to slag.

Not taking his gaze off the approaching chimerae, the Director pulled his pistol from its holster and racked it. His soldiers drew back on their rifles and took aim at the creatures shuffling towards them. “Execute,” the Director ordered, and the lab flared with starry gold muzzle flashes and echoed staccato drumbeats of gunfire. In moments, the entire horde was left bleeding a coagulating Technicolor soup into the drains on the floor.

Director Roniger and his assault team had found not one iota of what they sought from Dr. Andros’ lab. Their arrogance, of course, pleased the plotting mind of Chaos. For in eliminating only what they could easily see, they ignored the tiny details that quite literally slipped through the cracks. Into the nutrient-rich pools of blood swam a tiny creature, which began to feed and grow on the ichor of its slain brethren....

=010000010110111001100100011100100110111101101101011001010110010001100001=

“What the hell did you do to my invention?”

After a thorough dose of antimicrobial and anticancer drugs had been washed completely out of his system, Vanya had returned to the lab from his bout of acute radiation syndrome to find his prized kurchatovium superconductor cryonic beam covered in a white residue of melted ice cream from Andromeda and Artemisia’s bingeing.

“You said the beam could be modified to accept custard, so I did that,” Andromeda said. “The system is fully optimized and the... tests I did showed that it performed exceptionally well.” The results of said tests were of course apparent in Andromeda’s further expanding waistline.

Vanya paced back and forth in front of her, his goggles buried in his mechanical hand. He was gaunter and paler than before, his mane of black hair and grizzled beard shorn by heavy doses of chemotherapy. “While I admire your ingenuity, apprentice, perhaps I should have clarified that if you wanted to make modifications to the device, you needed to construct your own,” he said, snatching the cryonic beam from Andromeda’s doughy arms. “Dr. Blackstone is interested in using our device for his specimens, and the increased funding we could gain from this collaboration would be beneficial to our further research together.”

The words “increased funding” echoed in Andromeda’s mind. “Would it be enough to have me accepted as a doctoral candidate?” Andromeda asked.

“Possibly,” Vanya answered. He set the cryonic beam down on the work table and pulled a small screwdriver out from his hand. “I don’t know yet.”

Odysseus’s blue avatar appeared on top of the cryonic beam. “Sir, I must request that you shield yourself before you do any work with the internals of that device,” he said.

Vanya sighed, placed the screwdriver down, and went over to his locker to put on his hazard suit. “I’ve scheduled for you to meet with Dr. Blackstone and his student today,” he said. “Just do whatever they need. Impress them with your knowledge as you have... impressed me so far.” He slipped on a pair of black, lead-lined gloves. “Also, I don’t have two hazard suits, so you’re going to have to leave. Immediately,” he finished.

Taking the elevator back up, Andromeda’s phone buzzed with a single character from

Artemisia: “?”

“He wants me to meet with another scientist,” Andromeda texted back. “Do you want to come?”

Artemisia responded with an emote of a shrug.

“Okay,” Andromeda replied. “Meet me at the level 85 monorail station.”

The monorail system was the arterial network for commuting across the artificial island of

Ilmarinen, ensuring no scientist ever needed to walk from one tower to another when damp blankets of fog and salty air cocooned the city. The rapid-moving trains rode on electromagnetic rails, suspended high in the air. At certain junctions, they could transition from above to below car-level tracks for ease of engineering routes. The trains were all single pods so that they could also act as large elevators for descending into Deep Labs pits or travelling to high points of Knowledge Towers. A few were even equipped with cable attachments so that they could be pulled as aerial tramways.

Waiting for Artemisia to arrive, Andromeda munched on a second breakfast of a bag of chips and a can of cold brew coffee from a vending machine. The drink wasn’t as good or as energizing as Chimera, but it was roasty and dark and had lots of cream. Artemisia, with one of her androids riding on her cap, stepped off the elevator and ambled over to Andromeda. Andromeda nodded, by means of greeting. The two had no time to say anything (not that it was likely Artemisia would) before the next train hurtled into the station with an electric whine. It hissed to a stop and let off a few dozen passengers. Andromeda and Artemisia then boarded and were whisked off along the A3 line from Altair to Regulus Tower.

When they arrived, a girl stood outside the door to Dr. Blackstone’s office, a binder-bound brick of papers marked with colored tabs in her lanky arms. Her lavender hair, clearly dyed, was done up in a tight bun. Over her thin frame she wore a wooly burgundy sweater on top of a neatly-pressed pearl-colored collared shirt. A pair of scarlet glasses bedecked her blue eyes.

“Uh, hello,” Andromeda said, feeling slightly underdressed in her sweatshirt. Granted, it was brand new and lacked the grimy patchwork quilt of chemical and grease stains that usually ended up adorning her clothes, but it still appeared rather casual. The girl turned to face the two arrivals, adjusting her glasses.

“I’m Andromeda, and this is Artemisia,” Andromeda said. “I... we work for Dr. Zimov. I’m an apprentice and she’s his doctoral student.”

Artemisia shot Andromeda a look, but said nothing.

“Natalya Okhtalos,” the girl said. “Pleased to meet you. Dr. Blackstone said you’d be coming. I thought Dr. Zimov didn’t have any doctoral students though?”

“Artemisia just joined our lab today,” Andromeda said.

“Okay. Well, let me show you in,” Natalya said, opening the door.

Most offices and labs at the institute were panelled in sleek polished steel, aluminum, titanium, and glass. However, Dr. Byron Montgomery Aloysius Blackstone IV, as the brass nameplate on his door read out, preferred waxed mahogany panelling and studded leather upholstery. Tall bookshelves outfitted with a sliding library ladder and replete with hardback tomes took up the entirety of one wall. A bold painting of a teal, four-armed humanoid squid with a long bulbous nose and staring yellow-white eyes was brashly hung above the heavy wooden desk, on which sat a fish tank filled with bright corals.

“So, where’s Dr. Blackstone?” Andromeda asked.

“He’s at his desk,” Natalya said, setting the papers down on the ornate coffee table in the center of the office.

Andromeda searched around the room, walked to the desk, and spun Dr. Blackstone’s armchair around, but there didn’t appear to be anyone in the room but the three of them. “Is this a prank?” she asked, turning back to Natalya.

“No, sorry, I should have clarified,” Natalya said. “He’s in the tank on the desk.”

Andromeda stooped and stared into the glass vessel. Along with the corals, she noticed a lumpy neon green and black striped creature with fiery orange markings around its foot and a pair of ruffled fleshy appendages protruding from its head. Somehow, it seemed to be looking knowingly at her. “Okay,” she said, “So he’s a slug.”

“He’s not just a slug, he’s a nudibranch!” Natalya said, puffing out her cheeks.

“Sea slug,” Artemisia’s android said for her.

“That’s a multi-phyletic group,” Natalya cried. “It’s not defined taxonomically!”

“I would personally consider all of those terms completely correct,” the nudibranch said in a proper Albion accent. The syllables, though precisely articulated through whatever voice synthesizer allowed the mollusk to speak, were waterlogged by the liquid he was immersed in. “Greetings, representatives of Dr. Ivan Hibernius Zimov. I am Dr. Byron Montgomery Aloysius Blackstone IV. As you are now well aware, I have transferred my consciousness into this nudibranch of the genus Nembrotha to better understand the life of the mollusks I study. It has been a fascinating experience indeed!”

