#Especially because I actually experienced stalking on the internet

[helldustedstories]

wow nevermind, i wasnt trying to be weird just trying to compliment you but i take back my compliment

youre not like stolas at all and you should write stella instead since youre identical to her, a rude uppity bitch. learn to take compliments and dont assume its meant in an weird way

its no surprise you only write with the same 4 people bc youre rude and uppity and your writing might be good but its only purple prose

oh and you dont want to make other people feel bad but your always bragging and being uppity

enjoy your day i guess stella lmao

Again, normally I just delete this sort of thing and move on, especially because I don't like feeding into any sort of "drama." But at this point, this is about more than just me. This is about boundaries.

Unfortunately, I am forced to do this publicly because by choosing to continue to contact me anonymously, I have absolutely no way of having any sort of nuanced discussion with you about why the messages you've been sending me have not been okay and have crossed my boundaries several times over.

You don't know my history or what I've experienced. I don't owe you anything. But because we're doing this, I guess it's time to pull out that history and to explain to you exactly why what you did wasn't okay, especially this last message.

I have been stalked on tumblr before. It started out very similar to your first message, which I do still have saved, seeming very positive and encouraging, but it made me uncomfortable. So when I didn't answer, I got another message, this time asking to see a picture of me. I am normally fine with sharing pictures for munday sometimes, or if I feel like I'm rocking a particular look, but having someone I don't know on the internet blatantly asking, even if it is couched in another 'compliment' is wildly uncomfortable.

Again, I understand that neither of those things were malicious and were even likely well-intentioned, but respecting people's privacy online is something that is important. And when I didn't answer either of the first asks, that should have been your cue to let it go. I even turned anon off for a while because the first two made me uncomfortable.

I ended up turning it back on and got another ask, and this one felt even more bait-y than the first two. Protip: if you start a sentence with "no offense," what comes after it is usually going to be offensive. If you also have to add that something can be seen 'in a good way,' then you are acknowledging that it can also be seen in a bad way, and continuing to push that on someone else is probably not the best idea.

And when the majority of the messages go "compliment by putting other people down - actual thesis of the ask, trying to push your own thoughts onto others - other compliment putting other people down," it doesn't actually feel very much like a sincere compliment anyway. It feels like a way to continue to push your own thoughts and feelings on other people by dressing it up as though you're complimenting them.

I also have deep-seated trauma when it comes to random, unsolicited praise from people I don't know, especially when it's worded in the way that you did. Is it something I've been working on? Yes, absolutely. But telling me "learn to take a compliment" is a deeply triggering phrase, so congratulations, you're getting this whole rant instead of me just deleting and moving on.

What you said to me was not a compliment. If you have to put other people down to build someone else up, that's not helping anyone.

You sure seem to know a lot about what I post and who I write with. If you wanted to write with me and didn't get the chance, for that I am sorry. But it would have been much better if you had approached me either by sending me an ask with your actual URL or sending me an IM. I'm always happy to write with more people, but it's a two-way street. I do my best to reach out to people, to send memes, write open starters, etc, but if people don't reach back out to me, I can't exactly force anyone to interact with me.

Also, to all of your other points, part of the reason I write Stolas so well is because I've been where he is. Not exactly, not entirely, but I've been in an abusive relationship was for years. Kept going back to them despite everything because I didn't think anyone else would ever want me. Wrecked havoc on my self-esteem and my ability to form normal relationships with other people.

So sure, you can call me Stella all you want, say I'm an "uppity bitch," but I'd honestly love to see what you're referring to. I have done everything in my power to be as calm and level-headed as possible, and the only reason I am currently addressing this at all is because it has now become harassment.

If you have something you want to say to me, you are still welcome to send me an ask as yourself or IM me, and I'll be more than happy to have an actual discussion. But otherwise, please leave me alone. Please don't do this to someone else, either. You don't know their history and what might send them spiraling. If you want to send someone an anonymous compliment or try to brighten someone's day by telling them they're doing something well, then stop with that part. Make it specific, not just a generalization. If you like someone's headcanons, tell them that; if you like the graphics they edit, mention that. But don't use sending a compliment as an excuse to push your own agenda on other people, and if they don't reply, leave them alone.

[kimberly-spirits13]

Regarding your yandere question, I have a genuine answer!!

TLDR; it’s an alluring, toxic fantasy that I would never want in real life, but addresses some ~issues~ I have. I only enjoy it because I can experience it relatively anonymously then am able to escape it whenever I put my phone down/close the app out, unlike a true stalking situation.

For me personally (at the risk of oversharing) I have a deep seated fear of abandonment/being disliked and issues with feeling unseen while doing 90% of the emotional labor for my family and romantic partners. The thought of someone (a) taking that burden away and just controlling every aspect of my life while loving me so intensely is so alluring and (b) being known to the most intimate and embarrassing details and still being wanted relieves all those terrible thoughts I have in my head. (c) I have also experienced some trauma and tend to stray towards fighting or manipulating my way out, and tend not to panic in high stress/life or death situations.

I know I would (and 99.99999% of people would) hate that kind of relationship in real life. The lack of respect, privacy, and autonomy would drive me crazy. I know in real life, that sort of love tends not to be love at all, but the need for control. But the fantasy of it? Where that love is actually real and unconditional? Without the actual fear and consequences of it happening in real life? It’s very exciting to experience in the relative anonymity of the internet, especially when I can escape it the minute I close out the tab on my phone. (This explanation may apply to some but definitely not all people who enjoy yandere!)

Okay, okay, I gotcha. I’m sorry you have the abandonment issues. It seems a lot of people responding have said they have the same issues so it makes sense! I’m just glad this isn’t something y’all want irl and keep it to tumblr, AO3, wattpad… otherwise I’d be worried for y’all 😭😂. Thanks for sharing anon🩷

[ggstargetedlife]

Years ago, when I first stumbled across the definition of organized harassment and the detailed descriptions of what it entails and how it's done, for yet another year I remained in denial and doubt that it's real. It was happening to me, but my mind was desperate to believe anything but the truth right in front of me. It was easier to believe the man who'd made the threats against me that he'd destroy my life was the one overseeing what was being done to me as far as the stalking and harassment. It was easier to believe he had some kind of "God like" influence over others around me even from a distance, rather than to believe the government was involved and were the actual ones making it all happen. I actually thought him and his hacker friends, who have their own group and also knew all of my personal info, were somehow contacting everyone around me and introducing them to a vindictive smear campaign that would ensure everyone saw me in a certain light and treated me accordingly. My first attempt at researching organized harassment left me greatly overwhelmed with the wealth of information I came across on the internet. Some of it was questionable but a lot of it seemed backed by credible resources. What ultimately messed me up were the things described that I hadn't yet experienced or didn't recognize. For example, I was introduced to V2K September of last year. So when I first found information about it, I was highly skeptical. Even in early 2022, I would encourage other T.I.'s online and even link the articles of the weapon on my pg as proof it exists. What others didn't know though, I was still on the fence about it in the back of my mind.

Until it happened to me.

Sometimes, you can only understand something from your own perspective and if you haven't experienced it, it casts doubt in your mind, even as a T.I. Another example are the directed energy attacks. When I first discovered their existence, it was another thing I doubted, without recognizing it was already happening to me. The sudden unexplainable overheating spells and nausea, the headaches, and the extreme lack of sleep should've stood out in my mind during those time frames. I was aware "something" was going on, especially with the abrupt inability to get to sleep. What DID stick out to me was the "insomnia" would only take place on nights where I'd have to be into work extremely early the following day. But on the days where I wasn't expected until late morning to early afternoon, normally I had little to no problem falling into rest the night before. My mind was just in denial as far as directed energy weapons were concerned. I blamed my enemies, I just couldn't understand how technology itself could exert so much control over the human body, even though it absolutely can and does. I suppose deep down I simply didn't want to believe it, especially the governments part in it. Back then, considering myself an enemy of the government was something I didn't even want to consider. So I stopped researching, I stopped trying to make it all make sense and did my best instead to convince myself none of its real. It wasn't until the following year, 2021, I'd had enough and decided to go digging for answers again, this time with a more open mind. Ever since then, I've been on "red pill" status, absorbing as much information about this nefarious government run program. I believe every T.I. is in a different stage of targeting: some are experiencing more advanced levels of abuse (V2K, DEW, etc.) While others may only for now be in the same stage I was in during those beginning years with only the physical stalking and harassment. I've noticed when you mention V2K and remote Neural Monitoring to some T.I.'s, they're a bit iffy about it, because they are not yet on that level. This is the only reason I'm saying that, not to compare who's abuses are worse but to help shed understanding on why even some T.I.'s are themselves skeptical of certain tactics and aspects mentioned. I came across one T.I. on another platform who once mentioned, most people who experience V2K no longer experience the stalking and harassing "foot soldiers" of organized harassment, while on the flipside those who do not have V2K have to deal with constant perps. His point was, you either go through one or the other, not usually both at the same time. This is not true, but it's his own perspective from what he's experienced. Truth is, a lot of us are indeed forced to go through both. Just is what it is, and the more you know and accept as truth, the more you are targeted.

[semper-legens]

103. There Is No Antimemetics Division, by QNTM

Owned?: Yes Page count: 227 My summary: A meme is an idea that spreads. An antimeme is an idea that censors. Knowledge that cannot be known, information that you cannot retain, things that write themselves out of their mind the second they enter it. How can you fight something you cannot even perceive? Especially if it is coming straight for you... My rating: 5/5 My commentary:

If you are a denizen of the internet, which I assume you are because you are reading this, you will possibly be aware of the SCP Foundation. If you’re not, it’s an online horror-ish fiction project based around the fictional SCP Foundation, which secures and protects anomalous entities with strange, otherworldly qualities. This is a story set within that world, in the Foundation’s Antimemetics Division, dealing entirely in antimemes, information with self-censoring properties. It was recommended to me because I like House of Leaves, and yeah, it's very much like that. I loved every bit of it.

Antimemes are such a cool concept. Ideas that are self-censoring, information that destroys itself, beings that cannot be perceived without serious modifications to a person's psyche. And they're used to their full effect here. One of my favourite sections of this tale is one where a man believes that he's just joined the SCP Foundation, and gets stalked by one of these antimemetic beings - he's actually an experienced researcher, which he figures out after surviving the being apparently as a training exercise. This is implied to be routine in the Division; throw your researchers into an SCP and see if they survive. As the narrative continues, even the book censors itself - pages are blacked out, and the best thing about that is that it isn't overused, it's utilised incredibly effectively for the height of horror.

And speaking of, let's talk about horror! One of the things I really like about SCP's brand of horror is that, when it works, it's a more subtle and psychological form of horror. It isn't that a giant monster jumps out at you, it's that the monster was already there and has been manipulating your life for longer than you knew. Halfway through this story, main character Marion is revealed to have a husband, who neither we or she knew anything about. It's heartbreaking, seeing this man remembering years and years of history between them, and for Marion to feel nothing. But that's what she is now, and that's what this work is. It's chilling, and incredibly effective.

Next up, back to the Night Garden, with the last two stories from a girl’s eye.

