#Eclipse on the other hand... that boy craves violence

[problemsynth]

Ok I drew my sweet tiefling but like... what if I drew my terrible chaotic drow now.

[igenuinelywannagohome]

so

toxic yuri

lore dump under the cut :P

SO.

Ceana is kinda main focus OC. Big deal. Trauma baby. IXION dies right after they get introduced to the dang plot. BUT. ALAS. ANYWAYS LORE-

Ceana: Previously an animatronic from an aquarium that copied Faz Co. tech, Ceana kinda got snatched after her aquarium exploded due to a gas leak. Someone found their remains, and Faz Co. took the opportunity real quick. But, because of the fact Ceana had faced such severe damage mixed with the lack of will to give over backup memory chips, their coding was severely damaged. This ensued issues like lack of speech, inability to count, and illiteracy. This didn’t render them stupid, though. Quickly, they adapted to their struggles and pieced together their past, managing to revert themself on their own. Through this struggle, they meet the squad, do some lore stuff which they really didn’t want to deal with, and got thrown up on by a kid. The vomit killed their fish. Oopsies. After shenanigans ensue, SPECIFICALLY AFTER and/or around Eclipse’s second death, IXION arrived. IXION, a major antagonist in THEIR story (not interfering with other lore problems) had given them love and respect which they desperately craved, sending them into a false sense of security. (AKA: toxic yuri begins.) It took a lot of talking. A LOT of talking. And eventually the way they found out they were being used and abused was on a Sunday night watching Finding Nemo with Earth while they painted each other’s nails. IXION, enraged by Ceana’s sudden rebellion, made a plan to kill them. The plan had been to input a detrimental virus into their coding, which was already fragile, and have it eat them alive to turn them into, as seen in the smaller picture next to their character: a murderous cannibal. They were given no mind, no thoughts, no feelings. The virus was to delete all memories and possible emotions and bias towards others. The only way to ‘revert them to normal’ or ‘end their suffering’ was to permanently dismantle them. This backfired, and IXION, whom had been the root of the virus (explained in their lore) was torn to shreds by Ceana the moment the virus rooted into their systems. As the virus lessened in strength, Ceana’s last memories of IXION is her torn off hand holding her cheek, claiming that ‘she loved them’ and they were a ‘monster’ for their actions. This…stuck with Ceana. The overload in emotion mixed with the dwindling virus managed to have it morph into something entirely different: a protection code. Now, when children, family, friends, or even strangers are presented with violence, Ceana loses it and makes sure to ‘detain the assaulter’. (This is tearing them apart limb from limb and making sure their body is an unrecognizable pile of mush). This has caused various problems, but since Faz Co. had assumed their code was done for, they never became a certified animatronic. In the eyes of law, they are just an automaton gone rogue. The biggest downside to this ‘protection code’ though, is that Ceana fails to remember the events of what happen when it takes over. So seeing IXION call them a monster as they regain consciousness and the faces of fear people display once watching them detain a person had always haunted them.

Fun facts:

Ceana has a detachable fish tank for their middle abdomen

Inside of said fish tank they used to have two fish named Strawberry and Shortcake.

Shortcake survived the explosion, Strawberry did not.

An odd obsession with sharks.

Ceana was originally supposed to be a ‘female designed animatronic’, but went through the fboy boy treatment and decided that no thanks!!! (they/them)

Ceana is insecure about their odd paint job. They find it odd and ugly.

Ceana can play the ukulele.

Their hands can project ocean scenery onto walls.

Tall. About 10’4.

They have vocal stims. Meowing, beeping, and specific song notes that sound nice to the tongue.

They’e made entirely from glass, apart from their endoskeleton.

IXION ripped their eye out when they were infected with the virus.

No one knows they killed IXION (until they collapse from the guilt)

Ceana is good at glass sculpting, being able to quite literally meld themself back together.

I’m gonna write IXION’s part later my brain no like word

[ukdamo]

Antinous

Fernando Pessoa

It rained outside right into Hadrian's soul.

The boy lay dead On the low couch, on whose denuded whole, To Hadrian's eyes, that at their seeing bled, The shadowy light of Death's eclipse was shed.

The boy lay dead and the day seemed a night Outside. The rain fell like a sick affright Of Nature at her work in killing him. Through the mind's galleries of their past delight The very light of memory was dim.

O hands that clasped erewhile Hadrian's warm hands, That now found them but cold! O hair bound erstwhile with the pressing bands! O eyes too diffidently bold! O bare female male-body like A god that dawns into humanity! O lips whose opening redness erst could strike Lust's seats with a soiled art's variety!

O fingers skilled in things not to be named! O tongue which, counter-tongued, the throbbed brows flamed! O glory of a wrong lust pillowed on Raged conciousness's spilled suspension! These things are things that now must be no more. The rain is silent, and the Emperor Sinks by the couch. His grief is like a rage, For the gods take away the life they give And spoil the beauty they made live. He weeps and knows that every future age Is staring at him out of the to-be. His love is on a universal stage. A thousand unborn eyes weep with his misery.

Antinous is dead, is dead forever, Is dead forever and the loves lament. Venus herself, that was Adonis' lover, Seeing him again, having lived, dead again, Lends her great skyey grief now to be blent With Hadrian's pain.

Now is Apollo sad because the stealer Of his white body is forever cold. In vain shall kisses on that nippled point Covering his heart-beats' silent place implore His life again to ope his eyes and feel her Presence along his veins this fortress hold Of love. Now no caressing hands anoint With growing joy that body's lusting lore.

The rain falls, and he lies like one who hath Forgotten all the gestures of his love And lies awake waiting their hot return. But all his vices' art is now with Death: He lies with her, whose sex cannot him move, Whose hand, were't not cold, still ne'er his could burn. Lilies were on his cheeks and roses too. His eyes were sad in joy sometimes. He said Oft in his close abandonments, that woo Love to be more love than love can be, «Kiss My eyelids till my closed eyes seem to guess The kiss they feel laid in my heart's breast-bed.»

O Hadrian, what shall now thy cold life be? What boots it to be emperor over all? His absence o'er thy visible empery Throws a dim pall. Now are thy nights widowed of love and kisses, Now are thy days robbed of the night's awaiting, Now are thy lips purposeless and thy blisses No longer of the size of thy life, mating Thy empire with thy love's bold tendernesses.

Now are thy doors closed upon beauty and joy. Throw ashes on thy head! Lo, lift thine eyes and see the lovely boy! Naked he lies upon that memoried bed; By thine own hand he lies uncovered. There was he wont thy dangling sense to cloy, And uncloy with more cloying, and annoy With newer uncloying till thy senses bled.

His hand and mouth knew gamuts musical Of vices thy worn spine was hurt to follow. Sometimes it seemed to thee that all was hollow In sense in each new straining of sucked lust. Then still new crimes of fancy would he call To thy shaken flesh, and thou wouldst tremble and fall Back on thy cushions with thy mind's sense hushed.

«Beautiful was my love, yet melancholy. He had that art, of love's arts most unholy, Of being lithely sad among lust's rages. Now the Nile gave him up, the eternal Nile.

Under his wet locks Death's blue paleness wages Now war upon our pity with sad smile».

Even as he thinks, the lust that is no more Than a memory of lust revives and takes His senses by the hand, and his flesh quakes Till all becomes again what 'twas before. The dead body on the bed gets up and lives Along his every nerve ripped up and twanged, And a love-o'er-wise and invisible hand At every body-entrance to his lust Utters caresses which flit off, yet just Remain enough to bleed his last nerve's strand, O sweet and cruel Parthian fugitives!

He rises, mad, and looks upon his lover, That now can love nothing but what none know. Then his cold lips run all the body over— His lips that scarce remember their warmth, now So blent with feeling the death they behold; And so ice-senseless are his lips that, lo!, He scarce tastes death from the dead body's cold, But it seems both are dead or living both And love is still the Presence and the Mover. Then his lips cease on the other lips' cold sloth.

But there the wanting breath reminds his lips That between him and his boy-love the mist That comes out of the gods has crept. The tips Of his fingers, still idly tickling, list To some flesh-response to their purple mood. But their love-orison is not understood. The god is dead whose cult was to be kissed!

He lifts his hand up to where heaven should be And cries on the mute gods to know his pain. Lo, list!, o divine watchers of our glee

And sorrow!, list!, he will yield up his reign. He will live in the deserts and be parched On the hot sands, he will be beggar and slave; But give again the boy to be arm-reached! Forego that space ye meant to be his grave!

Take all the female beauties of the earth! Take all afar and rend them if ye will! But, by sweet Ganymede, that Jove found worth And above Hebe did elect to fill His cup at his high festivals, and spill His fairer vice wherefrom comes newer birth—, The clod of female embraces resolve To dust, o father of the gods!, but spare This boy and his white body and golden hair. Maybe thy newer Ganymede thou meanst That he should be, and out of jealous care From Hadrian's arms to thine his beauty steal'st.

He was a kitten playing with lust, playing With his own and with Hadrian's, sometimes one And sometimes two, now splitting, now one grown, Now leaving lust, now lust's high lusts delaying, Now eyeing lust not wide, but from askance Jumping round on lust's half-unexpectance; Then softly gripping, then with fury holding, Now playfully playing, now seriously, now lying By the side of lust looking at it, now spying Which way to take lust in his lust's withholding.

Thus did the hours slide from their tangled hands And from their mixed limbs the moments slip. Now were his arms dead leaves, now iron bands, Now were his lips cups, now the things that sip, Now were his eyes too closed, and now too open, Now were his ways such as none thought might happen, Now were his arts a feather and now a whip.

That love they lived as a religion Offered to gods that do to presence bend. Sometimes he was adorned and made to don Half-costumes, now a posing nudity That imitates some god's eternity Of body statue-known to craving men. Now was he Venus, risen from the seas; And now was he Apollo, white and golden; Now as Jove sate he in mock-judgment over The presence at his feet of his slaved lover; Now was he an acted rite, by one beholden, In ever-repositioned mysteries.

Now he is something anyone can be. O white negation of the thing it is! O golden-haired moon-cold loveliness! Too cold! too cold! and love as cold as he. Love wanders through the memories of his vice As through a labyrinth, in sad madness glad, And now calls on his name and bids him rise, And now is smiling at his imaged coming That is i'th'heart like faces in the gloaming-- Mere shining shadows of the forms they had.

The rain again like a vague pain arose And put the sense of wetness in the air. Suddenly did the Emperor suppose He saw this room and all in it from far. He saw the couch, the boy and his own frame Cast down against the couch, and he became A clearer presence to himself, and said These words unuttered, save to his soul's dread:

«I shall build thee a statue that will be To the astonished future evidence Of my love and thy beauty and the sense That beauty giveth of infinity, Though death with subtle uncovering hands remove The apparel of life and empire from our love, Yet its nude statue-soul of lust made spirit All future times, whether they will't or not, Shall, like a curse-seeming god's boon earth-brought, Inevitably inherit.

«Ay, this thy statue shall I build, and set Upon the pinnacle of being-thine. Let Time By its subtle dim crime Eat it from life, or with men's violence fret To pieces out of unity and presence. Ay, let that be! Our love shall stand so great In thy statue of us, like a god's fate, Our love's incarnate and discarnate essence, That, like a trumpet reaching over seas And going from continent to continent, Our love shall speak its joy and woe, death-blent, Over infinities and eternities!

«The memory of our love shall bridge the ages. It shall loom white out of the past and be Eternal, like a Grecian victory, In every heart the future shall give rages Of not being our love's contemporary.

«Yet oh that this were needed not, and thou Wert the red flower perfuming my life, The garland on the brows of my delight, The living flame on altars of my soul! Would all this were a thing thou mightest now Smile at from under thy death-mocking lids And wonder that I should so put a strife Twixt me and gods for thy lost presence bright; Were there nought in this but my empty dole And thy awakening smile half to condole With what my dreaming pain to hope forbids».

Thus went he, like a lover who is waiting, From place to place in his dim doubting mind. Now was his hope a great bulk of will fating Its wish to being, now felt he he was blind In some point of his seen wish undefined.

When love meets death we know not what to feel. When death foils love we know not what to know. Now did his doubt hope, now did his hope doubt. Now what his wish dreamed the dream's sense did flout And to a sullen emptiness congeal. Then again the gods fanned love's darkening glow.