Andromeda remained in stock silence.

“I suppose I had best explain what I would like you ladies to do today,” Dr. Blackstone continued. “There are many samples currently being held in live captivity in the Deep Labs. I have collected a great number of mollusks over the years, and the Deep Labs are of course the only place for such a malacological zoo. However, the specimens have a very short lifetime, most often only a year or two. Thus, if we could rapidly freeze them, we could save on space and not need to recollect samples annually.”

Andromeda nodded. “Okay. Makes sense. And you can’t go get them because....”

“Yes, unfortunately being a slug does have its downsides,” Dr. Blackstone said. “The samples should be on sublevel 19 of the Hades Deep, so you should not be too far from the sun, nor for too long. Natalya can show you where they are.”

Natalya jumped when Dr. Blackstone mentioned her. “Uh, yes!” she said, “I have the specimen list right here.” She picked a bright purple tab in her binder and slid a neatly printed sheet of paper out of its sleeve.

As they waited for a J8 train, Andromeda’s stomach burbled with borborygmus like old water pipes. “Hold on,” Andromeda said, checking the time on her phone. “Let’s get lunch first, then we’ll go to the Deeps.”

Natalya frowned. “It’s only 11:30,” she said, “Let’s get the specimens first, then get lunch. I’d like to be back in time to do some studying for my invertebrate anatomy class tomorrow. Unfortunately we’re doing... echinoderms now. Sea stars are so boring.”

“You’re still taking classes?” Andromeda asked.

“Uh, yeah? I’m a junior.”

“A junior who does all of a scientist’s gruntwork. Never thought I’d see the day.”

“Dr. Blackstone puts a lot of faith in me,” Natalya said, beaming. “Despite his funding, he hasn’t had a doctoral candidate or apprentice in a while to help him. And with the whole nudibranch thing, he needs someone to organize his papers and such. Fortunately, organization is my hobby.”

“Brown noser,” Andromeda grumbled under her breath.

“What was that?” Natalya said.

“Nothing. But listen, getting lunch will take no time at all,” Andromeda said. “It’ll be a good time for us to talk about our research. I’d... love to hear more about mollusks.”

Artemisia gave Andromeda a skeptical look.

“You would?” Natalya asked, perhaps a bit too excitedly, since Andromeda took a step back. “I mean, of course. I guess that’s a fair trade, and I can’t imagine getting the specimens will take very long. What the heck, I think I can squeeze it into the schedule.”

“Great. Glad you’ve come around to my point of view,” Andromeda said, smirking. She checked her phone’s map of the Institute, looking for any restaurants or food courts nearby.

“There’s an all-you-can-eat sushi place just two floors up,” she said, “Or a sandwich place that looks like it has good reviews. What do you want?”

“Probably just a salad,” Natalya said, tapping her chin.

“I’m your senior here,” Andromeda said. “Lunch is on me. So what do you want?”

“I’m really not that hungry. Does the sandwich place do salads?”

Andromeda checked the menu. “Uh, yeah, they’ve got a couple,” she said.

“Let’s do that then,” Natalya said. “It’ll be quick right?”

“Uh, sure...” Andromeda said, her tone dropping off with uncertainty.

Institute restaurants were usually some collaboration between the Departments of Molecular Gastronomy and Economics, an experiment in cooking and business to test if some new recipe for Vaquelin was viable on the open market. Unlike the automated vending machines and omniprinter food carts, meals here were made with love and served by humans. One such restaurant, the tiny diner Shut Up and Eat, had been shoved into one of Regulus Tower’s many floors like a foot into an ill-fitting boot. Its nondescript facade was two tones of painted grey concrete and bore a circular sign with the restaurant’s name arching above a logo of two eyes over a fork and knife crossed in an X. The trio of scientific students took up three seats in one of the booths. True to her word, Natalya asked for nothing but a small ceasar salad and a glass of ice water, but this paled in comparison to the veritable feast Andromeda and Artemisia ordered for themselves.

“Are you really going to eat all that?” Natalya asked. “This isn’t some sort of joke, right?”

Andromeda frowned and rocked her head from side to side at the meatball sandwich dripping red tomato sauce and stretchy mozzarella cheese held in her paws. “Yes,” she finally said, chomping down into an orb of zesty Italian herbs, spices, beef, veal, and pork. A 6-inch long cheesesteak loaded with shredded eye round, hot peppers, and provolone sat on another plate next in line, followed by a hunk of cheesecake like an oversized door stopper. For Artemisia, there was an Italian grinder overflowing with sopressata, mortadella, capers, olives, and roasted bell peppers; steak and eggs on a kaiser roll with fried onions and horseradish; and a slice of dark chocolate cake overflowing with ganache icing. Both periodically sniped from the other’s basket of shoestring french fries.

Natalya picked at the limp lettuce leaves with her fork, slowly realizing she’d been tricked. She decided to press on and make the best of the situation. “What is Dr. Zimov’s field anyways?” she asked.

“Vanya,” Andromeda said through a mouthful of meatball. “Call him Vanya. Dr. Zimov is his dad.”

“Right,” Natalya said. “So what does he study?”

Andromeda swallowed. “Nuclear and theoretical physics, focussing on applications of transuranium elements. Kind of does a little bit of everything in physics, though. Built his own cybernetic arm and had a whole bunch of processors put in his head.”

“Interesting. And yet he’s only a Third-Class Scientist?” Natalya asked. “Maybe he needs more of a focus.”

“I dunno,” Andromeda said, crunching into the toasted hoagie again. “I think he just doesn’t buy into the whole ‘publish or perish’ thing. He tries a lot of stuff that doesn’t end up working. Usually ends in blowing himself up. This ice cream - I mean, cryonic beam is the first successful invention we’ve had in a while.”

“Hm. Dr. Blackstone has not been the most fortunate lately either,” Natalya said. “Since he’s a First-Class, they couldn’t really stop him from turning himself into a nudibranch, but it definitely has affected his output.”

“How long has he been a slug anyways?” Andromeda asked.

“About two months now.”

“What do you think is so fascinating about mollusks that you’d want to turn into one?”

Andromeda immediately regretted the question as Natalya assaulted her with facts about how nudibranchs grow from a larval form with a shell to an adult slug; how they consumed toxic animals like sponges and tunicates and sea jellies; how they could then reuse their prey’s chemicals in their flesh or store the unfired nematocysts in special extensions of their digestive tract; and all the different varieties of colors and shapes the many species could come in. After a while, she tuned it all out, focussing instead on dissecting what was left of her meatball sub and moving onto the cheesesteak.

“And what about you?” Natalya asked, her monologue finished. “What got you so interested in transuranium elements?”

Andromeda balanced out the hot peppers with a bite of the creamy cheesecake on her fork. “I dunno, they’re just cool I guess. Lots of neat properties, interesting ways of making them. The more things we find on the Island of Stability the more neat tech we’re able to make.”

Natalya nodded but seemed unconvinced. “What about you, Artemisia?” Natalya asked.