[snowgraybeautywhite]

How can I avoid buying a recast BJD? (2020 Version)

For new purchases…

Find out if the doll is currently for sale from the company, or if it is a limited doll from the past. Some companies sell limited dolls for a short period of time, and then don’t sell that particular doll again for a while. If you know that a doll was a limited release in March 2015, but it’s currently April 2020, you shouldn’t expect to find the doll new. Move to the secondhand purchases section!

If possible, buy directly from the company. Most BJD companies have English websites and allow you to order directly from them. The prices on the English websites are usually listed in USD. Occasionally the price in dollars is a bit higher than the price in RMB or won or whatever, but not by that much. It is *possible* to order directly from the company from eBay or Taobao, but it’s also possible to get scammed that way (http://geminick.tumblr.com/post/82377046814/a-story-of-fraud-please-repost), making it not really worth the amount of ‘savings’ you might get. Some companies offer layaway, and others have dealers that offer layaway.

Check out the dealers listed on the company’s website. Some BJD companies have dealers in the U.S. or E.U. Sometimes dealers have layaway, and shipping may be less expensive. Only dealers are allowed to sell dolls as new; other sites selling the dolls might be fake.

Look at the price listed on the company’s website. Expect to pay that price. The original price is what you need to expect to pay for the doll you want, if you’re buying it new from the company or from an official dealer. If you’re interested in a doll that costs $400 new from the company, a website listing it for $150 is not selling a legit doll. Just like you know what an iPod should probably cost, you know what the doll should probably cost. An extremely discounted price from a website or dealer is suspicious.

Avoid Amazon, Alibaba, Taobao, eBay, and other unmoderated marketplaces. Many recasters list their dolls on these sites because the websites get a lot of traffic, but there is no oversight to check if the dolls are legit. Yes, it’s possible to find secondhand legit dolls on these sites, but it’s much more likely that you will be scammed. If in doubt, post about it on social media and ask experienced hobbyists.

Avoid listings that have conflicting information. A listing that says something like “Volks Soom 1/3 1/4 BJD Fairyland Minifee Luts” is fake. A doll can’t be both 1/3 and 1/4 scale. Volks and Soom are two completely different companies. This keyword spam is used by recasters to bring their fake dolls to the top of search results.

Avoid listings with warnings that the faceup will be “similar”. Default faceups should look like the company’s original release photos. Pictures of a doll with a faceup that is blurry or not like the company photos are suspicious. Warnings that the faceup will be “similar” are suspicious.

For secondhand purchases…

Make sure the doll’s resin color was offered by the company. Especially for tan or fantasy color dolls, make sure the company actually produced the doll in that color. Gray-skinned resin Volks dolls do not exist, for example. If the seller says that the doll was dyed or painted, ask for progress photos.

Find out how the company marks their dolls. Many companies have identifying marks on their dolls. This can include headplates, names, numbers, or stamps sculpted inside the head or inside body parts, L and R markings, and more. Logos and marks in the resin should be relatively deep and clear, with some variation. Some companies have magnets to include option parts. Some dolls do ship with seam lines; find out what’s normal for the company you’re interested in. Abnormal would be a double seam line, which indicates that a doll with a seam line was recast, and the second set of seam lines is from the recasting process. If the doll is missing the company marks, or they’re abnormally faint or blurry, that’s suspicious.

Look for imperfections or abnormalities. Some dolls are recast without the faceup from the original doll having been removed, so the lips are fattened by gloss. Details can be lost in the fingers and toes, and in the ears or the nostrils. Some companies do ship dolls with 'snowflakes’ (small white resin marks), but large pits or bubbles are problematic. Ears that were pierced by default but are closed on the sale doll are suspicious. Dolls that were released by the company with magnetic hands but have hook hands instead are suspicious.

Look for paperwork and boxes. Find out what the company’s boxes and packaging look like. Few legit companies send their dolls in plastic clamshell packaging, like what children’s toys come in. Most companies have a distinctive box and packing style. Find out what that is. Some buyers do throw their boxes away. But if the seller can’t explain why they don’t still have the box, and they don’t have box opening pictures or some other signs of legitimacy, that is suspicious. The older the doll you’re interested in, the less likely that paperwork was provided. Ask around to hobbyists who have the doll you’re interested in to find out what the original paperwork looked like, if there was any at all. Bootleg paperwork does exist for some companies, but that doesn’t mean that paperwork isn’t valuable. If you’re buying from the first owner, they should be able to provide you screenshots of their order on the company’s website, or they should be able to explain how they bought the doll but can’t provide screenshots. The seller should be able to explain why paperwork is lacking if there should be some.

Look at clear photographs of the doll for sale. This isn’t just to protect against recasts, but to protect yourself from buying a doll that is dirty or damaged. Sellers should post bald shots of the head face-forward, and from the sides. There should be photographs of the head plate, if the company installs headplates. There should be nude photos of the front and back of the doll’s body. If the seller has these pictures but they are grainy, blurry, etc, request better pictures. Not all of these photos might be in the listing. However, if the seller can’t provide them when asked, you should probably pass.

Find out about the past of this specific doll. If the seller doesn’t state whether they were the first owner, ask. If the seller bought the doll secondhand and says so, see if you can trace the ownership back to the original buyer. Lots of dolls can be found on the DoA marketplace by searching for the sculpt name, so you can see if there is an obvious previous owner (or more than one), a split, etc. Sometimes you can’t get back to the original owner, or any previous one, so ask the seller if you need to.

Investigate the seller. Look at their feedback thread. Look up their past posts about the doll they’re selling. Are there box openings? Meetup pics? Anything? Basically, use those internet-stalking skills you developed on your high-school crush or whatever to investigate the seller. This is important whether or not the doll is suspicious! Not everyone on the internet is good at being responsible when it comes to money, packing, shipping, and being timely, even if they seem very nice otherwise.

If you end up with a doll that you think is a recast…

Post pictures of the doll and what about it makes you think that it is a recast. Ask the opinion of experienced hobbyists, including showing them the doll in person if that’s an option for you. On DoA, this has to be in the “Ask the Moderators” forum. On your own social media, you can post as you like. You may find out that your doll is fine! If lots of people agree with you that the doll probably isn’t legit…

File a claim with PayPal / your credit card company / your bank Even if the time limit has passed! Explain that you were sold a bootleg, counterfeit product marketed as a legitimate product (put it in terms of brand: you thought it was Fairyland Brand, but it is a knockoff).

Post negative feedback. Start a negative feedback thread (on DoA, in the forum/group where you bought the doll, etc.) and a public social media post about the transaction. If someone has scammed you, they don’t belong in the community, and you deserve to get your money back.

More information about avoiding recasts can be found here on Den of Angels.

[turnmeonbigreddevilman]

Hellboy alphabet

A/n: nobody asked for this but I am giving it to the internet anyway because there is not enough HB content out there! I was half asleep when I wrote some of these so they may not be the best but they’re what I got and I hope someone out there enjoys them!!

((GIF not mine))

A = Aftercare (What they’re like after sex)

HB is especially loving and cuddly after sex. He gets really rough and really animalistic in the moment so, coming out of it, he makes up for it with tons of kisses, hugs, and praise.

B = Body part (Their favourite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)

He loves his chest, if it isn’t obvious from the way he takes every chance he gets to not wear a shirt. He also loves his arms, he thinks they look nice and strong!

He loves your thighs. They are thick and lovely and every time he looks at them, he has to keep himself from imagining them wrapped around his head.

C = Cum (Anything to do with cum basically… I’m a disgusting person)

His most favorite thing is coming inside of you, if you are down for him to. Of course there’s the usual precautions if you aren’t on the pill, but if you are and are down for it, he’ll pump into you until he’s almost there and when he comes, he’ll strain to press as deep into you as he can. Sometimes, if he’s in a particular mood, he’ll pull almost all the way out and then cum because he likes a good cream pie every once in a while (when he’s a little tipsy, that is).

D = Dirty Secret (Pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

He likes it when you mark him. He may heal before anyone could really notice but just feeling you bite him or give him a hickey would damn near knock his whole-ass socks off.

E = Experience (How experienced are they? Do they know what they’re doing?)

He absolutely knows what he’s doing. That’s not to say that he’s been around, as he can count the number of people he’s slept with on one hand, he’s just a quick learner (and being a superhuman half-demon REALLY helps).

F = Favourite Position (This goes without saying. Will probably include a visual)

Before the relationship is serious: Doggy style. It’s all about the pleasure and that ass. What can he say?

When in a serious relationship: Missionary. He’s quite the sappy bitch and something about seeing the woman he loves coming undone under him, making love to him and only him, is so fulfilling.

G = Goofy (Are they more serious in the moment, or are they humorous, etc)

For all the jokes this boy cracks, you would think he would do the same during sex but he is completely serious (if he’s sober). He’s a very lusty individual, and practically breaks down into an animalistic rut when he’s turned on/fucking. Expect mostly growls and groans along with some slight dirty talk here and there.

H= Hair (How well groomed are they, does the carpet match the drapes, etc.)

He has no choice but to groom it, have you seen how hairy he is in general? If he doesn’t keep it in check, it’s impossible to manage. He prefers to keep it pretty close-shaven, almost pornstar-like, but not in a bad way. It allows for a very nice slapping noise between the both of your bodies in the moment

I = Intimacy (How are they during the moment, romantic aspect…) 

Once HB is in love, he is in LOVE. As mentioned above, he loves getting it in missionary because he can kiss you, watch you, and even whisper sweet nothings to you during very special times. He really is a big teddy bear.

J = Jack Off (Masturbation headcanon)

He’s a male. He jacks off. Sometimes multiple times a day, but he always still has some energy left for you. Honestly, he’s doing you a favor by giving his hand a couple of rounds instead of wearing you out with his stamina and ability to go for HOURS, lasting rounds upon rounds.

K = Kink (One or more of their kinks)

Dominance. He loves being in control, making you behave, telling you how to pleasure both him and yourself. Do as he says and you’ll be rewarded.

¡¡¡Daddy kink!!!! (But he would never admit it unless you let him know you were also into it, if you even are) it’s all about the power aspect, babyyyy!

He’s also got a size kink. He LOVES being so much bigger than you. And his strength!! He can pick you up and manhandle you while also protecting you and keeping you warm.

Lastly, he has a kink for the sounds you make. Moan in earnest and it could possibly push him over the edge, depending on where in the sex process you are. Your sounds let him know how he’s doing as well as how much pleasure you’re experiencing. Whimper and he is 100% done.

L = Location (Favorite places to do the do)

The bed, the shower, the couch, in abandoned meeting rooms, in closets while people are walking by outside the door etc.

M = Motivation (What turns them on, gets them going)

Tease him with a short skirt and a sultry look and you’re in for it. He’s in predator mode, stalking you until he gets you alone. Call him daddy in casual conversation and he’s ready to go.

N = NO (Something they wouldn’t do, turn offs)

He will not hit/slap you during sex. He’s terrified he’d hurt you on accident because of how strong he is. If hitting/slapping is your thing, he feels bad that he can’t do that for you but he would rather not risk it.

O = Oral (Preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc)

He’s a little sloppy at first but he is a quick learner. Before long, he has you squirming when his head is between your thighs.

He does like receiving but he’s not selfish. He likes giving too! (Bonus note: please play with his balls, he will love it)

P = Pace (Are they fast and rough? Slow and sensual? etc.)

