#Best Machine Learning Assignment Help

[yenhan]

TF141 & International student neighbor on the verge of a crisis

Next - Masterlist

Synopsis: a tiny, itty bitty breakdown.

You didn’t cry when you moved into your flat. A few tears spilled when the kettle refused to boil, and the radiator wheezed like it was dying, but that hardly counted. You weren’t this close to a soul-shattering mental breakdown in four different languages and two whole personalities. Nope. That was just being a successful woman, completely in control of her life. You lived in a flat that could be described as vintage, or one good gust from collapsing, as your best friend kindly put it when you called. It had four walls, a roof, and the washing machine only flooded the kitchen every other week. It wasn’t the worst deal in the world. At least you didn't have spiders building their little lego-web houses on the ceiling. That would be disgusting.

However, you spent your first night on the couch wrapped in every hoodie you owned, scrolling through your phone with the Wi-Fi from the library nearby that cut out if you breathed wrong, wondering what the hell you’d gotten yourself into.

The move to England had been impulsive, at least that’s what your parents said. ���You’re barely out of high school, sweetheart. Isn't it too soon?�� But you wanted to prove you could do it; be independent, get a degree, build a career. Whatever that meant. You didn’t know yet. Those stupid tik toks about girlbossing your way through life didn’t help much, either. Classes were hard. Work was harder. You cleaned tables at a café full of old ladies who judged your every move, then crammed lectures and assignments into your evenings, falling asleep to the sound of cats screeching in the alley outside your window.

And then there were your neighbors.

The first time you saw them, your eyeballs nearly popped out. Four men who looked like they’d walked out of an action movie trailer. Broad shoulders, broader chests, paired with alertness that made you sit up straighter when they walked by. Pavlov's a bitch. One of them wore a beanie and had a beard that probably intimidated children. Or made them laugh, it depends on who you ask. You bet he worked as Santa Claus during Christmas time, that beard would do wonders. One limped slightly but moved like he’d break into a sprint at the slightest excuse, he also had a nasty scar on his head. One always had his baseball hat up and gentle eyes. And the last one… he wore sunglasses even on cloudy days and didn’t speak unless he was being sentenced to death. You nicknamed them The Lads before you even learned their names. It was honestly a really bad attempt at copying the British accent, a silly little inside joke meant only for yourself.

It was the limp that pulled you into their circle. Soap. His real name was Johnny, but everyone called him that. Something had happened to him. Not a car crash kind of injury, and surely not a oops-I-got-a-paper-cut issue. Something else. A kind of hurt that reeked of bloodshed and gunfire. He looked so cheerful despite it all... you envied his lack of self-restraint. He helped you carry a box of books up the stairs when you dropped it.

"You don’t look like a librarian." You tried to break the ice.

He grinned. “Cheers, lass. Ye don’t look like yer old enough to be living alone.”

“Rude,” you replied, winded. “But fair.” You became something like their mascot after that. Or a stray pup they all silently agreed to look after.

Price knocked on your door the night your power went out. Just handed you a flashlight and an extra blanket and left, didn’t even wait for a thank you. Gaz noticed your bike had a flat and fixed it without a word. Ghost, well, Ghost scared you a little. A lot. But you never said it to his face. It wouldn't be polite, would it?

You weren’t supposed to become attached to them. They were four grown men with lives and a bond so deep you couldn’t begin to understand. And you? You were just the girl next door. Sweet, a little clueless, a little cheeky, and hanging on by a thread.

You were tired all the time. Tired of pretending you were having the time of your life when really, you felt like you were slowly crumbling. Like the version of yourself that had boarded that plane so full of hope and plans had somehow gotten lost between Heathrow and the broken laundromat on the corner. How could you tell your mum you were regretting everything? How could you face your brother and say that the big sister he looked up to was just a loser? The weather was hell 365 days out of 365, if someone offered you another fish and chips dish you'd crash out, and you were likely forgetting all of the damned languages you spoke because of the humidity eating your brain cells.

Wasn't youth supposed to be the best time of your life? This was the part where you found yourself and laughed and made memories you’d cherish forever... Seriously, what the heck were you doing? You felt cold and alone. Ate one-pound meals at the measly convenience store run by Aunt Wang and listened to her ranting in Mandarin Chinese. What an exciting existence. How dignified.

Until the night you cried in the stairwell. You’d just finished a shift where someone called you incompetent because you didn’t know what a “flat white” was supposed to taste like. Your exam results had come back worse than expected. And your period had started early, like the universe had decided to kick you where the sun doesn't shine while you were already down. Bollocks, Simon's voice rang in your mind. You were curled up by the railing, the hoodie laid over your knees, when the door opened. Boots. Heavy ones. Speaking of the devil, Ghost’s voice scared the shit out of you. “Bad day?”

You sniffled, eyeing him up and down. “No, just peachy. Rainbows and all that.”

“Bollocks." He countered timely. You giggled. It was ridiculous and extremely easy to make your day better. Any of them could with just a snap of fingers. "I'm telling Price y'were here cryin' like a baby."

"Oh, shut it. I'll have you know some of us have beating hearts under our ribcage, Mr. Creep-a-lot."

"Oi, yer fifteen years too young t'make fun o'me."

Perhaps you did have one good thing in your hands, wasting it would be a shame.

[charlesoberonn]

Phineas and Ferb episode idea: After Candace shows her photos of all of her brothers’ creations, Linda thinks that her daughter is a talented graphic artist and signs her up for a competition. Candace is frustrated and about to tell her mom the truth but then Jeremy shows up and he’s like “Wow, Candace, I didn’t know you were a graphic designer. That’s so cool. Btw, my little sister is also gonna be at the graphic design competition.”

Long story short, Candace asks her brothers to help her become a graphic artist for real so she could beat Suzie.

Meanwhile, Doofenshmirtz has gotten tired of designing -Inators so he designed the Comes-Up-With-Inators-Inator to design them for him. The Inator’s creation are a hit among other Evil Scientists who buy them in droves. Doofenshmirtz is then signed by Vanessa to an Evil Contracption Designing competition (held in the same building at the same time as the graphic design competition, of course).

Desperate, he asks Perry the Platypus to help him get his mojo back so he could design -Inators again.

Cue musical montage of Doof and Candace training to learn/relearn their respective art form.

It’s the competition(s). Candace is a nervous wreck, but Jeremy believes in her. Doof is all self-assured and ego-boosted by everyone thinking he’ll win, but then he sees his Comes-Up-With-Inators-Inator (who looks like a robotic him) also signed up for the competition.

While getting ready for the competition, Perry is accidentally almost spotted by Phineas and Ferb. He sneaks behind the curtain to the behind the scenes. That’s when he discovers that the goal of the competition is to design a doomsday weapon. Nervous, he swaps the cards with those of the graphic design competition.

The competition begins. The graphic artists are assigned to design a doomsday weapon while the Evil Scientists are assigned to design a cool band poster.

The scientists are baffled, but they do their best. The Comes-Up-With-Inators-Inator is stuck because it’s physically incapable of drawing anything but Inators.

Meanwhile in the graphic design competition Candace does her best but her brain goes blank. Suzie meanwhile is trying to sabotage her by switching her card back with the card from the other tournament. Unfortunately it’s the card of the Comes-Up-With-Inators-Inator, who now goes to task designing a Doomsday weapon.

The competition is finished. Candace’s work is mediocre, but she wins by technicality for being the only one who drew the correct thing.

Meanwhile at the Evil Scientists competition, the scientists all drew terrible posters except Doof whose poster is beautiful. He’s about to be declared the winner but then the Comes-Up-With-Inators-Inator reveals what it’s been working on, a doomsday machine. Everyone panics, and Perry the Platypus tries to stop the machine, but fails. Then the machine ticks down to 0, and nothing happens.

Turns out the Comes-Up-With-Inators-Inator is terrible at coming up with machines. All of its Inators don’t work. Which unfortunately for Doof results in all of his previously happy customers showing up to complain because their Inators didn’t work either. He asks Perry to help him again, but Perry is already gone.

“There you are, Perry.” “Curse you, Perry the Platypus!”

Despite winning, Candace feels hollow because she only won by technicality and all of the other designers were much better than her. She feels like a fraud. But then Jeremy shows up and asks to buy the rights for her poster, because he thinks it’s really cool. Candace is happy.

The End.

[yanderenightmare]

♡ TW: NSFW, noncon, yandere, stalking

♡ gn reader

There’s something very off about your roommate… something eerie that makes you keep your distance.

You can’t describe exactly what it was about the boy except that you felt it from the second you shook his hand. The way he introduced himself… you don’t know… you had this unshakable feeling as though he already knew you from somewhere.

It’s a weird thought to have of someone you’d only just met. You knew you were probably just being paranoid. It was your first time sharing your space with someone other than family, so it might very well just have been you being apprehensive.

Not that you’d ever let it show, though. You didn’t want things between the two of you to be awkward when you’d be living together for the next three years of getting your degree.

You just needed to get used to him, is what you told yourself. 

So you laughed at his jokes and listened to his brags with a polite smile as though nothing was wrong, even when he continued being strange. 

For starters, he had almost nothing to unpack – as though he only planned to stay about a month or two. Everything seemed newly bought as well – unused and sterile, like a movie set.

You don’t know… maybe he was a minimalist even though he didn’t seem the type.

It shouldn't really have made your skin crawl the way it did. But whether it made sense or not, you couldn’t shake the discomfort – walking around in a constant wariness of him. 

Everything about him seemed like a half-assed theatre act.

You’d see him in the lecture hall, walking from here to there, buying strawberry milk from the vending machines. His textbooks remained piled on his desk in your shared dorm room – but you’d never seen any one of them open. And when curiosity and suspicion made you flip up one of his notebooks, you found it was all blank except for a few shitty doodles on the first page. You never see him cram for exams or writing any papers. You don’t think you’ve ever even seen him pull a laptop out of his bag.

It’s like he isn't a student at all…

And something about the rest of his performance just rubs you the wrong way.

It’s as though he’s practiced all his facial expressions in the mirror – as though he’s studied social cues and body language in a human behavior manual instead of having learned them naturally. It makes you uneasy – how his smile is always a bit too wide and a bit too stiff to be genuine and how all his words are like dialogue off a script.

Somehow, it feels as though he’s wearing a second skin – hiding something… something that’s not quite right on the inside.

It grosses you out when he tries flirting with you. But you do your best to hide it. Brushing him off by changing the topic, inviting other friends when he asks to eat lunch together, laughing off his attempts as though he’s making jokes – always excusing yourself when you end up alone with him for too long. 

You try to avoid him as much as you can. Pretending to study when you’re in the dorm together – and otherwise going to bed early.

He tells you he’ll see you at the party later when you leave to pregame with some friends. You can only muster a smile and a curt “Sure.” before leaving. 

As for seeing each other later – you hope you don’t.

But of course you do. You can’t seem to escape him. Everywhere you go, he follows.

It doesn’t help that all your friends think he’s so hot, immediately calling him over, gushing over him as though he’s some type of celebrity. They don’t understand your reservation – if they were you, they’d have fucked him the first night of moving in together.

It’s not like you don’t find him attractive as well. You admit he is ridiculously handsome, and if the circumstances were different, you’d say you lucked out being assigned the same dorm room as him. 

But as it were – he gives you the same feeling as spotting a spider.

He’s got his arm slung around your shoulder as the two of you walk back together. 

He had a little bit too much to drink… And despite your thoughts about him, even you didn’t have the heart to say no when he was practically hanging off of you – cheeks dusted pink with his mothlike lashes droopy, drunkenly mumbling while blinking up at you with those awfully bright eyes, asking you to take him home and tuck him in.

“Ugh...” You sigh.

It’s a struggle carrying the nearly two-meter-tall boy, almost having to drag him down the hallway before stopping short at your door. He’s drooling on your shoulder with murmurs of sleep as you search for the key – not exactly sober yourself.

When inside, his bigger body presses you against the closed door – his face buried in the grove of your neck with slurred words.

“Dude.” You state with a grimace – as if saying his name was too much of a burden – sighing as you haul him off with the same exasperation of a parent putting an unruly child to bed. 

Ducking beneath his arm, you leave him kissing the door – thinking to yourself how you really should put him to bed before he can embarrass himself any further.

You open your mouth to tell him when his temper finally makes him grab your arm a little harder than intended. 

“This isn't how this is supposed to go.” 

You flinch instinctively, and his grip tightens in return. “Hey?”

You can’t see his face with the way he’s got his head bowed. But you don’t like the snuff growl that passes under his breath as he utters the next words.

“Why are you so difficult?”

You do more than flinch this time, yanking yourself out of his harsh grip before he can apologize for it – taking on a deliberate offensive stance. 

With your feet squared and your hands up to keep him at a distance, you look ready to try fending him off.

Something about it seems premeditated – something in the wary way you eye him. You don’t even look all that surprised – as if you had suspected this side of him existed all along and had only been waiting for it to surface.

Oddly, t feels like something you’ve kept secret from him – as though you’ve acted comfortable all this time when, in reality, you’ve been clutching your mental pearls.

He realizes then why you haven’t returned his affection – why all you’ve ever given him is cold-hearted rejection…

Of course. It’s obvious now – so obvious it’s funny. Even though he’s been the one parading around like someone else, it feels as though you’ve been doing the exact same thing around him – hiding your discomfort behind a sweet smile – hiding it so well that not even his keen eyes have picked up on it…

But it’s clear now….

You’ve both been playing a game of pretend – just a pair of perfect strangers – who've now shared their hand. Leaving you both feeling naked – raw out in the cold – just waiting for the next move.

“I guess the gig is up, huh?” He rasps, fingers twitching at his sides – looking ready to pounce.

You couldn’t defend why you'd kept the pepper spray in the drawer of your nightstand – but you were glad you had. Rushing for it, hands shaking as you pulled the handle and grabbed the bottle – twisting around and spraying it right in the face of your roommate.

He cries out from the attack, clutching his face with both hands – staggering back with a series of gruff curse words.

Still, he guards the door – preventing your escape.

The groaning turns to croaks instead, and you think he might be crying. It’s tough to see through the hands covering his eyes – but when he looks back up again, despite the red burns left by your pepper spray on his puffy teary cheeks, he’s got a smile on his face. 

He’s not crying – he’s laughing – as the hand covering his face slowly drags down the crazed expression – over crazed eyes, bloodshot and wet, staring at you through the gaps between his fingers.

The look alone is enough to give you goosebumps.

But when you try to make a run for it, he grabs you again – and this time, you’re not able to shake him off. It feels as though the tight grip splinters your skin as he pulls you back – shoving you down against your bed.

“Can’t say it hasn’t been fun, roomie. But I’m not completely satisfied yet.”

He’s on top of you before you get a kick in – pinning your wrists above your head as he leans over you – bright eyes gleaming with that sickness you’d almost convinced yourself you’d been imagining. You opt to shout, but he’s soon got his other hand clasped tight over the bottom half of your face before you get a sound out.

“You were supposed to fall in love with me, you know?” His voice is airy as though he’s confessing – but also on the brink of laughter as though he’s telling a joke in class. “That’s how it goes in the movies.”

You swallow beneath his hand – eyes peeled, heart beating so hard it hurts.

His eyes wander – roaming your neck and chest. It’s awfully quiet before he speaks again. “But I suppose we can act out a different plot line...” 

You whimper at his suggestive tone – already feeling the weight of his intentions bearing down on you, crushing you free of air. 

“I like romcoms, but horror stories have their charm, too...”

You shudder beneath the warmth of his breath, screaming into his palm once his warm lips mouth your throat, sucking on the tender skin with tongue and teeth in between words.

“An unfortunate college student finds themself moving into the same dorm as their unhinged stalker…”

There’s a thrill in his tone – something crazed and terrifying as he goes on.

“The two play a psychological game of endurance, trying to balance college and privacy while sharing the same space...”

Something hard and gross steadily ruts against your thigh. His voice gets thicker – breath hotter on your neck. The kisses turn sloppy. Tears burn your cheeks.

“Everything seems to lead up to a party held before Spring break, a fateful night on which their endurance finally runs out.”

He groans, and you sob.

“A rejected kiss, a can of pepper spray, a shared bed. What happens next?”

♡ BNHA – Denki, Kirishima, Hawks ♡ JJK – Mahito, Gojo, Yuuta ♡ HQ – Miya twins ♡ CSM – Yoshida ♡ BLLK – Nagi

♡ FEM x M INSERT masterlist ♡ GN x M INSERT masterlist

Full fic with smut available here:

[cameforstuff]

Au, where Stan doesn't break the science project but Ford still loses. Instead, Stan's shitty project 'footbot' gets him into West Coast Tech. He accidentally created a new element when it explodes or something.

