#DNA Evidence

[blogparanormalexpresso2stuff]

The DNA of a big cat in the Panthera genus – probably a leopard – has been identified from a swab taken from a dead sheep in the Lake District

This is the first time that big cat DNA has been found on a carcass in the UK. The analysis was carried out at a laboratory at the University of Warwick run by Prof Robin Allaby

[merryfortune]

DNA Evidence

Written for the Rarest of Rare Pairs Fic-a-Thon on Dreamwidth

Prompt: Any: any/any(/any+) femslash - sharing lipsticks 

Title: DNA Evidence

Ship: Chiyomaru/Masquerena

Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG

Word Count: 2,030

Rating: T

Warning: None 

Tags: Denial of Feelings, Pining, Unhygienic, Indirect Kiss

   “Again?!” Pla-Tina snapped at her.

   Chiyomaru winced but did her best not to. It didn't exactly reflect well on her if she flinched when her superior yelled at her, after all. Instead, she gingerly lifted her hand.  

   “Yes, ma'am, the target got away,” Chiyomaru suppressed a whimper and tried to talk like a soldier, “but we did collect some DNA evidence of her. Could be useful.”

   Said DNA evidence was inside the plastic baggie that Chiyomaru was holding. The item in question was a tube of lipstick, colour presently unknown but its outer shell was a muted, charcoal black with mauve linework. The brand had been scratched off by something, possibly a screw driver based on the pattern of the rivulets. It was a feeble attempt at hiding identity.

   “We have enough of that girl's detritus, rookie.” Pla-Tina snarled. “Dispose of it.”

   “Understood.” Chiyomaru chirped.

   She stashed the baggie inside of her pocket again and saluted Pla-Tina. Her heart raced. She hated being scolded (read: verbally abused) by her superiors. She really, truly, genuinely did her honest and earnest best and this was the thanks she got for it? It completely ruined her already bad mood.

   After all she was the reason the infamous I:P Masquerena had gotten away again.

   Everything with her was a fumble. There was something about her that caused plans to fail, it was as though she were a magnet for Murphy's law, turning everything she touched into a Saturday morning cartoon. Every rave against crime turned into a slapdash sprint off the edge of the nearest building's roof. Chiyomaru's memories of every twist and turn blurred until it just snowballed to get snapped at by her superior but hey. At least she had a souvenir.

   One that she was meant to throw in the trash and Chiyomaru tried. She really did.

   She got home, back to their dormitories. It felt good to be back. The familiar sight of the dark hallways and darker rooms was calming. She unlocked her room and stood in front of her waste bin. She stood in front of it and went through the mental list of what she needed to do.

Throw out the lipstick. They didn’t need it.

Have a shower. None of the rooms have ensuites though.

Rest up for a better, more refreshed mind. Just so she could do her chores tomorrow? No thanks.

   Chiyomaru sighed to herself. She drew out the bagged lipstick from her pocket. She lifted her hand. She held the baggie by the knot at the top of it. She didn’t move her arm despite willing herself to do it. Chiyomaru tried to move her muscles, inch by inch, instruction by instruction but no matter how minute the order or how she tried to will herself, she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t bring herself to do it despite her determination. 

   She tried over and over again but despite having that mental list, she didn’t have the mental fortitude to go through with it. Not one item off it.

   So, Chiyomaru gave up. Annoyed that even now, she couldn’t go through with orders like a well-oiled machine. Chiyomaru turned away from the waste bin and looked out to her room, her shoulders relaxed and she threw the lipstick baggie onto her bed. That came easy to her as she defeatedly kicked off her shoes and changed into her pyjamas. She threw her uniform onto the floor and flopped into bed face first. 

   Complete and utter full depression mode.

   For all of two minutes.

   Chiyomaru growled to herself. She couldn’t be anything but a goody-two-shoes, it seemed so she dragged herself up and tidied her room. She simply could not with the idea of having dirty laundry on the floor. No way! She bent down, picked them up, and gave them a sniff test. Ew, rank, and promptly decided they needed to go into the laundry basket so she balled them up and dunked them into her bamboo basket.

   Then she returned to bed. Angrily. In the way that only someone going through the motions of grief could be angry. She was angry at herself, angry at her boss, angry at her coworkers, but she was furious with her rival.

   Rival was, truly, the only word for I:P Masquerena.

   They seemed like they were on equal footing. They were both newcomers on the scene as newbie cat burger and fresh-faced S-Force recruit. Masquerena’s first heist had even been Chiyomaru’s first night on the job and something illicit clicked when their eyes first met and made contact. Masquerena blew a raspberry and Chiyomaru blew a gasket right back at the disrespect.

   The back and forth between them was clumsy and personal. Everything about Masquerena made Chiyomaru irate. She was silly and klutzy, made bad feline puns and was always toppling over head over heels. She was the worst thief in the world! Yet she had bested Chiyomaru - and by extension, the rest of the S-Force - every time through sheer dumb luck.