His pace varies so much just between days, rounds, or even moments. He can do both and prefers both, he just likes having sex with you. That being said, with his size and nature, his “slow and sensual” is not the same as an ordinary human man’s “slow and sensual”. By human standards it’s still quite rough, hence the ever-present need for aftercare.

Q = Quickie (Their opinions on quickies rather than proper sex, how often, etc.)

Let me tell you, ANY time this demon can get his hands on you, he will if you’re up for it. He can’t get enough of you and sometimes, finding a room and taking it slow is not an option. Many times you have found yourself in a broom closet with him holding you up against a wall or shelf.

R = Risk (Are they game to experiment, do they take risks, etc.)

HB is down to try anything that won’t get you hurt. Present an idea to him and he’ll likely be excited to try it out, he won’t hold back!

S = Stamina (How many rounds can they go for, how long do they last…)

Well he isn’t human, and he’s unnaturally strong, so that he can go for consecutive rounds upon rounds. You may tire out around 5 but he’s still got about 2-3 at LEAST left in him. Remember when I said it’s good he jacks off a lot? Yeah, this is why.

T = Toy (Do they own toys? Do they use them? On a partner or themselves?)

He never really had a serious need for actual toys before you. Sure, he’d been involved with other people but only casually and not enough to warrant a collection of things to use. During your relationship with him though, he starts collecting little things he thinks it would be cool to try, like blindfolds and ropes, as well as things he thinks you’ll like, like vibrators etc.

(Side note: sexy times when you’re first trying out the new toys are a tad goofy at the start because he’s nervous and trying to relieve his own tension, but as you both get into it, he becomes more of his usual, lusty and primal self.)

U = Unfair (how much they like to tease)

Red is the BIGGEST flirt so you know he’s also the BIGGEST tease. He’ll slap your ass in public, put his hand a little too far up your thigh during meetings, and purposefully “forget” to grab a towel so that he has to come out of the steaming shower completely naked.

V = Volume (How loud they are, what sounds they make)

Dude isn’t so much loud as he is consistently making noise. He can’t be silent, it just feels so good, but unless he’s really feeling it, he’s not yelling either.

W = Wild Card (Get a random headcanon for the character of your choice)

HB loves when you come work out with him. Not only is it one of the few times he feels attractive (he knows he’s built), but he also gets to watch you work out, squats and all, and he always tries to act like he’s your trainer so he can get you riled up for the shower sex that may or may not happen afterward

X = X-Ray (Let’s see what’s going on in those pants, picture or words)

HUGE. Big. Thick. Tough to fit in the first time every time. He’ll get you nice and ready though (wink wonk)

Y = Yearning (How high is their sex drive?)

Moderately high. He’s a machine when it comes to sex, and it’s already known that he jerks it a lot and can last multiple rounds. Give him the chance and he’ll “rock your world any day of the week, princess, WOOO”- or so he once said when you were wondering about it.

Z = ZZZ (… how quickly they fall asleep afterwards) 

He’s a master at sleeping. As soon as he knows you’re good, he’s out. He’s got you in an iron grip, he’s drooling on the pillow, and he is GONE. A freight train crashing through the room couldn’t wake him.

[1dffexchange]

Warm Blood

To: Eriza @booksncoffee

From: Natasha @wokeuptired​

Summary: This is ridiculous, and Carver knows it.

She doesn’t even know his name, and he’s all she can think about. One kiss at an office Christmas party—an office where she doesn’t even work most of the time—and she can’t get him off her mind. 

It doesn’t help that she’s spending a week working in said office, sitting at a neat freak’s desk and trying not to leave fingerprints behind while looking over her shoulder every five minutes to see if he—Mistletoe Boy—is at the coffee pot. 

She’s beginning to think she dreamed him up.

ONE.

Carver Cantrell is not somebody who makes stupid decisions.

That is the first thing she would want you to know about her: this is not her modus operandus. She is not the kind of girl who buys a plane ticket and jets off to Paris on a whim. She doesn’t purchase expensive articles of clothing without stalking them online for a few weeks first. The wildest evening she has is when she orders something different from the Chinese place on the corner. Nobody would ever call her a wild child.

And she certainly doesn’t kiss boys she’s never met under the mistletoe at the office holiday party just because she feels like it.

Except she just did.

“Wow.”

Carver pulls back, unsure of which of them said that, her or the guy she’s just been locking lips with. Her heart is beating so loud she can hear it in her ears, and she can feel her blood hot in her cheeks. His eyes are bright blue, so blue she can feel them in her toes.

Which is a feeling she’s never felt before. Crazy, because Carver thought, right before this second, that she’d felt them all.

Her emotions have tended towards the severe ever since she was a kid. Imagine six year-old Carver, throwing a fit at the supermarket because her favorite cereal was out of stock, and her helpless mother, standing three feet away with her hands up so that other shoppers wouldn’t assume she was the cause of the tantrum. Skip to middle school, when Carver didn’t eat for two days after she and her best friend—the same Jess whom she roomed with in college, walked beside at graduation, and is currently accompanying to this party—had a fight. Just last month, she watched a Hallmark movie where a woman reunited with her teenage love after twenty-five years, and she sobbed for an hour.

Anger, sadness, happiness—Carver has always felt them all in extremes. She’s learned over the years to take deep breaths until the emotions calm down so she can figure out which ones to listen to before she acts, but they’re still there, nonetheless.

Like two minutes ago, when she turned a corner on her way to the restroom and walked right into the sturdy chest of the guy who currently has his arms wrapped around her. He sparked something in her right away, and the inches they’ve just put between them have done nothing to dampen that flame.

“Sorry,” he says. He tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, his fingertips warm. “I probably shouldn’t have done that.”

This is where she should say something like, “Fuck that, do it again!” but her mind draws a blank. Her brain is too busy considering his accent, which is decidedly not California surfer boy like every boy she’s dated since she moved here a year ago, to come up with something witty to fire back at him.

“Hey, Car—”

She looks over my shoulder to see Jess coming around the corner. She has a plate in her hand piled high with Carver’s weakness: angel food cake, the literal food of angels.

“I found this,” she says, holding it out. “And you. And, you’re busy, apparently—who’s this?”

Carver follows her gaze back to the boy in question, who’s pushing a hand through his hair and grinning. His hair looks like it’s straight out of a shampoo commercial. She should’ve touched it during their kiss. What a missed opportunity.

“Sorry, I—I was actually on my way out,” he says. His eyes return to her as he brushes a fingertip across her cheek before stepping back. “It was nice to meet you.”

“You too,” she manages before he turns away and disappears around the corner.

Jess grabs her elbow. “What was that? Who was that?”

Carver lets her tug her back into the party. “I have no idea.”

Five minutes later, Carver’s shoveling angel food cake into her mouth and recounting the last hour as Jess rambles on with the office manager, Kayla. Michael Buble’s Christmas album plays in the background, stockings hang on the wall, and a small Christmas tree sits in the corner, but nothing can disguise the fact that this is an office. A well-designed office, but an office nonetheless.

Jess has worked for West & Up for a year, and Carver’s going on month three. West & Up is one of those newer companies that’s popped up as interior design has become accessible to anybody with internet access. It’s part online home goods retailer (think Wayfair but a bit less fashionable), part interior design firm. Jess does web design, and Carver crunch numbers.

They both work in the Century City office, where a bunch of nerds in glasses occupy cubicles in a decidedly less fashionable building right next to the freeway. Carver had never been to the Santa Monica office before tonight, and she’s definitely been missing out, because not only can you smell the ocean from the balcony, cute boys also work here.

One cute boy in particular.

Carver has never felt such an instant connection with someone before, and she can already tell it’s going to consume me. This is how her mind works: it can only focus on one thing at a time, and that one thing nearly always becomes an obsession. That’s why she’s so good at math. Her OCD keeps her doing problems over and over again until she’s sure they’re perfect. And her OCD will no doubt have her going over that kiss incessantly.  

“Carver, it’s going to be so great to have you here in January,” Kayla says. “I’m so happy you said yes.”

Carver swallows a bite of angel food cake and fakes a smile. Truth be told, she’s not looking forward to her temporary reassignment to the Santa Monica office. She hates changes to her routine, and she hates things that aren’t her choice. Kayla says she agreed, but when her supervisor presented it to her, it didn’t really seem like saying no was an option.

“I’m really excited to see how things work around here,” she says, which is about the best answer she can manage without the unrelenting guilt she always feels when she lies. She doesn’t tell Kayla she doesn’t understand why she can’t continue her internal audit of the company from her own cubicle.  

She has a slight suspicion that she’s going to arrive for her first day in January and be instructed to count the pens in the copy room.

TWO.

Kayla Warner is not the kind of person who takes no for an answer.

This is typically something that works in Niall’s favor, because Kayla is the office manager and when she’s on your side, she gets shit done. Niall befriended her on his first day at West & Up, and ever since, she’s been going to war for him. She got him the best cubicle (aka the one furthest from the break room), always makes sure he leaves promptly at five, even if she has to drag him out herself, and never fails to order his favorite brand of pens. Usually Kayla Warner is his hero.

But now that she’s decided to be his matchmaker, he’s moving her decidedly into the “villain” column. Once Kayla has an idea in her head, there’s absolutely no talking her out of it. Which doesn’t mean Niall isn’t going to try.

THIS IS A BAD IDEA.

Niall watches as three little dots appear on his phone, showing that Kayla is responding to his all-caps message. He never should’ve told her about Mistletoe Girl in the first place, but Kayla could tell that something was up when he suddenly appeared way more interested in Kayla’s incessant stream of office gossip than he used to be. Kayla practically sniffed it on him.

“You kissed somebody at the Christmas party, didn’t you?” she demanded, the question mark only there out of politeness. Kayla’s like a bloodhound when it comes to secrets, especially secrets related to the affairs of the heart.

Not that Niall’s heart is involved here. He really doesn’t want it to be, because it shouldn’t be, not after one kiss. Even if it was the most perfect kiss he’s ever experienced in all his years of kissing–barely a decade, so he wouldn’t exactly call himself an expert, but he knows a good kiss when he sees it.

Kayla’s still typing, so Niall navigates away from the text message thread and opens Instagram. He’d scoured the employee profiles a zillion times over the past few weeks searching for Mistletoe Girl, looking at all the Carters and Carolyns and Carlas that work for the company, and he couldn’t find her. But now, thanks to Kayla, he knows her name, her actual name, so he can stalk her on social media.

Carver Cantrell. Her profile is private, so Niall can’t see much beyond her bio and her profile picture (her smiling face pressed up against a puppy’s much smaller one), but it’s gratifying to know that she’s real. It’s a relief to know that he didn’t imagine the whole thing. And it’s nice to know that she loves dogs. Loving dogs is a good sign.

Niall doesn’t blame himself for questioning his sanity. It was like something out of a romance film, wasn’t it? Kayla’s obsessed with those things, “Love Actually” and “27 Dresses” and all that. It’s not every day that you’re on the way back from the bathroom at the dreaded office Christmas party when a cute girl crashes into you right under the mistletoe. And it’s certainly not every day that a kiss with a stranger makes you reexamine the way you look at the world.

Kayla’s reply rolls in, distracting Niall from reading Carver’s bio for the hundredth time.