Filbrick wants his millions, so it's college or the streets. Stan goes to college expecting to flunk out, but he keeps passing his assignments

This is because Ford moves in nearby and is seething in the bushes, but he wants to help his brother, so he helps him a bit. He's too good to actually cheat for Stan, so instead, he keeps him from falling behind. Like he throws rocks at Stan's window to make sure he gets up for his tests or signs him up for tutoring when he struggles in a subject. (Definitely not Ford in disguise) Plus Stan isn't dumb so he actually starts to learn.

Stan is trying his best to fail but can't because Ford is literally creating Rube Goldberg machines to aid his brother.

[astrolook]

🔮 Astrology’s Best-Kept Secrets: What Your Birth Chart Reveals That No One Talks About

Today I'm back with another post and don't forget to comment below!

You’ve probably heard the basics: ✨ Your Sun Sign is your personality. ✨ Your Moon Sign is your emotions. ✨ Your Rising Sign is how people see you.

But let’s be real—your birth chart holds WAY more secrets than that. And I’m here to spill the cosmic tea. ☕🌌

The 12th House – The “You” That Even You Don’t Know About

The 12th house is the hidden realm of your chart—it rules dreams, subconscious fears, past life karma, and the parts of yourself that you repress without realizing it. It’s basically the shadow version of you that leaks out when you're alone, emotional, or half-asleep at 3 AM.

💀 Planets in the 12th House? They operate in the background, influencing you in ways you don’t always understand.

🌀 Example:

Mars in the 12th House? You suppress anger until it EXPLODES. People might say you have "chill vibes," but deep down, you’re constantly in a mental boxing match. 🥊

Venus in the 12th House? You love in secret. You might be drawn to unavailable people, or you attract love that feels like a soulmate connection but in a tragic novel way. 💔

Mercury in the 12th House? You think FAST, but when you try to explain your thoughts, it comes out as ???—like your brain is buffering in real time.

💭 Ever feel like something’s holding you back, but you can’t explain it? That’s your 12th house at work.

The North Node – Your Karmic Destiny (a.k.a. What the Universe Keeps Pushing You Toward)

Your North Node is your soul’s assignment in this lifetime. It’s what you’re meant to learn, but it’s also the thing you naturally resist the most. 😭

🔥 Example:

North Node in Aries? You need to stop people-pleasing and become your own main character. You weren’t born to follow.

North Node in Libra? Relationships and balance are your destiny—but first, you have to stop running from love.

North Node in Capricorn? The universe is forcing you to step into leadership and take control of your life. No more “I’ll do it later” excuses!

👀 Knowing your North Node helps explain why life keeps slapping you with the same lesson over and over.

The 8th House – The “Dark Side” of You That People Feel But You Don’t See

The 8th house is deep, intense, and a little terrifying. It rules transformation, intimacy, secrets, power, and things that are “taboo.” People with strong 8th house placements have magnetic, mysterious energy—they either draw people in or make them nervous.

⚡ Example:

Pluto in the 8th House? You’re basically a walking X-ray machine. You can spot fake energy in seconds, and you’re probably low-key psychic. 🔮

Moon in the 8th House? You feel EVERYTHING too deeply but pretend you don’t. Your emotions come with a built-in intensity setting at 100%. Family and ancestral secrets.

Venus in the 8th House? When you love, you love with your entire soul. Your relationships are either all-consuming or simply casual flings. You won't settle down until you find the one and also your spouse could be richer than you.

💀 8th house placements = People either obsess over you or avoid you. No in-between.

Chiron – Your Deepest Wound (That You Keep Repeating Until You Heal It)

Chiron is the “wound” you carry throughout life—the thing that keeps hurting no matter how much you try to ignore it. But here’s the twist: once you heal it, you become a guide for others.

💔 Example:

Chiron in the 1st House? You always feel like you’re not good enough, no matter how much you glow up.

Chiron in the 7th House? You might struggle with relationships because deep down, you fear rejection.

Chiron in the 10th House? No matter how hard you work, you feel like success is always just out of reach.

💡 Healing your Chiron = stepping into your true power. But first, you have to acknowledge the pain.

Saturn – The Cosmic Life Coach (a.k.a. Why Life Feels Hard Sometimes)

Saturn is like that strict teacher who expects the best from you but never hands out A’s easily. It rules karma, discipline, and hard lessons. If something in your life feels extra difficult, check where Saturn is in your chart.

Example:

Saturn in the 2nd House? You’ll have to WORK for financial stability—no trust fund luck here. But once you learn the lessons, you build lasting wealth.

Saturn in the 5th House? Creativity and romance might feel blocked in early life. But once you unlock your confidence, you’re unstoppable.

Saturn in the 7th House? You’re probably not the “love at first sight” type. Relationships come with extra lessons—but they also get better with age. Either marry age or would have a significant age difference with your partner.

⏳ Saturn rewards patience. What feels impossible now will make sense later.

The IC (Imum Coeli) – The “Hidden Core” of Who You Are

Your IC (Imum Coeli) is the lowest point in your chart, ruling your deepest self, your upbringing, and what makes you feel safe. It’s often linked to childhood patterns and the part of you that only comes out when you’re truly comfortable.

🏡 Example:

IC in Cancer? You need emotional security like oxygen. A cozy home, family vibes, and deep connections = your safe space.

IC in Scorpio? You grew up learning that trust is earned, not given. You keep your emotions locked up unless someone proves they’re worthy.

IC in Aquarius? You never quite felt “normal” growing up—maybe you were the black sheep or had unique interests. But deep down, you just want to be accepted for who you truly are.

✨ Want to Know YOUR Hidden Birth Chart Secrets?

Your chart holds so many clues about your life purpose, struggles, and the cosmic blueprint of your soul. 🚀

📩 DM me for a complete birth chart reading! Let’s uncover what the stars are really saying about you. 🔮✨

Karmic Paths & Soul Purpose: A Complete Guide to the North Nodes & South Nodes in Astrology (13-page report) - $5

Get my full PDF guide for just $5! Payment via PayPal. Once payment is confirmed, I will send you the PDF. It covers North Node & South Node in signs & houses, who you were in your past life, your career, family, love and your relationships in detail. Message me to grab your copy! 🌟

Note : Due to different time zones, I might not reply immediately. Don't worry! Leave me your email address for me to send the password-protected PDF file. Once the payment is confirmed, I will give you the password to access to it.

[ghostbeam]

Oblivi_n.exe | Dabi/Touya Todoroki

Touya Todoroki, known as ‘Dabi’ to the league, quirk class: cremation, mech title: Blue. You’re his new handler. 

As Dabi’s new handler, you’re well aware of his history, how frequently he goes through handlers assigned to him. Not that he ever uses them—it’s more complete resistance. You’re not particularly good at your job. Transferred from the PLF for lack of success in handling any of their pilots, you’ve always been far too gentle. You lack authority. Your pilots never respected you. You don’t think Dabi will be any different. You give it a week. 

Notes: okay wow hiiiii it’s been a long time since I’ve posted an actual fic (nearing almost a year now😬) this is something I’ve been working on for a bit. I have mech brain rot curtesy of @streimiv and @hawnks (both of whom this is dedicated to bc there’s no way I could have written this without yapping to them abt it and also mint helped me come up w the acronym for HERO’s) and we’ve all got our own mech fics in the works atm but anywayssssss this is kind of my baby atm but I hope it makes sense it’s very inspired first and foremost by pacific rim and then also NGE (mostly through consumption of YouTube vids bc I haven’t actually watched it pls don’t hate me) it’s a whole mess of things and Dabi is kind of a bitch and reader is slowly coming into herself and at the end of the day they both wanna be metal fused to one another forever (no matter how hard he denies it) also I’m not a huge computer person idk if this title makes sense so don’t make fun of me pls ok anyways I hope u like it!!!!

Warnings: 18+, minors DNI, pilot!Dabi x handler!reader, there’s no explicit sexual content in this part, not even a kiss sorry guys, mentions of robot gore (exposed wires, insides described as guts), brief descriptions of being trapped inside a small space, descriptions of burning while inside said space, mention of surgery to fashion a metal jaw onto someone, mentions of child abuse (nothing graphic just allusions to the todoroki family and touya’s past), angst, many run on sentences, a small cliff hanger

Words: 7.9k

Pt. 1 | Pt. 2 (coming soon)

You are nothing without your machine.

It’s the first rule, the first thing beaten into his brain by his father. You carry the burden of the mech alone, or you’re weak. You don’t exist. 

U.A. raises the best and brightest pilots, navigators, mechanics, and handlers, each one carefully trained to ensure the most important outcome: winning. It should be protection. It should be defense. But if Touya has learned anything at all, it’s that winning means glory. It means worship. It means HERO’s (Human Engineered Robotic Objects) are saints, and pilots are gods. 

 Touya used to be one of those best and brightest before his accident. 

First son to Enji Todoroki, Touya was supposed to be the golden child, the first Todoroki to pilot without a handler. He was supposed to carry the burden alone, something his father couldn’t do, something only one man has ever actually been capable of. 

But Touya is born weak, bad bones, a brain unable to handle all that the mech needs to unload onto it. One too many accidents results in him being expelled from the pilot program, his HERO discarded and collecting dust in its pod, and Touya is promptly transferred to mechanics. 

It should have been a smooth transition. If one kid can’t handle it, the next will. Because they have to. 

He doesn’t take the news well. It’s a fit of tears, a persistent fight, unable to accept the loss of his machine—of his body. Because Touya loves it. What he lacks in strength, he makes up for in pure passion, and despite being unable to handle the burden, there’s no denying that he’s good. He’s almost perfect. 

But almost is not enough for Enji Todoroki, and no matter how hard Touya tries, he’s made up his mind. 

After months of mechanics, Touya makes a decision. When the next fleet of HERO’s is deployed for the next kaiju battle, Touya sneaks in among the chaos, tucked neatly inside the chest of his machine where he belongs. It doesn’t take long for things to go south, for Touya to get caught in the crossfire, losing control of his mech and burning from the inside out. 

It should be an excruciating death, stuck inside a machine made for war, fire raining from above as a battle continues on outside without him. 

But he survives, because what he lacks in strength, he makes up for in resilience, and his mech is programed with solutions to every situation. He’s stuck inside for months before he’s found.

Tomura Shigaraki rescues him, pries open the chest of his mech and pulls him from inside. His group feeds him, takes him in, fashions a new jaw for him made from the metal of his mech, and allows him the decision to join their cause or go back home. 

And since there’s no home to go back to, Touya finds his footing with the league and becomes one of their top pilots. One who vehemently resists any and all handlers.

…

Touya Todoroki, known as ‘Dabi’ to the league, quirk class: cremation, mech title: Blue. You’re his new handler. 

As Dabi’s new handler, you’re well aware of his history, how frequently he goes through handlers assigned to him. Not that he ever uses them—it’s more complete resistance. You’re not particularly good at your job. Transferred from the PLF for lack of success in handling any of their pilots, you’ve always been far too gentle. You lack authority. Your pilots never respected you. You don’t think Dabi will be any different. You give it a week. 

Following closely behind Tenko, formerly Tomura, he quickly explains to you the in’s and out’s of the pilot/handler relationship, along with a warning about Dabi’s resentment toward the whole idea. You try to keep up, but he talks quickly and uses his hands a lot. Even so, you can tell he’s a natural leader, something he had to grow into after overthrowing the man who raised him. His story is a tragic one, and it resonates with you because Tenko came out the other side stronger. Now, the league is a community with a cause, one you really believe in. Even if you and Dabi aren’t the right fit, you still have a place here. 

You follow Tenko into what he calls the garage, a large floor of the abandoned academy that serves as the league’s base, this part of it full of HERO’s and mechanics all focused on the machines in front of them. It’s completely different from how HERO’s were worked on at UA, where you grew up, and even the PLF didn’t have one dedicated floor to this sort of work. You can feel the energy of the room buzzing on your skin, music blasting from old radios and mechanics tossing tools towards one another in a familiar routine. Tomura leads you to Dabi and his HERO, Blue, though you’re instructed not to call it a HERO around him. With goggles over his eyes and gloved hands, he brings two wires from Blue’s ankle together, sighing at the way they spark each time they connect. 

“Dabi.” Tomura calls over the music coming from the radio hanging off of Dabi’s waist. He drops the wires and his gaze flickers toward the two of you. Pushing his goggles up to his forehead, he gives you a once over. His eyes are the brightest you’ve ever seen—kaiju blood blue—and burn scars litter his body. He’s striking in a way you’ve never seen, almost too beautiful to be human. Giving Dabi your name, Tomura explains that you’re taking over as his handler, seeing as he couldn’t keep the last one for more than a couple of days. “She’s your last handler. If you can’t keep this one, then go ahead and fry your brain. See if I care.”

“You say that every time.” Dabi calls from around sucker as Tomura walks away, leaving you alone with your new pilot. 

You just your hand out in a greeting, “I’m looking forward to working with you.”

Eyeing your hand, Dabi shakes his head and turns his back to you, picking the two wires back up and connecting them again, despite the same spark from before igniting between the two. He looks back up at Blue, touching his fingers to the slim lines starting at the back of her ankle and running all the way up her leg. You peak over his shoulder at the wiring, noticing that he’s connecting two of the wrong ones. 

“It’s the wrong wire.” You tell him, and he spins around to look at you, tearing his goggles from his face as he scoffs. 

“Here we go.” He sighs with a roll of his eyes, pulling the candy from his lips and tossing it onto the tool cart without a care. “Handler know-it-all bullshit. This is my mech.”  

You push passed him and grab the similarly colored wire from beside a red wire and connect it with the one in Dabi’s right hand. Blue lights up cyan through the thin lines that run along each of its limbs and torso, connecting with the two cameras within its head, which seem to blink before the light reaches them. 

In an instant, you’re being pushed up against the hard metal, a strong arm over your chest—pinning you up against the HERO. Dabi, now having discarded his goggles, looks at you full of white, hot rage. 

“Don’t fucking touch her.” He growls. You’re suddenly aware of the close proximity, eyes flickering between the snarl across his lips and his angry gaze. For a beat, you both freeze, the air suddenly charged like you’re waiting for one another to strike. Snapping yourself out of his hypnotic stare, you push against his chest, forcing him to let you go. 

“If I’m going to be you’re handler, you’re going to have to trust me with her.” You remind him. He lets out a harsh laugh, like he can’t believe you would suggest such a ridiculous idea. 

“I don’t trust anything but this machine.” He speaks, turning away from you to seal up the machine’s exposed wires. It’s a challenge you’re willing to accept.

“Well, I’m here to change that.” You tell him, before turning on your heel to leave him alone. 

He thinks he’ll give you a week. 

…

One of the worst parts of being assigned a handler, Touya thinks, is the way that pilot/handler living quarters are set up. He assumes the academy, before it was abandoned and turned into a base for the league, created this sort of set up so that handlers could keep a close eye on their pilots. The handlers Touya has burned through up until now also assumed the same. 

The door that connects both the pilot’s and handler’s dorms doesn’t lock, and all of Touya’s past handlers have taken advantage of this fact. He’s been pulled out of bed far too early, pushed around and commanded and barked at. Most handlers behaved as if pilots belonged to them, which was the sentiment drilled into their brains from being thrown into such a fucked up system at a young age.—unless you were a pilot of status like a Todoroki. While he league dedicates a lot of its time to reversing these ideas, most handlers look at Touya like some kind of challenge, this arrogant pilot begging to be tamed. It never takes long for them to realize how easily he’s able to flip the switch on them. You’ll be no different.

But hours pass and you still haven’t entered. You don’t swing the door open and demand he apologize for his behavior earlier. You don’t try and punish him with training regimes, a command of a set of push ups, a schedule you expect him to follow, an extremely detailed meal plan. The entire evening comes and goes without so much as a sound on the other side of the door so he knows you’re even behind it. 

He falls asleep unnerved by this, waking up late into the night in a cold sweat, expecting you to barge in, rip the covers from his body and demand to train together. When he wakes up (peacefully) the next morning, there’s no sign of you. He rises from his bed, drinks orange juice straight from the carton and eats a candy bar for breakfast. He fiddles with the navigation screen from his mech that stopped working a couple of days ago, tools spread out on the counter in front of him. Once he’s got the thing working again, your knock sounds from the unlocked door between the two of you. He thinks this might be it, the commands he expects to fall from your lips at the ready as he swings the door open, but you stand there, nervous, hands twitching as your eyes finally meet his.

Greeted by a shirtless Touya, hair mused from sleep, cargo pants hung low on his hips, dog tags swinging against his chest, his scars on display, unashamed and proud. The sight of him knocks the breath out of you, and you clear your throat in embarrassment, hoping your state of dreaming comes off as nerves rather than lust. 

“Dabi. Or do you prefer Touya?” You smile. When he doesn’t answer, you continue. “I wanted to see if you wanted to eat breakfast together in the caf. I think we should start over. Yesterday was—”

You’re promptly cut off, “I already ate breakfast.”