Thy death has given me a newer lust— A flesh-lust raging for eternity. On my imperial will I put my trust That the high gods, that made me emperor be, Will not annul from a more real life My wish that thou shouldst live for e'er and stand A fleshly presence on their better land, More beautiful and as beautiful, for there No things impossible our wishes mar Nor pain our hearts with change and time and strife.

Love, love, my love! thou art already a god. This thought of mine, which I a wish believe, Is no wish, but a sight, to me allowed By the great gods, that love love and can give To mortal hearts, under the shape of wishes— Of wishes strong, having imperial reaches— A vision of the real things beyond Our life-imprisoned life, our sense-bound sense. Ay, what I will thee to be thou art now Already. Already on Olympic ground Thou walkest and art perfect, yet art thou, For thou needst no excess of thee to don To perfect be, being perfection.

«My heart is singing like a morning bird. A great hope from the gods comes down to me And bids my heart to subtler sense be stirred And think not that strange evil of thee That to think thee mortal would be.

«My love, my love! My god-love! Let me kiss On thy cold lips thy hot lips now immortal, Greeting thee at Death's portal's happiness, For to the gods Death's portal is Life's portal.

«Thus is the memory of thee a god Already, already a statue made of me-- Of that part of me that, like a great sea, Girds in me a great red empire more broad Than all the lands and peoples that are in My power's reach. Thus art thou myself made In that great stretch Olympic that betrays The true-wholed gods present in river and glade And hours eternal in its different days.

«So strong my love is that it is thyself, Thy body as it was ere death was it, Towering above the silence infinite That girds round life and its unduring pelf. Even as thou wert in life, thy corporal shade Is in the presence of the gods. My love Permits not that its carnal being fade Or one whit false to fleshly presence prove. Creeds may arise and pass, and passions change, Other ways may be born out of Time's dream, But this our love, made but thy body, 'll range On deathless meads from happy stream to stream.

«Were there no Olympus for thee, my love Would make thee one, where thou sole god mightst prove, And I thy sole adorer, glad to be

Thy sole adorer through infinity. That were a divine universe enough For love and me and what to me thou art. To have thee is a thing made of gods' stuff And to look on thee eternity's best part.

«O love, my love! Awake with my strong will Of loving to Olympus and be there The latest god, whose honey-coloured hair Takes divine eyes! As thou wert on earth, still In heaven bodifully be and roam, A prisoner of that happiness of home, With elder gods, while I on earth do make A statue for thy deathlessness' seen sake.

«That deathless statue of thee I shall build Will be no stone thing, but my great regret By which our love's eternity is willed. My sorrow shall make thee its god, and set Thy naked presence on the parapet That looks over the seas of future times. Some shall say all our love was vice and crimes. Others against our names, as stones, shall whet The knife of their glad hate of beauty, and make Our name a pillory, a scaffold and a stake Whereon to burn our brothers yet unborn. Yet shall our presence, like eternal morn, Ever return at Beauty's hour, and shine Out of the East of Love, and be the shrine Of future gods that nothing human scorn.

«My love for thee is part of what thou wert And shall be part of what thy statue will be. Our double presence unified in thee Shall make to beat many a future heart. Ay, were't a statue to be broken and missed, Yet its stone-perfect memory Would, still more perfect, on Time's shoulders borne, Overlook the great Morn From an eternal East.

«Thy statue is of thyself and of me. Our dual presence has its unity In that perfection of body, which my love, In loving it, did out of mortal life Raise into godness, set above the strife Of times and changing passions far above.

«The end of days, when Jove is born again, And Ganymede again pour at his feast, Shall see our dual soul from death released And recreated unto love, joy, pain, Life—all the beauty and the vice and lust, All the diviner side of flesh, flesh-staged. And, if our very memory wore to dust, By the giant race of the end of ages must Our dual presence once again be raised.»

It rained still. But slow-treading night came in Closing the weary eyelids of each sense. The very consciousness of self and soul Grew, like a landscape through dim raining, dim. The Emperor lay still, so still that now He half forgot where now he lay, or whence The sorrow that was still salt on his lips. All had been something very far, a scroll Rolled up. The things he felt were like the rim That haloes round the moon when the night weeps.

His head was bowed into his arms, and they On the low couch, foreign to his sense, lay. His closed eyes seemed open to him and seeing The naked floor, dark, cold, sad and unmeaning. His hurting breath was all his sense could know. Out of the falling darkness the wind rose And fell. A voice swooned in the courts below. And the Emperor slept.

The gods came now And bore something away, no sense knows how, On unseen arms of power and repose.

[gordonwilliamsweb]

Pandemic Presents New Hurdles, And Hope, For People Struggling With Addiction

Before Philadelphia shut down to slow the spread of the coronavirus, Ed had a routine: most mornings he would head to a nearby McDonald’s to brush his teeth, wash his face and — when he had the money — buy a cup of coffee. He would bounce between homeless shelters and try to get a shower. But since businesses closed and many shelters stopped taking new admissions, Ed has been mostly shut off from that routine.

He’s still living on the streets.

“I’ll be honest, I don’t really sleep too much,” said Ed, who’s 51 and struggling with addiction. “Every four or five days I get a couple hours.”

KHN agreed not to use his last name because he uses illegal drugs.

Philadelphia has the highest overdose rate of any big city in America — in 2019, more than three people a day died of drug overdoses there, on average. Before the coronavirus began spreading across the United States, the opioid overdose epidemic was the biggest health crisis on the minds of many city officials and public health experts. The coronavirus pandemic has largely eclipsed the conversation around the opioid crisis. But the crisis still rages on despite business closures, the cancellation of in-person treatment appointments and the strain on many addiction resources in the city.

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When his usual shelter wasn’t an option anymore, Ed tried to get into residential drug treatment. He figured that would be a good way to try to get back on his feet and, if nothing else, get a few good nights of rest. But he had contracted pinkeye, a symptom thought to be associated with the virus that leads to COVID-19, so the evaluation center didn’t want to place him in an inpatient facility until he’d gotten the pinkeye checked out. But he couldn’t see a doctor because he didn’t have a phone for a telehealth appointment.

“I got myself stuck, and I’m trying to pull everything back together before it totally blows up,” he said.

Rosalind Pichardo wants to help people in Ed’s situation. Before the pandemic, Pichardo would hit the streets of her neighborhood, Kensington, which has the highest drug overdose rate in Philadelphia. She’d head out with a bag full of snack bars, cookies and Narcan, the opioid overdose reversal drug.

She’d hand Narcan out to people using drugs, and people selling drugs — anyone who wanted it. Pichardo started her own organization, Operation Save Our City, which initially set out to work with survivors of gun violence in the neighborhood. When she realized that overdoses were killing people too, she began getting more involved with the harm reduction movement and started handing out Narcan through the city’s syringe exchange.

When Pennsylvania’s stay-at-home order went into effect, Pichardo and others worried that more people might start using drugs alone, and that fewer first responders would be patrolling the streets or nearby and able to revive them if they overdosed.

So, Pichardo and other harm reduction activists gave out even more Narcan. A representative for Prevention Point Philadelphia, the group that operates a large syringe exchange program in the city, said that during the first month of the city’s stay-at-home order, they handed out almost twice as much Narcan as usual.

After the lockdowns and social distancing began, Pichardo worried that more people would be using drugs alone, leading to more overdoses. But Philadelphia’s fatal overdose rate during the pandemic remains about the same as it was this time last year. Pichardo said she thinks that’s evidence that flooding the streets with Narcan is working — that people are continuing to use drugs, and maybe even using more drugs, but that users are utilizing Narcan more often and administering it to one another.

That is the hope. But Pichardo said users don’t always have a buddy to keep watch, and during the pandemic first responders have seemed much more hesitant to intervene. For example, she recently administered Narcan to three people in Kensington who overdosed near a subway station, while two police officers stood by and watched. Before the pandemic, they would often be right there with her, helping.

To reverse the overdoses, Pichardo crouched over the people who she said had started turning blue as their oxygen levels dropped. She injected the Narcan into their noses, using a disposable plastic applicator. Normally, she would perform rescue breathing, too, but since the pandemic began she has started carrying an Ambu bag, which pumps air into a person’s lungs and avoids mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Among the three people, she said, it took six doses of Narcan to revive them. The police officers didn’t step in to help but did toss several overdose-reversal doses toward Pichardo as she worked.

“I don’t expect ’em to give ’em rescue breaths if they don’t want to, but at least administer the lifesaving drug,” Pichardo said.

In her work as a volunteer, she has reversed almost 400 overdoses, she estimated.

“There’s social distancing — to a limit,” Pichardo said, “I think when someone’s life is in jeopardy, they’re worth saving. You just can’t watch people die.”

Even before Philadelphia officially issued its stay-at-home order, city police announced they would stop making low-level arrests, including for narcotics. The idea was to reduce contact overall, help keep the jail population low and reduce the risk of the virus getting passed around inside. But Pichardo and other community activists said the decreased law enforcement emboldened drug dealers in the Kensington neighborhood, where open-air drug sales and use are common.

“You can tell they have everything down pat, from the lookout to the corner boys to the one actually holding the product — the one holding the product’s got some good PPE gear,” said Pichardo.

More dealers working openly on the street has led to more fights over territory, she added, which in turn has meant more violence. While overall crime in Philadelphia and other major cities has declined during the pandemic, gun violence has spiked.

Police resumed arrests at the beginning of May.

Now when she goes out to offer relief and hand out Narcan, Pichardo packs a few extra things in her bag of supplies: face masks, gloves and gun locks.

“It’s like the survival kit of the ’hood,” she said.

For those struggling with addiction who are ready to start recovery, newly relaxed federal restrictions have made it easier to get medications that curb opioid cravings and stem withdrawal. Several efforts are underway among Philadelphia-based public health groups and criminal justice advocacy organizations to give cellphones to people who are homeless or coming out of jail, so they can make a telehealth appointment and get quicker access to a prescription for those medicines.

During the pandemic, people taking medication-assisted treatment can renew their prescription every month instead of every week, which helps decrease trips to the pharmacy. It is too soon to know if more people are taking advantage of the new rules, and accessing medication-assisted treatment via telehealth, but if that turns out to be the case, many addiction medicine specialists argue the new rules should become permanent, even after the pandemic ends.

“If we find that these relaxed restrictions are bringing more people to the table, that presents enormous ethical questions about whether or not the DEA should reinstate these restrictive policies that they had going in the first place,” said Dr. Ben Cocchiaro, a physician who treats people with substance-use disorder.

Cocchiaro said the whole point of addiction treatment is to facilitate help as soon as someone is ready for it. He hopes if access to recovery can be made simpler during a pandemic, it can remain that way afterward.

This story is part of a partnership that includes WHYY, NPR and Kaiser Health News.

Pandemic Presents New Hurdles, And Hope, For People Struggling With Addiction published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/

[dinafbrownil]

Pandemic Presents New Hurdles, And Hope, For People Struggling With Addiction

Before Philadelphia shut down to slow the spread of the coronavirus, Ed had a routine: most mornings he would head to a nearby McDonald’s to brush his teeth, wash his face and — when he had the money — buy a cup of coffee. He would bounce between homeless shelters and try to get a shower. But since businesses closed and many shelters stopped taking new admissions, Ed has been mostly shut off from that routine.

He’s still living on the streets.

“I’ll be honest, I don’t really sleep too much,” said Ed, who’s 51 and struggling with addiction. “Every four or five days I get a couple hours.”

KHN agreed not to use his last name because he uses illegal drugs.

Philadelphia has the highest overdose rate of any big city in America — in 2019, more than three people a day died of drug overdoses there, on average. Before the coronavirus began spreading across the United States, the opioid overdose epidemic was the biggest health crisis on the minds of many city officials and public health experts. The coronavirus pandemic has largely eclipsed the conversation around the opioid crisis. But the crisis still rages on despite business closures, the cancellation of in-person treatment appointments and the strain on many addiction resources in the city.

Email Sign-Up

Subscribe to KHN’s free Morning Briefing.

Sign Up

Please confirm your email address below:

Sign Up

When his usual shelter wasn’t an option anymore, Ed tried to get into residential drug treatment. He figured that would be a good way to try to get back on his feet and, if nothing else, get a few good nights of rest. But he had contracted pinkeye, a symptom thought to be associated with the virus that leads to COVID-19, so the evaluation center didn’t want to place him in an inpatient facility until he’d gotten the pinkeye checked out. But he couldn’t see a doctor because he didn’t have a phone for a telehealth appointment.