THIS IS A GREAT IDEA

YOU CAN LEAVE HER CHOCOLATE AND FLIRTY NOTES ON YOUR DESK

I’M A FUCKING GENIUS

The messages arrive one after the other in rapid succession. Kayla texts like she talks: without breathing. It overwhelmed Niall when they first met, the speed at which Kayla thinks and talks and moves, but he’s slightly less intimidated by her now. Slightly.

Sighing, Niall clicks through to the text thread and hits the call button. It only rings once before Kayla picks up.

“You’re not going to be able to talk me out of this,” she says. Something clangs in the background; she’s probably making cookies again.

“It’s a terrible idea in every way,” Niall says. He stands from the couch and goes into the kitchen. Speaking with Kayla always makes him feel like he’s not doing enough. Like he ought to be doing at least 6 things simultaneously while talking to her. “You know I hate people in my workspace. It’s like you’re making us move in together, and we’ve barely even spoken.”

Kayla laughs. “Exactly. This is a great trial run. I’m pretty sure she’s just as much of a neat freak as you are, but if she’s not, you’ll be able to tell, and then you can abort the mission.”

“I want to abort the mission already.” Niall opens the fridge and starts unloading it of containers full of leftovers that should’ve been thrown out weeks ago. “You’re the one who’s not letting me.”

“That’s because I am your best friend and I care about your well-being.”

“But—”

“I’m not hearing it, Niall Horan,” Kayla says. “Now stop pretending to clean your kitchen, hang up the phone, and figure out a plan for tomorrow, will you? I can’t do everything for you.”

“Are you sure you can’t?” Niall asks. “Because you’ve done the rest of this for me. So I think you could just—”

“Don’t be facetious, Niall, it doesn’t suit you,” Kayla says before hanging up.

Sometimes Kayla reminds Niall of his mother, and since she’s far away across the Atlantic Ocean, he doesn’t really mind that.

Except right now. Right now, it’s driving him crazy.

THREE.

On Monday, January 7th, Carver parks her car in the lot outside West & Up’s Santa Monica office. She’s ten minutes early, and she fully intends to use all ten of those minutes to have a panic attack in her car.

There’s a post-it on her dashboard that, at her therapist’s suggestion, reads, “EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE,” and she repeats that aloud to herself a few times, but it doesn’t help. She makes a list in her mind of all the things that could go wrong. Maybe her cubicle neighbor will smell like baloney sandwiches. Maybe she will embarrass herself in front of the CEO. Or, maybe, worst of all, she might run into Mistletoe Boy.

She’s done her best over the past couple of weeks to forget about him, but she hasn’t gotten very far. And Jess’s constant mentioning of the kiss hasn’t helped things. She’s scoured the employee profiles on the company website for the guy with the soft lips and the foreign accent that Carver kissed at the Christmas party, and she’s come up empty.

“He must be one of the ones with no photo,” Jess has insisted multiple times.

“Or maybe he doesn’t work at West & Up anymore,” Carver told Jess last night as she was waxing on about how her chances of running into him again were about to increase exponentially. “Or maybe he never did, and he was crashing the party and that’s why he ducked away so fast. Or maybe he’s engaged to one of the girls from HR, or—”

“Or maybe you’re looking for excuses,” Jess said, jabbing an elbow into Carver’s side. They were watching “Set It Up” on Netflix for the zillionth time, and Jess had paused in speaking all the lines along with the actors to remind Carver that she may have watched her chance at one true love walk out the door a few weeks back. “Do not hide in your cubicle for the next week, okay? You need to, like, make yourself visible.”

“How do you suppose I do that?”

“Go to the coffee machine, like, all the time. Introduce yourself to everyone you can.” Jess turned to Carver, her eyes wide, her tone serious. “And, for the love of God, make a fucking move if you see him again.”

Carver tries not to think about that right now, as she squints into the sunlight and curse herself, again, for leaving the house without her sunglasses this morning, as that’s basically a death sentence in Los Angeles.

She reads her post-it again: “EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE.”

Then she takes a deep breath and opens the car door.

Kayla practically pounces on her when the elevator doors open on the third floor. She checks Carver in and shows her where the restroom is and babbles the entire time about how great her New Year’s was and how she hopes Carver’s was great too and did she watch the ball drop this year?   

“You can use Horan’s desk,” she says, leading Carver through the office. It’s an open plan, desks everywhere, most of them totally cluttered. Paper everywhere, knicknacks, dusty computer screens. But the desk Kayla guides Carver to is wiped clean. “He’s one of our architects. He’s on site all week.”

“You’re sure he won’t mind?” Carver runs her eyes over the spotless desktop. There’s a pothos plant in a terra cotta pot next to a black mug holding six identical black pens, and that’s it. The only bit of personalization she can spot is a dinosaur sticker on the corner of the computer monitor. Horan, whoever he is, clearly values cleanliness over, well, pretty much everything else.

It actually reminds Carver a little bit of her workspace, but at least she’s got more than one plant.

“Oh, yeah,” Kayla says. “He won’t care. He might come by in the evenings, though, so you should be out of here by five if you can, and don’t leave anything lying around. He’s a bit of a neat freak.”

“Right.” Carver pushes the keyboard out of the way and puts her laptop on the desk. “I’ll be out of here by five.”

“You know where I am if you need anything. See you at lunch!” Kayla calls as she disappears around the corner

Carver opens her laptop and clicks through her email to the spreadsheets the company wants her to look through. Luckily she hasn’t been asked to count any pencils yet, but the day is still young.

By lunch time, her fingers hurt and her eyes are dry. Kayla takes her to a salad place across the street, and Carver forces myself to choke down kale topped with assorted vegetables. When she was younger, she believed that she’d magically develop a taste for salad once she reached her twenties, since it’s what twenty-something professionals always ate for lunch on tv shows, but it hasn’t happened yet.

Then she returns to Horan’s immaculate cubicle, puts her earbuds in, and zones into the work. She used to think that she’d have to hate her job in her twenties, just as she’d have to love salads, but the truth is, she loves it. She loves columns of numbers and when there’s a knot in the data she has to untangle. She loves losing herself in it, because in the numbers there is always an answer.

In life, there often aren’t answers, and she’s not a fan of ambiguity.

Before she leaves, she can’t resist opening the top drawer to see if that’s where the owner of this desk hides his mess. But, no, it’s just as organized as the surface. Plastic bins hold pens, paperclips, pencils, and post-its, all in separate sections. There isn’t a thing out of place. She wonders if he uses dinner plates with dividers, too.

Carver snags a bright pink post-it out of the drawer and scrawls a quick note on it before sticking it to the monitor.

Thanks for letting me use your desk. I tried not to leave too many fingerprints. Sorry for snooping through your drawer, but I wanted to find your organizational weakness. Apparently you don’t have any. Congratulations. - Carver

FOUR.

Niall chickened out.

After all that berating last night and a pep talk via text from Kayla this morning, he chickened out. He didn’t leave anything at his desk for Carver, and, to top it off, he hasn’t been able to stop thinking about it.

Every day at the Wilson project is a busy day, and today was no exception. This morning, two of the guys ripped out the old range and found faulty wiring, which is a remodel nightmare second only to flooding. That should’ve been enough to distract Niall, but it wasn’t. He pulled out a pen to make some notes and wondered what kind of pens Carver likes. He looked at granite samples with the Wilsons and wondered if Carver would think the black countertop would darken the room.

And then he thought about how fucked up it was that he was thinking about what Carver would think, considering he doesn’t even know her. Fucked up and creepy.

But here he is anyway, driving to the office in 5 o’clock traffic to see if Carver’s left any mark on his cuble. A very small, slightly creepy part of him is hoping he’ll be able to catch a trace of her perfume lingering in the air. He doesn’t have the vocabulary to describe scents, but he smelled it on her the night they kissed, and he knows he’ll recognize it instantly if he smells it again.

Kayla’s already left, which means he doesn’t have to face an interrogation when he passes her desk. The entire office is pretty much cleared out, which is how he likes it. Honestly,if he could work from home, he would. Other people are exhausting.

Which is part of the reason he’s afraid, he thinks, of meeting Carver. He’s idealized her so much in his head, but what if when he meets her, really meets her, she’s boring? Or annoying or just plain exhausting? What if spending time with her makes him wish he were spending time alone? The disappointment could crush him.

Which is why it’s easier to pretend he doesn’t care.

As he rounds the corner towards his cubicle, his heartbeat quickens, which is a total betrayal of his attempts to be nonchalant about this whole thing. He takes a deep breath, but it doesn’t help. Then his desk comes to view.

Nothing appears to be amiss. His chair is tucked in just the way he likes it, all of his black pens are still in their black mug, and his dinosaur sticker hasn’t moved. But—

Wait, what is that?

Niall grabs the post-it off the monitor and brings it up to his face. Is this Carver’s handwriting? It’s much neater than he’d expected based on the way her hair was slightly askew at the party. One’s general upkeep, he’s noticed, tends to belay their handwriting, and their handwriting reflects their level of organizational mastery.

Niall’s own hair is always flawless.

He reads the note to himself a couple of times, smiling at the mention of fingerprints. Apparently Carver has a sense of humor. And she might like post-its just as much as he does.

Hmm. Niall takes a seat at his desk, opens the drawer for another post-it, and grabs a pen. Time to come up with something clever to say in response.

FIVE.

In the morning, there’s a new post-it note on the monitor. Carver grins when she first sees it, because she’s always loved the idea of penpals, letters exchanged between strangers. She’s never had one herself, but novels always made it seem like you could tell your friend who lived worlds away things you couldn’t tell your BFF who lived next door.

Carver doesn’t have any such expectations of Niall Horan, of course, but it still makes her a bit giddy to see that he’s written her back.

But that feeling disappears as soon as she reads the note.

Thanks for your note, and thanks for keeping my desk clean. I don’t know what you’ve heard about me, but I don’t really mind fingerprints. As long as there aren’t too many. And you keep them off the computer screen. You have neat handwriting, though, so I think I can live with you using my desk for the week. - Niall

Carver turns the post-it face-down on the desk. Maybe she was slightly rude in my post-it, but his message is ruder. “I can live with you using my desk for a week”—who talks to a stranger like that? It might be sarcasm, but he should know better than to be sarcastic in a note. There’s no room for nuance in a post-it note, they’re much too small.

What Carver wants to say in response is also much too long for a post-it note, so she yanks open the top drawer in search of notepaper. Her desk back in her cubicle hosts a variety of cute notepads and post-its, but all she can find in Niall’s desk is a small yellow legal pad. Despite its unattractiveness, it’ll have to do.

She does decorate the corner with a giant flower, though, courtesy of one of Niall’s five identical black pens.

Dear Niall,

Thanks for your note. I appreciate that you can live with me using your desk for a week, although I’d like you to know that I’d gladly vacate for another workspace if given the chance, since you seem like an asshole. Is that your weakness? You don’t know how to be nice to strangers on post-it notes? Good luck with that. I hope you enjoy being alone.

Note written—or at least started; Carver thinks she might have more to say later—she shoves it under Niall’s keyboard and opens her laptop. She’ll leave it there for the day, keeping it in the back of her mind, and right before she leaves, she’ll decided whether or not to leave it.

No impulsive decisions, even in anger.

Except maybe she should be impulsive. Maybe she should stand up for herself, even though there may be negative consequences, like an even ruder reply tomorrow, or a chastising by Kayla or even a meeting with HR for inter-office harassment.