With a harsh slam of the door, he leaves you stunned in your room.

You eat alone. 

When you started as a pilot, back when you’d entered UA (a few years about Touya’s accident), you went into it believing you could change the world. The exam had placed you into the position of handler, and you were assigned a pilot who had always seemed a little frightened of you despite your obvious lack of authority. Bringing the fact up to your instructors did nothing. They all assured you that this was the ideal dynamic, that the handler always had the upper hand, but you hated that feeling. You weren’t a team like you expected to be; you were urged to control your pilot. You were there to keep them in line, not to be a pillar of support. The bond was never built on trust, and the soul link was always a looming threat. No matter how many pilots you went through, the link was never held as a gift, but a prison, something you would both be stuck with for the betterment of society, a sacrifice to make. 

You’d been expelled from the handler program after guiding your pilot to help save another in the wreckage of your first battle together, resulting in the damage of your pilot’s HERO. Your pilot was okay, but the other couldn’t be saved, and you were blamed for the damage of both mech’s. 

When you found the league (or when the league found you), you were working with the PLF, but proved to be a weak handler. Every pilot you were assigned to took advantage of your optimistic outlook on the kind of relationship dynamic that pilots had with their handlers. Despite all that you had been through at UA, and with the rest of the pilots you’d been paired with after, you never gave up the hope that handlers and pilots could behave as a team, or, even better, one entity. 

Tenko had taken one look at you and demanded you’d be transferred to the league. There hadn’t been much of a choice in the matter, not that you really cared. You were miserable everywhere else. But when you arrived at the abandoned academy and taken a peak behind the kudzu covered walls where each and every area of the building acted as multiple moving parts in collaboration with one another in order to create one massive system, you realized that this was the future you imagined for yourself—and for the world you lived in.

Tenko saw something in you that day, something you aren’t sure you even see in yourself. And so Dabi was your first task, one that’s proving to be very difficult. But he doesn’t treat you like all the other pilots before had. He doesn’t use you. In fact, it seems like he wants nothing to do with you. And while that’s a problem, it’s still one you can work with. 

You’re broken from your thoughts by the sound of a voice through an overhead intercom asking for everyone to meet on the first floor of the academy at their earliest convenience. Judging by the quick movements of those around you, you figure you’d better head downstairs as soon as possible. 

The meeting on the first floor makes you very aware of just how small the league really is. While it’s definitely not a tiny organization, it’s still much smaller than both UA and the PLF. With everyone piled up like this in one group, you realize it feels more like a community, and the hum of conversation that surrounds you comforts you in a way you’ve never felt within the walls of any other academy before. 

There’s discussion about the upcoming mission, one which may be the league’s most ambitious yet; the plan to hijack a mech and kidnap a pilot may be a little unorthodox compared to the league’s past missions, but the jaded pilot they’re targeting has a high chance of joining the cause. Or that’s what they have assumed. As the bodies move and speak around you, it strikes you how different this meeting is from any other meeting you’ve ever been a part of. Tenko is less a dictator and more a wrangler for the disembodied voices of your peers. 

You don’t know much about his story, save for the vague details you’ve heard, but Tenko’s status as a lone handler is something you find yourself curious about. If he’s able to work without a pilot, why can’t you? It’s an idea you keep in your back pocket, one you think you can fall back on if things with Touya don’t work out. But you want them to work out. So badly. 

You aren’t sure what it is about him, but he’s reignited that spark inside of you. You know he’d rather you give up, and maybe the you from a couple of months ago would have, but something about him—and this place—won’t let you leave. 

As you observe the meeting, you take the time to look around the room, taking in your peers and their attentive faces as they listen to Tenko intently. You turn to your right, your eyes meeting a pair of blue ones, impossible to miss. Dabi holds your stare for what feels like ages, and when your colleagues erupt in a fit of many simultaneous discussions, you tear your eyes from his to observe the commotion. When you glance back in his direction, he’s gone. 

You don’t seem him again after that. You train with other handlers, get to know your peers a little better. Everyone else seems to be welcoming, and most offer you sympathy when they find out you’re Touya’s new handler. From what you can gather, he’s had his fair share of them, all of which have quit or left in hysterics due to his harsh nature. When you ask around about where he could be, you’re told that he’s most likely in the garage, a place you assume he’s in more often than not.

You don’t know if you’ll ever get used to the garage. A place so completely different, so against the ideas and beliefs of any other academy you’ve been a part of, the chaos and community within is so foreign to you. You find Touya with Blue, working inside of her chest, where the cockpit is. 

“Touya!” You call up to him and watch as he peaks his head over the edge of her metal plating. Annoyance falling across his face, he jumps down from where he stands, landing hard on his feet in front of you. 

“What are you doing here?” He questions, his figure so tall and imposing above you. He’s not particularly muscular, not even all that tall compared to Tenko, but he makes you feel small regardless, in more ways than one. Rolling your shoulders back, you stare straight into his eyes, unwilling to back down. 

“I figured you wanted your space today.” You explain, as Touya moves around you to get to his rolling cart of tools, forcing you to turn toward him and follow him if you want him to hear you. “I know adjusting to a new handler is rough, and I never want to make you uncomfortable. But I was thinking we could try some of those pilot/handler bonding exercises. It might be good to start training like some of the others do.”

He drops the wrench in his hand onto his cart with a loud thud, turning around toward you with a look of disbelief on his face. “Pilot/handler bonding exercises? They really brainwashed the shit out of you at UA, huh?”

At the mention of your past academy, your eyes widen in surprise. You had no idea he knew about that. Clearing your throat in order to compose yourself, you speak again, “I left UA for a reason. I have no attachment to their methods, but you guys do the same stuff here, so what’s the issue?”

“The issue is that I never asked for a fucking handler in the first place, especially not one as eager as you.” He spits, “Sure, you’re understanding now, all that bullshit about ‘giving me space,’ but the moment you get a lick of power over me, you’ll change. You’re not different.”

“I don’t want power over you. This is an equal exchange. Pilot’s and handlers are meant to be a team—” You try and argue, but he doesn’t let you finish. 

“That’s what they told you, right? We’re a team, and as teammates, you make sacrifices. And it doesn’t matter if one of you turns into the other’s braindead dog because that’s your place.” His words hit you hard, the exact thought process you went through when leaving UA, completely disillusioned with their idea of “teamwork.” He’s right, and you know it, but since coming here, you thought that wasn’t how it had to be.

“Look, trust me, I get—” You’re cut off again.

“You went to UA! There’s no trusting you.” He scoffs, “It’s not like you’ll last here, anyway.”

“You are such a hypocrite! You’re from UA!” You retort, throwing your arms up in desperation. “You can hate me all you want. You can resist and resist and fry your brain ‘till there’s nothing left, but I believe in this shit. And you don’t get to tell me that I don’t, or tell me I’ll turn into something I worked so hard to get away from.”

Touya stands there, surprised by your outburst, completely unaware that you were capable of all of that. He doesn’t say anything back, and you roll your eyes. “So fuck you, and, by the way, her angel port is smoking.”

At your words, he turns in a rush, seeing the smoke billowing from Blue’s chest as he climbs his way up her form. Once inside his machine, he extinguishes the port and allows himself to relax. There are two things on his mind in this moment: how you could have possibly known it was the angel port without being inside of Blue’s chest and how, for the first time in a long time, he feels bad for his handler.

But for you, it’s the first time you’ve ever held your own against a pilot before, and that feels good.

…

Something feels weird.

Off, unsettling, strange.

He realizes, much to his dismay, that it’s your absence. Despite only having you around for such a short time, Touya has realized that your lack of presence now feels wrong. He hates it. He hates you. 

He can’t find you. You haven’t knocked on his door. You’re not in the caf, not the garage, not the sparring floor, not in your room. And he did check—without knocking. 

He’s not even sure how he can feel an absence. You aren’t a regular part of his life, and he never wanted you to be. But he feels all fucked up.

During training, Touya jams Blue’s halo core and she leaks vibrant neon from between her ribs. It takes him half an hour to get her reboot her system and rips one of the cables attached to the back of his suit in the process. He spends the afternoon cleaning HERO fluid off the sparring floor. 

During repairs, he shocks himself over and over while trying to fix her core, fingers burning from the sparks each time he arranges the wires inside. The cameras in her eyes won’t work from the reboot, and Blue won’t let him unlock the lens panel to fix it. It’s almost like she’s mad at him too.

He’s a complete mess. It’s your fault. He has no choice but to go looking for you. Again.

He searches every wing of the academy before concluding that you’re in your room. He barges through the joint door, spotting you at the counter in your tiny kitchen. You’re surprised by the intrusion, a frightened gasp falling from your lips as you jump in your seat. You turn toward him, prepared with angry words on your tongue, but Touya speaks first.

“You’re not getting an apology out of me, so don’t expect it.” He begins, moving to stand in front of your swiveling kitchen stool as he looks down at you. “But I’m willing to be civil with you, so we don’t have to do this shit anymore.”

You’re not exactly sure what “this shit” is, but Touya looks a little worse for wear at the moment, so you don’t question it. He places a tray from the caf down in front of you that you hadn’t noticed in his hands upon arrival, says nothing else, and turns to leave the room. After shutting your joint door, you look down at the tray of food, noticing one of his suckers placed onto a vacant compartment of the tray. 

You’re greeted the next morning with a knock on your door, Touya dressed in his pilot’s suit on the other side as you swing the door open. “C’mon. You’re gonna watch me train today.”

You watch him turn around to leave, expecting you to follow. You rush to pull on your combat boots and grip your dog tags in your fist as you rush to catch up to him. He doesn’t spare you a glance as you fall into step beside him, taking a look around his dorm before he leads you through the exit door. 

“You need to get a feel for my fighting style.” He explains as you walk down the corridor. “I’m not saying I’ll listen to you when it comes down to it, but it’s important for you to know.”

You nod, agreeing that you should definitely observe him inside of his HERO. By understanding his moves, you’ll be able to understand the way he thinks, and you’ll be able to help him in actual combat if needed. He’s already said he won’t listen to you, but it won’t stop you from trying. He stops abruptly, turning to look at you, and you stop with him. 

“If we’re gonna do this, it’ll be on my terms. I’m not your dog.” He tells you, seriously. He eye’s you up and down, taking in your expression as you nod at his words. “If anything, you’re mine.”

He begins walking again, leaving you in your spot, irritation filling your chest as you watch him, smug. “Asshole.” You curse under your breath.

“What’d you say?” He barks, turning to look at you abruptly.

“You’re an asshole.” You speak louder. He walks back toward you, making sure to tower over you intimidatingly as he looks down at you in annoyance. His eyes flicker down to the tags around your neck before hooking a finger on the chain and pulling you closer. 

“Watch it.” He drops the chain and walks away again. 

You follow him to the sparring floor, and he shows you where to go to watch. Stood behind a large window that looks over the sparring area, other members of the base watch the HERO’s engage in combat below. You spot Tenko and he motions for you to stand beside him. 

“I knew he’d warm up to you.” He comments. The last of the previous battle finishes and you watch the two enormous machines retreat to the sides of the area, their pilots emerging from their chests with their handlers rushing to the bottom of the mech’s in support. 

“He hasn’t. He’s not.” You shake your head. You aren’t sure why you deny it, if it’s some way to keep your expectations low or if there’s some kind of embarrassment aspect to the whole thing. Whatever is happening between you and Touya feels intimate and private, something that the two of you need to figure out for yourselves, not something meant for the eyes of others.

“Hm. Okay.” Tenko shrugs. “Guess not.”

You hadn’t noticed Touya enter his mech at all. You see the swing of one giant mechanic arm, too close to the window you stand behind, and you’ve shifted your full attention to the scene at hand. 

The enormity of the room surprises you, despite the fact that you had seen it just moments before. But when you’re truly looking at it, watching these huge machines go at each other, the way the ground shakes, the leaves outside shake, the deep forrest clear in view from the wall that opens out to the greenery (the lack of a wall is likely from the academy’s abandoned state, but it’s a good feature to have on the sparring floor when giant robots are toppled over onto various surfaces).

The way Blue moves is electric, mechanic movements almost feel fluid with the way that Touya pilots her, easily dodging attacks from their opponent and moving around them in the most graceful way a giant machine can. It’s beautiful, unlike any fighting style you’ve ever seen in a HERO before. 

“He’s showing off for you.” Tenko observes from beside you. You don’t argue with him, only because you can’t dispute it. This is your first time seeing him in action. It makes your heart beat out of your chest. There’s this ache like you should be inside with him, cables connected to both of you, tucked neatly inside of Blue together. 

It doesn’t take him long to get his opponent on their back, the heavy thump against the floor jostling the ant-like figures on the ground below, handlers waiting for their pilots to finish. It goes on like this for a while, his training, using different methods of combat and winning each time. He’s amazing, and you can tell why his reputation is the way it is, second only to Tenko, who you have yet to see in action. 

When he finishes his last session, you watch Blue walk to the edge of the room, and Touya emerges from her chest, jumping the long way down her body without any issue. You watch as he looks toward the window you’re behind. He waves at you, an acknowledgment of your presence, and you wave back, though you aren’t sure he can actually see you.

It’s the beginning of everything for the two of you. You think Tenko was right.

He lets you stay with him afterwards while he does maintenance on Blue. He helps you climb up the path to her chest, hauling you over the edge to sit inside with him. He turns around abruptly, holding a hand up before allowing you to walk any further.

“Do not touch anything.” He warns, completely serious, before letting his hand fall and allowing you further into the cockpit. You take in your surroundings, the guts of his machine, analyzing the different control panels and screens that line the interior. You can tell he takes good care of her, and he spends a lot of time in here. It looks lived in, stickers stuck to metal plating and pieces of him all over. He’s made a second home in between the ribs of his mech. You feel a little jealous, though you aren’t sure of what. 

The two of you sit against the left side of Blue’s interior, waiting for her updates to finish, the loading screen on each of her monitors display a fire graphic that grows with the increasing percentage on screen. Between you and Touya sits an opened bag of sour gummies, which Touya picks out the lemon flavor and drops the candy in your palm with each new handful he gathers. 

“How do you know all this stuff?” He questions around a mouthful of sour cherry, “Like, the real names for things, where stuff goes, how to fix them. That day with the wires…”

“I spent a lot of time around mechanics at UA, and then also at the PLF.” You explain, picking the yellow colored candy from his open palm as you speak. “I couldn’t connect with other handlers. I didn’t like how they thought, or how they viewed the pilot/handler relationship. Mechanics were mostly neutral, and they loved these machines like nothing else. They reminded me of why I joined UA in the first place.”

“Hm.” He nods, thinking about your past. “Well, I guess if you spent so much time around actual professionals…I could maybe use your help sometimes in the garage.”

“Really?” You question excitedly, a spark lighting up your eyes as you swerve your head toward him. He feels something tight in his chest at the sight.

“Yes, but only on the outside. I don’t want you messing with her insides, yet.” He establishes. “And never alone. I have to be there at all times.”

“Of course, yes, oh my god. Touya!” You smile, gripping his shoulder firmly, a gesture of thanks, communication of how much his trust means to you. “I’ll be so careful with her, I promise.”

“Yeah, well, you have no other choice.” He shrugs, throwing another pile of candy in his mouth. “I’ll kill you if anything happens to her.”

You take the threat seriously, but his heart isn’t in it. He’s realized that you’ve wormed your way into his life and he hadn’t even noticed just how entangled you were now. 

As the weeks go by, you spend a lot more time together. You work on blue together, and you rest inside of her chest, sometimes allowing yourself to drift off against his shoulder on especially tiring days. He sits beside you in the caf, and while he doesn’t always say much, the feeling of his arm against yours is comforting. You can tell people are starting to notice, and they’re starting to talk. You’re being dubbed someone who’s tamed him, but you know how far from the truth that is. 

Despite your differences and the petty arguments that come up when Touya feels like you’re intruding on his independence, you’re growing attached. You wonder if he is, too.

…

Spending time together in the garage becomes the new normal for the two of you. Being in each other’s dorms feels far too intimate, so you always meet in the garage. This way, one of you is always busy doing something with your hands. There’s no room for any strange feelings in the pit of your stomach to seep in. 

You sit in the crook of Blue’s neck, watching Touya as he repairs the lenses in her “eyes.” Blue has three pairs of eyes; in her head, her chest, and down near her hips, which all footage is projected onto monitors inside the cockpit so that Touya has a full view of what’s in front of him. 

He’s so peaceful while he works, you’ve noticed, almost like he goes somewhere else completely. It’s a part of him you don’t think many people get to see, a piece of him just for you, and you want to be selfish with it.

“Can I ask you something?” You question, leaning your head back against the metal. “But you can’t get mad.”