“I got myself stuck, and I’m trying to pull everything back together before it totally blows up,” he said.

Rosalind Pichardo wants to help people in Ed’s situation. Before the pandemic, Pichardo would hit the streets of her neighborhood, Kensington, which has the highest drug overdose rate in Philadelphia. She’d head out with a bag full of snack bars, cookies and Narcan, the opioid overdose reversal drug.

She’d hand Narcan out to people using drugs, and people selling drugs — anyone who wanted it. Pichardo started her own organization, Operation Save Our City, which initially set out to work with survivors of gun violence in the neighborhood. When she realized that overdoses were killing people too, she began getting more involved with the harm reduction movement and started handing out Narcan through the city’s syringe exchange.

When Pennsylvania’s stay-at-home order went into effect, Pichardo and others worried that more people might start using drugs alone, and that fewer first responders would be patrolling the streets or nearby and able to revive them if they overdosed.

So, Pichardo and other harm reduction activists gave out even more Narcan. A representative for Prevention Point Philadelphia, the group that operates a large syringe exchange program in the city, said that during the first month of the city’s stay-at-home order, they handed out almost twice as much Narcan as usual.

After the lockdowns and social distancing began, Pichardo worried that more people would be using drugs alone, leading to more overdoses. But Philadelphia’s fatal overdose rate during the pandemic remains about the same as it was this time last year. Pichardo said she thinks that’s evidence that flooding the streets with Narcan is working — that people are continuing to use drugs, and maybe even using more drugs, but that users are utilizing Narcan more often and administering it to one another.

That is the hope. But Pichardo said users don’t always have a buddy to keep watch, and during the pandemic first responders have seemed much more hesitant to intervene. For example, she recently administered Narcan to three people in Kensington who overdosed near a subway station, while two police officers stood by and watched. Before the pandemic, they would often be right there with her, helping.

To reverse the overdoses, Pichardo crouched over the people who she said had started turning blue as their oxygen levels dropped. She injected the Narcan into their noses, using a disposable plastic applicator. Normally, she would perform rescue breathing, too, but since the pandemic began she has started carrying an Ambu bag, which pumps air into a person’s lungs and avoids mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Among the three people, she said, it took six doses of Narcan to revive them. The police officers didn’t step in to help but did toss several overdose-reversal doses toward Pichardo as she worked.

“I don’t expect ’em to give ’em rescue breaths if they don’t want to, but at least administer the lifesaving drug,” Pichardo said.

In her work as a volunteer, she has reversed almost 400 overdoses, she estimated.

“There’s social distancing — to a limit,” Pichardo said, “I think when someone’s life is in jeopardy, they’re worth saving. You just can’t watch people die.”

Even before Philadelphia officially issued its stay-at-home order, city police announced they would stop making low-level arrests, including for narcotics. The idea was to reduce contact overall, help keep the jail population low and reduce the risk of the virus getting passed around inside. But Pichardo and other community activists said the decreased law enforcement emboldened drug dealers in the Kensington neighborhood, where open-air drug sales and use are common.

“You can tell they have everything down pat, from the lookout to the corner boys to the one actually holding the product — the one holding the product’s got some good PPE gear,” said Pichardo.

More dealers working openly on the street has led to more fights over territory, she added, which in turn has meant more violence. While overall crime in Philadelphia and other major cities has declined during the pandemic, gun violence has spiked.

Police resumed arrests at the beginning of May.

Now when she goes out to offer relief and hand out Narcan, Pichardo packs a few extra things in her bag of supplies: face masks, gloves and gun locks.

“It’s like the survival kit of the ’hood,” she said.

For those struggling with addiction who are ready to start recovery, newly relaxed federal restrictions have made it easier to get medications that curb opioid cravings and stem withdrawal. Several efforts are underway among Philadelphia-based public health groups and criminal justice advocacy organizations to give cellphones to people who are homeless or coming out of jail, so they can make a telehealth appointment and get quicker access to a prescription for those medicines.

During the pandemic, people taking medication-assisted treatment can renew their prescription every month instead of every week, which helps decrease trips to the pharmacy. It is too soon to know if more people are taking advantage of the new rules, and accessing medication-assisted treatment via telehealth, but if that turns out to be the case, many addiction medicine specialists argue the new rules should become permanent, even after the pandemic ends.

“If we find that these relaxed restrictions are bringing more people to the table, that presents enormous ethical questions about whether or not the DEA should reinstate these restrictive policies that they had going in the first place,” said Dr. Ben Cocchiaro, a physician who treats people with substance-use disorder.

Cocchiaro said the whole point of addiction treatment is to facilitate help as soon as someone is ready for it. He hopes if access to recovery can be made simpler during a pandemic, it can remain that way afterward.

This story is part of a partnership that includes WHYY, NPR and Kaiser Health News.

from Updates By Dina https://khn.org/news/pandemic-presents-new-hurdles-and-hope-for-people-struggling-with-addiction/

[stephenmccull]

Pandemic Presents New Hurdles, And Hope, For People Struggling With Addiction

Before Philadelphia shut down to slow the spread of the coronavirus, Ed had a routine: most mornings he would head to a nearby McDonald’s to brush his teeth, wash his face and — when he had the money — buy a cup of coffee. He would bounce between homeless shelters and try to get a shower. But since businesses closed and many shelters stopped taking new admissions, Ed has been mostly shut off from that routine.

He’s still living on the streets.

“I’ll be honest, I don’t really sleep too much,” said Ed, who’s 51 and struggling with addiction. “Every four or five days I get a couple hours.”

KHN agreed not to use his last name because he uses illegal drugs.

Philadelphia has the highest overdose rate of any big city in America — in 2019, more than three people a day died of drug overdoses there, on average. Before the coronavirus began spreading across the United States, the opioid overdose epidemic was the biggest health crisis on the minds of many city officials and public health experts. The coronavirus pandemic has largely eclipsed the conversation around the opioid crisis. But the crisis still rages on despite business closures, the cancellation of in-person treatment appointments and the strain on many addiction resources in the city.

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Subscribe to KHN’s free Morning Briefing.

Sign Up

Please confirm your email address below:

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When his usual shelter wasn’t an option anymore, Ed tried to get into residential drug treatment. He figured that would be a good way to try to get back on his feet and, if nothing else, get a few good nights of rest. But he had contracted pinkeye, a symptom thought to be associated with the virus that leads to COVID-19, so the evaluation center didn’t want to place him in an inpatient facility until he’d gotten the pinkeye checked out. But he couldn’t see a doctor because he didn’t have a phone for a telehealth appointment.

“I got myself stuck, and I’m trying to pull everything back together before it totally blows up,” he said.

Rosalind Pichardo wants to help people in Ed’s situation. Before the pandemic, Pichardo would hit the streets of her neighborhood, Kensington, which has the highest drug overdose rate in Philadelphia. She’d head out with a bag full of snack bars, cookies and Narcan, the opioid overdose reversal drug.

She’d hand Narcan out to people using drugs, and people selling drugs — anyone who wanted it. Pichardo started her own organization, Operation Save Our City, which initially set out to work with survivors of gun violence in the neighborhood. When she realized that overdoses were killing people too, she began getting more involved with the harm reduction movement and started handing out Narcan through the city’s syringe exchange.

When Pennsylvania’s stay-at-home order went into effect, Pichardo and others worried that more people might start using drugs alone, and that fewer first responders would be patrolling the streets or nearby and able to revive them if they overdosed.

So, Pichardo and other harm reduction activists gave out even more Narcan. A representative for Prevention Point Philadelphia, the group that operates a large syringe exchange program in the city, said that during the first month of the city’s stay-at-home order, they handed out almost twice as much Narcan as usual.

After the lockdowns and social distancing began, Pichardo worried that more people would be using drugs alone, leading to more overdoses. But Philadelphia’s fatal overdose rate during the pandemic remains about the same as it was this time last year. Pichardo said she thinks that’s evidence that flooding the streets with Narcan is working — that people are continuing to use drugs, and maybe even using more drugs, but that users are utilizing Narcan more often and administering it to one another.

That is the hope. But Pichardo said users don’t always have a buddy to keep watch, and during the pandemic first responders have seemed much more hesitant to intervene. For example, she recently administered Narcan to three people in Kensington who overdosed near a subway station, while two police officers stood by and watched. Before the pandemic, they would often be right there with her, helping.

To reverse the overdoses, Pichardo crouched over the people who she said had started turning blue as their oxygen levels dropped. She injected the Narcan into their noses, using a disposable plastic applicator. Normally, she would perform rescue breathing, too, but since the pandemic began she has started carrying an Ambu bag, which pumps air into a person’s lungs and avoids mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Among the three people, she said, it took six doses of Narcan to revive them. The police officers didn’t step in to help but did toss several overdose-reversal doses toward Pichardo as she worked.

“I don’t expect ’em to give ’em rescue breaths if they don’t want to, but at least administer the lifesaving drug,” Pichardo said.

In her work as a volunteer, she has reversed almost 400 overdoses, she estimated.

“There’s social distancing — to a limit,” Pichardo said, “I think when someone’s life is in jeopardy, they’re worth saving. You just can’t watch people die.”

Even before Philadelphia officially issued its stay-at-home order, city police announced they would stop making low-level arrests, including for narcotics. The idea was to reduce contact overall, help keep the jail population low and reduce the risk of the virus getting passed around inside. But Pichardo and other community activists said the decreased law enforcement emboldened drug dealers in the Kensington neighborhood, where open-air drug sales and use are common.

“You can tell they have everything down pat, from the lookout to the corner boys to the one actually holding the product — the one holding the product’s got some good PPE gear,” said Pichardo.

More dealers working openly on the street has led to more fights over territory, she added, which in turn has meant more violence. While overall crime in Philadelphia and other major cities has declined during the pandemic, gun violence has spiked.

Police resumed arrests at the beginning of May.

Now when she goes out to offer relief and hand out Narcan, Pichardo packs a few extra things in her bag of supplies: face masks, gloves and gun locks.

“It’s like the survival kit of the ’hood,” she said.

For those struggling with addiction who are ready to start recovery, newly relaxed federal restrictions have made it easier to get medications that curb opioid cravings and stem withdrawal. Several efforts are underway among Philadelphia-based public health groups and criminal justice advocacy organizations to give cellphones to people who are homeless or coming out of jail, so they can make a telehealth appointment and get quicker access to a prescription for those medicines.

During the pandemic, people taking medication-assisted treatment can renew their prescription every month instead of every week, which helps decrease trips to the pharmacy. It is too soon to know if more people are taking advantage of the new rules, and accessing medication-assisted treatment via telehealth, but if that turns out to be the case, many addiction medicine specialists argue the new rules should become permanent, even after the pandemic ends.

“If we find that these relaxed restrictions are bringing more people to the table, that presents enormous ethical questions about whether or not the DEA should reinstate these restrictive policies that they had going in the first place,” said Dr. Ben Cocchiaro, a physician who treats people with substance-use disorder.

Cocchiaro said the whole point of addiction treatment is to facilitate help as soon as someone is ready for it. He hopes if access to recovery can be made simpler during a pandemic, it can remain that way afterward.

This story is part of a partnership that includes WHYY, NPR and Kaiser Health News.

Pandemic Presents New Hurdles, And Hope, For People Struggling With Addiction published first on https://smartdrinkingweb.weebly.com/

[gordonwilliamsweb]

Pandemic Presents New Hurdles, And Hope, For People Struggling With Addiction

Before Philadelphia shut down to slow the spread of the coronavirus, Ed had a routine: most mornings he would head to a nearby McDonald’s to brush his teeth, wash his face and — when he had the money — buy a cup of coffee. He would bounce between homeless shelters and try to get a shower. But since businesses closed and many shelters stopped taking new admissions, Ed has been mostly shut off from that routine.

He’s still living on the streets.

“I’ll be honest, I don’t really sleep too much,” said Ed, who’s 51 and struggling with addiction. “Every four or five days I get a couple hours.”

KHN agreed not to use his last name because he uses illegal drugs.