Carver goes back and forth about it all morning. She spends a bit of mental energy regretting leaving a note at all yesterday, and then a bit more energy wishing she’d asked Kayla more questions about the owner of the desk. Like, is he a nutcase? Is he obsessed with fingerprints? Because he catalogues them? Because he’s a crazy, stalking, murdering, psychopath?

By lunch time, Carver feels like she’s bursting at the seams. Kayla shows up for lunch, and Carver practically leaps out of her seat. They barely make it out of the building before Carver brings it up.

“Hey, so this Horan guy? What’s he like?”

Kayla looks over her shoulder as she pushes out the front door of the building and into the sunlight. “Why do you ask?”

Carver wrinkles her nose at Kayla’s smile. “He left me a super rude note.”

The smile drops instantly. “What?”

Carver squints into the sunlight and stops to fish her sunglasses out of her purse. “Yeah,” she says to Kayla. “I left him a note last night, thanking him for letting me use his desk and whatnot, and I come in this morning to a note that’s like, don’t leave too many fingerprints and I won’t kill you.”

“What? There’s no way Niall wrote that,” Kayla says.

Carver follows her into the same salad place as yesterday. “I mean, I may’ve exaggerated a little. But that was the gist of it.”

The conversation pauses as Carver orders her food—the same salad as yesterday—but Kayla brings it up again as soon as the two of them are seated. The restaurant isn’t exactly quiet, but Kayla is not the kind of person, Carver’s beginning to realize, who lets a loud space hinder her conversation.

“Niall is not an asshole, I promise,” Kayla says. She extracts a metal straw out of her bag and sticks it in her drink. “He’s just not that good at people.”

“What?”

Kayla shrugs. “Listen, I’ve been friends with him for three years. He doesn’t always make the best first impression. Like, he tries, but it’s hard for him.”

What? Carver thinks the question this time instead of voicing it. She understands being socially awkward, but the best thing about written correspondence is that you can revise it a thousand times before sending it off (or, as it were, leaving it taped to a monitor).

“Like, okay,” Kayla continues. “He probably thought he was being funny. But he’s such a dingbat he doesn’t realize that sarcasm doesn’t translate when it’s written down, or he thought he was making a joke and he didn’t realize that he’s not funny. Like, he’s really not funny.”

Carver tries to think of something to say in response, but she finds herself coming up empty. Kayla’s trying to apologize for Niall, but Carver’s realizing that she really doesn’t want to hear it. Luckily her salad arrives, saving her. She shoves a forkful of lettuce into her mouth and chews as Kayla rambles on.

Finally, Kayla pauses, so Carver asks what she really wants to know. “So, do you think I should write back?”

Kayla’s fork hovers in the air on its way to her mouth. “Do you want to write back?”

Carver blinks. “I don’t know what I want to do.”

���Well, I’m a firm believer that you should do whatever feels right to you,” Kayla says, setting her fork down. “So maybe what you need to do is figure out what it is you want to do.”

Carver nods, repeating that over and over in her head until it starts to make sense.

At least, the words make sense. She still has no idea whether or not she should leave the note.

SIX.

“I wrote her a note.”

“Yeah, I know, you idiot,” Kayla says sharply. “What the fuck were you thinking?”

Niall nearly drops his phone. That would be especially bad considering he’s currently squatting over a puddle of water in the middle of the Wilson construction site. He’s downgrading it from kitchen to construction site, since every 10 minutes a new problem arises that requires something else to be ripped out or torn up. The drywall is gone, revealing rotting studs, and when they pulled up the tile this morning, they found mold in the floorboards.

This house isn’t even old. Niall doesn’t understand it.

But he has to deal with it nonetheless.

“What are you talking about?” he asks.

“She asked me about you,” Kayla says. She’s whispering, like maybe she’s sitting at her desk right now and doesn’t want to be overheard. “Hold on, let me go outside.”

Niall stands up and turns his back on the other guys staring hopelessly into the puddle. He walks into the Wilsons’ backyard, which borders a strip of land known for being a mountain lion hotspot. When he first moved to LA, Niall was fascinated with them, with P-22 and his brave freeway crossings (both the 405 and the 101) and  his adventures around Griffith Park. Experts say that P-22 will probably never leave Griffith Park’s 8 square miles, which is only half a victory. He’ll be safe because he’s the only male mountain lion living there, but he’ll never mate. His line will end with him.

Niall isn’t nearly as pessimistic about his own future, but he does have a few things in common with P-22. In a city surrounded by people, sometimes he feels like he’s living on an island. Anyone who wants to get to him will have to cross treacherous territory.

“Okay, I’m back,” Kayla says in Niall’s ear. “Now tell me what the fuck you were thinking, please.”

“I still don’t know what you’re talking about,” Niall says.

“Your note! You were a total asshole. At lunch today Carver was like, who is this guy and what the heck is his problem? And she’s totally right. What the heck is your problem?”

Right now Niall’s problem is that Kayla doesn’t seem to be planning on letting him get a word in. “Well—”

“Stop talking. I’ll tell you what’s wrong with you. You don’t know how to be nice to people because you are afraid of making authentic connections because then someone might get close enough to see that you’re as perfect as you pretend to be.”

“Hey—”

“It’s not your turn, idiot. You need to fix this now, because you haven’t completely ruined your chances, but you’re close, I can tell you that. I tried to tell Carver that you’re just bad at first impressions, but she wasn’t hearing it. Like, she literally zoned out and stopped listening to me.”

Niall feels like doing that right now. He also feels like jumping headfirst into the Wilsons’ pool, or throwing his phone in so the water can drown out Kayla’s voice. Or maybe he should leave his phone here and walk off into the forest and make a new home with P-22. The mountain lion won’t judge him. It might attack him, but it certainly won’t do so while calling him an idiot.

No, Niall can do that himself. He definitely feels stupid right now. He thought he was being witty and maybe even flirty, but clearly none of that came across. Instead he made himself look like an asshole, and he’s probably completely ruined his chances with Carver, who—he can admit this to himself, even if he hasn’t said it out loud—might be the one girl who could save him from a P-22 fate.

“So figure out a plan, Niall, because Carver is probably sitting at your desk right now writing a note to you about how much of a dickhead you’re being, and your deserve it!” Final words voiced, Kayla hangs up.

Niall sighs, allows himself a moment of self-pity, and opens the notes app on his phone to make a list.

Before end of work day:

- Call plumber

- Figure out how to explain further delay to Wilsons

- Call Wilsons, explain, apologize

- File report with office

By tomorrow AM:

- Fix Carver problem

- Refill gas tank

- Sleep?

It’s shaping up to be a busy afternoon.

SEVEN.

Carver wakes up the next morning feeling perfectly normal, and then she remembers what she decided. Before she left the office, she pulled her note out from underneath Niall’s keyboard, signed her name to it with a flourish, and taped it to his monitor.

She sits up in bed, overcome with a wave of nausea. Assuming Niall went to the office last night, which he most likely did because he seems like the kind of person who follows his routines religiously, without exception, there is going to be a note waiting for her, and it’s probably not going to be a nice one.

But when she gets to Niall’s desk, there’s nothing there. Her note is gone, but there isn’t a new one.

Fuck. There are so many things this could mean. Maybe he read her note and was so annoyed by it that he decided she wasn’t worth responding to. Maybe he laughed and crumbled it up into a ball and tossed it over his shoulder as he walked through the parking lot to his car. Or maybe a janitor threw it away and he never even saw it.

Carver pushes it out of her mind, though, because she has work to do. There are numbers to be crunched and data to be sorted and there is plenty to distract her anxious mind.   

But she can’t get the note out of her head. How did he react to her note? Why didn’t he respond? Is she a terrible person for leaving it in the first place?

Just before 11 AM, Kayla pops her head over the edge of the cubicle, a mug of coffee in her hands. “Morning,” she says. “Can you do me a favor?”

Carver minimizes my spreadsheet and grins. “Of course. I need a break anyway.” That isn’t an overstatement. With all the circles her brain has been going in, Carver wonders how she managed to get anything done this morning.

“Great.” Kayla holds out a manila envelope. “Can you take an early lunch and drop this off for Horan at the Wilson house?”

Drop this off for Horan. Oh, shit.

“Of course,” Carver says, but meanwhile her brain is having a heart attack. She hates spur of the moment plans, she hates going to places she’s never been before, and mostly she hates that she might be about to confront Niall in a place she’s never been before, where she can’t control anything.

She can’t say any of that out loud, though, so she takes the envelope from Kayla and puts the address Kayla gives her into Google maps on her phone. She blasts the “Mamma Mia” soundtrack on the drive, but it doesn’t help calm her nerves.

Even though the house isn’t geographically that far away, it takes nearly half an hour to get there, which must be why Kayla told Carver she wouldn’t expect her back before two.  Los Angeles traffic is no exaggeration.

She parks her car at the end of a long driveway and pushes her sunglasses onto her head. She remembered them this morning, but she doesn’t think they’re going to save her from whatever is going to happen at the top of the drive.

The house is the first thing that shocks her. It’s beautiful, and that’s not a term she typically uses to describe architecture. She may work for West & Co., but she’s a math geek. She’s a human computer. She doesn’t have a natural taste for beautiful construction, but this she recognizes. It’s two stories and massive but not obviously so, because the facade has varying heights and it doesn’t look like an imposing box. She can tell, though, that the people who live here are loaded. There are mediterranean stones and slightly tinted window panes and she can just bet that the back of the house is entirely glass to give the residents the best possible view of the hills behind.  

She walks through a beautifully manicured front yard to find that the front door is open, so she goes inside without knocking. The front hall is two stories high, and a living room with mid-century modern furniture is on the right. It looks like it belongs in an Architectural Digest celebrity home tour on youtube. There is no clutter anywhere, like maybe no one lives in this house and it’s actually just used for filming and photoshoots.

Carver follows the sound of hammers through to the kitchen at the back of the house. There are floor to ceiling windows, just like she expected, and even though the kitchen is entirely deconstructed—it looks like custom cabinets are currently being installed—she can already tell it’s going to be beautiful.

“Hey, Horan!”

Shit. Carver follows the direction of the shout and steps further into the kitchen, and that’s when she sees him.

He’s outside, so they’re separated by a massive kitchen and a sliding glass door, but it’s definitely him.

It’s Mistletoe Boy.

It can’t be, though, right? He can’t be Niall. Niall can’t be him. They can’t be the same person.

But then somebody shouts, “Horan!” again and Mistletoe Boy turns and, oh shit, he’s coming this way, and Carver definitely cannot deal with this right now. She backtracks out of the house and grabs a construction worker who’s just coming in.

“Can you give this to Horan?” she asks, holding out the envelope. The guy wrinkles his brow, but he shrugs and takes the envelope. “Thanks,” Carver says, and then she practically runs to her car.

Carver starts the engine as she’s buckling her seatbelt (even though her mother taught her never to do that), and she drives out of the neighborhood with her heart attempting to beat its way out of her chest. She pulls into the first parking lot she sees, shuts off her car, and leans her head on the dashboard.

Of all the things to happen today, it had to be this. She had to find out that Mistletoe Boy and desk asshole Niall Horan are the same person, and that had to happen at his construction sight and it had to be a total surprise, and now she’s sitting in her car in a parking lot outside of a Whole Foods and this is fucking Beverly Hills or something (Carver really doesn’t know where the fuck she is right now) and she’s probably going to get arrested for having a panic attack in her car.