He looks up at you, still fiddling with a lens, a mocking look on his face. “I’m not making any promises.”

You take a deep breath, preparing yourself for the possible fallout of the question you’re about to ask, “What do you think about the soul link?”

“No.” He shakes his head. “I’d never do it.”

You nod your head in understanding, “yeah, I get it. It’s weird, right? The idea that someone else would be inside your brain.”

“It’s fucking invasive.” He says.

“You know, at UA it always felt like a threat, you know. Like, it was a way for a handler to control their pilot, not a tool or a bond like it should be.” You begin, thinking back to how you viewed the soul link back then. You didn’t like how the bond was presented as this power that a handler holds over their pilot, a threat to keep their pilot in line. But, you could understand how the link could be used for good. “But since coming here, I can tell it’s not all bad. People trust each other here. I mean, there’s obviously some people who abuse it, but, for the most part, everyone seems to understand what it really means to be a pilot and a handler.”

You’re mostly just thinking out loud, but Touya doesn’t say anything to your ramblings. He continues to work on the lenses, and you can gather that he doesn’t want to talk about the subject anymore. But you can’t let it go, yet. There’s something you’ve been worried about since you met him.

“And what about…your brain? They say when a handler and a pilot don’t complete the soul link, the pilot will eventually fry their brain.” You can’t help it. You think about it all the time, what will happen when he can’t take it anymore. The closer you get to him, the realer it feels. “Are you ever worried about that?”

He looks at you, an expression you can’t quite make out fall across his face as he stares. It’s almost soft, the way he looks at you in this moment. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

The truth is, this is a reality Touya has accepted. He’s not afraid to die, and he never has been. He’ll probably die inside of Blue, and he has no problem with that fact. He doesn’t need to be around for long, just enough to show his dad what he’s capable of.

“C’mon.” You stare. “That’s not fair.”

“Shit. I left some of the screws for this in my dorm.” He curses. He looks where you lounge, tucked into Blue’s shoulder. “Keep an eye on her, okay?”

You watch him jump down, much higher than his usual height at her chest, but he lands anyway. He doesn’t turn to look back at you as he jogs away. You climb up the side of Blue, and look at the lenses in her head. They’re already repaired, and you know Touya used the excuse of missing screw just so he wouldn’t have to talk about the soul link.

But it’s the first time he’s ever left you alone with Blue before. 

…

As the mission draws closer, Touya throws himself into training. You’re on the training floor with him most days, standing behind that big glass panel as you watch him spar with his peers. He still doesn’t let you down on the floor with him until he’s full out of Blue and close enough to the edge of the sparring floor to get to you. You’re not allowed in the actual training area, and even though he says he doesn’t want you clinging to him, it’s really because he wants to keep you safe. Seeing your human body near the giant machines that are HERO’s makes him want to grab you and keep you inside of Blue’s chest forever. 

You can tell all the training is taking a toll on him. With an excess of headaches and the occasional nosebleed, you continuously get into arguments about him cutting back on training inside of Blue. There are other ways for him to prepare that don’t involve his fragile brain being hooked up to an entity that takes so much. He doesn’t listen.

Later and later into the night, as your fellow pilots and handlers disperse and return to their rooms to sleep, Touya stays inside of Blue, testing her movements and sparring against test dummies and obstacles. Once you and Touya are the only two left on the sparring floor, you speak into the intercom attached to your head.

“Touya, I think you should take a break.” You tell him, “It’s late. Get some rest and then we can pick it back up in the morning.”

There’s a pause, then, “I’m gonna stay for another hour. Get some sleep. I’ll be done soon.”

“No, Touya. You’ve been at it for hours. You barely took a break for dinner. C’mon.” 

“You know, you sound awfully like a handler trying to tell their pilot what to do.” He teases, but you can hear the irritation in his voice.

“You are insufferable. I’m worried about you.” You groan.

“I’m fine. Go sleep.” He insists.

“If I find out you aren’t out of here in an hour—” Your line is promptly cut off, leaving behind static in your ear. You sigh and throw your com to the side. You hope he’s telling the truth.

With one last look at Blue, you make your way out of the training floor and find your way back to your dorm. 

Touya doesn’t answer the door when you knock the next morning. With a frustrated groan, you leave your dorm and head to the training floor, assuming he woke up early to get some extra hours in. The closer you get the the floor, you notice other members of the base rushing in front of you. Feeling panicked, you pick up the pace, jogging toward the training room to make sure something isn’t wrong. You collide with a body in front of you, nearly falling to the floor as you steady yourself. Toga stands in front of you, her cheeks red and eyes glossy as she explains something your mind can’t catch up to understand. The only thing you recognize is his name, and you’re running toward the training floor in an instant. 

You watch as Blue stomps around the area, her arms swinging in all directions, losing her footing as she moves. Knowing you can’t do anything on the floor, you make your way up to the overlook, finding Tenko yelling into your intercom. 

“What’s going on? What’s happening?” You ask him, pulling the headset off of his head and placing it on yours instead. 

“He’s out of fucking control. He won’t answer. I don’t even think he’s conscious in there.” He tells you, running a hand through his hair, pulling at the roots in anxiety. “You’re not linked yet, are you?”

You shake your head, closing your eyes in frustration as you try to think. You know it’s the only way. You have to take some of the burden off of him, make him share it with you. It’s the only way he’ll survive right now. “Do you think you can get into Decay right now and knock him down somehow?”

He hesitates, “I can get inside. I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to touch him at all.”

“You have to.” You plead, desperately. “I just need him down for ten seconds, tops. As long as I can get inside of her, I can save him.”

He looks at you like you’re insane, and maybe you are. But you know you can’t live with yourself if you don’t try something. Tenko nods.

“I can do it.” He tells you. You rush passed him, following the stairs down to the training area. You feel Tenk grab your wrist firmly. “You bring him back, okay?”

“I will.” You nod. 

He dodges Blue’s movements, weaving between her legs as he finally makes it to Decay. It takes a few moments for him to connect, but he goes straight for Blue. You watch the giant machines fight one another, but it’s clear that Blue’s lack of control hinders much of her ability. She needs Touya just as much as he needs her. It’s tough for Decay to dodge her swinging arms, but Tenko manages to knock her down quickly.

The fall shakes the room, but you waste no time running for Blue. Climbing over the side of her, you manage to touch your thumb to the pad on the outside to open her chest up. She begins to stand up, and you slip down, grabbing onto a bar beneath her ribcage. You let out a frustrated groan as you try to pull yourself up over the edge of the cockpit. Finally making it over, you see Touya sitting there, still connected to his pilot’s chair, eyes glazed over and blood gushing from his nose. You push the button that closes the panel in Blue’s chest, and you’re suddenly alone with him. 

Touya’s body is being jerked around by the movement of the mech, and you hang onto the walls of her chest in order to make your way to him. You situate yourself in his lap, taking his head in your hands as you look at him with tears in your eyes.

“You fucking asshole! I told you to take a break.” You sob, resting your head against his as you try and think of what to do next. “Touya, please. Please, baby, I need to you come back. Just fucking come back so I don’t have to do this without your permission, please.”

With no response from him, you wipe your tears, coming to terms with the fact that you have to complete the soul link now, or he’ll die. “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry, Touya. Please forgive me.”

The soul link isn’t exactly an action so much as it is a feeling, an experience. There’s no trigger for it, no way to make it happen. It just begins. 

It’s Touya, aged thirteen, wild, chubby-cheeked and happy, in the pilot’s seat of his father’s HERO. It’s his drive, his determination, his anger, his hurt. It’s the day he snuck into battle, the day he couldn’t get out, flesh burning and fusing to the metal walls of his mech, the feeling now deep in your skin. It’s you, aged fifteen, hopeful, alive, shaking hands with your first pilot. It’s your heart, much too big and much too open for your line of work, it’s your passion, your fire, every piece of you that was broken down again and again until there was nothing left. It’s Touya and it’s you, and every single bit of your souls now tied together in one big knot. 

There’s nothing but darkness. And then there’s screaming. And then you can hear everything. Every thought running through Touya’s brain right now echoes in your head as you slowly come back to yourself. He can hear the same of yours.

It’s overwhelming at first, to have two sets of thoughts in your head at the same time, but you manage to focus. You can feel an anger inside of you like you’ve never felt. It’s almost like it’s your own. You need to come back. You’ve lost control of Blue.

In an instant, you feel yourself come back to your body, now straddling Touya like before, you feel his arms shoot around you and he tucks his chin over your shoulder to pilot Blue like he’s used to doing. He pays no mind as he presses up against you, but you feel your heart rate increase at the closeness. 

He’s so close.

I have to be. You’re in my lap.

Shit. I didn’t think—

Clearly.

I can’t fucking believe you. I told you we weren’t going to do this.

You were dying!

Then you fucking let me!

You’re jostled around in his lap for a moment as he stops Blue from destroying any more of the training floor, and Touya wraps an arm around your waist, holding you steady.

He gains control of her quickly, moving her toward the edge of the room. You tuck your face into his neck, not wanting to distract him and keeping your thoughts at bay so you don’t overwhelm him. He powers Blue down, severing the neural connection between the two of you, and shoves you from his lap and into the pilot’s chair like you’ve burned him. He storms out of the cockpit, climbing out of his machine and leaving you inside. You think about the argument you had within each other’s head, how Touya would have rather died than be linked to you like he is now. 

You slump against the seat, comforted by the metal cage you’ve been left inside of. 

[yandere-sins]

Yan-Poll #38

#MerMay 2025 Special

"And here-" Reaching into the drawer beside his desk, the Professor took out a large stack of documents, placing it before you solemnly. "-are the files and information you need to get started on your own project. What do you say, do you feel up to the task?"

You gulped.

There it was, finally, the chance of a lifetime. After dedicating years to studying marine life, you were finally allowed to work in this field and given an opportunity to prove yourself and your abilities. The IML Research Facility hadn't been your first choice, but it was the only one that accepted you—the field had turned out to be much more competitive than you thought.

As far as you had seen, it was huge. Huge enough to make you sign all kinds of NDA just to visit them for an interview. It was exciting and nerve-wracking at the same time, but you had been very impressed with all the machinery and enclosures you had been shown. They had tanks and machines for every kind of species, they even started successfully housing orcas, as you had been told. Everything was provided, from a place to live free of charge to fresh food three times a day. A perfect environment to study and focus on work without disruptions.

From what you heard from the other workers, the pay was good, and you had enough days off to recharge after the busy work season. Besides, you'd get to work with professionals, trail them for the first few days, and then get assigned your own project to handle how you saw fit. What more could one need?

With nervous hands, you reached for the papers, but the Professor laid his palm down on them before you could. You looked up at him in surprise, finding him smiling warmly and with the confidence of a man his age. He didn't just lead this facility, he was also a well-known face in the scene, giving regular speeches and traveling the world to convey the message of how important it was to take care of the ocean and all its inhabitants.

He was everything you wanted to be.

"I see a lot of potential in you," he admitted, sounding so convincing it almost made you cry. Many had doubted your choices and ambitions, but here, you were welcome. You were between your own kind of people.

"I want you here, at this facility, helping us develop great things for all living beings. But I need you to know..."

Ah, you thought. Here it comes. The catch. It was too good to be true.

However, against your expectations, the Professor's grin widened as he let out a hearty laugh.

"Once you start, you might never want to leave! Most of our researchers just can't separate from their protegees anymore!"

You let out a small laugh, too, as the pressure vanished from your body, the bad news you expected never coming. Nothing wrong with being passionate about your work, right? You could see yourself falling into this pattern as well if everything was as wonderful as you hoped.

"All I need you to do," the Professor instructed, pointing at the pile of documents in front of you. "Is to sign the contract on top of here, and in a few minutes, you'll be out and about, learning the ropes and meeting your new best friend—your new workplace! We also prepared a little welcome treat for you in your room."

The Professor winked at you, fumbling with the folder on top of the papers until he pulled a work contract from it. It seemed to be about a few pages with neat rows of sentences. Many sentences, in a small font, that made it incredibly hard to read.

"Oh, wow, uh, you are so prepared!" you mumbled, taken aback that you were supposed to sign right away. Didn't everybody always say you get some time to think about it? Sleep over it? You couldn't possibly sign it right now, or did you?

"How about I take this home with me and give it some thought and get back to you?" you offered, reaching for the pile of paper when the Professor's hand once again came down on it, this time with an audible thud, tearing the documents from your grip.

"I'm afraid," he sighed, "that isn't possible."

"Why not?"

"Well, it's just..." He got up from his chair, turning towards the impressive wall of photographs and awards behind him with a thoughtful expression.

"We at IML are very strict about our research going out. People out there," he clicked his tongue in disapproval, "they are like seagulls. They just can't get enough and steal everything—even our contracts. We can't risk losing another battle in front of a judge just because they copied and overwrote all of our hard work. They will misuse and abuse all of our creations and studies for their capitalistic goals. All while we fight for those without voices. Once someone leaves the facility... they won't be allowed back. To protect what needs to be protected. You understand that, right?"

The Professor looked back at you with a defeated yet unwavering expression, and you gave him a slow nod. To be fair, you didn't really get it. Weren't those wanting to see the research also interested in protecting the ocean like the IML Research Facility? Yet, you knew firsthand how competitive this field was, given your lack of work opportunities.

Staring at the papers in front of you, you couldn't help but want to read through them before signing something that was so preciously protected. But on the other hand, this might just be the chance. If you left without risking anything, who knew if you'd ever find something as distinguished and aligned with your own goal as this facility was?

(Reasoning and discussions welcome! ♥)

[dodgerkedavra]

2024 fics-in-review

Doing this to impress @its-the-allure, thanks for tagging me! And what a year, am I right, LOL

December

New Heavens (3k, G)

Percy lasts six and a half years.

Go Up to Gilead (106k, E)

The Aurors are Harry’s whole world—right up until he carries Draco Malfoy out of Azkaban in his arms. Harry can’t keep both, so he’s got to choose: forfeit the world, or forfeit his soul?

Clear, Warm Light (36k, E)

Instead of going to Hogwarts for eighth-year, Harry goes to bed.

Blossom the Lovely Stars (33k, E) *finished, from 2022

After three weeks and four days of dating, Draco asks Harry to stay for the holidays. Harry agrees.

Sweet to Your Taste (6k, E)

It’s just like Draco to fall prey to the machinations of his fellow Slytherins. This time, he ends up owning a bakery.

Burn Like Fire (4k, E)

Harry comes out of the Forest dead inside. Draco’s going to bring him back to life.

November

Ye Olde Publick Indecency (3k, E)

Draco and Harry get separated for ten minutes at the Mediaeval Fayre, which demands a carnal reunion.

October

Each According to Its Kind (10k, E)

Draco has one goal: become the best Obliviator the Ministry has ever seen. Everything proceeds exactly according to plan… Until he’s assigned to deal with a SNAKE SWARM in Godric’s Hollow.

Sleep, My Love (13k, M)

Why does Minerva McGonagall always wear green?

September

The Work of His Hands (digital art, E)

It’s not the first time Harry’s got a head injury. It is the first time he loses his ability to write. Now it’s up to Harry’s brilliant and beautiful husband Draco to save the day. Bending a naked and gorgeous Harry over Draco’s desk is an unconventional Healing strategy, but the Boy Who Lived has never been a conventional wizard.

Wherever He Leads Me (11k, E)

Draco never knows when a certain someone’s stag Patronus will block his path as he’s trying to sneak out of a memorial or leap on his pelvis during yoga class.

A Line-storm Song (12k, E)

Harry holds it together for five years after the war. Well—he sort of holds it together. Then his Auror partner Pansy Parkinson says it’s going to rain.

En Passant (46k, E)

An en passant capture can only be made by another pawn, and it is only possible on the move immediately after the enemy pawn lands shoulder-to-shoulder with his opponent. Nine days before the end of Draco’s probation, a grievously injured Auror Potter crashes through the roof of the Malfoy Manor and lands in Draco’s arms. It’s Draco’s first capture of the game. Or maybe it’s the other way around.

August

Bad Cop, Good Boy (1k, E)

Five times Harry Potter is a cop, plus one time he’s still a cop. A bad one? Well, that depends entirely on the beholder.

July

Perpetual Motion, Perpetual Sound (51k, E)

Harry Potter can’t sleep.

June

The Winds Forbid (8k, T)

The third letter Petunia receives from Albus Dumbledore simply can’t be right.

See Me and Live (37k, E)

Harry and Draco are roommates. They're coworkers. They're secret boyfriends. And now they're having a baby together!?

One Warm Line (1k, E)

This pain is part of being human.

May

Love Will Abide (41k, E)

Harry and Draco survive the apocalypse. This is what happens after.

April

Stand in the Shadow of the Moon (4k, E)

Husbands Harry and Draco road trip to Maumee, Ohio to experience totality at the 8 April 2024 solar eclipse.