Artemisia had managed to silently polish off her entire meal, and now was reclining contentedly. She rested her boobs in her arms while her chubby belly edged its way over the diner tabletop. “She likes robots,” her android said for her.

“As I said, our lab does a little bit of everything,” Andromeda said. She burped into her fist, her fork clattering against the cheesecake plate, now devoid of anything except a few smears of filling and crumbs of graham cracker crust.

Natalya checked her wristwatch, and nearly fell out of the booth. “What? How is it 12:30?”

“Time moves at a constant rate of one second per second at sea level,” Andromeda said.

“We have to go now,” Natalya said, rattling the dishes as she rushed out of the booth. “Or else we’ll be back late.” Andromeda looked to Artemisia, and they both decided to follow her out of the restaurant.

They descended back down to the monorail station. While Artemisia and Natalya waited for the train, Andromeda wandered over to one of the vending machines and got herself an after-lunch snack.

“What are you eating now?” Natalya asked when Andromeda returned, plopping herself on the bench next to the skinny girl.

“Calamari,” Andromeda said. The shiny plastic bag featured a picture of a laughing cartoon cephalopod being dunked in oil. “Do you want - hey!”

Natalya knocked the bag out of Andromeda’s hands, spilling bits of chewy fried squid all over the grimy metal floor. “How can you eat those? Cephalopods are highly intelligent!”

Andromeda swept as much of the scattered calamari back into the bag. “They also taste good,” she said, returning to her munching.

Natalya fumed as they boarded the J8 train to the Hades Deep. It made a few stops along the way, inhaling and exhaling passengers with each halting breath. Near the Deeps, it picked up a large handful of Security Division soldiers and a bespectacled, cloaked inspector. At the edge of the Hades Deep, the monorail car transferred from its above-car to a rear-car track, allowing it to descend into the yawning maw of the pit.

The Hades Deep extended over 3 kilometers down. Though the upper portions were artificial, below a certain depth it dug to the bottom of the seamount that formed the anchor for the island of the Ilmarinen Institute of Advanced Studies. Labs, classrooms, and rooms for other purposes ringed the abyss’s walls, while a spider web of sensor spires, bridges, and cables criss-crossed the pit. No less than ten separate monorail lines descended into the shaft, with smaller elevators connecting specific sets of floors and the deepest reaches where the light from above could never shine. The J8 line had stops for sublevels on the southeast portion of the pit.

The Security Division troopers disembarked as they passed the monorail stop at sublevel 18, joining a crowd of white-armored comrades. The door to the main laboratory on that level had been reduced to a scorched void, from which Security agents were retrieving all types of busted scientific hardware. A number of black plastic bags concealed a variety of lumpy misshapen objects outside, some of them still twitching.

“I wonder what happened there,” Natalya thought aloud.

“Nothing good,” Andromeda said. “And nothing that concerns us.”

The monorail soon sped them down another level from the crime scene. It halted at the sublevel 19 station, where the trio left the car behind. Natalya rushed up to the door to the Blackstone laboratory, just a short walk from the stop. She pulled out a set of metal discs and pressed them into the door lock, then scanned her palm. A small computer screen flipped around and displayed an image of a colorful nudibranch, a giant octopus, and a ruddy land snail.

“Please identify,” the automated voice said. “You have 30 seconds.”

“Doris annae, Enteroctopus dofleini, and Monadenia fidelis,” Natalya recited.

“All species identified. Welcome to the Blackstone lab.” The door slid open and the three entered the airlock.

“Ajax?” Natalya called as she exited through the airlock into the lab proper. A purple hologram shimmered to life.

“Greetings, Natalya,” Ajax said. He looked to Andromeda and Artemisia as they came in. “The visitors I presume are authorized by Dr. Blackstone?”

“Yep!” Natalya said. “We’re here to pick up some specimens. Can you help us out?”

“Of course,” the A.I. said. “I will prepare the transport containers.” A robotic arm slid over to a stack of small plastic boxes and began neatly setting them out on a nearby worktable

Andromeda took a better look around the lab. Corridors of thin metal shelves were stocked with hundreds of glass tanks. Some tanks contained nothing but some peat moss and a few pieces of cucumber for an unremarkable brown slug. Others were large saltwater reef tanks bedecked with bright sponges the size and color of a peeled watermelon upon which crawled forearm-sized nudibranchs, their feathery gills fluttering. Still more were tall and relatively empty, with dainty blue slugs feasting near the surface around a stricken Portuguese man o’ war. A large cylindrical tank was inky dark, but tiny white sea angels flapped their dainty wings about as they spiraled in its slow current. A squat deep tank held a large red octopus that peered at Andromeda curiously, stretching his tentacles towards the unfamiliar human.

“I see you’ve met Jorge,” Natalya said, approaching the octopus tank. “He’s mischievous. Loves to sneak out and get into the clam tanks for a snack when we’re not here. Ajax usually has to keep a close eye on him.”

“Yes, in fact just yesterday I caught him trying to disassemble the filter valve,” Ajax said.

“Aw, being a rascal are you?” Natalya said, dangling her arm into the cold water. The octopus reached up and wrapped his suckers around her. Natalya giggled. “So cute!”

“Yeah, I guess he’s kind of cool,” Andromeda said. “A bit mushy though.”

“He can slip through any gap bigger than his beak,” Natalya said, “And he’s pretty clever too. I bet he’s bored, so let’s give him a toy.” She went over to a nearby fridge and grabbed a large unpeeled shrimp out of a container with a pair of large forceps. On top of the fridge were some screw-top jars, one of which she grabbed and stuck the shrimp inside. Handing the jar to Andromeda, she said, “Here. Stick that into his tank. He’s a cuddler though, so look out!”

“Alright then,” Andromeda said with uncertainty. She slowly lowered her arm into the cold water. Though she tried to stay as far away from the octopus’s slimy red tentacles as possible, the cephalopod was wily and simply crawled over to her. He unfurled his 8 appendages and reached one out towards Andromeda’s plush forearm.

“Octopuses taste with their arms, so he probably wants to get a good lick of you,” Natalya said, clicking the forceps together like a crab claw.

Andromeda shuddered as the octopus adhered to her with sticky suckers, leaving round marks in her supple flesh. “Yeah, uh, okay,” she said. “This can stop now.” She let Jorge grab hold of the jar of shrimp and yanked her arm out of the water, free from the tentacle’s clutch.

“Aw,” Natalya said. “You’re no fun.”

With a loud bang, a drainage pipe over their heads burst, gushing an iridescent mixture of diluted chemical waste and a black whorled snail shell that thunked down onto the floor. The mollusk poked a pair of stumpy eyestalks out of its shell and turned itself over. Scale armor of hardened black sclerites covered its scarlet foot upon which it slowly glided forward. The pair of tentacles about its mouth sensed iron in the steel flooring, and its tooth-coated tongue began to scrape up the metal aided by acidic saliva. Its caustic, vinegar-scented mucus smoked and bubbled as it burned into the floor.

Andromeda stared at the creature for a moment, then turned to Natalya. “Is that also one of yours?” she asked.