Deep breaths, Carver, her voice of reason tells her, and she leans her head back and tries to listen. Her dashboard post-it tells her that “EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE” but that doesn’t seem realistic right now.

Nonetheless, Carver says it out loud.

“Everything will be fine,” she tells the steering wheel.

“Everything will be fine,” she tells her bitten-down fingernails.

“Everything will be fine,” she tells her purse, haphazardly thrown on the floor on the passenger’s side as she rushed away from the Wilson house.

“Everything will be fine,” she tells herself.

Then someone knocks on her window, causing her to shriek.

Everything is not going to be fine.

EIGHT.

Carver looks up, eyes wide, and Niall regrets this immediately. When he saw Carver rushing to her car looking as though she’d seen a ghost, he knew instantly that she saw him, realized who he was, and panicked. His brain told him that if he let her go now, he might never see her again.

So he followed her out. He jumped in his truck and trailed her car out of the Wilsons’ fancy neighborhood and into the parking lot of a Whole Foods. Whole Foods is a store that he generally tries to avoid because the prices are ridiculous and all of the Prius drivers in the parking lot give him dirty looks when he parks his truck, but none of that matters right now.

What does matter is Carver, and she looks like she would rather cry than talk to him.

Too bad, because for the first time in a long time, Niall doesn’t want to walk away from this problem.

He meets Carver’s eyes and waves. She grimaces, so he tries to smile. Carver closes her eyes, takes a visible deep breath, and reaches for the door handle.

“Shit.” Niall takes a step back, out of her way, and tries not to panic. He didn’t really think this part through. What the hell is he going to say to this girl? This girl of his dreams? The girl who is now standing in front of him, leaning against her closed car door, looking up at him like he’s already broken her heart.

Damn, what a mess. Niall hates messes.

“Hi,” he says.

“Hi,” Carver says. She looks exactly as he remembered her: green eyes, blond wavy hair, oversize glasses. Just as cute as she was before Christmas.

He said hi, then she said hi, so it’s his turn again. Unfortunately, his mind is blank.

This was much easier in December, when they were standing in the dark under the mistletoe and Niall didn’t yet know that the kiss they were about to share would haunt him for several weeks following.

“Sorry about the note I left you,” Carver says, saving his ass. “I shouldn’t have written any of that.”

Niall shakes his head. “No, I deserved it. I’m a terrible note writer.”

Carver bites her lip; she’s either holding back a smile or a frown. “You could definitely use some practice.” It’s definitely a smile.

Niall smiles back. “Will you let me try again tomorrow?”

Carver nods.

NINE.

Dear Carver,

This is what I should’ve written in the first note: I knew that you were using my desk, and by that I mean that I remember you from the Christmas party. I’m glad that you’re using my desk, but what I’d like better is if you’d go out on a date with me. I think you’re kind and funny and sweet, and I want to learn more about you.

Best,

Niall

TEN.

Dear Niall,

Yes.

- Carver

[hjertetssunnegalskap1]

The Skamdom, the good parts and bad parts and what to do with it

I love Skam. The Skam fandom has been and still is, joy in so many ways. It’s amazing to meet other fans who love the show and love everything connected to it. The Skamdom has been more than a weird obsession, it has given me a feeling of family and friendship, too. I have learned a lot about myself and my own prejudices and about my identity and preferences. Skam has been an inspiration to create fanwork, I have gotten lots of positive feedback and it has helped me to have fun with creating stuff again.

However, I have discovered that there are some parts of the fandom that are quite toxic. Yeah, I know, water is wet, hah. I guess it’s well known that there are negative sides to all fandoms. I’m pretty new to fandom life, though, and I suppose it has taken time to get fully aware of how bad things can get. Skam has a positive underlying message, after all, and I have often thought that it “should be too good for hate like this.” Well, it isn’t. We all know it. It’s even possible that parts of Skam somehow ignite certain forms of toxic fandom processes, too, although I have no idea what that could be. Could it be that the show feels so real? That the characters are so young? That the show handles important issues? I really don’t know, but I would love to hear all the theories. 

Anyway, I have noticed that even though people spreading hate usually are a small fraction of the fandom, they have the power to do significant damage. Hate drives people out of ships, and out of the fandom. Hate makes fanfic writers stop writing and artists stop making art. Fans are being frozen out or silenced because they have the wrong opinion.This is sad, and the worst part is, that it has happened more than once.

What makes a fandom toxic, then? Why does it happen in the first place? And what can we do about it? I have tried to read up on some ideas about it and mixed it with some of my own thoughts about group processes. I won’t pretend to know anything about fandom life previous to Skam or on earlier fandom sites, but I would like to say something about the things I do know of. The reason I write this is purely selfish, by the way. I need to understand this. The Skam fandom is constantly evolving (as it probably should) and I need to keep my own fandom experience good, and to do that, I need to get what this negativity is all about, and how to deal with it.

So, what is it about?

First of all, I should mention that I’m kinda hesitant about talking about good vs. bad fandom behaviour. Life isn’t black or white like that and I don’t like to describe processes as if they were. However, there are fandom actions that are bad, and toxic, and I think it can be useful to talk about it in the open. Just remember that I’m not trying to call out anyone here. I think we’re all more or less guilty of negative fandom behaviour.

When I start to talk about what is toxic in a fandom, I suppose it can be smart to start with what it isn’t. Well, obviously, sharing your love for something isn’t. Also, I think that fans disagreeing and discussing stuff isn’t toxic. Making arguments for what you think is a good thing, just as expressing how you feel about something, or critiquing something constructively. Open discussions keep the fandom alive. Talking is good!!!  

Attacking others with threats or extreme actions, however, not so much. Here are some examples of what I think are toxic sides of the fandom: 

Possessiveness: some fans feel like they own the content they're fans of, that it belongs to them, and only to them. Fans are stalking the actors, for instance, and trying to control them. Sending hate and threats to Henrik’s girlfriend, is a good example. Or spreading hate about Tarjei when he withdrew from some fans and sat boundaries for them. Ulrikke has experienced a lot of hate because she doesn’t follow the wishes of some fans, as well. 

What if the actors or creators do some really shitty things? What if they express prejudices or ignorance or maybe they do something they shouldn’t do? Well, it’s not possessive to point out that the creators or actors do shitty things. It’s possessive to try to control them.

I suppose a lot of fans can feel a hint of possessiveness at times. Like, when someone expresses “I almost don’t want this fandom to grow bigger, I want it to stay our small precious treasure”. It doesn’t have to be harmful, only if the fans exclude others or act in a harmful way because of it.

Entitlement: some fans think that the creators must do what they want. For example, the fans may demand a particular romantic pairing or 'ship' to happen in a show, and be furious enough to send death threats to the authors if this doesn't happen.

Everyone can get disappointed in things happening, of course, and expressing that is okay. But there’s a difference between expressing disappointment and spreading hate. 

Feeling superior: some fans feel superior to more casual fans, and shout loudly about it. Or they feel better than other fractions of the fandom. Some fans might not feel superior, but maybe special. They have their self-concept shaped by the fact that their fandom makes them an outcast. Maybe they even feel bullied. But in some cases, they are the ones who hate on others for things they like. This can often end in fan wars (”this remake is better than that”). 

I think a feeling of “others don’t get this show like we do” is familiar to many in the fandom and in many different groupings. I can’t say that I have felt superior in any way, but

I have at least once expressed my opinions on characterization in a way that other fans found offensive. 

Us and them: This toxic culture of possessiveness, entitlement and feeling superior develops in so-called “internet echo chambers”, spaces where dissenting opinions are not tolerated. This means the group has a conformist mentality and everything is about “us” and “them”. 

Outsiders are usually rudely educated or just simply banned. This conflict creates a sense of self and community that is tied to the in-group, the 'safe haven' of the fan community. Online, these groups pat each other on the back for liking the right version of the show, or the right ship or whatever, and not only that, but having the group's particular opinions on it, and for participating in conventions, contributing art and fan fiction, and so on. 

Losing their identity: When people are part of a group, they often experience a loss of self-awareness. They are less likely to follow normal restraints and inhibitions and more likely to lose their sense of individual identity. Groups can generate a sense of emotional excitement, which can lead to behaviours that a person would not typically engage in if alone.

I think a lot of fans can recognize this feeling of getting swept away with some amazing ideas in a group. When it leads to spreading hate, it becomes toxic.  

Addiction: People also get addicted to the attention and validation these online niches can give them, especially if the outside world is less friendly. That leads them to extreme in-group loyalty and extreme out-group hatred. They can get so caught up in their fandom that they stop caring about people outside of it.

And yeah, uhm. I can actually recognize the addictive part of fandom life. I need to check Tumblr and AO3 every day, for instance, as well as check in on fandom friends. I live for every kudos or like I get on the things I make. I know, addiction is maybe not toxic for others than yourself, but I still wanted to add it. Addiction can also lead to toxic behaviour towards others in the fandom. 

So... What to do, then?

It’s not easy to handle these things. One problem is that attempting to confront toxic fandom processes results in the groups withdrawing into their echo chambers and feeling superior. I have tried once or twice to answer hate like that with reasoning but often it’s mostly to sort my own thoughts on the subject (I think better in writing). I have rarely experienced to get through to anyone. 

Sometimes, or pretty often, ignoring toxic behaviour might be best. Confrontation may just result in circular arguments, after all. If you ignore the behaviour, you're not giving it attention. Also, you can let them think what they want to think. You can block, delete, or ignore negative people or behaviour on most social media networks. I have filtered and blacklisted words on Tumblr and it has helped a lot. That’s maybe one of my best tips. Scroll past stuff that isn’t for you. Remember the phrase “don’t like, don’t read.” Make the content that you’re passionate about. Talk about the things you love. Share your opinions. Focus on the stuff that makes you happy. That’s my goal, anyway.

When should you confront someone, then? My opinion is that it can be okay to confront if they're going beyond simply having an opinion, into the world of threats, harassment, and stalking. When the stuff being said can be hurtful or discriminating, too. Then it’s right to both confront and report, really.

Is this fandom stuff worth all this hassle?

I hope this long rant doesn’t bring you down too much. Despite all of this negativity, I believe fandom is a very positive thing. Most fans just want to enjoy the things they love with others who love the same things. That’s my main goal, too. Skam has been important to me and I want it to continue to be that. I want to keep the fandom as a space to share my love for the show. Thinking through these processes has helped me see a little more clearly how to do that. 

Ultimately, the Skam fandom is what we make of it, and we all can make it better. We can talk and share opinions and remind each other that we don’t support harassment, especially over ships or different versions of Skam. We can be decent to each other. I am not saying “be kind, always”, because in my opinion that phrase was never meant to stand alone without “being an asshole isn’t something you become, it’s a choice”. 

But yeah, that’s another discussion. My point is, if we all work together, we can manage to have a fandom that is open and tolerant and spreading love instead of fear and hate. And if that’s a little too optimistic, I’m gonna filter and blacklist and stick to “don’t like, don’t read” and see if it helps.