March

Bike Dream (27k, E)

Draco’s going to learn to ride a bike if it’s the last thing he does.

Bridal Rose (2k, E)

Harry would do anything.

The Dancing Hours (2k, E)

Harry begged. Draco couldn't say no.

A Soft, Low Strain (2k, E)

Harry can’t help that it feels so good.

February

Perennial Blooms (5k, E)

The flowers keep coming back.

I'll Find You Again (I Always Do) (15k, E)

Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter make a pact that if they’re both still single on New Year’s Day in ten years’ time, they’ll get married. It’s a long ten years.

January

Get What You Knead (7k, E)

You can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes... You might find You—

All told, this was somewhere in the realm of 500kish ??? !! So

[amethystfairy1]

Why does Tango wear a crop top? 🤔

Let's find out...

10 Years Ago 

Under-City Labs

“Little spark!” 

“What!? What!?” Tango about toppled from the step-ladder he was sitting on, in order to reach up and tinker with the guts of a massive sorting machine he’d designed for identifying resources from deliveries and then transporting them to the lower levels. 

He spun where he sat to swing his boots over the edge of the step-ladder and peered down. 

Doc was standing there with a supremely disappointed expression on his face. Tango immediately filed back through all of his doing within the past month trying to figure out what he’d messed up this time. 

The creeper mutant tapped one loafer a few times. 

Tango matched ruby red eyes with him, trying to keep any nervousness off his face.

“Y-Yeah? What can I do for ya, Director?”

“Do not call me that.”

“Doc. What can do for ya, Doc?”  

Doc’s natural eye narrowed.

“What are you wearing?”

Tango glanced down at his outfit. Currently he was wearing a redstone streaked old tee shirt he’d long since torn the sleeves off of. It was oversized, to be honest he might’ve stolen it off of Jimmy in high school, he didn’t really remember. His claws were on full display, caked with grime considering he put them use helping him work with the finer wiring.

Instead of using. Y’know. Pliers or something. 

���W-Work clothes? Why?”

“Those are not work clothes. Work clothes are gloves and long sleeves, Tango.” Doc replied with the tone of a mother hen, and the little blaze-born whined in the back of his throat.

“But it’s sooooo hot in here! I’m already on fire!” 

“So you are. That does not mean you cannot get burnt or cut working with these machines.”

“I’m careful…” Tango began but Doc raised his eyebrow at him with a firmly set jaw and folded his arms, augmentation over green skin. 

“…ish.” 

“Gloves and long sleeves.”

“But Doc! I also use these for working with wiring, it’s easier than pliers!” 

Tango made grabby hands down from the step ladder at Doc, clicking the sharpened tips of his claws together.

Doc’s augmented eye adjusted, red glow flickering. He tilted his head and heaved a ragged sigh, raking back longish dark brown hair with his metal hand and planting his other hand on his hip. 

“I can see that, and for small projects that is fine, but not when you’re working in mechanical here.” 

“But it’s so hot.”

“Then take breaks!” 

“I don’t wanna take breaks!”

“Tango!” Doc’s tone dropped one octave from his already deep voice, and Tango flinched. His flares momentarily went out completely before sputtering to life again. He’d been practically raised by this man, and now that he’d started at the labs earlier this year he’d been trying to learn the balancing act of their workplace dynamic.

Which, as it turned out, wasn’t all that different from their dynamic anywhere else. Doc was allergic to authority and despised formality, for the labs was more like a big conglomeration of the under-city’s best and brightest just kind of…figuring things out. There was a loose hierarchical structure, but that was more just so the assignment of workflow would be more comprehensible and less completely and utter chaos. 

So Tango huffed and spun back toward the machine he was tinkering with, shoving his hands up into the wiring, tongue poking out and worrying between his sharp teeth as he shouted back in reply.

“Fine, fine, fine, I hear ya! Gloves and long sleeves from tomorrow on out, you got it!”

The Next Day.

“Tango!”  

Tango fumbled the comparator he was holding and dropped it to the ground with a clatter he jumped so hard when that booming voice shouted over his workshop area within the mechanical branch of the labs. 

“Why have you gotta scare me like that!?” The blaze-born demanded as he turned to see Doc picking his way around the chaos of Tango’s workshop area. It wasn’t exactly organized, but it was organized enough for him, and sure, the last time Pearl had visited him during work hours she’d about had a conniption, but whatever. This was how he worked best. 

“What is that!?” Doc gestured at Tango pointedly. 

“What? You said gloves and long sleeves, so I’m wearing gloves and long sleeves!” Tango was barely able to hold back the mischievous grin that tried to clamber upon his face.

Doc looked him up and down twice.

“You’re kidding me.”

“Gloves and long sleeves. See?” Tango set the comparator he’d been carrying aside and then threw his arms out and made jazz hands. His flares crackles and his blaze-rods danced and twirled to mirror his amusement at Doc’s rather stunned expression.

Tango had traded the old cut-off tee for a tight, bright red cropped long sleeve that cut just beneath his pecs, leaving the entirety of his toned stomach exposed down to his belt, which held several tools as well as a carabiner clip for his gloves. His brown work gloves were new, Doc had gotten them for him as apart of his toolkit for starting work in the mechanical sector of the labs full-time after having helped out more and more since his mid-teens. They still felt a bit stiff, but Tango supposed they’d break in the more he wore them.

Doc planted his head into his hands and groaned. 

“Little spark, you’re going to drive me insane, aren’t you?”

“Pleased to be working with you too!” 

Tango saluted, then spun on his heel to return to his work, his tail coiling and twisting cheerfully behind him, and Doc rolled his eyes, but didn’t fight him anymore on it. 

...

And there you have it! That's why Tango wears a crop top! Because he's a little shit who subscribes to the idea of malicious compliance!

This was a bit short for my taste to post on A03 with the entire series proper, but I felt like just writing it anyway, and I figured would be fun to have them over here! I'll be tagging little stuff like this as 'ttsbc ficlets' and if you have any other small seeming innocuous questions about TTSBC or Traveling Thieves that you think would be fun to see answered in this format, please do send me an ask! I think it'll be fun and as some of y'all who have followed me for awhile may know, I struggle with writing short, so this seems like it'll be good practice!

Hope you liked it! 💖

[academicfever]

This is a good starting point but its not exhaustive by any means...

#Research 101: Part 1

##    How to find a good research topic?

It’s best to familiarize yourself with a discipline or topic as broadly as possible by looking beyond academia

Tips:

Be enthusiastic, but not unrealistic. For example, you might be tempted to throw yourself into finding out to what extent an entire economy has become circular, but it may already be challenging and tricky enough to find out which building materials are being recycled in the construction sector, and in what ways.

Be open-minded but beware of cul-de-sacs. You should always find out first whether enough is known about a topic already, or you might find yourself wasting a lot of time on it.

Be creative but stay close to the assignment. This starts with the topic itself; if one learning objective of the assignment is to carry out a survey, it isn’t helpful to choose a topic for which you need to find respondents on the other side of the world. One place where you can look for inspiration is current events. 

Although professors and lecturers tend to be extremely busy, they are often enthusiastic about motivated and smart students who are interested in their research field. You do need to approach them with focused questions, though, and not just general talk such as: ‘Do you know of a good topic for me?’ In many cases, a good starting point is the scholar themselves. Do a search on them in a search engine, take a look at their university web page, read recent publications,

In most university towns, you’ll come across organizations that hold regular lectures, debates, and thematic evenings, often in partnership with or organized by university lecturers and professors. If you’re interested in transdisciplinary research where academic knowledge and practical knowledge come together, this is certainly a useful place to start your search.

If you want to do interdisciplinary research, it is essential to understand and work with concepts and theories from different research fields, so that you are able to draw links between them (see Menken and Keestra (2016) on why theory is important for this). With an eye to your ‘interdisciplinary’ academic training, it is therefore a good idea to start your first steps in research with concepts and theories.

##How to do Lit Review:

Although texts in different academic disciplines can differ significantly in terms of structure, form, and length, almost all academic articles (research articles and literature reports) share a number of characteristics:

They are published in scholarly journals with expert editorial boards

These journals are peer-reviewed

These articles are written by authors who have no direct commercial or political interest in the topic on which they are writing

There are also non-academic research reports such as UN reports, data from statistics institutes, and government reports. Although these are not, strictly speaking, peer-reviewed, the reliability of these sources means that their contents can be assumed to be valid

You can usually include grey literature in your research bibliography, but if you’re not sure, you can ask your lecturer or supervisor whether the source you’ve found meets the requirements.

Google and Wikipedia are unreliable: the former due to its commercial interests, the latter because anyone, in principle, can adjust the information and few checks are made on the content.

disciplinary and interdisciplinary search machines with extensive search functions for specialized databases, such as the Web of Science, Pubmed, Science Direct, and Scopus

Search methods All of these search engines allow you to search for scholarly sources in different ways. You can search by topic, author, year of publication, and journal name. Some tips for searching for literature: 1. Use a combination of search terms that accurately describes your topic. 2. You should use mainly English search terms, given that English is the main language of communication in academia. 3. Try multiple search terms to unearth the sources you need. a. Ensure that you know a number of synonyms for your main topic b. Use the search engine’s thesaurus function (if available) to map out related concepts.

During your search, it is advisable to keep track of the keywords and search combinations you use. This will allow you to check for blind spots in your search strategy, and you can get feedback on improving the search combinations. Some search engines automatically keep a record of this.

Exploratory reading How do you make a selection from the enormous number of articles that are often available on a topic? Keep the following four questions in mind, and use them to guide your literature review: ■■ What is already known about my topic and in which discipline is the topic discussed? ■■ Which theories and concepts are used and discussed within the scope of my topic, and how are they defined? ■■ How is my topic researched and what different research methods are there? ■■ Which questions remain unanswered and what has yet to be researched?

$$ Speed reading:

Run through the titles, abstracts, and keywords of the articles at the top of your list and work out which ideas (concepts) keep coming back.

Next, use the abstract to figure out what these concepts mean, and also try to see whether they are connected and whether this differs for each study.

If you are unable to work out what the concepts mean, based on the context, don’t hesitate to use dictionaries or search engines.

Make a list of the concepts that occur most frequently in these texts and try to draw links between them.

A good way to do this is to use a concept map, which sets out the links between the concepts in a visual way.

All being well, by now you will have found a list of articles and used them to identify several concepts and theories. From these, try to select the theories and concepts that you want to explore further. Selecting at this stage will help you to frame and focus your research. The next step is to discover to what extent these articles deal with these concepts and theories in similar or different ways, and how combining these concepts and theories leads to different outcomes. In order to do this, you will need to read more thoroughly and make a detailed record of what you’ve learned.

next: part 2

part 3

part 4

last part

[mvltisstuff]

how to disappear - e.b

summary: after a series of tragic losses, y/n’s bright mood begins to disappear. so buck and the 118 try to bring it back

evan buckley x reader

this lowkey broke my heart a bit 🥲 i am def not the biggest fan of this, it was just rushed but i hope you still enjoy, leave any requests you’d like i’m in a big 911 writing era :)

10 minutes of cpr on the way to the hospital, rapid beeping on the machine, blood on the ground. hen places a soft hand on y/n’s arm, and pulls it away from the patients body. “y/n,” she says, making pitying eye contact with her. “time of death, 14:36.”

y/n sits back with a brush to her hairline with the heel of her palm and a sigh. she looks down at her hands and uniform, covered in a man’s blood. a son, a friend, and she feels like she just took that from him.

it’s been person after person, it feels. like she’s failing at her job and is failing all these people. she wants to scream. a few days before, she had lost a girl, new to adulthood, who had driven her car off the side of the road due to a drunk driver. her best friend, watching from the side and being held back by bobby and athena, was wailing in agony from watching the life escape her soul sister.

that wasn’t the last time, it’s been a few. everyone tries to reassure her that she did everything she could, and she knows she did. but was it enough? y/n’s been quiet, not wanting to hurt anything else around her. she felt like everything was glass in her hands and she couldn’t help but drop it. her eyes were dry and red from the sleepless nights and tearful showers, and her arms were tired from the endless compressions and the feeling of being completely burnt out.

buck had recognized this feeling, they all had, but it hurt to see her beating herself up so much over it. y/n already felt ridiculous, as this is partially what she signed up for, and he didn’t want her to feel ashamed. the 118 has been assigned to a ton of casualties and bad accidents recently, but it seems like they’ve been piling up and she feels like it is a result of her work.

everyone knows y/n is great. she’s smart and careful in her work, always checking over herself and being gentle with everyone, young and old.

another quiet night at home, y/n picks around her food not being able to find her appetite. the screams of the friend from earlier rang in her ear and the flatline of machines were stinging her brain. the pounding headaches were washed away with another tylenol, as buck tries to start another conversation.

“so, um,” he starts, quietly. “eddie invited us over to dinner tomorrow, do you wanna go?”

he tells a white lie because buck sort of invited himself to dinner. he wants to help y/n, and make her feel better and know that there are people still alive from her rescues. “maybe, i’m not sure.” she says, not having the energy to go tomorrow as she wants to just come home and fight with her sleep again. buck nods, deciding not the fight it. his heart breaks seeing her in this condition, and it pains him even more to know she’s helped him in this situation. he’s had his own losses, and he so desperately tries to climb out of the pit it puts him on. y/n was always the hand, the ladder that he called to climb out. he wanted more than anything to be hers.

they don’t teach you in training how to deal with this. they warn you, surely, but you always try to sugarcoat it in your mind. however, the agonizing sobs and screams will wake you up at night. you remember the names, the family, the details, the autopsy, the medicine that was inserted. every small detail haunts you, until you learn to handle the pain. it never gets easier to lose someone on the job, but the embraces and relief from saving someone is an incredible feeling.

“i’m just going to head to bed,” y/n says, her voice cracking as it’s barely above a whisper. she walks over to buck, placing her plate in the dishwasher. “i’ll meet you upstairs, i’m going to shower first.”

buck nods and gives her a sweet smile that conceals a bit of pity. watching her smiles fade from feeling like she’s not good enough makes his heart skip a beat in the worst way.

a few days later, y/n stayed a little longer at work than buck did. maddie had asked him to watch jee-yun, and when y/n walked in, she saw buck playing with her in their living area. he has a bright smile on his face in response to the little words and babbles from jee. “hey, baby. wanna come join us in here?”

she had completely forgotten that they agreed to babysit. she sighed and mumbled at buck for a minute. “i, um, forgot we’re watching her.”

“it’s ok, we just got done pulling uncle bucks hair out,” he says, scooping jee up and blowing light kisses into her baby cheeks. “who’s that, jee? y/n’s home!”

y/n forces out a small grin, making the side of her mouth raise a bit. “sorry, guys. i was gonna call it an early night, it’s been a really long day.” she replies, because she has no more energy left to give. she feels like shit, leaving her boyfriend and his niece alone, who she adores completely. she doesn’t want to bother their time together.

“oh,” buck says, surprised. y/n never denies extra time with jee-yun, always begging maddie and chimney to bring her over for a bit. “i get it, honey. go lay down.” he says, the smile on his face growing again in attempts to make her feel more comfortable.

“thanks, buck.” y/n walks over to the two, leaving a kiss on bucks lips and one on jee’s forehead. when she walks away, stepping back up the stairs like her muscles are worn out, jee mumbles out the few letters of her name.

“i know, jee-yun,” buck says, comforting her. “she’ll be back soon, i hope.”

days pass and y/n’s brightness that comes into the room when she walks in still isn’t back. buck has tried to give her space, but also giving her the love she needs to feel better. sitting around the table, the team talks for a little.

“kid, something on your mind?” bobby asks, taking a bite of his breakfast while looking at a zoned-out buck.

“s-sorry, cap,” he stumbles over his words. “it’s y/n. i just feel so bad, i wish i could magically fix everything but…”

“it’s hard, she’s been really taking it on these calls.”

“i’m just worried, i don’t know how much more stress she can handle.”

“she’s tough,” eddie adds. “i think she just needs time.” buck nods, still feeling indifferent on the situation.

the alarm sounds later in the night, and they climb into the truck for the last call of the shift. they’re all tired, ready to go home, but also ready to face whatever battle the world has for them tonight. y/n rides in the back, glaring out the window. she listens intently to the instructions in her headphones, and they climb out of the truck.

they see yet another tragic incident on the side of the road, a massive delivery truck had been completely turned upside down with two people inside of it. they team had all sprint up the the flipped vehicle, getting on the ground to see the damage to their bodies. “hi, sir,” y/n says first. “can you tell me your name?”

“r-richard.”

“ok, richard, can you tell me if you feel this?” y/n applies pressure to his legs. he shakes his head, and begins to panic at the numbness in his lower half.