“It can’t be. It looks like a sea pangolin, but those are benthic organisms,” Natalya said. “They only live around hydrothermal vents.... This is a new species!” She grabbed the snails’ shell with her forceps, the aluminum immediately fizzling against the mucus-coated whorl. Humming a cheery tune, she brought the gastropod over to a plastic container on the worktable and dropped it in. “Oh, Dr. Blackstone is going to be so proud of me,” Natalya said, tittering. She closed her eyes for a moment. “All my studying is finally paying - hey, where’d it go!”

The snail, not content to be held in its prison, had torn a hole oozing sticky strands of melted plastic into the bottom of the tank, eaten its way through the table, and fallen back to the floor.

“You can get that one,” Andromeda said. “I’ll get the rest of the specimens.”

“Alright,” Natalya replied. “You’ve got the list right?”

“Yep,” Andromeda said. She unfolded the list from her slightly-too-tight jeans and scooped up a pile of boxes in her chunky arms. “Shouldn’t take too long.”

Andromeda wandered over to Artemisia, who was examining the lab’s robotic claw. “Do you wanna help me find these specimens?” she asked her.

“Question,” Artemisia’s android said for her.

“Shoot.”

“Why did you lie?” the android asked.

“About you working in our lab? Don’t worry about it.”

Artemisia’s eyes narrowed, and she shook her head. “What are you planning?” her robot asked.

“You don’t have a doctoral advisor,” Andromeda said.

“Not true!” the android said.

“Okay, then who is it?”

Artemisia clenched her hands into fists and stared at the floor. “Can’t tell you,” her machine said.

“Oh, sure. ‘Can’t tell you.’ A doctoral candidate without an advisor is vulnerable,” Andromeda said. “You’ll have your lab, your launch bay, and your mech snatched out from under you by some bureaucratic process if you don’t find one.”

Artemisia nodded, continuing to bore her gaze into the steel plates.

Andromeda put her hand on her shoulder. “But that’s not something we need to worry about right now, okay? Let’s just go get these slugs and get out of here.”

It took Andromeda, Artemisia, and Artemisia’s robot helper about an hour to search through the entire laboratory for the required species, plop them into specimen containers, and bring them back to the front of the lab. By the time they were done, they were both huffing and puffing and damp with perspiration from walking down aisle after aisle of specimen racks searching for the right species. However, Natalya was nowhere to be found.

“Where is she?” Andromeda wondered aloud. “Hey, Natalya! We have all the specimens. Did you get that snail? Let’s go!”

The lithe girl wandered out from one of the racks. “I couldn’t find it,” Natalya said.

“How could you not find it?” Andromeda asked. “It’s a snail. Did it sprout a pair of legs and sprint off?”

“No.”

“Well then, where is - hold on,” Andromeda started to say, but then stopped. “Did you see any holes in the floor?”

Natalya’s eyes went wide. She rushed back down one of the aisles repeating a string of “Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no....”

Andromeda followed her down the row of tanks to a baseball-sized hole already bored through the steel flooring and into the concrete below. “Odd?” Andromeda asked into her phone. “What’s directly below us right now?”

The blue A.I. hologram appeared from the device. “Let me find out,” Odysseus said, and thought for a moment. “Well, this is troublesome. You are 5 levels above the containment for Unit 4 of the Hades Research Reactor Facility.”

“Well, that’s not a problem,” Andromeda said. “Those reactors are sealed in tight. Just breaking through the shell around them isn’t an issue.”

“Just breaking through the concrete might not be a problem,” Odysseus said, “But a dripping acid trail could damage any number of systems inside the containment. Unit 4 is carbon dioxide cooled, and a very, shall we say, finicky design. Certainly no RBMK, but if the pressure seals around the reactor core were to be somehow deactivated, say by being turned to molten slag....”

“I get the picture,” Andromeda said. “Let’s get Security on this now and -”

“No!” Natalya interrupted, returning from her jaunt around the lab. “They’ll just kill it. We want it back alive. Dr. Blackstone needs to see it.”

Andromeda sighed. “Alright, fine. Are any of your specimen containers acid-proof?”

“I don’t think so,” Natalya said.

She thought for a moment. “Do you have any baking soda?”

“I think in the chemical storage,” Natalya said. She went into one of the cabinets under the table at the front of the lab. She tossed the orange box to Andromeda. “Here. Why do you need it?”

“We need something weakly basic that will help keep that caustic mucus from attacking everything it touches once we find it,” Andromeda said, filling one of the specimen containers with the white powder. “If we use something strong, like sodium hydroxide, we’ll just kill it, and as easy of a solution as that would be, you don’t seem to want that for some reason.” She handed the container to Natalya and pulled out her phone again. “Odd, what’s one floor below us?”

“Public records storage. It’s open,” the A.I. said.

“Great. How hard can it be to catch this gastropod anyways?” Andromeda said.

The three rushed to catch the next monorail car down to the next level, a completely open ring that surrounded the entire pit of the Hades Deep. Thousands of server racks were lined in innumerable rays of black metal around the gaping black hole of the shaft. Odysseus directed the three to line up their position with the hole in the lab floor a level above them. The caustic mollusk proved easy to find, though, as its red-orange flesh popped out against the drab columns of dark grey boxes. Natalya immediately spotted it crawling along and dissolving the top cover of a stack of processors.

“There,” she said, pointing out the dangerous gastropod. “Is there a ladder nearby?”

Andromeda and Artemisia searched around their immediate area, but no climbing devices of any sort could be found. “Just use the servers, there should be enough handholds to get you up there,” Andromeda said.

Natalya rolled up her sleeves. She approached the server rack, took a deep breath, and boosted herself up using a gap between the bottom-most and second bottom-most cases. Hand by hand and foot by foot, she clambered up to the top of the stack, the capturing container held firm between her teeth. Reaching the top, she slowly positioned the mouth of the box around the snail’s whorled turban shell.

“Ha!” Natalya said, slamming the container lid down. “Got you. Woah!”

With only her feet holding her in place, Natalya lost her balance and fell off the rack. Andromeda’s eyes went wide; powered by pure adrenaline, she rushed to catch the tiny biologist. Natalya hurtled like a meteor into her, knocking the wind straight out of Andromeda’s lungs. Fortunately, the landing was cushioned by a thick layer of adipose. The specimen container bounced off Andromeda’s squishy tummy and landed upside down on the floor.

“Sorry,” Natalya said, extending a hand to help Andromeda up. “Are you alright?”

“Oof,” Andromeda said, her breathing returning to her. “Probably just bruises, nothing major. Where’s the snail?”

Artemisia pointed out the specimen container on the ground.

The three girls watched as the snail’s chemical cocktail sputtered and sizzled against the snow of baking soda that surrounded its foot. For a moment, it looked like the plan had worked perfectly. Then, the powder turned into a translucent slurry of mucus and reaction products from the solution of acids and solvents in the snail’s fluids. Soon enough, with the baking soda's neutralizing power completely defeated, the compounds in the mollusk’s slime burned through the bottom of the plastic container as well, and it slipped out through the hole.

Natalya’s broad grin flipped upside down like she had been taken through a loop-de-loop on a rollercoaster. Buckets of tears welled up in her eyes. The gastropod was well on its way to dissolving through the metal floor as well.