Philadelphia has the highest overdose rate of any big city in America — in 2019, more than three people a day died of drug overdoses there, on average. Before the coronavirus began spreading across the United States, the opioid overdose epidemic was the biggest health crisis on the minds of many city officials and public health experts. The coronavirus pandemic has largely eclipsed the conversation around the opioid crisis. But the crisis still rages on despite business closures, the cancellation of in-person treatment appointments and the strain on many addiction resources in the city.

Email Sign-Up

Subscribe to KHN’s free Morning Briefing.

Sign Up

Please confirm your email address below:

Sign Up

When his usual shelter wasn’t an option anymore, Ed tried to get into residential drug treatment. He figured that would be a good way to try to get back on his feet and, if nothing else, get a few good nights of rest. But he had contracted pinkeye, a symptom thought to be associated with the virus that leads to COVID-19, so the evaluation center didn’t want to place him in an inpatient facility until he’d gotten the pinkeye checked out. But he couldn’t see a doctor because he didn’t have a phone for a telehealth appointment.

“I got myself stuck, and I’m trying to pull everything back together before it totally blows up,” he said.

Rosalind Pichardo wants to help people in Ed’s situation. Before the pandemic, Pichardo would hit the streets of her neighborhood, Kensington, which has the highest drug overdose rate in Philadelphia. She’d head out with a bag full of snack bars, cookies and Narcan, the opioid overdose reversal drug.

She’d hand Narcan out to people using drugs, and people selling drugs — anyone who wanted it. Pichardo started her own organization, Operation Save Our City, which initially set out to work with survivors of gun violence in the neighborhood. When she realized that overdoses were killing people too, she began getting more involved with the harm reduction movement and started handing out Narcan through the city’s syringe exchange.

When Pennsylvania’s stay-at-home order went into effect, Pichardo and others worried that more people might start using drugs alone, and that fewer first responders would be patrolling the streets or nearby and able to revive them if they overdosed.

So, Pichardo and other harm reduction activists gave out even more Narcan. A representative for Prevention Point Philadelphia, the group that operates a large syringe exchange program in the city, said that during the first month of the city’s stay-at-home order, they handed out almost twice as much Narcan as usual.

After the lockdowns and social distancing began, Pichardo worried that more people would be using drugs alone, leading to more overdoses. But Philadelphia’s fatal overdose rate during the pandemic remains about the same as it was this time last year. Pichardo said she thinks that’s evidence that flooding the streets with Narcan is working — that people are continuing to use drugs, and maybe even using more drugs, but that users are utilizing Narcan more often and administering it to one another.

That is the hope. But Pichardo said users don’t always have a buddy to keep watch, and during the pandemic first responders have seemed much more hesitant to intervene. For example, she recently administered Narcan to three people in Kensington who overdosed near a subway station, while two police officers stood by and watched. Before the pandemic, they would often be right there with her, helping.

To reverse the overdoses, Pichardo crouched over the people who she said had started turning blue as their oxygen levels dropped. She injected the Narcan into their noses, using a disposable plastic applicator. Normally, she would perform rescue breathing, too, but since the pandemic began she has started carrying an Ambu bag, which pumps air into a person’s lungs and avoids mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Among the three people, she said, it took six doses of Narcan to revive them. The police officers didn’t step in to help but did toss several overdose-reversal doses toward Pichardo as she worked.

“I don’t expect ’em to give ’em rescue breaths if they don’t want to, but at least administer the lifesaving drug,” Pichardo said.

In her work as a volunteer, she has reversed almost 400 overdoses, she estimated.

“There’s social distancing — to a limit,” Pichardo said, “I think when someone’s life is in jeopardy, they’re worth saving. You just can’t watch people die.”

Even before Philadelphia officially issued its stay-at-home order, city police announced they would stop making low-level arrests, including for narcotics. The idea was to reduce contact overall, help keep the jail population low and reduce the risk of the virus getting passed around inside. But Pichardo and other community activists said the decreased law enforcement emboldened drug dealers in the Kensington neighborhood, where open-air drug sales and use are common.

“You can tell they have everything down pat, from the lookout to the corner boys to the one actually holding the product — the one holding the product’s got some good PPE gear,” said Pichardo.

More dealers working openly on the street has led to more fights over territory, she added, which in turn has meant more violence. While overall crime in Philadelphia and other major cities has declined during the pandemic, gun violence has spiked.

Police resumed arrests at the beginning of May.

Now when she goes out to offer relief and hand out Narcan, Pichardo packs a few extra things in her bag of supplies: face masks, gloves and gun locks.

“It’s like the survival kit of the ’hood,” she said.

For those struggling with addiction who are ready to start recovery, newly relaxed federal restrictions have made it easier to get medications that curb opioid cravings and stem withdrawal. Several efforts are underway among Philadelphia-based public health groups and criminal justice advocacy organizations to give cellphones to people who are homeless or coming out of jail, so they can make a telehealth appointment and get quicker access to a prescription for those medicines.

During the pandemic, people taking medication-assisted treatment can renew their prescription every month instead of every week, which helps decrease trips to the pharmacy. It is too soon to know if more people are taking advantage of the new rules, and accessing medication-assisted treatment via telehealth, but if that turns out to be the case, many addiction medicine specialists argue the new rules should become permanent, even after the pandemic ends.

“If we find that these relaxed restrictions are bringing more people to the table, that presents enormous ethical questions about whether or not the DEA should reinstate these restrictive policies that they had going in the first place,” said Dr. Ben Cocchiaro, a physician who treats people with substance-use disorder.

Cocchiaro said the whole point of addiction treatment is to facilitate help as soon as someone is ready for it. He hopes if access to recovery can be made simpler during a pandemic, it can remain that way afterward.

This story is part of a partnership that includes WHYY, NPR and Kaiser Health News.

Pandemic Presents New Hurdles, And Hope, For People Struggling With Addiction published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/

[nicksstoryvault]

Against the snowy gales buffeting over her long black coat, Selina momentarily quelled an intrusive shiver, as light flurrying drifts of snow-kissed over the flawless alabaster of her sharpened, polished cheekbones, her feline poise altered as she was out of her natural element of shadow, instead of garbed in her sleek charcoal-black neoprene suit, a low-cut, one-shouldered black Dior dress, stunningly adorned over her lithe and delectable curves, she was dangerously ravishing in the semblance of graceful elegance, a svelte, kittenish beauty that appeared tempuously untouchable with beckoning allure, the cascading lengh her mahognay wavelets restrained into a chignon, with silken tresses constrasting the paleness of her cheeks; transforming her into a forbidden siren, while masking the ardent decadence that surged through her veins.

stiffened at the phantom sense of HYDRA’s tentacled sources that were ensnaring secrets about Bucky’s horrific--torturous past--KBG files that pinned him to weaving threads, the Winter Soldier was an eternal identity of rebirth that wouldn’t be effaced by the Clean Slate USB drive, Bucky was chastened —shackled to the damning existence Armin Zola had altered him into, the illusion of reachable light to freedom wasn’t at his doorstep.

An immeasurable silence filled the night, and all felt intangible and unreal to Bucky as he stood motionless in the alley outside the Little Italy café. What should have been the first night in a long line to come where he and Selina would celebrate their unbreakable love and passion for each other, had instead turned into a night of unexplained shock and horror that left him feeling disconnected from reality around him. The world seemed as speechless and devoid of sound just as himself, for nothing but white noise rang in his ears. Steel-blue orbs gazed unblinking and listless at the unassuming yet unusual sight of a female cow—a bovine—lying unconscious, flat on her side beneath a pale street-light. Cows belonged on farms, or somewhere in the rural-parts of the world where nature and pasture were dominant; they didn't belong on a city street. The scraps of a torn black Dior dress hanging from the back and shoulders of the large yet slender shaped creature was a heart-clenching reminder that it wasn't in fact a bovine—not originally. Only ten minutes ago, it used to be the woman he loved: Selina Marie Kyle. After their dinner took an unexpected turn due to Selina's unexplained behavior and physical illness, he followed her out into the alley just in time to see the magnitude of her deterioration. Something—or someone—had done something to his precious kitten because people didn't just turn into animals on a whim. The soldier inside of him urged him to keep a disciplined approach, but the man who was in love told the soldier to shut-up and allowed his emotional downpour to show. Wetness collected in Bucky's eyes, a frown marred his once boyishly cheerful features. Shakenly, his steps took him closer to the unconscious cow…Selina. "Oh my God," He whispered, finally disturbing the dreadful silence and making everything feel more real. His legs felt weak, his feet felt numb and before he knew it, he had collapsed on his knees beside the bovine, watching as she released deep and even breaths. "Selina…" He whispered with a broken tone.

In the obstructing darkness under the wooden stairwell, a spare and unwelcomed feminine presence loomed menacingly behind Bucky and his fattened bovine; she fed off the aura hopelessness, it was utterly electrifying. 

Twitching her deviant crimson lips into a sinister grin, she encroached in whimsical--haughty advances, her leather boots unlaced bespoke an eccentric spirit as she was adorned with long black coat and ripped fishnet leggings, her thick raven curls gnarly and unkempt against the contrast of her pale--ivory features and her viperous dark irises ablaze with sorcerous conjure. "So tell me, charming boy," she simpered tauntingly, with an English resonance in her raspy tone, gesturing a gloved sheathed hand to the inert and mahogany furred bovine that was a devoid of kittenish beauty. 

"Do you still think your enchanting princess is gorgeous now that she's a fertile beast?" she ventured deviously, gazing down at the pinkish, veiny sack of swelled flesh growing between Selina's broad hind legs, and scowled in disgust. "She's not even ripe for milking yet..." She hissed out tersely and mirrored the hostile flash of glacial heat in Bucky's shadowed, teary steel-blue eyes, sharpening into razor slits under his disheveled chestnut tresses...She gazed deeper finding  a desolate spirit against the feverish sheen of unshed tears. "It won't matter, she just needs to submit to one of my big boys."

The foreign voice succeeded in jarring Bucky from his decadent grief and he snapped his gaze into the woman's direction. He recognized her immediately as one of their waitresses that served them dinner tonight and whispered a confusing yet ominous question into his ear. The confusion he felt evaporated almost instantly, and the sorrow he felt inside welcomed the empowering surge of rage and malicious into his system as he glared hateful daggers at the woman. "You…" He said with accusing tone as he slowly rose up onto unsteady feet. "You did this to her, didn't you!" He yelled, his composure shattering into a crescendo of consuming aggression. He felt his impulse guiding him into a deadly strut towards the unknown woman's direction, his hands clenching into indomitable fists at his sides.

Feeling the vibrations of his intimating stomps against ice encased puddles, she reared her head back, freely emitting a crackling laugh of morbid elation, conveying her unmasked insanity. She was relishing his banking desperation, craving to see how far he would go to restore his beloved kitten back into the strikingly beautiful and lethal woman he loved; she loved balancing the extent of one's unbreakable promise of devotion against the gravity of utter failure--grief. Bucky was in the crosshairs, his stoked embers of cold driven ferocity would soon douse once he accepted heartache--the abandonment of his murderous strength. How deep was the measure of his love to the bloated cow, did he truly love Selina for beauty or was it beyond reflection? Swaying her head in serpent motion, she flashed him with a deranged smile, challenging the unstoppable momentum of his raging heart. "You can do whatever you want with me, bash me to the ground, choke breath out of me, it will not change your beauty into a human again.. for love always has a price, and you only see her as swan because of blinded heart, so I plucked her feathers and turn her into an ugly duckling..." She pointed a finger down at the stirring bovine, devilishly, unleashing a ruthless--inevitable challenge to arrest his lethal intent. "Unless you can prove to me that love can be true in a new existence, your dear Selina Kyle will remain a hefty bovine...She will lose all memory of ever being human and yield to instinct..." She curved her darkened lips wickedly into a devious sneer, meeting his molten steel-blue irises into a deadlock. "So prince charming, do we have a wager?"