[darkdevasofdestruction]

Chisaki Kai with a Fem!S/O who needs comfort

Trigger Warning: Mentions of past abuse

So, not many blogs write about darker themes and I know there are many people who need comfort and help, advice, someone to talk to, so... Yeah, I write comfort stuff for people who need help, who experienced any kind of past abuse, especially since I had my fair share of bad stuff happening.

Take care of yourself and always know that your own happiness is the most important thing in your life!! <3

I know Chisaki isn’t the most romantic/sensitive persona and in canon I’m not sure he’d actually CARE much about anyone, but just like he cares about Hari, I think that there are ways to get to him, to see his softer side, as long as you’re not someone that he needs to use to reach his goal (ex: Eri’s innocence and purity never got to him because he needed to use her, so he never thought of her more than an object to use as he pleases)

“Y/N, dear, today you’re going to be meeting Chisaki-san very soon, so get dressed in something appropriate and elegant, then come in the living room so we can greet him properly, understood?” my mother said sternly, looking at me with a cold stare. “Yes, mother.” I reply in a meek voice, hurrying to my room.

There, I make my hair slightly wave-y, put a thin, black headband, to go with my fire red hair, a white victorian shirt tucked in a long, black skirt that went just a bit above my ankles, put on skin-coloured stockings, black flats, and a soft jewelry set of bronze earrings, necklace and a ring, all sporting a gorgeous forest-green emerald, to highlight my eyes.

I quickly apply natural coloured make up, so I would have some colour and a slight blush to my face, added some white crayon on my lower lid to give the impression of big, innocent, obedient eyes, then went to the living room, where I got the seal of approval from my mother, who sat next to my father, on the sofa, both looking extremely strict and straight, whereas I had to stand up until this Chisaki man arrived, so I could be introduced to him, then I could fetch wine and other stuff that an obedient wife should do.

To be fair, I don’t really know strictly what I should do, but they’ll just tell me anyways, so it will be fine.

The clock struck 8 P.M. and the next second, the butler opened the door, revealing a tall man, with a lean body, dressed in a white suit, white gloves and a black mask, his eyes gleaming like gold in the Sun, incredibly intimidating, as if he could set the whole manor on fire with the flick of him hand, and he was welcomed to sit on the sofa opposite of my parents.

Before that, he shook my father’s hand, bowed to my mother, “kissing” her hand, then as he got in front of me, I did a low courtesy, telling him my name in a voice barely above a whisper, then he bowed in front of me, properly introducing himself to me, then kissed my hand, through the mask, just like he did with my mother, but not before stealing a longer look at me, his vibrant amber eyes looking directly into my innocent emerald ones, making me feel as if I was under a microscope, observed and analysed, like a hunter stalking its prey.

On the other hand, as I looked into his eyes, it seemed like everything around me was black and white, a complete lifeless blur, the only thing alive being his radiant golden eyes, that were, on the surface, unreadable, and yet, somehow gave off a menacing vibe, perfectly fitting for the Yakuza leader.

“It is my pleasure to finally meet you, Miss L/N. I have heard many wonderful words about you, yet nothing compares to seeing you in real life.” he said in a very alluring voice, yet his words seemed as empty as any broken cup.

“You’re too kind, Mr. Chisaki. I appreciate your word. You, as well, are exceeding any expectations existent.” I replied, looking down, an unfortunate habit I have developed over the years.

After the formalities, I poured wine in their cups and then I was told to wait outside, since I shouldn’t know of such affairs, and they only called me later to say goodbye, and found out I will be moving in completely at Chisaki’s base over this week.

Goodbye world as we know it.

I settled in my room, seeing that it was a huge dormitory with bathroom inside, everything extremely comfortable, and more, a side-room only for clothes, put my laptop on the bed and took out the few clothes I got with me.

As part of the deal, my parents promised to fill my card every week with quite a huge sum of money, so I can accommodate in this new place...Which means I can finally buy things I want, wear what I want...And kinda do what I want, to a certain degree.

NEAT!

In the evening, a knock on the door took me out of my thoughts and as I opened it, a bored looking Kurono was there, telling me that dinner was ready, and if I wanted to eat with him and Chisaki, since he was a bit free, or eat in my room.

Since I was going to live here forever, I thought it would be nice to get to know these guys better, especially my soon-to-be-husband, that is. I had a few huge worries in plastered in my head, all of them thrown at me by my own mother, that is, but I tried to pay them no mind.

“Oh, uh...Should I dress in anything more appropriate or something? I don’t want to offend anyone or-” I said, not realising I was rambling out of worry, until Hari put a hand on my shoulder. “Just like this is fine. There are no rules here of how to dress or anything, so anything works just fine.” he said in an emotionless tone, a bit surprised by my worries. “Really? Like...All kinds of outfits are okay here? Even those outfits teenagers wore outside when we passed by?” I asked a little too excited, not realising my eyes were wide in shock. “Uhm...Yeah, that’s okay. As long as it’s nothing indecent, anything works. Now, follow me.” he motioned for me to follow to the supposed living-room. “Then, if I am to order some things from the internet, where should I put the address? It obviously can’t come here, so...Where else?” I asked curiously. “There’s this place where we go every week where I think would work. I can just pick the package up or have someone send it here any time, if you want.” he replied, opening the door for me. “But since the card is on my name, would they allow someone else other than me to take it? I don’t really have much to do, so I can go take it myself so I won’t bother you! Just...I need some directions, since I’m pretty directionally challenged...” I chuckled awkwardly, scratching the back of my neck. “I’ll take you there when the time comes. I will write the address on a piece of paper so you know what to write.” he mumbled, pulling out the chair for me to sit down at the small table. I thank him timidly, not really being used to that happening to me, then just as he too sits down, Chisaki enters the room, dressed in white vans, black jeans, a black shirt and a white loose tie, having the same white gloves, and weirdly enough, a beak shaped mask. Just as i was indoctrinated at home, I jolt to my feet and bow to him, greeting him formally, only to feel his hand on my head.

“Raise your head, Y/N. You are supposed to be my fiance, not my maid, so there is no need to act like one.” he said in a stern voice, making me sit back down. “O-Oh, haha, of course, I apologise. I’ve been told that’s the thing a proper wife should do, sorry if I made you uncomfortable or anything.” I smiled awkwardly, biting my lip. “I see. I will keep that in mind. What I can say is that there is no need for any unneeded formality.” he replied, taking off his mask before he started to eat.

Nodding and humming in understanding, I start eating as well, slowly, trying to not to make any noise while at it, and when I finished, I waited until I got the permission to be excused from the table so I could start ordering stuff online. Kurono didn’t realise at first why I was shifting a bit in my seat, but Chisaki easily realised and told me I’m dismissed and that I shouldn’t wait for him to tell me what to do, since I have a mind of my own and I should use it accordingly.

Perhaps I should try and stop being so closed off, listening more to my intuition, rather than to my parents’ communistic indoctrination. So... Let’s buy cute, pastel clothes! Pastel pink, pastel purple, pastel blue! Lots of cute accessories! Goodness gracious, these are all just so cute!

I wonder if Chisaki will like these? Nah, probably not, he doesn’t seem like a person to care about these things. I am, after all, just a part of the deal he made with my parents. He marries me, and with that, a part of my parents’ business, since I will inherit it after they die.

Too bad that Chisaki doesn’t know some of these dark secrets behind this deal...

I dressed in a super cute pastel purple, fixed my light purple wig then went out of the room, ready to go out to the local Starbucks and enjoy a nice chocolate frappe with weird but fun name, then update my social media with cute pics. Three months passed since I came to be Chisaki Kai’s fiancee and truth be told, it was the most liberating thing I’ve ever experienced. It was weird, but I felt free like never before.

When I was with my parents, going out of the house was a strict no-no, unless it was some charity ball I was made to attend, so other rich people who had sons could see me...All for business deals, of course. But now, except for the fact that he’s always very busy, he has his own room, so my own dorm is my private space where nobody goes and I’m allowed to breath without anyone looking past my shoulder.

Plus, I can dress in whatever way I want and play video games! I am even allowed to fool around on social media, as long as I’m careful not to get caught or affiliated with the Underground, so it’s perfect!

After I finished my stroll around the park, I go back to the base, stopping by Chisaki’s office, to see how he is. As usual, of course, he was busy with paperwork.

“Sorry to disturb you. I got you a chocolate frappe from Starbucks.  I uh...Didn’t know if you liked it, but it’s sweet so I thought you might want try, maybe?” I asked shyly, showing him the Venti cup I had. “I’m not a fan of sweets. You can drink it, if you like.” he responded, not even looking up from his papers. “Uhm...Can I...Can I help you in any way? You’re always so busy and stressed...Uhm...A massage? Or...Any simpler task that I could do in your stead? I don’t really know if you’re sleeping and eating well, so I’m just checking...S-Sorry if I’m annoying.” I trailed off, looking away, which is when he raised his head and turned in his seat to look at me properly. “Come here, Y/N.” he ordered, motioning for me to approach him.

I slowly and unsurely made my way in front of him, between his legs, then he took the cup away, putting it on the table’s corner, so it wouldn’t accidentally ruin his papers, then took a hold of both my hands and looked up at me, his eyes boring into mine as if looking an answer.

“Show me your Quirk, Y/N. I haven’t asked before and your parents avoided this question like the plague.” he demanded in a dull yet strict voice. “W-Well...My Quirk is extremely boring and useless, so I can get why they never mentioned it. To them, I’m as good as Quirkless, which is a huge family disappointment, like my whole existence, that is, but...I mean, if you want to see...” I sighed, putting my hands under his, raising them so he could see well enough how a small, pink flower starts growing from his hands, looking gorgeous, frail and innocent. “Your Quirk is making flowers?” he asked, an eyebrow raised, seeming almost interested. “Yeah...Nothing important or interesting in any way, I’m sorry for disappointing you. I guess Quirks really define the person, in some way. I’m pathetic enough as it is.” I shrugged, letting my arms fall to my sides, looking away. “Don’t say that. Quirks are filthy, and everyone now is sick. They all need to be purged and cured. This, however...Is purity and I won’t hear otherwise from you or anyone else, understand.” he replied, holding me by the elbows. “U-Uhm...Okay, then...” I nodded reluctantly, not really knowing how to react. “In two days there is going to be a fake charity ball hosted by your parents and we are invited. Make sure you dress appropriately, since we will be attending.” he said nonchalantly, and I could feel all the blood on my face drain, my mind going dizzy a bit. “M-My parents, you say...O-Okay, I’ll do my best then...! I won’t disappoint you!” I tried to say excitedly, to hide me trembling form before leaving the room in a rush, back to my dorm, collapsing on my bed since my legs gave out.

My parents had a clear purpose for this, and it won’t really end well... Not for me, at least.

I  dressed in a simple but elegant long dark green dress, with a new set of jewelry gifted by Chisaki specially for this event, my arranged to fall down my bare shoulders in elegant fire waves, and my make up was nothing drastic, but the seductive cat eye was highlighted with the perfect help of the black eyeliner, whilst he wore a dark suit with a dark green tie, so we would match.

It’s needless to say that I was hyperventilating quite a bit, but I tried to hide it some way, my red lipstick making the contrast with my with teeth create a dazzling smile, so nobody saw my insecurities, especially not while I was still clinging to Chisaki’s arm.