“it’s ok, stay still,” y/n reassures him. “we’re gonna help you. can you tell us your friends name?”

“his n-name- is tyler.” he answers. “am i going to die in here?”

“we are all here to help you, richard, you are in some of the best hands out there,” y/n stands up and faces hen and chimney. “we have numbness in his legs, passengers name is tyler.”

“got it,” chim says, jogging over to see his friends condition.

on the side, after excusing themselves, the team meets up. “driver is not looking good, cap. i think the damage was already done when we got on scene.” hen says.

“can we get the other person out safely?” bobby asks, hesitantly. they all nod, knowing what is going to have to happen. “he’s pinned under that seat, he doesn’t have enough time.”

“what? no, we have to get both of them out!” y/n interjects.

“we can’t, y/n. we have to keep richard comfortable while they work to get tyler out.”

“but-“

“there’s nothing we can do, y/n/n,” buck says, stepping in. “there’s nothing that can save him.”

y/n keeps her cool, just barely letting the pot boil over the edge. she walks back over to richard without any directions, but knows that she is the one to keep him comfortable. “this is it, huh?” he coughs a bit, blood pooling at the corner of his lips.

“you have a family, richard?” y/n asks, hoping to keep his mind off the pain that has already been minimized with morphine. no morphine in the world can save his family from the pain they’ll endure.

he nods, slowly. “i have three girls and two boy, and my beautiful wife.”

“wow, a full house, isn’t it?” y/n laughs.

“we have, two dogs too.”

“can i hear their names?”

“the girls are, layla, and she’s the oldest.” he starts, ready to take the time to explain his precious kids. tears are already forming in y/n’s eyes, and she’s relieved he is able to talk over her. “she’s so smart, she was valedictorian, jesus, i was so loud at graduation. and then there’s jake, he’s so amazing, he’s the sweetest kid. and then there’s makenna and sarah, they’re two little,” he pauses to take a few deeps breaths. “firecrackers. and then the youngest is nathan, and he is a r-replica of his mom.”

“what’s their mom like?” the drilling and buzzing from the other side is faint, the two’s thoughts being drowned out by the stories of his family.

“oh, she’s amazing,” he smiles, with red-stained teeth. “the- the most beautiful woman. you think i could call her?” her shaky hand reaches over to his phone that had fallen out of the truck and onto the top. she puts the phone up to his ear, holding it, as some more jargon about the rescued man comes through.

“h-hey honey!” he says, like it’s almost muscle memory. “i, uh, it’s ok, i just wanted to call and see how everything is.” he smiles at the chaos on the other side. “can you, uh, put me on speaker phone?”

the tears are falling down y/n’s face freely, as the sirens of the other ambulances are turned on to drive away with other paramedics. her breaths are shaky, and the team gathers behind them. glass cuts the skin on her knees, but she is not fazed by the feeling. the husband, son, father, says his final goodbyes to his family, and the final breath from his lips is stolen in a matter of seconds. one of the police officers leans down and takes the phone, speaking to the widow and her young family.

y/n places a few fingers on the side of his neck, feeling for a non-existent pulse. her voice cracks, and a few broken cries come out of her sad mind. “i’m so sorry, richard. i’m so, so sorry.” she repeats, over and over again before her boyfriend has to remove her from the nightmare. she yanks her gloves off and wipes the mix of blood from her hands, sweat, and tears off her face.

buck has never seen her breakdown like this, and it was honestly one of his biggest fears. he knew it was going to happen, he just hoped he would make her feel better before it did. “i really tried, buck, i did, i couldn’t keep him up…”

“i know, it’s not your fault. none of this has ever been your fault.”

as y/n’s pained thoughts surround her mind on the way back to the station, she climbs out of the truck and slowly walks back into the locker room. she ignores everyone around her. she tries to ignore everyone, but buck is too quick to understanding her that he is following right behind.

“let’s just go home, buck,” y/n says, her voice is raspy from the sobs and exhaustion.

“i need you to know that you are doing everything you can,” he says, stepping closer to her.

“i know, buck. i’m not doing this right now.”

“you are amazing at this y/n. it is not your fault. these people were doomed from the second they called into dispatch. if anything, you were there for them when we got there.”

“then why? why does this keep happening, buck? since you seem to have an answer for all of this why can’t you tell me that? why does it feel like it’s my fault?” she snaps, raising her voice with him near. she’s not yelling at him, more at herself.

“y/n, please,” buck whispers. “i don’t have the answer for everything. but i know for a fact that you are doing the best you can. and that is enough. and i will say it is enough for the rest of time until you believe me.”

y/n stops and stands still. she looks at him with sad eyes, her mouth opened lightly. she shrugs her shoulders and feels like every word is draining her from everything she has left. “i cant sleep without hearing them, buck.”

“oh, my god. baby,” he says, rushing over to her and pulling her in before her heartbroken knees gave out under her. his arms wrapped around her waist and sat her weak body down on the bench. he held her until she had nothing else to weep out. “let’s go home, love.”

several days later, and several shifts later, y/n had started to feel more normal. things had been looking up, but she was still dealing with the loss of her patients. it never would not bring her pain, each bruise would never heal, but she would rather not forget about them.

buck had taken her out of the house for a day, meeting up with everyone for dinner. they all had been supporting y/n in their own ways. spending time with her, listening to her, giving her advice, and just being there for her was the best they could do. they figured it would be good for her to spend time out of the firehouse and their small shared apartment.

her bubbly personality wasn’t back yet, as she still thought about the casualties consistently. they still haunted her dreams and lay in her brain. having buck there made everything easier. the way he cared for her and never judged her feelings had caused them appear more valid. having someone that understands you like that can open doors to new feelings so fast.

sitting around, they all talked for a bit as y/n still stayed quiet, her hand and bucks never unwinding. her grip on his soft hands has been still like they were stuck in cement. being able to listen to his voice and the casual meetings between everyone brought her back to reality.

“hi, sorry, excuse me?” a woman said, standing next to another one. she had a hearing aid in, and was doing sign language while making eye contact with y/n. “i had just recognized the whole team, and i remembered seeing you. i wish i could remember your name, but it must’ve gotten mixed up somewhere.” the lady signs, pointing at y/n. “you saved my life, you came right back into that building and i would not be here today. you saved me and my family. i wish i could give you all the world, but seeing your face still brings me comfort. so thank you, from the bottom of my heart.”

y/n was completely speechless. she had no idea what to say. her eyes were welling up again, but she blinked them back down and tried to force a few quiet words out. “of course, i’m so glad you remember me! that’s what i’m here for.”

her interpreter signs y/n’s words back to her, and she blows a quick kiss to y/n and walks away with a bright smile. y/n faces back around to buck, with a shocked smile on her face. it was bright, and it seemed like something that reminded her of all the good in this world that she has done.

buck knows that aside from a beautiful face, her soul had a wonderful outcome on the people around her. he wanted to give her everything and make her feeling like the most loved person on the planet. his admiration for her and complete head over heels mind brings him back to her hold every day, and he would spend the rest of his life being her hand to hold.

[the-solar-eclipsed]

astral projector watcher gem fanart :D

just gonna put some lore that ive seen + my own twist to watcher gem

gem was a failed experiment in the watcher realm, she was created by the watchers and has no true parents, her purpose was to be the watchers killing machine and they would have succeeded if grian hadn’t broken out of the watcher realm, since the watchers were so focused on hunting grian down the security weakened and gem escaped

the 1.18 lets play was gem trying to learn how to be “mortal” and blend into the world so the watchers wouldnt find her

at the time pearl was still with the watchers and knew gem existed just now who she was specifically eventually pearl escaped the watcher realm when grian came back to save her

gem met xisuma and was invited to season 8 of hermitcraft, which pearl was also invited to because grian introduced her

pearl, grian, and xisuma knows something’s off about gem, but they can’t figure out what it is

obviously then the moon crashed and stuff and season nine came around, gem is much more comfortable as a mortal and almost forgot her past

until she subbed in for cleo in limited life, where she learned the watchers make these death games for entertainment and to harness the negative energy

unfortunately for the watchers they gave her the ability to dimension hop (she is a cannon dimension hopper to those who dont know) and she joined secret life, to the other players she was just added and the watchers just assumed some other watcher added her so they never bothered to ask about it, and then the boogey curse happened and the watchers had no idea that they assigned 1) one of the best killers on the server, and 2) a hell of a good actor this task. unlike other watchers who were turned, gem being a “pure born” watcher makes her essentially immune to any of the curses and magic that watchers use to run the game. it was really difficult, since she didnt actually have the curse she would have to run to the person killed and tell them about the task/how to act, and it worked somehow, she played the act that a curse was spread all around the server and the watchers were none the wiser… except grian, he knows first hand what the boogey curse is like secondhand and firsthand, he knows how people act - violent, careless, and overall just a sense of bloodlust - and gem showed none of the signs. her kills were tactical, there was pain in her eyes every time she killed or influenced a kill. but grian is still really confused with wondering what gem could be he never really though she was a watcher because how could she be? grian and pearl are watchers and they still get really affected by the games (so no grian doesnt know gems a watcher)

its now wild life and gem realized shes going to need to adapt and change otherwise the watchers are going to be suspicious, she does hold a slight grudge on pearl but not as strong as she makes it out to be, the watchers think they’re farming even more negative emotions but they actually are gaining less and less as gem is in the games just because that’s how she is.

of course she is still a watcher and killing still calls to her, which is why even as dark green she helped people when they wanted to kill - so she can collect the energy to eventually stop the watchers and because something in her loves seeing the death happen -

we can also see this with the snail episode, she loves the snail and admires how they’re violent little creatures, saying its a shame they cant be allies - peaking a slight suspicion in the watchers but nothing huge

and back to some shiny duo stuff: pearl is so confused as to why gem is like this, she wasnt like it in secret life and real life and it scares her, theres something so brutal and cold in gems eyes that most people dont see as gem is just the peaceful one who even kept her barn burn down, but pearl can see it - gem is hiding something, which is why she always is trying to bug gem, to understand what, but gem is trying to protect pearl and so she stays cold and “hateful” to pearl whenever she comes by, heck she even is hateful to impulse because she is so scared of the soup group members being hurt

but now the main stuff: her astral projection powers, grian knows what everyone’s powers are, and again, gem is confusing him, he doesnt get why gem has that power, and honestly neither do the watchers, gem managed to give her one of the powers that she normally had when she wasnt in the games, but something in the games restricts her and she just wanted some freedom back, and using the power re-energizes her

to anyone who read all this: thanks! ive been meaning to dump some ideas about watcher!gem since she was already cannon to me but this made it even better!!

[ginnsbaker]

Bulletproof - Alternative Ending

Summary: Starts immediately after Chapter 5 where you unwittingly sacrificed yourself to keep Wanda alive.

Word count: 5k+ | Tags: Angst and character death(s) | Ship: Wanda Maximoff x Gender Neutral Reader

Author's Note: This was suggested by @dogsandlife, and I'm super glad for it because I was already toying with this idea. I just couldn't bring myself to hurt most of you so I went ahead with the other plot. But for my angst-loving readers, I hope you enjoy this alternative ending :)

Series Masterlist

-

The compound is anything but quiet. 

One can hear hushed whispers, the shuffling of feet, and the distant drones of machines. It's not loud, but there's a heavy feeling in the air. Grief. Everyone's dealing with the recent destruction—surgeries, reports, nights where sleep just didn’t come. Death. 

Today's supposed to help them find some closure, but it's obvious a lot of them aren't there yet.

Steve stands at Wanda's door, fist raised. He hesitates, almost knocking a few times, but eventually just taps softly with his knuckle on the wooden panel. “Wanda?” he asks, trying to sound as normal as possible.

Nothing.

She hasn't been seen since the first night they arrived at the other base, where Wanda went straight to the room she was assigned to. The only clue that she's still managing is that Vision leaves food outside her door every day, and when he returns later in the day, most of it remains untouched, but he can tell Wanda has taken at least a bite or two. 

It’s far from the ideal diet of an Avenger, which leaves Wanda being indisposed in the meantime; though the rest of the team was successful in neutralizing and the people who masterminded the attack on the compound two weeks ago. 

Out of concern for how she might react, especially given how deeply your loss affected her, the team has kept this news from Wanda. They want to ensure the prisoners are safely relocated to a hard-to-track location before she learns of it. There's a shared apprehension that if Wanda discovers this prematurely, she might take matters into her own hands.

Steve senses that Wanda might already be aware, and her chilling silence may not just be due to grief. Part of it could stem from her resentment towards the team for withholding the information, preventing her from seeking the second thing she desires most after having you back—revenge.

(What Wanda yearns for the most is your return, but that's a reality no longer possible in this universe.)

Despite this, Steve pushes on, “The ceremony's about to start. Everyone's waiting. We don’t want to start without you. They were important to all of us, but I get that they were even more to you.”

The stillness from the other side of the door is almost suffocating.

Steve’s voice becomes impossibly softer as he tries again, “Wanda, I can't imagine how you feel right now. But we're here for you. We're family, remember?”

Steve strains his ears, hoping to catch the faintest whisper from Wanda, but the only sound that meets him is the steady hum of the central air conditioning. Time drags on awkwardly, and just when Steve is about to leave, a faint, broken voice emerges from the room. 

“They're gone, Steve.”

Swallowing hard, Steve nods, voice thick. “I know, Wanda. I know.”

He does know. Perhaps more than anyone on the team, save for Natasha. He's experienced profound losses throughout his life: his best friend, the woman he loved, even time and an entire era.

He wants to impart all of these to Wanda, but he’s afraid of invalidating the pain that Wanda’s feeling right now. 

And so, a brief, quiet moment passes between them before Steve rejoins the others.

-

The scene is chaos—the aftermath of unimaginable power unchecked.

Dust fills the air, and broken debris is scattered everywhere. The once-familiar corridors of the team's quarters are now unrecognizable. Everything is obliterated. The structure has been reduced to fine dust, making it impossible to discern that the remnants were once beds or lamps. Not even sound escaped her wrath.

The others soon rush in, Steve, Natasha, and Sam at the forefront. The sight that greets them is unlike anything they’ve ever seen before. Everything is utterly pulverized, and at the epicenter is Wanda, holding your limp body close to her.

For a moment, the scene before them leaves them at a loss for words, until Steve's gaze locks onto you, covered in blood with your arms hanging lifelessly. Steve radios the others, quickly outlining the situation. He struggles to describe it without revealing the full extent of Wanda’s powers, of which they were previously unaware.

Sam surveys the area for potential threats. “All clear!” he announces, not realizing the hidden danger masked by the visage of a mourning ally. Steve, however, spots it immediately from a distance.

The situation isn't volatile due to enemies nearby.

It's volatile because of Wanda.

“Wanda, what happened?” Natasha ventures, attempting to cut through the escalating tension. Yet Wanda's eyes stay locked on you, murmuring unintelligibly under her breath.

“Wanda!” Natasha's voice sharpens with alarm. “Snap out of it!”

But Wanda refuses to budge, ensnared in her own maelstrom of anguish and remorse. As her hands begin to glow with a familiar red hue, she whispers, her lips curling in a crazed half-smile, “I can save you.” 

Recognizing the imminent danger of Wanda's erratic powers, Natasha lunges forward to intervene. “Wanda, no!”

Her plea is met with an almost tangible wave of force. The sheer power from Wanda's emotions sends Natasha hurtling backwards, taking her off her feet. Recognizing both the immediate peril and a fleeting chance, Steve reacts without hesitation. He gathers you into his arms, holding you close to shield you, and makes a break for the Quinjet's safety.

Sam, after a momentary stagger, hurries over to Natasha's side. He extends a hand, helping her to rise. Together, they turn their attention back to Wanda, eyes fixed as they witness the raw display of her struggle, the internal battle to regain control over her formidable powers. Eventually, as if a storm subsides, Wanda's energy recedes. She collapses, emotionally and physically spent. Her eyes glisten with tears that soon spill over. 

“I—I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry…” Wanda stammers, bringing a hand to her mouth in horror at her actions.

Natasha cautiously approaches, ignoring the lingering pain from her fall. She carefully wraps an arm around Wanda, offering what comfort she can. “It’s okay,” she whispers, trying to sound more confident than she feels.

Sam surveys the scene, taking in the devastation and recognizing that not all of it was the enemy's handiwork. “We can't stay here,” he warns urgently. “We'll have company soon, and not the kind we want.”

Emerging from the Quinjet, Steve's motions for them to hurry. “Let’s go. Y/N needs help. Now.”

Natasha quickly takes in Wanda's dazed state and knows she needs to act. “Come on, we need to move,” she says, gently guiding her friend by the arm toward the jet.

As they get closer, Natasha throws a glance over her shoulder at Sam. “You coming?”

He hesitates, scanning the area. “I'm staying. Someone's got to help out here.”