Bucky tensed from his halted posture, feeling as if he were a puppet on strings and there was nothing he could willfully do other than listen and glare as the mystery woman both mocked and tempted him with a gamble. His fists at his side shook at the strain of his warring impulses between listening and rampaging. Deep down he knew that violence wouldn't restore Selina, if it was at all possible. The older woman in front of him appeared equally unafraid and amused by his visible struggle and Bucky couldn't help but wonder what she was capable of. Clenching his jaw, he remained fixed to his position with his expression shifting to one of scrutiny. "What are you? A witch?" He muttered distastefully, looking over her goth-like appearance that was an obvious indicator that it wasn't just a sense of fashion. The questions he carried lingered at the back of his mind and slowly they began to trickle forward. "What do you have to do with Selina, or me for the matter?" A part of him worried this was some kind of reprisal for a forgotten crime he committed as The Winter Soldier, or perhaps from Selina's days as the infamous Gotham cat-burglar.

She merely shrugged in response, indignantly, after hearing the hitching tremor edge in his graveled timbre, her dark eyes gleamed with a spectral cast of darkened malice, spitefully revealing her indecorous mirth against his relentless urgency to restore his transformed lover. "Let's just say that I'm a snake that strikes into men's hearts, I crave to ravage the bounds of love, bringing saps like you into a desperate thrall of wretched submission, the prince's kiss always breaks the damn spell to free his true love..." She finally answered, becoming intently drawn into Bucky's unwavering eyes were infused with contemptuous fury, his aquamarine depths paled into a livid glint of untrammeled mania, evident to his barred teeth as his full shapely lips pulled into a wolfish snarl. He radiated with hostile intensity, a morphic consonance of vicious menace that was revving to escape. His lengthy chestnut mane flitted off his powerful shoulders, as flurrying snow lashed over his clenching, stubbled jaw.--he was ready to lunge for the attack. She didn't falter back when his imposing shadow eclipsed her. Instead, she weaved her fingers into the snowy air, conjuring up the sorcerous energy to orchestrate, as she teased with a retaliatory pitch. "What happens if I decide to twist the story, if the moment your lips touch your princess's, you pay the price...I'm not a ghost of your destructive past, James Buchanan Barnes, I'm a storyteller of grim tales, and you have just become my new prince... “

"You're insane if this is all a game to you," Bucky sneered. The witch's flippant remark made that ravaging impulse to seize her throat feel even more unbearable. Mobsters, terrorists and aliens weren't bad enough, now they had the supernatural to contend with. Beings with power they couldn't just counter with brute force. Bucky inwardly cursed his, and Selina's astronomical bad-luck at finding themselves in trouble. "If you knew who we were, you'd know that winning won't be our only goal. We'll burn your whole story to the ground if you screw us over…" Perhaps threatening the witch further wasn't a wise move, but Bucky wouldn't be a push-over and a slave to her tricks and schemes. He'd had enough of those to last a life-time. He silently considered his options. He didn't understand how magic worked but he knew at least one sorcerer that lived in New York who could be of help. Asking for help was a possibility, but would he only be endangering Selina further? He released a despondent sigh. "What do I have to prove to you, anyway? I love Selina more than life itself—"

“That would be quite sweet if those words were eternally bound to your dear heart,” she pouted mockingly, hindering the utmost of his declaration, as he downcast a heated glare of steel-aquamarine blearily down at the unconscious bovine, heartache was tellingly vivid in his eyes, his restraint --defiance was fracturing bone-deep, as his lips shakily quaked as a faint sob drew up his throat. His despair was amplifying when he listened to breathy grunts emitting from Selina's lax muzzle. He was on the hairbreadth of releasing the surge of unbidden tears.

The mage tilted her rounded jaw up, waiting for him to drop to his knees and surrender to the warped reality she conjured him to tread through."If you truly love your pretty heifer more than beauty and the quenching lush of her lips to tame your virile hunger, I will extend my kindness to you, James Barnes, giving you one chance to abolish the curse--" She circled around him with viperous grace, whispering insidiously against the knife-edge curve his clenching jaw, trying to shatter his steeled resolve. "How long can you slave for her until that unbreakable devotion is transmuted into revulsion...Will you still love dear Selina even when she's nothing more than a gluttonous and repulsively swelled dairymaid, I wonder?"

"Shut up," Bucky hissed, revealing rows of perfect white teeth that gave him the appearance of a beast being provoked into fury. The witch had the gall to look offended by his comment, but it didn't stop him from looming over her with repressed aggression, loose brunette strands framed the corners of his turbulent gaze. "I've heard enough of your sick and insane rambling. I'll play your little game and once I've freed Selina, you better never darken our doorstep or cross us again. Because it doesn't matter what tricks you have up your sleeve, I will find you and you won't like what happens next."

Reeling back with evasive motion, she teasingly placed her fingers on her pouting lips, gasping breathlessly in a malicious cadence of alarm. Bucky's passive visage had dangerously morphed into something more bestial--unhinged. His steel-blue irises liquified into luminous heat under askew dark tresses as she felt his fuming gusts of seething breath ghosting down her throat. Restraint was becoming threaded as deadened malice pulsated in his constricting pupils. In jaunty response, she licked her lips vilely, daring him to uncage the rearing beast inside. "Threaten me all you want, but it won't undo your curse..." she viciously sniped, grinning at his delay of aggression.

"Give me your contract," Bucky shrugged tiredly, knowing she was right and threats wouldn't get him anywhere closer to restoring the woman he loves. Words couldn't describe how useless and vulnerable he felt right now, and his show of intimidating as a ditched effort at helping him to feel in control. Squaring his jaw, he retreated a step backwards and relaxed his posture into one that appeared non-threatening. It went against every fiber of his being after enduring a life-time of enslavement. But it was a risk he would have to take. Selina was worth it.

The arcane cravings of sorcerous hunger mounted through her veins, as she handed Bucky the scroll, her sable eyes alight with devious anticipation as she watched him read the mythic text of ink that would seal his damned fate; tumults of unassailed emotion clashed against his aching heart, unblinkingly he shakily nipped on into swell of his bottom lip, quashing down a throated sob as sigils of pigs and roses formed under the shadow of his fisting gloved hand. "Are you prepared to give everything up for her?" she pressed with an indifferent tone, weaving her gracile fingers in the air as dark vapors formed into a raven's feather that landed into the clasp of his opened hand. "Once you give me your name, dear James Barnes, no matter how much you will fight, in the end, you will be a memory to her..."

The witch's words were a clear indicator to Bucky that no matter the outcome of this game, he was going to lose, one way or another. The gleeful and sadistic glint in the older woman's eyes showed an absence of humanity and remorse in her soul that he had seldom seen in the twisted and malicious faces he'd crossed in his life. The feathered-pen in his hand felt as sickly as a insect crawling across his skin. He refrained from crushing it and the papyrus in his other hand and resolved to sign away his freedom lest he become consumed by doubt and second-thoughts. Selina's life and humanity were at stake, and there was nothing else he could but sign his name on the scroll. The instant the ink scrawled the last letter of his surname, he was taken by surprise when the scroll suddenly began to glow an eerie green. "What—" Before he could question it or drop the parchment out of surprise, the energy encompassing the scroll swirled around his body until it dissolved into particles of residual magic that permeated his flesh. It felt like a thousand needles piercing his skin and he became rigid with a breathless gasp as the magic fused inside of him.

Jerking her head back as her raven curls lashed over the polished ivory of her cheek, she drew out an orgasmic crackle against the sapidly of her victory of his inevitable choice, her dark irises flashed down as Bucky surrendered to gravity, falling into a stance of all fours, as verdurous tendrils spiraled rapidly over him, infusing into hardened swells of his broad muscles, as he parted his lips agape to release an anguished cry as his metallic fist hammered into the pavement with vicious force. Like a calamitous--striking viper, she violently slashed her nails against his arching back, ripping the fabric of his shirt, only to be rewarded by a seething growl. "Now, the curse bound to you, in five nights you will say goodbye to your humanity and exist as a worthless, bloated pig..." she hissed, yanking on his curtaining tresses to force his head up. "Now go and kiss your pretty cow..."

"No!" Bucky cried out, anger and distress clawing against his very soul. An ill-engulfing surge of anxiety washed over him from head to toe, making him shudder and tremble in the wake of its touch. He just signed his life—his humanity away and there was nothing he could do other than play the hand being dealt to him. Tightening his metallic digits into a powerful fist, he moved to lash out in sheer frustration as his emotions took ahold of him. "I'll—" To his utter confusion, the witch was no longer in sight, her presence having left no indicator behind save for the twisting agony in his body. Blue-eyes wide and unblinking, Bucky gazed around the dark alley in search only to find no sign of her. He didn't feel surprised. He was jostled from his reverie as he felt a sting against the back of his palm. It was scalding as if he had just been branded by a hot poker. Wincing he glared at the ill-message formed with green characters. "Five days…"

Against the heaviness berthing her down like a heap of cement, Selina responded automatically to the distressed pitch of Bucky's raw, throated sobs, becoming aware of sudden intrusion of coldness raking over her subdued form. Slitting her dark eyes open, her vision was blotched with a feverish haze, everything was blotched into amorphous shapes, with a measure of conscious effort, she tried to speak, but the sleekness of her melodious voice was gone--ousted by the alarming volume sonorous bellow that was unmistakable to a cow mooing. Her limbs felt weighted down by shackles of stone, and the pungy stench wafting off her was odious. She groaned out a stifled breath, lifting her large head off of the chilled pavement, instantly shuddering against the absence of his thermal heat embracing around her. "B--Buckoo--" she bellowed, cringing at the disturbing cadence ripping out of her throat. "James...Where are you, handsome?"

Groaning in a faint breath in response to the graveled timbre of his velvety undertone, Selina welcomed the ease of his strength as his gloved palm cradled against the curve of her jaw, he captured her awareness, steadying her down by the anchoring, sensual heat that resonated in his veins. His thumb smoothly glided a delicate sweep with controlled tenderness, as Selina reacted, tucking her large-widened head against the alloy plates of his metallic shoulder; calmly breathing in the heady scent of sandalwood and minted ice that penetrated her senses. Her opened her eyes slightly, staring at the full curve of his shapely bow lips, moonlight contrasted over rosy flesh as he quivery parted his mouth, revealing a flash of bucked teeth, while Bucky did his damnedest steeled himself against the barrage of achingly deep emotion.

In the delirious wake of recognition, something felt alarmingly different in her, as unbearable pressure swelled between her legs, almost like someone lodged an oversized balloon filled with heated liquid in that guarded area, it was a revolting sensation of layered flab that snug against the undercurve of her stomach. Jolted by that sickening feeling, she went into defense mode, rearing her head back, her jeweled coffee orbs widened owlishly as she dreaded to shift her reluctant gaze down. "Bucky-Bucky," she bellowed, her irate breaths grew into rapid pants. All resistance fled. Her heartbeat increased to a frantic crescendo in the moment she stared into his strikingly pained steel-blue eyes, the clarity of unshed tears was unsettling...He looked utterly detached-helpless to even chase her stare towards the hump of mahogany fur covering the fattening expanse of rounded barrel-size girth. "W-What's happening to me?"

The words Bucky dreaded had escaped her mouth, revealing a helpless uncertainty that was both painful and rare to hear. He could feel an increase pressure on his chest, as if his heart were being pulled into an abyss where it would be rendered cold. Watching the distressed creature with familiar brown eyes begin to panic, he knew that he couldn't skirt around the subject or try and break the news to her slowly. Selina was a blunt woman and she hated prolonged news. Licking his dry lips, Bucky blinked repeatedly before releasing a somber breath.

"The waitress in café…slipped something into your drink. Whatever it was, darlin'…" he grimaced, feeling his lips tighten as he found himself momentarily lacking the courage to continue and lead Selina into a downward spiral of emotions. But as he felt the bovine bristle with impatience, he knew he couldn't bite his tongue any longer. "Whatever it was, it turned you into a cow…" He swallowed a large lump of emotion in his throat, while his eyes stung with a pouring of emotion he could no longer control. "I wouldn't make this up, darlin'. You know I wouldn't…" he sniffed. "Look for yourself," he gestured down to her lower body urgently.

"What the hell are you playing at, Bucky," Selina dismissed an incensed snort, despite the soul-churning tension in her overly plump, furred body was suffocatingly paralyzing to relent against, she recoiled her large head back, her coffee irises flared with dangerous heat as she composed herself, discarding temerity of his breathless words, her ingenuous demeanor shifted lightning quick like gleam of knife in the dark, as she finally centered the unwavering intensity of her alarmed-blank gaze onto a sack of pinkish, veiny pudge with four plump teats poking under overlaps of sagging wrinkled flab that undoubtingly inflated into distinct shape of dairy cow's -milk jugging- utter.