“We need to get Security on this now,” Andromeda said. “They have a whole battalion of troops just a few floors above us, they’ll deal with it in -”

“No!” Natalie said, whipping back to face Andromeda. “‘Dealing with it’ to the Security Division means turning that little snail into a splatter on the floor. It doesn’t deserve that!”

Andromeda rolled her eyes. “Whatever you say.”

“Okay, yeah, I get it, you don’t see the beauty of mollusks,” Natalya said. “They’re slimy and gross and squishy, and you like to batter and deep fry them for a snack.” She stomped towards Andromeda. “But guess what? That mollusk might be vitally important to getting both of our labs more funding, so we’d better catch it if you don’t want to be stuck as an apprentice forever.”

She took a deep breath, calming herself. “We’ll just catch it on the next floor with... something,” Natalya said.

The next level held only a vacant laboratory, at least according to Odysseus. Andromeda cautiously entered while the others waited outside, on the lookout for Security troopers who might not take kindly to them snooping around and refusing to say what they were looking for. A condensed breath of mist floated aside as Andromeda padded into the lab. A thin man in a dark blue suit and tie stood in the hallway. He gazed at seemingly nothing but the empty mist, but then turned to face Andromeda.

“Have you seen an acidic snail?” Andromeda asked the man.

“No,” the man said. He walked towards her and placed his hand on her shoulder. His cold grip dug deep into her padded upper arm. “Not yet.”

“Not yet?” Andromeda echoed. She turned to face the man as he walked past her. “What does that -”

But all she saw was mist.

Andromeda sprinted out as fast as her tree-trunk legs could carry her. “There’s nothing in there to help us,” she said to Natalya and Artemisia between gasps. “Let’s just get to the next floor, maybe we’ll have more luck there.”

The car stopped at level 22. The door to the lab there was ajar. A ghostly flicker of white light scraped past through the crack, and an ooze of translucent slime streaked across the floor. Andromeda gingerly widened the door, carefully avoiding stepping in the clear viscous fluid.

“Denny... Denny just wants to watch.... Denny is hungry....” a man said, his voice a wheezing car engine choking on cigar smoke. He wore nothing but a black leotard. As he rolled on the floor, he coated himself in a thick slime which reeked of isopropyl alcohol. “You’re trash garbage!” he roared. “I’m going to eat you! Blaergh!”

Andromeda slammed the door shut. Without a word, the three mutually agreed to just wait for the snail on the next floor down.

The next sublevel was multipurpose, the area near the J8 monorail divided into a chemistry classroom, a low-level Security prison, and a small eating area with an automated burger joint. Whoever had zoned out this area clearly had been a bit scatterbrained, or perhaps no one else wanted it for anything since it was only five meters above boiling cauldrons of radiation and death. Dark hallways led off to other parts of the Deeps. 250 meters from the surface, the illumination here left the sublevel in constant twilight.

“I’m going to search that classroom,” Natalya said. “Maybe it’s unlocked.” Somehow, she hit the jackpot: not only was it open, but an emptied container for hydrofluoric acid had been stashed inside one of the cabinets. It was just the right size to trap an aggressively caustic and slippery mollusk.

While Natalya searched the classroom, Andromeda wandered over to the Security prison. From a distance, she recognized the same dented black armor from a little over a week ago inside the transparent walls of the lockup. Her helmet had been removed, her long raven hair limp and hanging over one of her mossy eyes. An android guard stood at attention and briefly analyzed her with its sensors as she approached, finding that Andromeda posed no threat. It was more concerned with its lone charge inside the prison. Dr. Katherine-Marie Voltaire sat on her thin cot inside the plexiglass cell, lit by a dangling halogen bulb. A few small holes in the cell let the stale air of the Deeps in and allowed her to communicate with whoever might decide she was worth a visit.

“Hello, Voltaire,” Andromeda said, approaching her former advisor.

“I see you’ve somehow managed to gain even more weight in a little more than a week,” Voltaire said, noticing Andromeda’s new sweatshirt and scanning up and down her paunch. “Impressive. You’re fattening up like a pig for slaughter.”

Andromeda did not respond to the bait.

“Why are you here?” Voltaire asked. “Have you come to gloat? Come to watch me wallow in misery? Do you take pleasure in my suffering?”

Andromeda remained silent.

Voltaire got up off the cot and approached the plastic barrier between herself and her former student. “Why are you here, Ms. Vainion?” she asked. The Security android took notice and went to a higher state of alertness.

“Why did you do it?” Andromeda asked. “Was I not good enough for you?”

Voltaire chuckled. “I told you all of this when I let you go. There was nothing you were doing that I couldn’t handle better myself. You were just a drain on my resources, just like I know you’re a drain on Dr. Zimov right now. Soon you’ll crack and wash out of here like everyone else who can’t truly handle science does.”

Andromeda’s eyes narrowed, and she quickly turned to leave.

“You know I’m right!” Voltaire shouted as Andromeda exited the prison.

“Andromeda!” Natalya called, waving from a table in the eating area. The brown acid container sat next to her on the bench. Andromeda made her way over and rested her weight against the tabletop.

Her starved beast of a belly growled at her. “I’m gonna grab some dinner,” Andromeda said, pointing to a nearby fast food machine. “One of you keep watch for the snail.”

Artemisia and her robot nodded. Natalya followed Andromeda over to the automated stand. The cart had a small omniprinter inside it that quickly fried, baked, and grilled whatever it was you ordered off the menu.

“What time is it?” Andromeda idly muttered as she typed in her order. She checked her phone. 3:31 PM, it read.

Natalya looked over her shoulder, and her face looked like it had been splashed with bleach. “No, no, no, no, no, no!” Natalya cried, taking a step back. “Ugh, no, we have to go back. I’m not going to have any time to study and then I’m going to fail. This is the end....” She collapsed into the bench nearby.

Andromeda went over to her. “Have you never failed a class before?” Andromeda asked, her brow furrowed.

“No! I’ve never gotten less than an A in anything,” Natalya wailed. “If I don’t do some studying, I won’t be ready for lecture tomorrow, and then I won’t be ready for the homework after lecture, and then I won’t be ready for the test, and then I’ll fail!”

Andromeda sighed. “That’s ridiculous.”

“It’s not!”

“It is. It really is,” Andromeda said. “I’m sorry, but you seriously study for fucking lecture?”

“Yes! That way I can be sure to understand -”

Andromeda cut her off. “You’re wasting your time. Go get a life.”

“Science is my life!” Natalya roared. “These mollusks are my life! What the fuck do you do all day? Sit in your dorm and eat ice cream and calamari?”

“N-no,” Andromeda said, blanching. She regathered her confidence. “Artemisia and I spent all of last week building a mech, and then we killed a giant lizard that attacked us.”

Artemisia nodded vigorously from her lookout spot.

Natalya stared at the two of them for a moment, silent. “Well, that’s just - that’s just great,” she said, breaking into a pained smile. She forced her index finger into Andromeda’s cavernous belly button. “I’m so glad a pair of worthless gluttons like you could save the Institute.”