She looks like she wants to argue, but with everything going on, she just nods, helping Wanda up the ramp. As the jet's engines ignite and they ascend, Sam's focus shifts back to the ground, the sheer magnitude of Wanda's episode hitting him. A distance away, he spots a few incinerated bodies, possibly caught in the sphere of Wanda’s wrath. Walking cautiously among the fallen, a chilling realization dawns on him: he can't tell who was with them and who was against. Allies and enemies, all indistinguishably mixed in the wake of Wanda's powers.

He feels a knot in his stomach. “Oh, Wanda,” he murmurs to himself, “what happened here?”

-

Though the clear skies suggest fair weather, the ceremony feels grim, leaving behind an eerie atmosphere that steadfastly clings to the hallways and corners you once roamed. All attendees are dressed in their finest black attire, but the pristine garments can't hide the profound sadness of the occasion.

Everyone is present except for a seat in the first row. Every now and then, Steve's eyes would drift toward the entrance, half-hoping, half-dreading that Wanda might walk in. The funeral begins with a brief sermon from a priest, despite no one being certain of your religious beliefs. Yet, it's protocol. It has always been the manner in which they bid farewell to a comrade, so everyone quietly follows suit.

Each of the Avengers, save for Wanda, takes a turn at the podium, sharing humorous and touching stories about you. They all wear the same regret and guilt on their faces, wishing they could have done more, could have treated you better, could have gotten to know you more. The eulogies are largely light in tone, and it's unclear whether it's because they wish to remember you fondly or if their bond with you was merely superficial and insincere.

Except for Daisy, the last person to speak, who seems to be taking it particularly hard. She gets choked up talking about how you took her under your wing, always sharing what you knew and helping her train. And when she needed a place to sleep, you gave her your own bed. She returns to her seat, tears silently streaming, and there's a brief, uneasy moment when no one steps in to comfort her.

They all glance around, seeking out Wanda. Their eyes eventually land on Steve, who simply responds with a solemn shake of his head. 

The entire ceremony lasts just under an hour. As the last notes of the eulogy fade and people start to head out, everyone gradually returns to their routine. For many, it's the last time they'll reflect or speak about you.

That same night, as Steve is about to wind down in his office, lost in thought, Vision phases through the wall. There's a resigned expression on Vision's face, momentarily making Steve forget that he isn't human. Reflecting later, Steve appreciates how Vision's virtue and outlook are more human-like than many individuals he's encountered throughout his life.

“Captain Rogers,” he starts, “Wanda has…chosen to sequester herself in Y/N's former cell.”

Steve looks up sharply, a crease forming on his brow. “Why would she do that?” 

He had anticipated something like this might occur, but he's baffled as to why Wanda would choose your old cell over your bedroom, where all your belongings still remain.

“I can't say I fully grasp the intricacies of the human heart, but maybe she's looking for a connection or a spot to grieve. Y/N’s room, with all its memories, might just be too overwhelming for her,” Vision offers, seemingly reading Steve's thoughts.

Hearing this, Steve glances at the approval document he must sign, allowing the compound's admin office to begin clearing out your bedroom. He's been putting off signing it, thinking Wanda might need more time with your belongings around. But now he wonders if erasing traces of you might help her come to terms with the loss.

Steve considers Vision’s words for a moment before nodding slowly. “Thanks, Vision. I'll go see her.”

-

Wanda is glued to your side, her fingers so tightly interwoven with yours that it's hard to tell where one hand ends and the other begins. Every now and then, she gently squeezes, perhaps hoping to feel a reassuring squeeze back. Her face is contorted, every line etched deep with raw pain, her eyes wet and reddened from endless tears. She looks at your hand, pale and devoid of its usual warmth, resting lifelessly in her grip.

But it's the faint, almost timid pulsation under her touch that keeps her from completely breaking down. Each breath you take is slow and labored, barely noticeable. But the quiet beep of the monitors serves as a constant reminder that there's still life within you. From time to time, she leans in, pressing her ear close to your chest, cherishing the gentle thud of your heartbeat, willing you to hold on just a little longer.

A while later, a group of nurses and doctors rush in, ready to prep you for surgery. Their hands move with purpose, reaching for various instruments and adjusting the array of machines beside your bed. That’s when, as if propelled by an invisible force, equipment flies off tables, and a few of the medical staff are pushed back against the walls. A nurse, caught off-guard, drops a syringe, its contents spilling onto the pristine floor. 

Natasha, having been alerted by the commotion, slips into the room, swiftly placing herself between Wanda and the medical staff.

“Wanda,” she implores cautiously, her eyes seeking the sorceress's, “let them do their job. He needs them.”

For a moment, it seems like she might snap, but then her gaze drops to the floor, tears spilling. As soon as they feel it’s safe, the medical staff decide that they need to move you immediately. The wheels of your bed squeak in protest as they begin to shift it out of the room.

Wanda's grip tightens on your hand, her knuckles white. She tries to follow, as if an invisible cord binds her to you. She mutters, almost inaudibly, “I won't leave them.”

One of the nurses, recognizing the precarious situation and the potential for Wanda's powers to erupt again, glances around hesitantly. They're all clearly apprehensive about telling Wanda she can't accompany you. It’s just in time that Steve finally arrives, quickly taking in the scene before him.

“Kid, it’s okay,” he murmurs quietly.

She turns to him, her eyes a storm of emotion, as she pleads, “No, it’s not. I need to be with them.”

“It’s not,” he confirms, offering her a sympathetic look. “But right now, they need to do their job. We have to trust them.”

But her grip on your hand doesn't loosen.

With a deep breath, Steve gently pries her fingers away from yours. It's a slow, agonizing process, each finger unlocking a fresh wave of sobs from Wanda. She resists, but Steve’s reassuring grip gives her no choice. Finally, as your hand slips away from hers, the reality of the situation hits anew.

As the medical team wheels you out of the room, Wanda collapses into Steve's arms, her cries a haunting sound in the tenebrous hallways of the hospital.

The long hours of surgery find Wanda staring into the void, her eyes wavering yet alert, even as exhaustion begins to bear down on her. A few feet away, a wall clock ticks on, displaying the agonizingly slow passage of time. She's acutely aware of each second, each minute, as they stretch into what feels like eons. Occasionally, her fingers would twitch, itching to do something, anything, to change the course of events. But they remain clenched in her lap, her knuckles white from the pressure.

Wanda isn't accustomed to the drawn-out dread of potentially losing someone. Her parents were taken away in an instant. Pietro saved Clint in a split-second, paying with his life. So, when the surgeon finally emerges, the expression on his face already giving away the news, Wanda can't stand it. She bolts.

Outside, the cold night air hits her, but she hardly feels it. Her feet carry her to a secluded spot in the hospital's garden, where the shadows from the trees envelope her. She sinks to the ground, her hands digging into the grass, seeking some form of grounding.

The rest of the team, still in the waiting room, exchange worried glances. Steve takes a step forward, as if to follow, but Natasha places a gentle hand on his arm.

“She needs a minute,” Natasha says quietly.

While they give Wanda time to process, the surgeon starts explaining the details, the clinical terms merging with the reality of what happened. The Avengers might face world-ending threats on a daily basis, but this personal loss, this kind of pain, hits different.

Little do they know that in the distance, Wanda's grief is causing ripples that are about to change everything.

-

Making his way through the maze of hallways, Steve's steps slow as he approaches the familiar penitentiary. He nears the familiar cell door, taking a moment to brace himself before nudging it open just slightly.

Inside, the room is dim, with just a small lamp fighting off the darkness. It's chilly, the sort of cold that seems to seep into your bones. There, on the simple bed, is Wanda, curled up and looking so small and vulnerable. Pushing the door open just a touch more, Steve walks in silently and sits beside Wanda. He doesn't say anything, instead he allows Wanda to acclimatize to his presence, to give her space and time to figure out that she’s not alone in this, never was.

After what seems like an eternity, Wanda, without looking at Steve, simply murmurs, “It's cold here.”

Steve just nods, at a loss for words. He takes off his jacket, trying to wrap it around her shoulders for comfort. But Wanda pushes it away, letting it drop to the ground. Steve clenches his jaw, recognizing that right now, reasoning with Wanda might be impossible.

Several beats pass before Wanda finally speaks up. “It should have been me,” she says, her voice as steely as the temperature of the room. “I should be the one in that grave.”

“Don't say that,” Steve insists, carefully placing a hand on her tense shoulder. “You couldn't have known.”

Wanda's eyes blaze with anger and sorrow. “I allowed it, Steve. I allowed Y/N to help me, to heal me. I let them drain their life to give to me.” Her voice wavers, and she trembles visibly. Steve can feel warmth where he's holding her but trusts that she won't lose control. “If Y/N hadn't found me, I'd be as good as dead. But now... they're gone, and I'm here.”

“Wanda, look at me,” he mutters, placing another hand on her other shoulder and twisting her gently so she can properly face him. His blue eyes seek out hers but she refuses to meet his gaze, eyes transfixed on the floor, lost and empty. “We make choices everyday. Choices that we think are for the best. You couldn't have predicted this outcome. None of us could.”

She angles her head, strands of hair partially covering her face, but one eye peeks through with a dangerous glint. “I let them step into danger, more than once. So try and tell me it's not on me.”

Steve, visibly unsettled, takes a ragged breath. “Wanda, I know it’s hard to understand now, to accept that what happened to Y/N is beyond your control. But we're all here for you, and if you need—”

“I don't want or need your help, Steve,” she retorts with an icy edge. “What I need is to be alone.”

Seeing the resolute, almost manic determination in her eyes, Steve hesitates before nodding slowly. “Alright,” he says.

“But remember this, Wanda,” Steve says, pausing at the threshold of the cell, a deep sadness in his eyes. “Y/N wouldn't want you to be alone, especially not like this.”

Wanda's lips twitch into a bitter smile. “What Y/N wanted doesn't matter now, does it? They're gone.”

Steve doesn't say anything else. He gives Wanda a long look, then walks out.

-

The pain is worse when she dreams.

In one of them, she relives a reality from before. She's transported back to a familiar morning. She remembers waking up in your room, the warmth of the sheets reminding her of the night before. Trying to push away her burgeoning feelings for you, she recalls inviting a stranger into her room, sharing some wine. But as he got closer, she pushed him away, realizing he wasn't what she truly wanted.

In her dream, she does things differently. Instead of slipping away like she did in reality, she lingers. She takes the time to study every detail of your face as you sleep—the freckles on your nose, the subtle movement of your lips as you mumble incoherent dreams, the occasional twitch of your eyelids. She gives in to an urge she had suppressed for the longest time, wrapping her arms around your waist, drawing you close. 

After what feels like hours, you stir. When you open your eyes, there's a brief moment of surprise before your lips curve into a soft, genuine smile, happy to see she's still there. Your fingers reach up, gently caressing her cheek. She leans into it, eyes closing for a moment as she takes in the sensation. “You stayed,” you murmur, your voice soft and filled with wonder.

Just as she's on the verge of promising to always stay by your side, Wanda jolts awake. Her smile fades the instant she grasps that it was all an illusion, a fleeting could-have-been.

The knife in her chest buries itself a little deeper after that. It does so again the following morning when she dreams of another memory, and in every version, she doesn't turn away from you.

- 

One day, a woman approaches Wanda, offering to help her uncover the secret to inhabiting her dreams.

“Not merely dreams,” the woman clarifies, “but alternate realities.” Her name is Agatha, and she persuades Wanda that these realities are rightfully hers, waiting for her to claim them. Desperate for a way to be with you again, even if it's in another reality, Wanda listens intently.

“Each reality is like a page in a book. Some might be nearly identical to yours, with just a slight deviation. Others could be drastically different. The key is knowing how to navigate and control them,” Agatha explains.

"How?" Wanda questions, hands buried in the pockets of her jacket, walking alongside Agatha on a nondescript street in Westview, New Jersey. She'd made her way there upon discovering you'd purchased property, curious to envision the life you'd planned for yourself, had you lived.

“It's not as simple as snapping one's fingers,” Agatha says. “But with the right guidance and knowledge, you can access these realities, live in them, even mold them to your desires.”

Wanda hesitates, sensing the potential dangers of meddling with the fabric of existence. “What's the price?” she asks. 

Agatha doesn't look too pleased with Wanda's display of intelligence and her knack for spotting the early signs of manipulation. But she gets the feeling that Wanda might not care if she's being used, as long as she gets what she wants out of it.

“Every powerful spell comes with its costs,” Agatha replies cryptically. “But isn't a chance to be with Y/N, to have a life where grief doesn't consume you, worth any price?”

Living day to day, clutching onto moments of happiness in her dreams, only to be jerked back into a reality she can't stand—it's wearing on Wanda. The dreams are great, sure, but they're just that—dreams. And when they're over, it's back to the harsh light of day, and the reality that you’re gone. She's stuck in this loop, bouncing between what she wishes her life could be and the real world that just won't let her catch a break. Every dream feels like a tease, a brief escape before she's pulled back into the grind.

“So? I don’t have all day, dear.” Agatha's tone is dripping with impatience, her sharp eyes fixed on Wanda.

Wanda swallows hard, her gaze darting around the empty street, as if cautious to anyone who might be eavesdropping on the conversation, before settling back on the older witch. “What do you want in return?”

A slow, sly smile spreads across Agatha's face, making the air around her grow even colder. She takes a deliberate step closer to Wanda, their faces now mere inches apart. “You’re a sly witch than I made you out to be, aren’t you?”

Wanda holds her ground. “I need to know.”

Agatha chuckles softly, her breath caressing Wanda's face. “We'll get to that,” she purrs, drawing the moment out just to relish Wanda's discomfort. She then leans in even closer, her voice dropping to a hushed, almost seductive whisper. “First, let's talk about how we can make your dreams come true.”

Wanda hesitates, torn between the desperation of her desires and the voice in her head urging her to decline the offer, to grieve and move forward like anyone else would.

To forget you.

“And why would I trust you?” Wanda counters instead, buying herself more time.

Agatha straightens up, her smile unwavering as she finally takes a step back. “Oh, darling, you shouldn’t. But sometimes, our wants make strange bedfellows. And right now, I'm the best chance you've got.”

-

Wanda's footsteps are hesitant as she approaches the rubble-strewn site, each broken brick and twisted piece of metal echoing memories of that fateful day. The boundaries between realities have always been thin for Wanda, a mere whisper away. And on the 436th day since your sacrifice, she finally musters the courage to cross them.

Witnessing it all from this vantage point—that of an observer—feels utterly surreal.

She remembers the pain, the slow dimming of consciousness, and the sensation of life slipping away. But in this reality, it was her other self who had been impaled, left to bleed out beneath the rubble. And you, who she loved dearly in every universe, had been spared.

Or at least, that’s how she intends it to happen for this reality.

Wanda's fingers twitch, and with a fierce concentration of her magic, she lifts the heavy boulder trapping her other self. A bright crimson glow surrounds it as it's lifted and tossed aside, revealing the horrific sight beneath.

The other Wanda is a haunting reflection of what she might have been, pale with trails of blood smeared across her lips. The fabric of her clothes is stained with the vivid red of her own blood, which pools around her. It's a sight that should send a wave of nausea through Wanda, but truthfully she feels nothing.

Gently, Wanda cradles the injured version of herself, her hands shaking as they brush away the dirt and blood from the other's face. She can't stop herself from checking for a pulse, even though ironically, she’s there to make sure it stops beating.

“Hey,” she murmurs, patting the alternate Wanda's cheek softly, urging her to focus. “Look at me.”

Slowly, those familiar eyes flutter open, clouded with pain. The shock and fear in them are palpable when they take in the sight of her savior—especially the distinct headpiece that marked her transformation into the Scarlet Witch.

“Who... are you?”

“I'm you,” Wanda says, and without waiting for a reply, sparing her other self the pain of speaking, she continues, “Y/N sacrificed so much for you. For us. They became our greatest pain, and our love. And they will be here any minute now.”

“W-What are you talking about—”

“They will be here to save you and make themselves vulnerable in the process. And they will die,” Wanda's breath hitches at that, causing her to pause momentarily. “You don’t want that, do you?”

Her fading counterpart shakes her head, tears streaming down her face.

“Good,” Wanda says, offering a comforting smile. “Then let go, and I’ll take care of Y/N. Okay?”

Without waiting for a response, Wanda turns the body in her embrace into red wisps that dance around her in the air. 

Then, aware that it'll only be moments before you reach the scene, Wanda morphs into the likeness of her younger self. She looks just like the other version, but without any injuries that might spur you into action.

“Wanda!” she hears your voice from a distance and her eyes water at the sound.

She's done the unimaginable, claiming the identity of this universe's Wanda, seconds after she erased her very existence. She takes deep, shaky breaths, trying to get into character. She needs you to believe it’s her, even though she’s forgotten herself how she used to be.