In benumbed horror, her leathery muzzle parted gaping wide, breathlessly. Selina was unable to react-to dare herself to move as the cacophonious wake of unbridled hysteria amplified through her into a tenfold, as she thrashed her head, blindingly with vehement sways, feeling ungrounded by the nightmarish -unfathomable reality she infinitely awoke into.

"No-No, I can't be a damn cow..." she bellowed in an infuriated pitch, squeezing her eyes shut, and lowered her head down on the hardened sculpt of his thighs, feeling the chilled wake of his metallic fingers without demur grace a soothing, telltale caress over her tensing fur, keeping her secured against him. Nipping on his lower lip, Bucky remained impassively guarded in his gnarled qualms, the edge of his unmasked pain gleamed dismal within his grayish-aquamarine irises; the illusion of his resistance couldn't be conjured. He was reeling away into a hopeless stupor, his soul inveigled by the influx of failure. The concessive throb clenching her heart abated. "Urgh..." Selina moaned, gritting her reshaped teeth, snorting out a vexatious breath."What kind of sick minded freak would change someone into a big fat cow and just walk away from the spoil..."

“She said she wants to test us…it’s a game to her,” he muttered morosely. There was an edge of disquiet as she became still, listening to him as he told her the specifics of his encounter with the crazy witch who wanted not only to destroy their love but turn him into a pig beside Selina. It was the stuff of nightmares and Selina had endured more than a few that were similar to her experiences in Gotham. Bucky instantly regretted saying anything more right now, especially as he could hear street-noise and civilians moving outside of the alley. They couldn’t stick around there much longer.  

It was then that she began to show signs of distress and panic. Her expanded size trembled, almost violently on her side as if she were trying to understand how her new body was supposed to function. A braying cry ripped from her throat, turning Bucky’s blood cold at the sound of it. “Selina, darlin’—”He tried in whatever way he could to get her to calm down but it felt as futile as trying to get a storm—a force of nature—to do the same. Gently he rested the warm expanse of his palm against the back of her neck and began to rub soothing patterns. “Just try to relax, I’ll explain everything later. Right now, we need to get outta here.”

With resurgence of feline momentum under the intimate tenderness of his caressing palm, unceremoniously, Selina huffed out an incensed grunt, trying to gain a firm sense of balance against the vertiginous onslaught, while she elicited the assailing disgust ravaging through her veins; she tried hefting up her rotund mass, feeling the heaviness of her swelled girth pinning her down. She no longer harnessed the acrobatic grace, the sleek precision of her lethally alluring caliber that made her sharp as honed blade scrying through shadow; every feminine curve of her lithesome body melted into layers of bovine flab.

This wasn't something she could brazenly evade. A sorcerous force had penetrated her, and condemningly morphed her into a voluptuous heifer -she couldn't discard the constant pressure of her utter stretching between the broad slabs of her furred hind legs. How she find an effective way to adapt to this distasteful--obese form...How could Bucky even love her, unless he voluntarily turned into a robust bull? Emitting a frustrated breath, and stifling a curse, she eased a frontal hoof off the chilled pavement, using Bucky's shoulder as her anchor as her large muzzle buried against the material of his shirt, a blurring rush of fleeting tears dampened his sleeve, as she finally arched her belly off the ground, welcoming the gentle cradle of his unwavering gloved hand that smoothly curved with delicate assurance under her jaw as trepidation injected into her heart. "How are we gonna do this, krasivyy (handsome)?" she gritted tersely, cringing at the deepening volume of her stricken voice. "I'm not sure if I can even stand on these damn hooves..."

"Just take it slow," Bucky offered quietly, rubbing the silken fur at the back of the bovine's neck in what he hoped was an assuring manner. In truth, he did it to assure himself as well. He needed that sense of easement and familiarity whenever he and Selina offered comfort to each other in their moments of disquiet. Of course, he couldn't be sure if the action felt the same to Selina in her new body, but he had to hope he wasn't completely useless as he was still feeling considering all this. Inwardly, he wondered, "what now"? As he took in her full appearance, she was big—measuring close to five feet in length and height. This was still his Selina, reminded himself, easing the bovine only four wobbly hooves. Her dark mahogany colored fur glowed line the sun beneath the street-lights luminating the alley-way enclosure. Her large muzzle was a pale rose, reminding him of the full-lush of her ruby-bladed lips. "I got you, darlin'. I got you," he whispered near her ear, feeling his heart swell as he took in her unchanged scent of lavender. In the distance, he could hear the street noise run louder, putting him on edge about what would happen if anyone came through and saw this odd scene. He needed to move her somehow that wouldn't unwanted attention. 'Steve…' The name entered his thoughts instantly, filling him with both hope and calm. "I'm gonna need to make a call," he said to her reassuringly. "Don't worry."

The sudden absence of his warmth evoked ingrain dread, nothing silenced the primal interference against her steeled resistance, as Selina grudgingly braced the massive bulk of her bovine form against the cement wall, steadying herself into a grounded stance while she grappled to subdue the rapid barrage of instincts possessing her. Regardless, she needed to remain poised and alert, utilize her instrumental methods of survival and stave back the urges to fall back into indolent stupor---Bucky wouldn't abandon her---no, he loved her to his dying breath, and that filled her with resolve to fight against the pernicious curse.

Turning her large head, with caustic motion, Selina gazed intently at him standing in the stairwell, his shadowed countenance revealing barest desperation as he spoke in a low, graveled rasp in the iPhone clutched within the unshakeable grasp of his metallic hands. "What are we going to do, Buck," she whispered shakily, lowering her muzzle down as errant tears dampened her fur. Thralls of heartache weren't something she could escape, the constant throbs were bone-deep, making her feel shackled to an infinite nightmare, as if the hand of fate pressed a cold steel of an atomizer against her heart, firing blank shots, that left her stunned to dare herself to budge.

She couldn't sedate her rampant pulse, as she watched Bucky falter in his steps. How far was the limit of his devotion to her...Could the extent of their love remain harbored against the hurricane of the harrowing enchantment threatening to consume their world? Stomping a hoof down, frustratingly, she bellowed out."Damn it, how can you even love me like this..."

Selina's conflicted tone carried across the small distance and entered Bucky's sharp-hearing. An increase in stress and anxiety grasped him as he felt torn between the dread of their predicament and the frantic conversation he was now holding with a very confused Steve Rogers. Though he could detect the uncertainty in his best friend's tone, Bucky was more than thankful that Steve wasn't one to waste time with questions when he sensed there was a perilous situation. "We'll be in the alley outside the café." A cold reminder moved down his spine and he repressed a shiver as he recalled the witch's warning. "I'll explain later. Just please don't call anyone else, Steve." And with that, Bucky hung up and made his way over to the bovine beside the wall. Her words hung between them, making him feel as if he were treading across a slippery-edge that could lead him into a downward spiral if he wasn't careful. He couldn't imagine what she was feeling now, both in body and mind, but what he did know was this was what the witch would want—for her to feel doubt, towards him and herself. Though it probably wasn't a good idea, he tried to bring a bit of levity to ease her gloomy spirit. "I've loved you in way more unexpected situations than this, darlin'. Some might've called me crazy for it. Its gonna take more than a change in appearance to drive me away." He smiled boyishly, though to himself it felt like a grimace at his lame attempt at humor. He inwardly prepared himself for the stinging sensation of a headbutt in response.

Against his dumbfounded reaction that painfully etched into his chiseled, stubbled cheeks, Selina quashed down the stokes of abraded hostility--kitty aggression-- and clenched her furred muzzle into a grimace. Snorting out an irritable breath, she tilted the broad expanse of her shoulder against the wall; rigidly flicking her tail with a tangible, passive sway, and stared into the glacial coolness of his soulful steel-blue eyes, finding a phantom cast of anguish that he tenaciously masked against the wage of neurotic emotions that ravaged his senses. "So I guess this is how it's gonna be," she paused in a tart breath, flitting her dark eyes piercingly down at the projection of her bulky shadow."Never thought I'd be walking in dark in big girl steps, but don't think for a second I'll be sleeping in a stinky barn," A play of snark chased her deepening bellow, as she rolled back her shoulders, nonchalantly." A girl's got her standards for living, handsome..."

"Hey…" Bucky interrupted her quietly, a clenching in his chest threatening to pull him into a diminished state where he could do nothing except succumb to panic. The warm softness of his calloused digits threaded through her mane of dark strands, resuming his comforting ministrations. It helped not only her but also himself. "This isn't gonna be permanent, darlin'," he said determinedly, relying on the strength he felt in his own words to keep him focused. "We'll find a way…" A lump of emotion in his throat nearly challenged his composure. His eyes moistened, threatening to spill a revelation of fear and turmoil. "I promise you, I won't stop until we do." He remembered Natalia once telling him—telling Steve—to never make a girl a promise you couldn't keep. This was one promise he wouldn't make lightly. The witch's face flashed in his thoughts—gothic, twisted and insane. A flicker of red and he saw the massive grip of his metallic digits around her throat. Hugging the bovine close, he plants a soft kiss on her brow. "We'll find a way."

Every instinct clamored to seize control over her, as Selina closed her eyes once she registered the softened pressure of his full-widened lips smoothing a heady trace of sensual ache over her fur; despite the obese shape rounding her girth, entranced ad nearly off balance on her hooves, she felt a ignited blaze of heightened desire tugging relentlessly at her fractured heart, urging her captive soul inside to finally answer his unbreakable vow that melded into her feverish veins. "I know we will, James," she murmured in a low rumble, nuzzling her head lovingly against the hardened planes of his broad chest, not creating a space of distance from him. Nothing cooled between them. "Just don't leave my side, no matter what happens after this damn night..."

A sad smile crept onto Bucky's boyishly handsome features, making him appear older than his physical years revealed. The weariness in his eyes revealed a withered soldier within being called into battle once again, but with a steady posture and an unrelenting spirit. The warmth in his chest sweltered into a burning heat of passion as he gazed into the swirling depths of coffee-brown orbs. The devotion he revealed was unshakable and affirming. "You know I won't, darlin'. I'm with you till the end." It was a promise he never made lightly to anyone he considered family. As a man of strength, love and loyalty, he would fight to fulfill that vow no matter what was in store. Before he could say more, both he and Selina are alerted to an increasing roar of an engine coming around the corner of the alley. An approaching vehicle. Bucky was standing fully erect in an instant, his posture protective as he shielded the bovine from whomever was coming. He could detect her unease as he felt her press her weight as firmly against the brick wall of the building, making herself as small as possible. "Just stand behind me, darlin'."

“Easy, Selina.” Bucky admonished gently, trying to calm her distress. Where there was tension moments ago in Bucky’s shoulders, the rigidness of his posture melted away into a more relaxed standing. The sudden shift in his mood and demeanor did little to calm her, but it made her realize that whoever he was talking to moments ago had just arrived in record time. The black unmarked van backed up towards them slowly, the wheels disturbing small puddles of melted snow that clung to its surface. The rumbling of the engine dimmed until the vehicle came to a complete stop a few feet in front of them. The van was large, big enough to fit a size-able shipment…or a cow.

“Its gonna be all right,” he said to her, giving another reassuring rub at the back of her neck to soothe her. The driver door to the van opened and a tall shape emerged from around the corner. Dressed in loose yet stylish blue-jeans with a thermal jacket secured over a broad and muscular torso stood Steve Rogers. Bucky released a breath of relief once he saw his best friend who regarded both him and the cow behind him with a leisurely look. “Thanks for being quick, Steve.” Bucky said with a grateful look.

“Just be glad I wasn’t too far away from a rental service and they had a van up for lease,” Steve returned with a soft shrug, hands hanging loosely at his side as he took in the scene in front of him with an assessing gaze. The soldier-like discipline he innately carried rubbed off on Bucky who felt a measure of strength return to his weary mind. Steve chanced a glance at the mahogany furred bovine standing behind his best friend. Were it not for the shredded pieces of black dress clinging to her furry back, he would have never guessed anything usual about her nor that she was in fact actually a human. “You all right, Miss Kyle?” He asked, remarkably calm yet inside he felt a twinge of uncertainty if the cow could even respond to him.