Andromeda shot back and gave Natalya an indignant salute in the form of a dismissive wave. “Okay, fuck you,” she said. She stomped over to the vending machine and grabbed her boxed cheeseburger. “Fuck you,” she repeated as she walked past Natalya over to Artemisia. The roboticist exchanged watches with Andromeda to get her own meal.

“What, you can’t take a compliment?” Natalya asked, her tone laced with sarcasm.

Andromeda took a deep breath, screwing up her face. “Okay. Listen. Do you want to know the real secret of this place? Classwork, homework, tests - it doesn’t mean jackshit. It’s artificial and worthless. You know what I do when I don’t know something?”

“I bet that happens a lot...” Natalya said.

“I look it up,” Andromeda said, ignoring the comment. “Or I have the lab A.I. look it up! Science isn’t about being a walking encyclopedia. It’s about being able to solve complicated problems creatively.”

“But I still need to pass my classes to become a doctoral candidate,” Natalya said. “I can’t do that if I don’t study.”

“Have you ever asked Dr. Blackstone if the amount you study is normal?” Andromeda asked. “Or anyone? Because it’s not. If you couldn’t handle the workload, you wouldn’t be here in the first place.”

Natalya tried to come up with a retort, but couldn’t. She sulked in her chair.

Andromeda turned her anger onto the helpless burger as she tore open the box and chomped on the spongy, ketchup-soaked bun.

“I hate to intrude, but you really shouldn’t eat that,” Odysseus said, appearing from Andromeda’s phone. “It contains - ”

“Odysseus,” Andromeda said, staring the A.I. down. “I don’t care.”

“Then perhaps it would be better for me to inform you that I have located the snail,” Odysseus said. “I would encourage you to hurry though, since I will remind you that we are just above the Unit 4 containment.”

“Show us!” Andromeda said. Odysseus pointed to a small black lump nearby.

Natalya jumped up and rushed over to the snail with her new trap. “Got it!” she cried, and screwed the lid on tight. “Just in time.”

But the snail had no interest in pleasing the young biologist. It circled about its prison a few times, scraping its toothy beak and radula against the bottom. Bit by bit, it cut through the acid-proof plastic. It landed at Natalya’s feet with a plop.

Natalya stared at the gastropod. The mollusk’s eyestalks, seemingly filled with frigid, unknowing rage, stared back. “Raraaaaaugh!” Natalya roared, picking her foot up to smash the tiny creature, before stomping it down just next to it. She collapsed to the ground, sobbing and defeated.

Andromeda whipped out her phone. “Odd, get Security on the line,” she said. “How much time do we have until that thing breaches the containment?”

“At the current rate, maybe... five minutes?” Odysseus said.

“Do it quick! We don’t -”

A blue ray of freezing energy shot from the darkness and froze the snail solid. Vanya stepped out from one of the shadowy hallways and wiped the misty barrel of the cryonic beam with a microfibre cloth. “Hello, Andromeda. I heard you were having a problem,” he said.

“Odysseus...” Andromeda growled to the A.I.

“My apologies,” Odysseus said. “I informed Dr. Zimov of your troubles just as you left Dr. Blackstone’s lab. He was not certain if he would make it in time.”

“If he’d told you I was coming, you might have not been thorough in your efforts to stop this creature,” Vanya said, picking up the frozen snail in a hazard-gloved finger and placing it in a titanium cylinder. “It seems your efforts were valiant, but futile.”

Andromeda’s mouth was a thin line.

Vanya ignored Andromeda’s expression. “This did prove a great test of the cryonic beam’s freezing potential,” he said, “And your software improvements were essential to optimizing the beam flux.”

Andromeda blinked. “Oh. Yeah. Uh, no problem. It was a simple coding job.”

“Glad to hear it,” Vanya said. “Now, I believe the four of us should get Byron’s specimens and get back to the surface. Being this far from the sun for this long can make one quite a bit mad.” He looked at Natalya, whose face was wracked by quakes of disbelief, her right eyelid twitching.

The ride back to the Blackstone lab was uneventful. They summoned a courier robot to push the cart full of specimens for them, then boarded a train back to the surface. Natalya and Artemisia sandwiched Andromeda between them, while Vanya sat across the aisle, using his cybernetic hand to read a holographic display of some scientific journal.

Andromeda looked at Natalya. The junior was pale and fidgeting. She kept pulling out a small cloth to polish her glasses for the umpteenth time.

“Alright! Urgh, I’m sorry, okay,” Andromeda suddenly said. Vanya looked up from his paper, a bit confused. “I’m sorry for what I said earlier. It’s just - you know what, nevermind. This is stupid.”

“Whatever it is, it isn’t stupid,” Natalya said, sniffling. “I accept your apology.”

“You... you remind me of myself, okay!” Andromeda sputtered. “That’s it,”

Natalya looked as if Andromeda had slapped her. “What?”

“There was a time before all of this when I had your motivation, and drive, and organization,” Andromeda said. “I wasn’t a complete studying freak, sure, but I wanted to be the best. I was passionate about things, like you are with mollusks. Then I failed once, and all of that just fucking evaporated.”

“Are you saying that’s going to happen to me?” Natalya said, her eyes wide with fear.

“No!” Andromeda said. “No, of course not. I guess I’m just saying... don’t let another person’s mistake ruin your dreams.”

Natalya took a deep breath and calmed herself down. Vanya gazed into Andromeda’s soul with the laser-like vision of his multi-lensed eyes. The monorail slid into the station at Regulus Tower, and the four scientists disembarked.

Dr. Blackstone met them in his genetics lab on level 91 of the tower, having called a courier android to move his tank. The space was filled with smooth white test tube racks, shaker baths, PCR machines, and other gadgets for DNA analysis. After a brief demonstration of the cryonic beam on one of the other specimens, Vanya unveiled the still-frozen acid snail. The nudibranch scientist gazed at it with his beady black eyespots.

“Hm. Yes, this does seem novel,” Dr. Blackstone said. “You said it came from a drainage pipe?”

“Yes,” Natalya answered. “It fell out of a pipe from above the lab.”

“That’s an unusual place for a land snail, but nonetheless. Could you slice off a bit of its foot for me?”

Natalya took up a small exacto blade and cut off the end of the mollusk’s tail. After thawing the piece off, carefully washing it clean of any remaining mucus, and mashing the sample to a pulp to lyse the cells, she placed it in a solution to extract the snail’s DNA. A few more processes later, and the genetic sequence was read out on one of the lab computers.

“Curious,” Dr. Blackstone said. “Very curious.”

“What’s wrong?” Vanya asked. He sidled up next to the tank.

“There’s a peculiar genetic sequence embedded within the junk DNA of this snail’s genome,” Blackstone said. “First it lists 26 of the 64 codons, each spaced with a stop codon in between. Then 16 of those codons repeat about 100 times.”

“It’s a genetic signature,” Natalya said.

“Precisely correct,” Blackstone said, “And it belongs to one ‘Lord’ Stefan Andros. Now, as a member of the peerage myself, I can assure you that Dr. Andros is not a lord of anything.”

“Arrogant prick,” Vanya muttered.

“Strong language,” Blackstone said, “But I’m inclined to agree.”