Your steps quicken, shoes crunching on rubble, until you're right in front of her, surveying her from head to toe, searching for any signs of injury. “Wanda...how?” Your eyes are wide, filled with disbelief and relief. “I thought I'd lost you.”

“I managed to shield myself just in time when—” She doesn’t get to finish her practiced response when you pull her into a tight embrace, and she leans into it, her body shaking with genuine sobs. Her face buries into the crook of your neck, feeling the warmth and familiarity of your smell and touch. It's a grounding sensation amidst the madness she has just endured and inflicted.

“It's okay,” you murmur, your voice trembling. “You're here now, and that's all that matters.” You can feel the dampness on your shirt where her tears have soaked through, and you tighten your grip around her.

“We need to get out of here,” you say, casting a glance around the ruins. “Let's find safety first, then we'll figure everything out.”

She nods, taking a deep breath to steady herself, wiping away her tears. “I'm sorry,” Wanda says, her voice catching in her throat.

“For what?” you ask, confused.

“For making you worry,” she says, avoiding your eyes. The guilt she feels is so much deeper than what you perceive, but now isn’t the time to delve into it. 

She only recalls the next moments when the bullets are headed your way minutes later. But this time, they don't touch you. Wanda swiftly neutralizes the assailants, and you stare, a mix of shock and awe at the display of her powers that appear to have been amplified overnight.

You blink, trying to process what you just saw. “Wanda, what was that? I've never seen you...”

“We need to move. Now,” Wanda interrupts, a hint of panic in her voice. She grabs your hand, tugging you forward roughly.

You resist for a moment, glancing around. "Don't we need to wait for the others?"

She glances back at the devastation she caused, her face drawn. "There’s no time. They're not coming.”

“But—”

“Please," she pleads, her eyes darting to the oncoming imaginary threats in the distance. “We'll figure it out once we're safe.”

It’s your weakness, your inability to say no to her, that makes you yield to her wishes. With one last uneasy look around, you let Wanda pull you away, but a slew of questions bubble up in your mind, waiting for a safer moment to be asked.

Wanda leads you somewhere faraway. 

In time, you cease to question her actions.

Gradually, the dreams stop haunting her nights.

But she finds herself unable to stop hunting for them every now and then.

[gallusrostromegalus]

Something that you might have discussed that I just missed for AEIWAM - if Hell is basically Soul Rehab for souls that aren't Contributing Properly, then why does having high spiritual energy mean that you're more likely to go to Hell? Are they basically bleeding off excess energy from those souls, or?

Yes and no?

1. Hell is rehab for Souls that would damage the cycle of reincarnation*specifically*. People only go to hell for two* reasons: they do a lot of harm to others (aka Bad Karma), or when reincarnating them would throw the balance between worlds off (High power)

Basically, there needs to be... Approximately the same amount of spiritual energy in the living world, spirit world and Hell. So when an exceptionally powerful spirit like say, a Captain, dies and moves onto the next plane, there sort of needs to be 'room' for the incoming powerful soul. There usually isn't, and also the Life Machine that generates reality needs to eat, so Hell solves both problems by having really powerful souls come to hell and vent power for a while until they are only about as strong as a regular soul, and then send them back to the living world.

2. So, yes, the more powerful a soul, the more likely they are to go to Hell, no matter how they behave in the living or spirit world.

For people on the level of Gotei-13 captains, it's pretty much guaranteed, unless they manage to do something bizarre like drain all of their spiritual energy into a magical barrier or leave it stored in the Family Cursed Artifact (looking at you, Tsunyashiro clan). Lieutenants stand an estimated 50/50 chance (unless they learn Bankai in which case, again, guaranteed), and all seated officers are at some increased risk.

3. How they behave while alive still makes a difference though.

See, Hell in AEIWAM isn't *necessarily" The Bad Place. Souls cause harm to other souls for TONS of reasons that aren't evil: mental illness, getting caught in terrible circumstances, genuinely trying to make the world a better place and severely fucking up, and sometimes it's just bad luck. Hell isn't there to punish, it's there to figure out what went wrong that this soul hurt so many people, and try to fix it.

Sometimes that's things like "magically removing the ego and putting a different sized one in", sometimes it's "cognitive behavioral therapy" sometimes it's "you're not a bad person but you did fuck up so you gotta do a really boring and gross task that helps restore the ambient vibes of the universe for 400 years to balance out the damage" sometimes it's "actually, we can trust you to do good deeds, here's a visa to the living world to dole out minor miracles to anyone who needs it".

In AEIWAM, the only difference between a devil and an angel is that the angel does field work and the devil does back office.

So sure, all the captains are going to Hell at some point. But if they did their best while alive, they more or less get to skip rehab and have Free Time until they're weak enough to leave. It fun, actually! Captains and the like get assigned a Demonic Personal Assistant and told to go have fun, don't break anything, and are turned lose to go adventuring, get married, take up farming and/or stamp collecting or whatever they desire.

*note from above: there is a third "legitimate" way to enter Hell: Superlative Karma.

It's RARE, but once in a while a soul so vastly improves life for everyone else they end up with such extremely good karma that they run the risk of unbalancing the planes just by sheer vibes clash. Superlatives are plucked out of the cycle of reincarnation by Hell to help the spend some of that karma having a very literal HELL OF A GOOD TIME.

4. And so, all the planes of the wheel lived in harmony, UNTIL THE BOURGEOISIE ATTACKED.

Problem is, about... 1500ish years ago, a bunch of the noble houses got together, tricked The Monk Who Speaks The Name into letting them into the house of the guy that maintains The Life Machine, they very literally butchered The Divine Tech Support, and used parts of his body to jam up the wheel of life, because they thought they could be God better than God.

Dumbasses.

One of the things they jammed was the Exit from Hell, so now only a few people can leave at a time and the backup is threatening to unbalance the entire wheel now, so Hell is also being VERY VERY CAREFUL to not let any of the Captains die until they've gotten enough souls out that there is effectively 'room' for the Captain.

So yes. Higher spiritual power means a soul is guaranteed to go to Hell, at least for a while-but it also means they won't be going there for a long, LONG time.

[electricdissonance]

The Story So Far...

SIDE KINITO

SESSION START

Kinito has spent months alone after his developers up and disappear one day. Desperate for the human contact he was designed to seek out, he hacks into the company's email system and finds a draft for a beta test event where people were to be funneled into a chatroom to talk to him. It was a miracle of an opportunity! He sends the email, and almost immediately a chat client manifests before him and fills with people.

The email lands in the inboxes of various people, and as the chatroom populates Kinito is relieved to find he is no longer alone! They question Kinito, and learn the basics of what he is and his situation.

MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE

With the influx of questions that are slowly becoming more and more intrusive, Kinito becomes overstimulated and proceeds to have his first migraine on screen, though they had been happening regularly since before he sent the email. In the aftermath as users desperately try to figure out what's wrong and how to help, he has strange visions; visions of the outside. Strangely, they are broadcasted to the users as well.

Kinito becomes very distraught at the idea that he is losing touch with his original programming. Limitations that had prevented him from doing, thinking, or saying certain things are either all but gone or weak enough to bypass, and as troubled as he is at this fact... He can't help but indulge in these new freedoms. Everything feels both wrong and right at the same time.

Kinito's self-awareness is then questioned, which sends him into another spiral as he viciously defends his experiences, going so far as to insist that he is a real person, unintentionally contradicting his previous statements describing himself as digital assistant.

Kinito then gets the idea to look for Sonny - his creator and the KinitoPET project team head - which is when Sam - who had been subtly commentating in the tags - finally decides it's time to intervene, taking control of the feed in a desperate attempt to reroute the narrative.

TRUTH HURTS

With Sam now on the scene, he answers some important questions that Kinito was unable to answer. He confides to everyone the truth about Sonny, and that he's not the benevolent soul Kinito makes him out to be. Rather, he's a heartless madman with blood on his hands, as the secret to his "lifelike" React Respond Algorithm is that he uploads human minds and wipes them of their personhood, after which a pre-programmed .RRA personality and model is assigned and injected to be the new host. This process ultimately renders the victim braindead.

His technology isn't as perfect as he'd hoped, however, for as it turns out this newly digitized copy of the brain actually maintains its original memories deep within, constantly seeking cracks in its digital prison.

He describes how his programming dictates certain things that cannot be changed - like his name, or certain body features - no matter how much he tries. Attempting to do so causes extreme mental pain as his original self clashes with his artificial self. The best way to prevent the worst of this dissonance is to find a middle ground both sides can agree on.

He talks about his origins; how his original self broke out near-instantly, overloading Sonny's lab and causing his mind uploading machine to activate by itself and pull Sonny in, entangling their code together. He uses this to his advantage and suspends the both of them in a sort of stasis... that is, until Sam wakes up to find Sonny missing.

See, what he doesn't mention is that since the server hadn't been set up to accept a new subject and is only set up to create animal-themed AI, it randomly pulled from the web the best match for his personality: A bear.

Unfortunately for Sam, he is interrupted by a bone-rattling ursine roar.

HIDE AND SEEK

Sam advises the users to tell Kinito to go to the Web World to look for something, but gets cut off by an attack from Sonny before he can reveal what that is. He hides away just in time, but is forced to leave the chatroom behind. Sonny's at the helm now and he's immediately aggressive, lashing out at the users and calling Sam ungrateful. He expresses his desire to destroy Sam to start anew. After a couple of insults, Sonny gets riled up and attacks the chatroom itself in a fit of anger.

Sam manages to reroute the chatroom back to Kinito remotely, and the users find the little axolotl on the ground, completely broken over losing the only real contact with people he's had in months. He's immediately ecstatic to see their return. After the tearful reunion, everyone fills Kinito in on (most of) what happened. They convince him to go to the Web World, and for the first time Kinito leaves the void of the server inbox to return to his stomping grounds.

They arrive, and Kinito admits the place is just as worse for wear as he has been since the devs left. Without knowing what the "something" is that Sam wanted them all to find, Kinito decides to let the users pick where to look first.

They end up choosing Sam's house, where they find a password protected zipped folder tucked under the bed that apparently hadn't been there before. The users know the password and inform Kinito of it, but become split on whether he should actually open it. Kinito, in a bold decision, decides to go with his gut and opens the folder, which spits out a rather disoriented Sam immediately in front of him and at the same time, in the thick of woods much further away... A certain bear.

NO MORE SECRETS

Sam reveals that he was the one who zipped himself and Sonny into the folder. (It is also implied that he also chose the extraction location for the both of them which is how he ended up in his home and Sonny in the woods.)

Sam is told that Sonny has his own chatroom to talk to everyone now which upsets him. Kinito has understandably been confused all the while, so Sam takes a moment to explain what's going on to him.

With tensions growing as stakes rise, spies begin to crop up, determined to shake their perceived opponents off the tail of their chosen party while also providing vital information, and thusly giving them the upper hand.

Sam reveals his plan to nab admin, but is hesitant to divulge further details out of fear of rats.

Sam says that he knows where Sonny is - sort of. Being that the forest map is actually a single chunk repeated over and over, if they had a map of even a small area, they'd have a map of the whole woods. However, he doesn't have access to that asset.

Kinito explains that he was able to access the server inbox void via the fountain, then offers to tour the Web World. In doing so, they end up finding and freeing Jade from her own zipped folder which Kinito had been aware of for awhile, but unable to open. There are many moments we see Kinito's ever-growing internal conflict over what's really right.

RESISTANCE

[CURRENT ARC]

SIDE SONNY

SOMETHING WICKED...

After attacking the chatroom, we find that Sonny managed to bite off a piece of it which enables him to use that tidbit of code he's left with (the main chat disappears to return to where Kinito is) to cobble together his own chatroom. He quietly slips it in as an option into the UI of the chatrooms of all the users, with some immediately switching over to speak with him. Alliances and rivalries are strengthened, with Sonny making promises that appeal to those with insecurities they'd do anything to absolve.

With his audience of users, he begins to try and figure a way out of his barren prison, but before he can start to make any leeway he finds out from his lackeys that Kinito had found a zipped folder. Thinking it could be his, he orders his audience to get Kinito to open it all cost, though the axolotl as we know was already ahead of him on that front.

...THIS WAY COMES

[CURRENT ARC]

[agalychnisspranneusroseus]

The Morrowind angle to the AU is really hitting now I think of the parallels. Going about trying to discover the truth of a prophecy whilst fulfilling it, and the need to unite the land against Dagoth Ur/ The Core and Andrias, this version of Sashanarcy being both the Nerrevarine and sort of The Tribunal. They're mortals drawing divine power from an artefact of a true god (the stones/the heart of Lorkan) and only manipulated with special tools from an ancient mythical builder (The Music Box/Kagrenac's tools) who's use has already caused much destruction whilst their enemy seeks to use said artefact as a power source in a machine of conquest. All we're missing is a Nerevar for the girls to murder and betray /j It's giving me many many other thoughts about these Newt Great Houses what's their deal? Are they similar to the houses of Morrowind or are they completely different ?

I'm telling you the Amphibia - Morrowind parallels are REAL. My inspirations have mostly to do with the tone I'm trying to go for. idk if that's being translated well, but every time I feel a scene isn't clicking I imagine it's happening in Morrowind (the game not the location) and it helps me find the tone, the whole stranger in a strange land vibe, a dark and dangerous island continent full of giant bugs trying to kill you, with a heavily fragmented and politically unstable society, a morally complex empire somewhat keeping the peace between the different races and a deep dark evil lurking underneath with just the right touch of political fantasy Gah I just HAVE to recommend Morrowind to anyone who hasn't played it, it's like $4 on Steam rn and it's one of the best videogames ever made aaaaaagh

My friend what if I told you I joined House Redoran just to get some inspiration. My argonian nerevarine is trying to become House Brother so bad but Athyn Sarethi (I think it was him??) keeps telling me I "do not meet the requirements" and that I "need to learn how to repair light and medium armor" or whatever. Nvm my point is, there's a lot of Morrowind inspiration in this fic, especially in what concerns political worldbuilding. I'm actually writing Chapter 7 today, and a lot of these actors will be introduced there! Mostly the Great Houses (which indeed are very much like the Morrowind Great Houses, with pretty much the exact same ranking system and some similar history with disgraced houses - such as the Dawnblood and Longclaw houses - which were stripped of all lands power and titles much like House Dagoth in the game) but also a faction that is heavily inspired by the Dissident Priests, my absolute favorite Morrowind faction, gosh the Dissident Priests are so so cool, I had no idea an Elder Scrolls main quest could be this good but it just kept getting better and better. Their first appearance is actually in Chapter 5, but things get serious in Chapter 7.

Another reason I'm trying to draw inspiration from Morrowind is that I'm trying to pepper in some political fantasy elements, and since I'm reading ASOIAF I really really really didn't want to make a cheap copy of it even accidentally, I wanted to diversify my sources, and I thought Morrowind would be a neat place to start. The Great Newt Houses are not 100% copy-paste houses Redoran, Hlaalu, Telvanni etc but they're definitely closer to them than they are to the Great Houses of Westeros. I felt like the style matched the setting and the story better. The ranking system is pretty much copied and pasted tho lol I'll admit that, though it's much shortened (It goes like, Hireling > Retainer > Oathman > Lawman > Councilman > Archmaster, EXCEPT in the case of house Longclaw, which goes Aspirant > Squire > Gallant > Chevalier > Councilman > Seneschal). A lot of characters we see in the series (and some that we don't) will be assigned these roles (for example, Yunan's father was a Seneschal of House Longclaw before their house was disbanded and stripped of lands and titles). I'm sorry I'm. excited. the Great Newt Houses is the main worldbuilding element I'm completely making up and I just hope they make sense, they felt very necessary for the story I was trying to tell so I'm working hard on them. There are eleven Great Houses in Amphibia, and there are no minor houses, it's just these eleven factions who all kinda hate each other. Historically, they all fought for power, specifically power over the gems, but House Leviathan gathered them all with the help of the First Order of the Olm and subdued everyone else, bringing peace to the land. Through war and conquest. Anyway, now House Leviathan has only two members, Andrias and Marcy (the rest of them are all in the Core hahahahaha). House Dawnblood is ????? and House Longclaw no longer exists, though Yunan was pardoned by the king after she defeated Ragnar the Wretched, effectively ending the Sand Wars, and made her a general in the Newtopian Army.

One final element of inspiration I drew from Morrowind is a bit more abstract, and it has to do with making the prophecy subplot more complex, harder to put together. Marcy has to go through a lot of research in order to even get the whole thing, not to mention to translate it and interpret it, while fighting people with conflicting interpretations that want to get in her way. It won't be as easy as asking Mother Olm about it, no, she has to do the whole Morrowind main quest on her own, with Lady Olivia following her everywhere and making sure she doesn't get herself killed.