With her jutting ears twitching reactively to the stern utterance of his baritone, Selina glared at him guardingly, keeping herself distant in collective poise as Steve measured his approach to them, gingerly his paces cautious and tentative with smooth precision in his footing. The vigilant depth of his cool azure eyes never wavered against the molten intensity of her glaring coffee irises.

For  the last few years, the solid ground between her and Steve Rogers was tenuous on a hairbreadth to the gravity of dependence; for Bucky, she adapted to his adamant--virtuous presence, genuine light resonated within his unyielding Brooklyn spirit, no shades of darkness glinted in his serene azure eyes --he was the real article--a true knight in shining armor when it came to protecting a dame, something she always evaded. Tonight would be no different. Lifting her muzzle up, indifferently, she responded with a strained grimace as he mirrored her gouging stare."You just had to ask, huh, soldier boy?" she snorted, challengingly. "How do you think I feel?"

Steve had the decency to look a bit sheepish once he realized how his own question must've sounded. His surprise over the bovine's ability to communicate verbally lasted a mere second before he schooled his features into something more somber yet idealistic at the same time. "Not too happy, I imagine. I'm sorry your evening was ruined. Though I'm sure you don't need it, I want you to know I'm ready to help you in whatever way I can. Starting with getting you somewhere safe." His words carried all the passion and loyalty one would expect from the Star-Spangled Avenger despite the fact he no longer carried that mantle. "Do you have a place in mind, Steve?" Bucky asked worriedly. Despite how fast things were moving, he felt bitter with himself for neglecting to consider that crucial detail. He couldn't exactly take Selina back to their studio apartment in Midtown, nor to the Avengers compound where the witch would likely suspect foul-play on his part—and the last thing he wanted was to ask Stark for help. Even if he did, magic wasn't something the proud scientist wasn't very capable of assisting against. "There's a few safe-houses outside of Queens, but you're likely to still keep a low-profile. Anything less than a completely isolated patch of land won't offer much security from prying eyes." Steve shrugged while opening the back-doors to the van.

"No, there's only one place that can offer what this big girl needs," Selina interjected, tartly against clenched teeth, harnessing her furtive tactics of using her innate mastery of stealth and deception to gain sanctuary from the intersecting crosshairs. She needed to broaden her horizons, a dank reeking safe-house residence in Queens wouldn't effectively conceal a 3-ton bovine, they needed to go off the grid-vanish from plain sight. A maelstrom of the unknown-mobilizing threats would ensnare them, HYDRA might reactivate sleeper operator nests for instant termination of a kill shot; she wouldn't jeopardize Bucky's life against those inevitable odds of the survival gambit. Isolation was the only clearheaded outlet to use. Determingly, and with her salvaged brazen defiance, she trotted closer to the van's wheelchair ramp that electronically descended over mounds of slush, against a knot of feverish tension, Selina composed out a cool breath, her jeweled bronze irises cast a mirroring gaze into Bucky's dismal steel-aquamarine deeps, tellingly gleaming with an arduous sheen of unshed tears under his disheveled brunette tresses. His eyebrows furrowing into a notch, as his metallic hand graced her back with a rhythmic caress, holding promising intent. "Let's just say an old friend from the past won't be hesitant to open his door if Barnes agrees to drink earl gray tea..." she whispered, coaxingly."It's the only place in Gotham that I call safe..."

Bucky felt his stomach twist in an uncomfortable way, but it was a smaller thing compared to the dread he felt at the possibility of Selina being discovered by unwanted eyes. Cattle weren't welcome in the city, not even in the suburbia neighborhoods outside of it, so the odds of a local spotting him sheltering a bovine cow beneath his roof and contacting a city inspector or animal control were high and risky. It was the last thing she needed to worry about right. As a moment of silence passed and his steel-blue eyes remained linked to her peering brown orbs, he felt a shift in his resolve and nodded to her in understanding. Her cryptic words were lost on Steve but one glance at Bucky told him that his friend knew exactly what Selina was referring to. His own thoughts and concerns on the matter were similar to theirs in that a 500 plus pound bovine couldn't be kept in the city. His first thoughts were to reach out to Clint who owned five acres of land out in the country, but Bucky was adamant about keeping the other Avengers out of this. He didn't know much about Selina's Kyle's past, but wagered that Gotham had a lot to do with it. "Then Gotham it is. Shouldn't be a long drive through Jersey; we should reach the bridge by morning depending on the traffic." Steve offered. "You ready?" He asked Selina as she stood just in front of the ramp that led to a long and empty interior where the only seats belong to the driver and passenger in the front.

Nodding tersely, Selina sucked back a long and tortured breath, and with steady effort, her frontal hooves breached the ramp's edge, her dark coffee irises roved an aching glance at Bucky, as he inched back with faltering steps, giving her room to climb up. For a tantalizing moment, they were locked into the other's unblinking gazes, pained racked through her heart; she was paralyzed by the sudden detachment, a sickening coldness that slashed against her bones. With a subtle nudge of her muzzle against the chilled alloy of his cybertronic hand, and relishing the voltaic charge of that intimate contact, she implored him to follow her inside the van. "Don't be shy handsome, I'm not that big yet...

Despite the gloom of the situation that hung over him like a dreary rain-cloud, Bucky smiled softly at her quip and found the urge to caress the side of her furry cheek with the back of his metallic digits. "I don't think you ever will be "that big", darlin'. Not for me anyway," Bucky responded while guiding her into the van. Steve smiled to himself as he watched them. Bucky and Selina's combined weight caused the vehicle to groan ever slightly. The smell of polished leather and new-car smell permeated their senses but they were both thankful to be safely concealed and out of the bitter cold. The backdoors closed soundly as Steve made his way to the driver's seat. "Gonna be a few hours. I'd get some rest you guys," Steve suggested, setting the van into drive and pulling into traffic. Bucky and Selina remained in the back. The floor of the van was carpeted, allowing Selina to settle down onto her side comfortably with Bucky beside her. "Relax, Lina. I'm right here," Bucky whispered to her, sitting of the van with his back pressed against the door so her head could rest comfortably on his knee. Idly, his finger caressed and rubbed the area near her muzzle in a lulling fashion, meant to coax her into rest. "I'm not going anywhere."

There were no other words to express how Selina felt when the graveled softness of his suave-hushed undertone unwaveringly carried back to her twitching ears and melted in her veins like sonorous decadent chocolate, smoothly anchoring her back to a steady tide against the sorcerous tumult. She was straying further away in thralls of careening heartache, the merciless curse wouldn't avail, and she knew that in the coming days, Bucky would lose her--forever. She couldn't live without him, not her handsome beast machine. At first, she didn't respond as she nipped on the leathery swell of her deformed lip, burying her muzzle vehemently into the material his Armani shirt, breathing in the virile scent of smoky timber and iced mint that fluidly pacified her anguished soul into a stupor of contentment. "Don’t worry, handsome,  I'll keep fighting this damn spell..."

Offering him a kittenish smile with the radiance of an eternal promise that melded with the glacial depth of his grayish-aquamarine holding silver flame of their vitality; she began licking his flesh hand lovingly with the heated dampness of her swelled tongue, as his metallic hand softly kneaded over the bulging shape of her belly, their unbreakable love engulfed-infused them to salvage onto the reins of hope...Somehow they would dance again in the existence they were meant to live, for now, Selina rested her large head down on the harden sculpt of his thigh, and closed her eyes, as he continued to embrace her new form with each adjusting touch that chased her heartbeat —he never stopped. 

The gleams of dawn pierced over pink tinge cloud banks over the awakening horizon, light flurrying snow dusted over the glass panes of the van's tinted windows, grunting out stifled breaths; her throat felt exhaustingly scraped raw against the feverish sickness eeling through her veins. As the ensued maniacal echoes of bone-chilling laugher that resonated from the darkened alleys of the Narrows, the ambiance of death never faded out, crazed demons still existed in the cells of Arkham, blood was an interminable color for murderers to paint. Terror breached steeled hearts. Gotham City wasn't a place of refuge against the storms, it was a nether labyrinth of resurrected carnage and soul harvesting collectors-nightmare row, where childhood innocence was brutally tested by the grounds of survival or the fatal caress of a gun. Selina didn't want Bucky or Steve to glance beyond the city's industrial facade, become captives of rapacious cimmerian wickedness lured them to the edge of sanity of the lunatic fringe.

Registering the light caressing warmly over her mahogany fur, Selina opened her eyes, stubbornly the wake of venomous sorcery was penetrating deeper like a scorpion's sting, she was beyond the mounting control of her bovine form. Her damnable spirit was a hostage against the bounds of an occultic enchantment.

Seething under her breath, Selina gazed irately out the back window as her dark jeweled orbs became fixed piercingly on the intimating expanse of shadow that belonged to an enormous mansion that haunted her in the fringe of her dreams-Wayne Manor- an Elizabethan renaissance castle -like domain that was facade sculpted with strikingly Gothic marble with pike edged spires that were mounted over each of fours tower, high lancet arched windows and laden with columned terraces, a ghostly aura emanated from the cold stone edifice- desolate and unwelcoming.

Banishing her blaze of dredged revulsion, Selina felt her larger bulk faintly tensing at the sight of mansion's visage with an implosion of aversion, her thoughts suddenly traced the route to the manor's front gates, beset by flawless verdant lanes and the rocky cliffs that peaked against Gotham Bay. Against the careening recollections, Selina forgot how much she detested the Wayne dynasty fortune-old money gone to waste.

Berating herself for dealing with sleazy scum like Roland Dagger to get a chance to steal a new identity with the Clean Slate program-freedom at her kitty paws, to efface her past wickedness and steer her towards a new road to take, even if her demons were buried beneath the fault lines...The safeguards of her deviant heart weren't uncrackable went sentiment left her in the crosshairs, she craved for the breakneck thrill of danger, almost like a fix of escasty, an intimate pleasure that she wielded by the devious measure of her own control and the seductive play of her arsenal.

She was dead inside with the infective compulsion to rob from the wealthy; stealthily prowling the desolate streets of Gotham with the innate elusiveness of feline prowess, her curvaceous and sleek body cut into shadows with fluid precision and lethal intent, like an untouchable sliheoute on the razor's edge of a darkening existence, her blood was cold to the warmth of humanity. She ravished so many lives by pulling the trigger by the compliance of her sadistic and callous handlers that caged her like a rabid little kitten for their survival game- an instrumental and practical thief with a vengeful reckoning.

Now, Selina was enmeshed in the tumult borderline of mortal existence, being infinitely stagnated into enslaving thralls of dormant instincts-how long would she reject the urges to graze on clumps of grass, entreat to become fattened with a calf and comply to the intrusive dominance of a bull... The extent of this unprecedented attack it wasn't the League of Shadows or HYDRA, this cryptic mage desired to push Bucky's love for her to the limit, make him duel with his own heart against the dark undercurrents of fiendish sorcery rippling between them. She knew that Bucky's hellbent Brooklyn spirit would relentlessly dare the impossible to restore her-no what the high cost of their eternal love would be.

Feeling a smirk curve knowingly over her muzzle, Selina became tantalized against the contrast fusion of telltale heat radiating from rigid heaviness of Bucky corded muscles, as she felt the voltaic coldness of his metallic palm tenderly stroked reverent-possessive caresses over the swelled width of her furred girth ; the controlled delicacy of his glides were sensually fueled by his unbreakable devotion to her.

Relishing the serenity of the grounded moment, Selina grunted in an intenser resonance of a moo, as she drove her dark irises on Bucky, he was slumped against the van's doors, his body was still, dark tresses of unkempt chestnut hung messily askew over his eyes, and ghosted against his nose, the heavy set of his dimpled, bristled chin, slack with a vibrant grace of boyish youth aglow on his skin. The smooth, hard planes of his cheekbones were intensely defined with the sharpness of a knife's edge under a layer of chubbiness.

Her drifting gaze fell onto the beckoning virile softness of his shapely-wide lips, the bowing arch slackened to the pain resonating deep inside him. His roguishly handsome visage became achingly torturous for her capture with the ardent heat of melding kiss that always infused the decadent cadence of their bodies to surrender against the escalating firestorm of unstoppable-boneless passion. The emblazon desire to kiss him breathless roared through her veins, unrestrainedly, as she reeled back with a jerking thrust of her head against the clamoring urgency. "I guess bad girls can't win..."