“I’ll report this to Security,” Vanya said. “They’re very tired of Dr. Andros being careless with his pets, and I’m certain they would just love to hear about this.”

“It seems our collaboration has been a smashing success, wouldn’t you say?” Dr. Blackstone asked.

“Agreed,” Vanya said. “I’m looking forward to continuing to work with you in the future. Andromeda, Andromeda’s...” He looked at Artemisia. “Friend? I think we’ve taken up enough of Dr. Blackstone’s time. Let’s get back to Altair Tower.”

Natalya smiled meekly at Andromeda and Artemisia from her place at the lab computer. “Thanks for helping me out,” she said.

“Don’t mention it,” Andromeda said, turning to follow Vanya out the door. As she left, she just vaguely heard Natalya start to say, “Dr. Blackstone, I’d like to ask you about my studying habits....” The full conversation was muted by the lab door closing behind them.

“I didn’t want to make a fuss in front of Dr. Blackstone or his assistant,” Vanya said to Andromeda as they rode the elevator down, the apertures of his goggles narrowing, “But I didn’t say you could bring a colleague with you.”

“You didn’t say I couldn’t,” Andromeda shot back. “Artemisia was helpful in getting all the specimens together. And she’s an expert roboticist. I think we should form a collaborative lab with hers.”

“That’s not something an apprentice can arrange,” Vanya said. “What level is she?”

“She’s a doctoral student.”

“Then we’d need to talk to her doctoral advisor. Who is that?”

“I don’t know,” Andromeda said. “She won’t say.”

Vanya looked to Artemisia. “Who do you work for?” he asked.

Artemisia exchanged glances with the android on her shoulder. She sighed, and said, “Dr. Wulfrik Argentine.”

Vanya’s many eyes went wide and he began to cackle his scratchy, grinding laugh. “You’re joking,” he said. “That old man’s retired. He doesn’t take doctoral students anymore.”

“He’s my father,” Artemisia said.

“Yes. Her full name is Artemisia Argentine,” Odysseus said from Vanya’s hand. The scientist stopped laughing. “And I can confirm that her public records show she is Dr. Wulfrik Argentine’s daughter.”

Vanya raised his goggles, revealing his ice blue eyes, and turned his gaze to Andromeda. “Apprentice, you continue to surprise me,” he muttered.

=0101011001101111011011000111010001100001011010010111001001100101=

Back in the darkness of the Hades Deep, Dr. Voltaire still sat in her cell awaiting trial. There was not much for her to do except pace back and forth and catch up on many nights of sleep lost during her graduate school days. That night, however, she was restless. She faintly heard the drone of the monorail car stop at the prison’s level.

Someone walked up to the android guard and lobbed a vial of acid at its central processor. The caustic fluid melted the machine’s armor and circuitry like butter in a microwave. The android groaned and sparked as it collapsed, destroyed. Its assailant cooly entered the lockup and immediately identified the sole person held captive there.

“Who are you?” Voltaire asked, approaching the man at the plexiglass wall. A sensor suppression mask obscured his face, the low hum it emitted blinding and deafening any snooping electronics. He wore a black hazard suit for protection against whatever threats he might face in his mission. Pulling a metal canister off the suit’s utility belt, he placed it against the transparent wall between them. With a push of a button on the base, the lid slid open, allowing the gastropod inside to extend its foot onto the glass and unleash its cutting power. The bulletproof plastic popped and bubbled as the acidic snail crawled up and around the edge of the cage.

“Who are you?” Voltaire asked again. The man removed his helmet, revealing a shock of flax-blonde hair and dark green eyes like a pair of polished beryls.

“Lord Stefan Andros,” the man said. “I require your services, Dr. Voltaire.”

Within a few moments, there was enough of a gash that Lord Andros could punch the wall down with the augmented strength provided by the hazard suit. Voltaire dodged out of the way of the falling, rough-shapen panel. Her savior extended his hand through the opening to help her through. He picked his creation up off the remaining piece of the destroyed prison block, his fingers protected by acid-proof gauntlets standard to hazard armor.

Voltaire smiled. “Of course, my Lord,” she said, but suddenly her stomach growled at her like a horrible genetic abomination prodded with an electric spear. “But first, let me get something to eat. You would not believe what they feed you in there.” Voltaire wandered over to the nearby fast food cart and placed her order.

Dr. Andros chuckled and crushed his acid snail beneath his heel.

[katenessfiles]

Camping out in your new home alone with little babies in a new city is so scary! Not having central ac and instead have to wait for a window ac unit for a whole mutha fuk’n week! Is one of the most edge of my seat anxiety filled sensation in these following ways 1. Having to keep the windows cracked open and night to keep a cool breeze. 2. Weed is illegal again. 3. Sleeping on an air mattress waiting for my new one to arrive(gotta love mattresses in a box.) 4. Completely relying on my gps to get around…5. Unpacking the shipping container. 6. Parking my car out front. 7.creepy basement makes creepy sounds.8. Possum…… i could keep going BUT I’ll stop and will mention it was a good move a tinge of drama but everything is going to work out in the long run its all moving along. Unpacking and cleaning is a nightmare!! But it’ll get done.

Good night

[tellio]

The Possum's and Racoon's and Firefly's Tea Party

My life Is a butcher’s block of  the dullest paring knives. I am so strange Not because I tossed A box of donuts out the car window for the possums’ and raccoons’ tea party. No, it’s because I shouted after them, “You’re welcome!” Sigh. And as long as I know The lighting bugs will join in then all is well. Or it might be.   I remember being trained, once upon a time, to reflect on the sweet…

[vatican3]

Are you ever dropping the JJ playlist?

I'm not going to link directly to it Right Now but here is the entire thing thus far:

She Hates Me - Puddle of Mudd

Chop Suey! - System of a Down

Possum Kingdom - Toadies

Hungover in Jonestown - Amigo the Devil

Only A Lad - Oingo Boingo

The Chosen - Aurelio Voltaire

Sympathy For The Devil (Neptunes Remix) - The Neptunes

Congratulations, You Survived Your Suicide - Sycamore Smith

Zero - The Smashing Pumpkins

Old Pine Box - They Might Be Giants

Today - The Smashing Pumpkins

Bullet With Butterfly Wings - The Smashing Pumpkins

Arsonist's Lullabye - Hozier

My Alcoholic Friends - The Dresden Dolls

Bad Habit - The Dresden Dolls

Mama - My Chemical Romance

I Wanna Destroy Myself - Ezra Furman

What's a Devil to Do? - Harley Poe

The Rake's Song - The Decemberists

Hurt - Johnny Cash

Ring of Fire - Johnny Cash

God's Gonna Cut You Down - Johnny Cash

I / Me / Myself - Will Wood

West Coast Smoker - Fall Out Boy

Kill All Your Friends - My Chemical Romance

Teen Idle - Marina

Cop Car - Mitski

Pure Morning - Placebo

Funtimes in Babylon - Father John Misty

We Know Where You Sleep - The Paper Chase

Beat the Devil's Tattoo - Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

[dancingnotes]

Cheap School Holiday Programs Perth

School holidays can be expensive for parents, but you don’t have to break the bank for your kids to enjoy some fun activities. Check out our list of cheap school holiday programs perth below!