   Even tonight. Chiyomaru kept coming back to their farewell as Masquerena once again got away with a USB stick full of passwords to various museums’ security systems throughout the city, how she disappeared over the edge of the building. She was gorgeous. The way her eyes sparkled in the moonlight, the cheeky glint to her teeth as she smirked like a cat. Only to screech as she crashed into an awning below before making her inelegant getaway.

   Classic Masquerena in some ways and it was beyond irritating. She was witty but always the butt of her own joke. She was sly and flexible but a klutz. Unlucky in all the luckiest of ways. She was sweet and personable and probably could have been an influencer if she really wanted. Everything about her epitomised the city and how different it was to Chiyomaru’s country roots but it drew her in all the more.

   She wondered. If circumstances were different, could they have been friends? Surely not. Chiyomaru proudly had a stick up her bum and Masquerena was openly more free-wheeling. Instead of being beaten down at a job increasingly turned into a dead end, what if it had been school or university or literally anywhere else where they first met. Regrettably, however, Chiyomaru came to the same decision as she peered into the rabbit hole. 

   Ultimately, she was a hall monitor and Masquerena was a rebel at heart. It didn’t matter if they were playing games or committing crimes, they were a pair with irreconcilable differences.

   Everything about Masquerena got on Chiyomaru’s nerves, after all. Her shiny, glossy hair, her air-headed nature, the sound of her voice which meandered between too cute and too cacophonic. It made Chiyomaru’s heart pound the more and more she examined the gap between herself and that gosh-darn thief. 

   Chiyomaru sighed. She wanted to sleep and ideally never wake up. She could only imagine the long list of chores she would have to do, not to mention corporal punishment or extra training, additional duties which would only aim to demean her. It would be the literal worst.

   Chiyomaru closed her eyes and tried to go to sleep. She got underneath her covers, smushed her face into her pillow and tried to ignore the face of Masquerena that she kept seeing amid the phosphenes. Her bedding was thin and well-worn. The room was draughty, too. She drew her knees up to her chest and jostled her foot against something.

   Oh. That’s right. The lipstick. It was still in the bag and it was still on her bed. Why did she even throw it over here? Why couldn’t she put it in the trash where it belongs.

   Well, with it on her bed, Chiyomaru didn’t want to sleep so she pulled herself up again. She could already feel her hair sticking out at odd angles with bedhead. She leaned over herself and grabbed the lipstick. 

   She examined it through the bag. It was roughed up but to a country girl like Chiyomaru, it seemed super bougie and even taboo. Only the showgirls and theatre girls wore makeup in her village and none of them were young like her so it seemed so weirdly foreign to her. 

   Chiyomaru let her curiosity get the better of her. She shouldn’t but what did it matter? She had picked it up out of the gutter on the roof. It had slipped out of Masquerena’s back pocket when she half squatted over the edge of the building, like a superhero and making the calculations of if she should stay or if she should go. 

   Chiyomaru ripped the bag open. The plastic was tougher than she thought it would be but she was able to it and the lipstick fell out, landed in her lap, in the folds of the blanket over her. She balled up the plastic and put it in her bedside drawer. Tomorrow morning, if she could, she would put it in the bin. Like she should have already.

   Then Chiyomaru did the next step.

   She uncapped the tube of lipstick and she gave the bottom of it a swivel so the lipstick would rise up past the rim of its casing. The lipstick was kind of a shade of brown but it also reminded Chiyomaru of the colour purple. A really dusty shade of it with some nude tones mixed in. 

   She could imagine it on Masquerena’s lips. They were… cupid bow shaped. Cute and well taken care of, not dry at all like her own. Their shape was remembered by the lipstick and… experienced by Chiyomaru for the very first time as she applied it to her own.

   The feeling of the smear was alien to Chiyomaru. It was a thick texture but not chalky, it was softer than that. She sighed as she imagined it was Masquerena’s hand guiding her and that it was-

   No, that was too far.

   Chiyomaru’s ears burned and her eyes snapped open. What was she doing?! Fantasising about her foe?! How dare she. Uncalled for, unthinkable, unhygienic, even.

   But it was an indirect kiss, nonetheless.

   She couldn’t take it back, and she only made it worse as she tried to wipe it off her lips. The substance was stubborn, it turned to dusky streaks on the back of her hands as she frantically tried to deny it and the faraway kiss of Masquerena. 

   Chiyomaru’s stomach knotted and she held on tighter to the lipstick. She couldn’t throw it away, she couldn’t even fling it into the far corner of the room in disgust. She just couldn’t. Her eyes welled up with tears as she grappled with contradictory feelings.

   She wanted to do right by her village, her ideals and her convictions but this shining city that once glowed with all her hopes and dreams… It was all grime underneath. The higher the pedestal the deeper the shadow behind it, or something like that.

   The tears she shed streaked down her cheeks and Chiyomaru gritted her teeth so as to not warble like a crybaby child. She gave up. To hell with tomorrow, let it happen, she deserved it. She was far more rotten than her superiors would ever know.