Staving off the feverish urge to release tears, Selina felt her breath being choked by a flaring sob when she maddeningly caught a flash of inducing agony etched starkly over his hawkishly chiseled, stubbled features. Painstakingly against the impending gravity of the malicious curse, she nuzzled his shoulder with an effortless nudge of her muzzle, anchoring him back to her with a semblance of calmness ghosting over the bugled curves of his sleek muscles. A shivery cascade of thermal heat traced her pulse to a steady tempo as she felt him intimately breathe out a gravelly rumble against her fur. "James..." she imploringly murmured in hushed grated timbre. "It's going to be alright, handsome...Remember that I'm adaptable."

The deeper timbre of her voice was unsettling at first to anyone who knew what it should sound like. The sleeping Bucky flinched slightly as if he were jostled by an unsuspecting intrusion that could have an ill-effect on him. His eyelids peeled open before squeezing shut involuntarily to acclimate to the pale light streaking into the back of the panel van from the windshield. “Lina…” He slurred with a sleepy voice that was followed by a grimace once he felt a jolting ache move up his back. He really shouldn’t have fallen asleep sitting up. The painful reminder triggered his memories of the night before; Valentine’s Day, the dinner, the tension, the food, the shady waitress…the dark magic. His eyes snapped open, hoping desperately the nightmarish memory of Selina turning into a farm-cow was exactly just that: a nightmare. One of many added to the sea of trauma and darkness within his subconscious.

But sure enough, the alarming and heavy sensation of a warm and furry weight resting in his lap whisked away any doubt he might’ve had and cold reality shrouded him in its chilling embrace. Selina was in fact turned into a bovine. Gone were the unrecognizable curves that a slender athlete embodied, covered with creamy alabaster skin that smelled of lavender. In their place were patches of thick mahogany colored fur, coating hard muscle and fat that would’ve weighed a ton were it not for his own considerable strength to support her form. “…Sleep good, darlin?” He tried, uncertain of what to say that wouldn’t trigger an unfavorable response.  

Hearing the murmurous timbre of his croaky undertone, Selina rigidly deflected against that wary venture assailing in his voice, they evoked a revelatory--splintering throb of soul-deep heartache; she wasn't prepared for inexplicable morning ahead of them, she didn't want Bucky to sugar coat his reaction towards her cursive bovine form with a flux play of his wide-- charmingly boyish smile that would jovially accentuate the deep crow feet lines that carved deeper around his grayish-aquamarine eyes; instead she drove a heated glance at her block-sized hooves.

A feverish shiver of knifing pain careened through the voluminous expanse of her girth as Selina dismissively tore her head away from his tentative reach as his metallic palm deftly lifted bring a wake of intimate stillness between them. A shallow pant of breath scorched her throat when she clenched her muzzle tautly. “Don’t even start with that, handsome,” she gritted, trenchantly, her bronze orbs flashed with vehement intensity. that held the breadth of her warring emotions.

“You can’t possibly understand what the hell I’m going through, Bucky, this isn’t a damn game of smoke and mirrors, I feel so disgusting in this body,” She froze against the crushing gravity, meeting the glacial cast of reserved ache rippling in the steadiness of his piercing cerulean irises, a unfeigned telltale anguish that arrested the depths of restraint, as she sniffled, futilely trying to force back a blurring swells of unreleased tears. “How can you even look at me…" She scrunched her muzzle up with ill-defined revulsion, fighting to deter a stray tear. "I’m not exactly the kind of pretty dame for a Brooklyn boy to wake up to…”

"Lina…" For a long and dreadful pause, Bucky felt as if he were frozen in a state of shock and uncertainty. It was a feeling he seldom experienced but also one he dreaded like heading into a warzone unprepared for what may lie ahead. The ache in his back was forgotten as a new feeling of discomfort washed over him. He felt as if he were pinned to the door of the van by the bovine's piercing brown orbs, swimming with vulnerability; as if life and death weighed heavily upon his answer. "Don't think that way," he said with a shrug. Though there was a part of him that felt exasperated by her trademark scorn and sarcasm, he wasn't eager to let things escalate into a heated argument that would only make things harder. Though if he were honest with himself, he felt remorse that her words made him ponder too long for comfort. The cow in front of him bore no resemblance to the woman he loved, and were it not for the deep brown of her eyes, he wasn't sure if he could find some familiarity to latch onto. He both hated himself and the witch that had done this to Selina. "Look I know this is hard…harder than I could possibly imagine," he said with a steady tone. "But we just gotta keep focus and beat this." Once again, he relied on his soldier-like discipline to face this unprecedented situation. He almost cringed at his own words and their surgical delivery. Selina didn't need a soldier, she needed the man she loved to help her through this.

Grounding herself against the undisguised tension mounting between them like drawn blades warring to thrust against their hearts, Selina's indignant countenance hardened nauseatingly, alarmed by her reluctance, she felt utterly sickened against the telltale anguish that flashed increasingly in the stillness of his pupils.Traitorious resistance became combined with an infused reaction that she couldn't suppress back. A railing scream was threatening to erupt, as hostile stokes of aggression viciously seized her graceful poise. "How do you expect me to pretend like nothing has happened?" she grunted in a terse breath, angling her furred muzzle up defensively as grayish light reflected in her dark irises, heartache was evident in her contemptuous glare. "You can't even look at me the same...I know you're trying to make it work, but handsome, you need to give this big girl some walking space."

A spike of apprehension moved through Bucky as he detected her increasing agitation. Despite his effort to pacify and soothe Selina’s turmoil, he knew this wasn’t just a delicate matter but an impossible one for her to brush off. Not that he’d blame her, he wasn’t sure he could do any better in her situation. A jolt of anticipation and dread hit him as he recalled his agreement with the witch. That if he should fail to prove his love for Selina was undying and true, he would be degraded and turned into a tub of pork and bacon. He hated told Selina about that yet, he didn’t need to add more worry to what she already carried. Though his concern remained for Selina’s well-being, Bucky could feel a toll weighing down on himself as he released a shrug of exasperation.

“I know, Selina. I just wan—” It was at that moment, the back doors to the van opened, letting daylight flood the interior. Bucky winced slightly before his eyes quickly became acclimated to the change in brightness and the sight of Steve standing expectantly in front of them.

“We’re here. You guys ready?” The blonde asked glancing between his best friend and the bovine, still showing no hint of oddity despite the situation. Bucky wasn’t sure how annoyed Selina felt at that, but he couldn’t help but feel grateful to his friend’s sense of timing.

“To stretch my legs? Yeah.” Bucky shrugs, climbing out of the van until his feet settle onto a small grabble path that led to a driveway up ahead. The skies were gray and the land was clear. A meter ahead, stood the incredible gothic-Victorian architecture that was Wayne Manor. It was a place he’d never been too but had been curious after hearing Selina’s stories about it. “Ready, darlin’?” He asked her hopefully.

"Yeah, don't expect me to give you, soldier boys, a tour…" Selina gritted her teeth, snarkily, conveying her incensed resolve to advance towards the heart of the Wayne family estate, the vast-bucolic landscape was coated with fresh morning snow. Poking her large head out behind a door, her dark bronze irises intently drifted to marble stone steps of the front entrance, a phantom chill invasively penetrated through her layers of thickened mahogany fur. She grimaced against the vacancy of inviting warmth–even when she brazenly infiltrated at the Harvey Dent Day celebration, practically guised in the charade of a gawky maid with a semblance of delicate grace; each level was haunted by apparitions remorseless-irreversible grief that was spawned when Thomas and Martha Wayne had been gun down in Crime Alley. Gotham was a never-ending hell-pit of morbid strife and bloodshed.

The refined-wellborn mansion itself was like an abandoned gravestone, cold and etched with unrest memories-a desolate sanctuary for those who salvaged their redemption. Against the adhesion of concussive heartache, Selina harnessed a resurge of steeled momentum and swiftly eased her massive weight off the van's carpeted floor, spreading her broaden legs out as she boldly challenged the limits of testable gravity cementing down the hefty expanse of her fattening body.

Composing a terse breath, vexatiously, Selina braced herself against the feverish rush, before rearing her bulging girth up, trying not to focus on the revulsive, heated pressure of her swelled utter while she dragged her frontal hooves in sluggish unison, reaching for Bucky's unshakeable metallic hand waiting to anchor her out, Bucky had was being unfailingly charming and ever constant with his genuine devotion, gleams of dawn’s light flitted through his lenghy, unkempt chestnut tresses as boyish softness crossed over the hardened planes of his stubbled, knife-edged features, making the striking depth of his steel-blue ireses alight with glacial intensity of a winter tempest over a becalm ocean; she craved to see the lethal menace of the beast machine split his pupils like lightning. Bucky was still fashionably garbed in his ripped Armani suit. The full arch of his shapely lips slanted into a downhearted smile. The soul-crushing weight of an impending reality of their love being induced by the beset curse was suffocatingly torturous for both of them. "This is going to be so much fun..." she played out with a derisive snort, frosted with contempt.

“Hopefully things will stay quiet till we sort this all out,” Bucky shrugged while absently rubbing the back of Selina’s neck to reassure her. He was instantly aware of her pinned gaze looking at him as if to say, “when have we ever been that lucky?” He smiled tightly at that and couldn’t help but wonder the same. They were anything but lucky to elude danger even when it seemed they were surrounded by a heightened state-of-security. His narrowed blue eyes scoped the exterior of the manner, mentally mapping its layout into his tactical mind for any points entry as well as exits in the event of an assault. Not an easy observation from the looks of it, the manor seemed to have well over a dozen rooms on the first floor alone.

“You two stay here, I’m gonna see who’s home.” Steve cautioned before making his way up the drive-way and towards the path leading to the steps of the manor house. Bucky instantly regretted him leaving as the tension he felt in the van moments ago returned swiftly as he and Selina were left to a gloomy silence. The weight of their conversation hung on their shoulders and for a moment, neither of them said anything in hopes of not returning to it so quickly. Instead, Bucky’s thoughts turned towards the house and its surprisingly unmentioned owner.

“Is…” He bit his tongue with uncertainty, knowing that it was a delicate subject for Selina as was most of her connected past to Gotham. She and Bruce Wayne had a complicated history and relationship that withered before it could actually flourish into something meaningful. Though Bucky had never met the man, he wasn’t sure how he would take to their presence here, and seeing Selina in the state she was now in. When it became evident Selina noticed his hesitation, he decided to be direct and ask. “Do you think Wayne will have a problem with us here? When’s the last time you saw him?”

"I'm not really sure, last time I saw, Gotham’ down and broke billionaire was in Florence and it's wasn't thrilling as I wanted it to be...We both came from shades of darkness, but he didn't want to play the game of shadow play anymore...Besides he didn't like girls having guns around... To make it simple, Wayne wasn't a very dance partner to engage a dance with...Unlike this charming Brooklyn boy, I know who can really kill it on the floor."

"You can sure make a guy feel special, darlin'." Bucky smirked at her choice of words. Though he was genuinely touched by her words, a shrivel of unease lingered inside of him as he considered the prospect of coming face-to-face with one of Selina's exes. He didn't know Bruce Wayne, nor had he heard much about him save for tidbits of information collected from his conversations with Selina and the various news articles he'd glanced through. He was presumed dead and his estate was passed onto his guardian and caretaker but even that was a lie according to Selina. Bucky had always sensed there was more to the man than what the world knew, but he never questioned it. Perhaps now he might get some answers. As Steve stood in front of the lavish double-doors to the immaculate estate, he mentally prepared himself for the rather incredulous story he'd have to regale whoever answered. A calloused thumb pressed against the doorbell and listened to the gentle chiming inside that reminded him of an old tea-shop he once visited during his time abroad. He waited patiently for a moment, wondering just like Bucky, what kind of man he'd be dealing with given Kyle had been short on the details. Just when he considered ringing the bell again, he paused at the sound of the lock unlatching and the door opening. To his surprise he was met by an old man who looked aristocratic and proper as if he had opened this door a thousand times and never missed a step in his routine. Kind yet curious gray eyes settled onto him with a pale light that spoke of untold worry and grief but also an unshakable strength that wouldn't yield to despair. A strange feeling enveloped Steve as he stared at the old man, speechless yet deep in thought as if he knew him from somewhere. "Uh. Hello," he began good-naturedly.