Let your kids unleash their inner warrior at Lazer Blaze. This exciting game is sure to be a hit with the whole family!

Ranger Red’s Zoo & Conservation Park

Formerly known as Peel Zoo, the boutique zoo is home to over 100 native and exotic animal species. Its menagerie includes koalas, wombats, dingoes, exotic birds, reptiles, spotted quolls and possums. The zoo also offers visitors the chance to hand feed animals and pat kangaroos and ferrets in its unique ‘hands-on experience’.

Children can also learn about animal husbandry, feeding and captive breeding at the zoo’s Junior Zookeeper program. A highlight is a huge walk-through aviary, where guests can admire and interact with 150 bird species. The zoo’s Tasmanian devil breeding program is a top priority and contributes to the survival of the endangered species, which has been hit by an incurable facial tumour disease in the wild.

Other attractions include a camel ride, crocodile presentations and a salt water pond where visitors can feed the fish. The zoo also goes on the road to schools and childcare centres, shopping centres and aged facilities to provide interactive wildlife experiences with incredible furry, feathered and scaly creatures.

Outback Splash

Located on the doorstep of the Swan Valley in Bullsbrook and just over 30 minutes from Perth city, Outback Splash is a top family outdoor entertainment destination. The waterpark (open September to April) offers four awesome waterslides as well as year-round attractions including mini golf mazes sensory play activities a children’s playground Australian animal experiences and onsite food and beverage outlets.

Outback Splash’s 4 new slides have been designed with thrill-seekers in mind. The Wall, Blackout, Gold Rush and the Wedgie are all exhilarating raft slides that will have hearts pounding and blood pumping.

The island-themed Splash Island water slide playground and tower slide area is suitable for a range of age groups. There’s also Octopus Bay, a kid-friendly water activity pool that includes a 3-slide giant octopus and miniature tipping bucket – perfect for little adventurers. An expansive lawn area is great for picnics while onsite food and drink outlets The Burger Bar and Snack Shack serve fresh meals and locally-roasted Yahava coffee.

Rottnest Island

Known locally as ‘Rotto’, this day trip destination is an absolute gem. With 63 secluded beaches and bays to explore, it’s a wonderland for swimming, surfing, fishing, walking and more. It’s also home to the incredibly cute quokkas and many gorgeous bike rides.

Discover Rottnest Island’s unique cultural history on a guided tour with Go Cultural Aboriginal Tours & Experiences. Learn of the Wadjemup (Rottnest) Island’s significance to the Noongar people on an immersive experience that includes Dreamtime stories, songs and dances.

Get a great deal on an all-included day trip to Rottnest Island with this offer. After hotel pickup, hop on the ferry to cruise over to the car-free island and enjoy a full sightseeing tour that includes the Wadjemup Lighthouse, Henrietta Rocks, Oliver Hill Guns and Tunnel, Cathedral Rocks, and Strickland Bay. Includes a box lunch, morning tea, round-trip ferry, and hotel pickup and drop-off.

Kings Park

Kings Park is one of the world’s largest inner city parks and offers a huge range of activities holiday programs. Enjoy sweeping views of the Swan River and city skyline from the vista points throughout the park. Visit the botanical gardens which have a huge focus on Western Australia’s native flora. Take a guided walk with a volunteer through the Botanic Garden on either a morning or afternoon walk. Or, climb all 101 steps of the DNA Tower for a unique view around the park.

There are many things to do in Kings Park including visiting the exhibitions at the Botanic Garden Discovery Centre. Or, explore the Yarra Yarra Riverwalk and May Drive Parkland or go for a bushland nature walk on the Boodja Gnarning Walk to experience the traditional Noongar use of the land.

The State War Memorial is a somber place for reflection and the May Drive (formerly Synergy) Parkland has a children’s nature playground with logs to balance on and rock climbing for kids.

[lucycayetana]

24.12.2022 (Christmas Eve)

Smooth and uneventful flight into the city and no issues picking up our checked bag and hire car. The hire car was the cheapest "mystery car" option and we somehow ended up with a 2021 Ford Ranger.

After getting the Christmas groceries, we ate lunch at this empty restaurant that was winding down for the holidays. I had a steak sandwich then the three of us shared this sesame miso caramel cookie in a skillet. Truly one of the best desserts I’ve ever had. We’re planning on coming back here before our flight home to try it again.

The campsite is a cosy spot up a little hill and the dome we’re staying in is warm and well furnished. We cooked beef burgers on the BBQ then played card games for a while.

We watched the stars just before midnight. I hadn’t seen so many stars in the sky like this in so long. Seven shooting stars. One of them was especially bright and had a tail stretching across the sky right above the lake. Saw Jupiter, Mars, and Uranus. Orion’s Belt. Taurus. Many satellites. Couldn’t find the Southern Cross as it was hidden behind some trees.

25.12.2022 (Christmas Day)

Woke up around 6:30am with the sunlight but went back to sleep until 9am. We finally got up and made pancakes and bacon for breakfast. My friends were sketching the view of the lake. We saw a shiny little green beetle and several dragonflies.

Went on a scenic drive around the two lakes towards this renowned walking track and the weather got worse as we got closer. We passed a seagull eating a possum and a hawk eating a rabbit on the road. There were heaps of international tourists on the walk and it was fun reading the different Christmas puns on their shirts. We skipped stones and took photos of the river and the fog rolling down the mountain. Unfortunately, we didn’t end up swimming as there were way too many sandflies and mosquitoes.

Drove past a dog on a paddle board in the lake!

Christmas dinner was BBQ beef and pork sandwiches, pork and chive wontons, and salad with steamed puddings. Finished the night with card games again.

26.12.2022 (Boxing Day)

Pancakes and bacon for breakfast again!

Met up with our friend who lives in the area for a picnic on the beach. Cucumber, hummus, hazelnut and coconut chocolate blocks, salami, salmon, cheese and crackers, and potato chips. We had a dip in the lake and took photos of a tree growing in the lake by the shore that was a bit of a tourist attraction.

Stopped by our friend’s house to see her dog and parents then went to another beach where the water was warmer. We stayed there for the rest of the day to swim and eat and sunbathe and eat and swim and eat and sunbathe then packed up when the evening breeze set in. Did some final grocery shopping, bought bubble tea from the local Asian store then came back to the campsite for BBQ sausages, salad and bread, s’mores and grilled pineapple with cinnamon.

27.12.2022 (Last day!)

My body was sore this morning and I found little spots of sunburn where I wasn’t as diligent with reapplying my sunscreen.

We managed to pack up camp and leave before 9am. The drive fairly quiet as we were all tired and I kept falling in and out of sleep. Stopped for some scones and sausage rolls partway before reaching the city. We looked for the same restaurant where we ate lunch before we drove to the campsite but they were closed. No more sesame miso caramel cookie in a skillet. Instead, we each got some cheesecake slices (passionfruit, tiramisu, and black forest) from nearby but they weren’t as good as the skillet. We went through a carwash, returned the car and got our flight home. I fell asleep again on the flight and didn’t wake up until I was jolted awake by the landing. All in all, I had a pretty good Christmas.