   She hid under her covers and stuffed her hand, tube of lipstick and all, underneath her pillow. She smashed her face into it, trying to rub off more of the lipstick but it stayed firmly put despite what she did to it. She clenched her eyes shut tight and begged to tear ducts to freaking stop it. Amazingly, that worked. It was a shame demanding that she fall asleep didn’t, however.

   She held the lipstick harder. Until she could feel the imprint of it, and her nails, inside the palm of her hand, that she could feel how she was white knuckling it. Chiyomaru all but curled up into a ball as she wrestled with these feelings. The events of tonight replaying in her head over and over again instead of sweet dreams. 

   Until fine. She cracked. She would admit it. Chiyomaru hated her job, she hated her boss but she hated how she liked Masquerena more. 

[gwydionmisha]

CW: Rape

[townpostin]

Engineering Student's Killer Denied Bail by High Court

Death sentence stayed for convict in 2016 rape and murder case Key Points: • Jharkhand High Court rejects bail plea of Rahul Raj, convicted rapist-murderer • Court stays death sentence pronounced by Ranchi CBI Special Court • Crime occurred on December 16, 2016; conviction in December 2019 RANCHI – The Jharkhand High Court has denied bail to Rahul Raj, convicted in the 2016 rape and murder of an…

[thephenotype]

[simplyforensic]

The First Death Row Exoneration with DNA Evidence: A Landmark 30 Years Ago

Introduction Discovering the power of DNA evidence in the criminal justice system was a groundbreaking moment, forever changing the landscape of wrongful convictions. On June 28, 2023, we commemorate the 30th anniversary of the exoneration of Kirk Bloodsworth, the first person to be exonerated from death row based on DNA evidence. This pivotal event paved the way for subsequent cases and…

[art-is-kayos]

What is a head without its eyes to see or mouth to speak

Ears to hear or hands to reach

Legs to move or havoc to wreak?

To what fate would it fall, an aspect bereft

Of all its subjects

And what then in turn, would happen then

To hollow parts left alone and broken.

[mixelation]

i am a scientist but i am also a true crime girlie. you cannot comprehend how many times a day i say shit like "a lack of evidence is not proof of innocence"

[alexcabotgf]

not to be true crime posting on main but i think i'm falling down the wm3 rabbit hole again

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

If you were to ask me why I believe what I believe, which is evolution, the very last thing I would say is because I was brought up to believe it. Absolutely the last thing I would say.

I would say the reason I believe it is because here is the evidence. And I would say here's a book of evidence and here's another book of evidence and here's another book of evidence. And you can go and look at fossils. You can go and look at DNA evidence. You can look at the evidence of the geographical distribution of animals and plants.

That's evidence.

Saying that it says so in my holy book. What kind of evidence is that? Does anybody seriously think that the evidence of a book that was written a few hundred, a thousand years ago by somebody who obviously didn't know anything, how could they know anything in those days? You're seriously saying that you take that more seriously than the evidence of fossils, the evidence of DNA, the evidence of geographical distribution, the evidence of comparative anatomy, comparative physiology?

==

Full video:

[whatudottu]

My first thought when i saw this: TFP Ben 10

Given how this 👇 is Ben's canonical car:

You aren't too far off lmao (mostly on the colour at least).

You might not be particularly a fan of CNA from your sphere of headcanons, but considering that Ben can access another biomechanical species in the galvanic mechamorph, I'm sure there's enough of an Omnitrix work around to sample cybertronian data. Seeing as it's a Camaro you could probably have a TFP x Ben 10 crossover equivalent to TFA Waspinator maybe, a green Bumblebee (or a green hornet if you of/remember that) but it's Ben. Considering how the biomechanical Upgrade has a few biological translation issues to the point of not quite technically being a fully integrated transformation, maybe Ben would speak with his own voice like Upgrade does or maybe even through radio depending on how physically different cybertronians are to human anatomy.

I mean that specific line of thinking would only be possible if Ben snagged a sample of Bumblebee's CNA (or whatever you'd prefer) which could either be convoluted or unclimactic, though I guess if street racing in some part of the globe with a desert (aka somewhat nearby Bellwood which already exists cross universe between Ben 10 and Generator Rex) there could be some plot about his shenaniganery nearly running Team Ben off the road and messing with Kevin's own heavily modified yet fresh from 1979 Dodge Challenger to the irritation and anger of Kevin himself. Something something Bee got the attention of the wrong (mostly) humans(ish).

[vexangle]

regarding the clone vs robot poll. everyone who voted 'clone' owes identical twins $100

[sylas-dove]

if ryley robinson ever met al-an he would kick that weird goat's entire ass btw. i love al-an as much as the next guy but please remember that he trapped the sea emperor leviathan at the bottom of the crater and killed one of her babies and also the rest of her species bc it was directly his fault that kharaa got released onto the planet & killed everything.

[english-mace]

some days you're just sitting peaceably drinking your tea & delving into your latest non-fiction light reading when

...homo sapiens really just out there like 'oh hey new species? mind if I fuck it?' & then not waiting for an answer huh