We mostly stayed at the bar since directly, we didn’t have anything to do with this event, except for the sake of my parents, we had to attend, and we enjoyed drinks. Well, more or less he made fun of me for almost spitting white wine, since I found it incredibly disgusting, so sulking, I stuck to water, pouting.

Not long after, my parents approached us, so we got off the bar stools and greeted them formally.

“Y/N, dear, and Chisaki-san, how are you enjoying the party?” my mother asked, a wide and extremely fake smile on her face. “It’s very nice, thank you for inviting us, Mrs. L/N, it was very kind of you.” Chisaki said in a very formal tone. “Oh, no problem, we just missed our sweet baby Y/N! Ah, speaking of babies, what’s with this tummy? Oh, don’t tell me! Oh, it’s about time yo-” she looked so excited, thinking I was pregnant, but I started panicking really bad and put my hands on her shoulders to stop her thinking. “I’m not pregnant, Jesus, we’ve only been together for 3 months! Don’t speak like that, who knows who’ll hear?!” I stuttered, not really knowing what to say, since I felt like I was being beaten up with bricks. “Ahh...That’s a shame! I guess you just got a bit fat...But next time I see you, there better be a child in that belly of yours, young lady! It’s tradition, after all! Us, L/Ns, must carry the bloodline through generations! So of course, unless it’s a boy, you must not stop, you need an heir!” my mother commented, obviously disappointed. “B-But...I...W-Well...” I could feel my mind going completely blank with worry and my heart was about to get out of my chest. My lungs were burning and sweat was dripping from my forehead. Clear signs of a panick attack, and I felt like almost fainting. “Oh, darling, that’s no way to speak in front of Mr.Chisaki! He knows what’s the best course of action for his business, no need for you to talk for anyone! Come on now, you bothered them enough, let them enjoy the party, they are young, free and wild! Oh, before I go, I saw David around, don’t forget to say hi to him, like the good girl you are!” my father winked at us, then took my mother away, leaving the two of us in an uncomfortable silence. “What was that about, Y/N?” he asked, clearly irked by the conversation. “Pardon me, I have to go vomit...” I whispered before running to the restroom and barfing into the bathroom, crying as emotions and anxiety took over my very being.

I knew that was going to happen, why did I expect anything else? Now that I’m caught in between two evils, I will have to tell Chisaki about the business problems, and I can just see how incredibly bad that’s going to end. After a good 10 minutes I finally got up, my legs still trembling, then went to wash my face with ice cold water before re-applying my make up, grateful for the fact that I was inspired enough to bring the basic make up stuff in my purse. When I got out of the bathroom, Chisaki was leaning on the wall, waiting.

“Hi...Sorry for waiting so long.” I muttered, looking away, embarrassed. “What happened?” he asked in a passive voice. “Just...Had a panic attack.” I replied, not daring to look at him. “Your mother’s words triggered it. Why?” he interrogated me, wanting to find out what was going on. “Can we...Go home, please? I...I had to tell you, sooner or later, but...I was a bit afraid...I guess...It’s not very nice...” I mumbled, shifting in my place uncomfortably. “Very well. Let’s go.” he nodded, offering me his arm to take, like all couples do in this fancy place.

The huge problem was that on our way out of the ballroom, the person I dreaded the most appeared in front of me, a charming smirk on his face, as he looked down on me.

“Aww, if it isn’t cute little Y/N! My, you turned into quite the seductive vixen, don’t you think? I guess you grew up quite a lot since then.” he winked, which made me flinch and step behind Chisaki a bit, gripping his arm tighter. “I don’t know you, leave me alone, I have to go home, bye.” I said, my voice breaking as I tried to make Chisaki move, but he didn’t budge an inch. “Well, I have to go back soon too, my whore is waiting for me at home. I see you found yourself another hunk, hm? Is he any good? Clearly, not like me, but-” he started to trail, but by this point my grip on Chisaki’s arm was so tight that I may leave bruises on his skin. “CAN’T YOU GET THE HELL OUT OF OUR WAY, YOU PARASITE?! SCATTER OFF BEFORE I STEP ON YOU AND SQUISH YOU LIKE THE USELESS VERMIN YOU ARE!” I screamed at him, already at my limit, wanting to get the hell out of there before I have another breakdown. “So ungraceful...Well, I guess it’s no wonder why they so desperately wanted to get rid of you. But, remember, Y/N...All men are the same. You can refuse them all you want, but it wont be long before they take action.” with an evil smirk, he left the place, not before fixing Chisaki with his eyes, condescendingly. “We have a lot to talk about when we go home, Y/N.” he muttered, leading the way to the car. “Give me a break...I need to sleep 24 hours...And hopefully get into a coma and never wake up” I said the last part, hoping he won’t hear.

That night, he was patient enough to let me sleep and recover from the hectic night...But I knew that the next evening, hell will break loose.

I dressed up in a pair jeans, a green plaid shirt with rolled sleeves and black combat boots and went to eat outside, enjoying a nice pizza as comfort food, then went to walk around the city, listening to music, trying to gather my thoughts and words in some way so I won’t stutter in front of Chisaki...Too much.

I didn’t even realise evening came until the lamp posts started lighting up, so I sighed and made my way back to the base, only to be greeted not by my sort-of friend, Hari, but by Shin Nemoto.

“You are the worst thing that happened to Shie Hassaikai! Master Chisaki was wrong to make a deal with your kin!” he said, angrily, pointing at me accusingly. “Well...That’s not wrong, I know that. What’s it to you? I can’t change the fact that I’m a disappointment.” I shrugged, not caring much about what was happening. “I will tell master Chisaki what you’re hiding! Do you hold any important secrets?” he asked, looking into my eyes. “Yes, 3, quite important ones...Wait, why did I say that?!” I gasped, slapping my hands over my mouth. “That’s my Quirk, idiot girl! Now, what are your secrets!” he demanded, making me widen my eyes in fear, trying to force myself not to speak, but words just came out of my mouth. “My parents stopped sending me money in over 3 weeks, saying their deal is over for now.” I said in a strong voice, so uncharacteristic of me, but I could feel my eyes watering. “Why didn’t you mention that to anyone? Not even to Kurono or Chisaki?” he inquired, a sadistic look on his face. “Because they said they won’t send any more money if I don’t produce an heir...G-Gods...Y-You...Monsters...” I sobbed, tears streaming down my face. “Does Master Chisaki know of that?” he asked, shocked. “I-I don’t know the deal they made...But I overheard my parents saying that the second I’ll have a male baby, an heir, they’ll make him the heir of the company and steal him from us, just so they won’t have to pass on their legacy to us, but to the kid...Why are you doing this to me?! I was going to tell Chisaki these things just now, why do you have to interfere?! Who do you think you are?!” I asked, my voice broke so badly that it sounded like a whine. “Shin? What are you doing to her?! Chisaki’s not going to like this!” Hari’s voice, usually dull, sounded alarmed now as he got in front of me, trying to calm my sobs down. “She’s a traitor, Chronostasis! She just confessed her sins! She’s been plotting with her parents!” he yelled, accusingly. “I WASN’T! I hate them! They abused me all my childhood! This deal was what got me out of that hell, and I’d never do anything to betray Chisaki! I don’t want to go back there! I’d rather die and burn in hell forever than go back there!” I screamed at him, falling on the ground, sobbing. “So pathetic...Pathetic, that’s the only word to describe someone like you! You are not worthy of staying in Master Chisaki’s company!” he said in a low, threatening voice. “That’s enough, Shin! If Chisaki gets here, he’s going to be pissed off!” he warned, getting in front of me, protectively. “What’s all this mess here? I don’t appreciate this chaos.” a low voice that sent chills through everyone’s spines echoed throughout the base. “M-Master Chisaki, I was interrogated the traitor! She spilled all her secrets shamelessly!” he said, proudly of his achievements. “The way I see this, you used your Quirk on her to make her confess. Is that correct, Nemoto?” he asked, in a passive-aggressive tone. “I had to! She wouldn’t answer my answers! She was going to betray you, Master!” he tried to defend himself, but that only made Chisaki angry enough to use his Quirk to kill him, then bring him back to life. “Never. Lie. To me. Again. Or else you’re not going to get lucky enough to see the light of life again, got it? Now leave.” he ordered Shin, who was shaking. “Now, you two. What the hell is going on here?” he asked, trying to cool off. “I...Don’t really know, to be fair. I just got here and saw Nemoto being aggressive with her.” he sighed, annoyed at getting caught in the middle. “I see. Then leave, I need to speak to my wife.” he said, nodding at his childhood friend, who only nodded at us, taking his leave. “Get to your room, I will be there shortly.” he said, looking down at me, which made me scurry my way to my room, trying to calm down, washing my face in the bathroom. When I got out, Chisaki was sitting on the bed, looking straight at me, his eyes boring into mine as if he was trying to detect any lie or deception.

“Sit.” he motioned for me to take a seat next to him, which made me gulp and shift in my place. He hasn’t been in my room before. “Don’t make me say it twice.” his voice getting sterner, which just made me sigh and sit down, trying to calm down my fidgeting with my fingers. “You’ve never been this nervous while around me. Why is that?” he asked, wanting to see the explanation. “Uhm...No man has been in my room before...Not here, not like that, at least.” I tried to explain, hoping it was relevant in some way. “Are you afraid of men, Y/N?” he asked, his gaze not leaving my face. “Mhm...Men...Nice people too...They’re fake, all of them, just pretending to be nice before they use or backstab you. Nice people can’t be trusted.” I mutter, scratching my hand, out of habit. “I see...Tell me what you wanted to confess.” he said, his voice calmer than before. “First of all...Will you...S-Sorry...Uhmm...C-Could you please tell me what the deal was? I have to know how they lied you, so I can tell you the truth...” I replied, intertwining my fingers together. “They said something about making sure I have an heir to inherit my position in the future, so they could support him as well.” he mentioned, making me bite me lip. “What did you...Think about th-that?” I asked, barely audible. “I have no time for such disgusting things, and especially not for little parasites. Why would I even want an heir? Everything I do is for myself, for the Yakuza.” he explained, his voice getting slightly patronising. “S-So...Y-You...Don’t want an heir? Or...Y-You know...Th-That thing everyone talk about.” I stammer over my words, already feeling faint. “I’m not going to have sex, no, so if that’s what you were thinking about-” he started saying, as if he was denying me something, but my face was already washed with relief, tears falling on my cheeks again, before I put my hands on my face. “Thank goodness...I’ve been agonising over this since I came here...I was so scared about this...I was expecting everday something like that to happen...Because...Because that’s what’s been put into my head...That it’s the most important thing and that men can’t control themselves...And then...That thing with David...” I trailed, not even realising if I was making any point, until Chisaki rose an eyebrow. “That guy at the ballroom? The one you snapped at?” he inquired, curious. “Y-Yeah...He...He was the first person I was the fiancee of, y’know...My parents wanted to get rid of me so I can get them a male heir, adopt it, then leave all their fortune to him. That was the truth of the deal. That’s why my mother was so happy when she thought I was pregnant...Surprise, I’m just fat, haha...They lied to you...Just like how they lie to everyone around them.” I sighed, slicking my hair back, not daring to look at Chisaki, who I was sure was burning with rage by now. “So they lied. Very well. I suppose nobody told them not to go against the Yakuza. They will pay for it.” he said, a cold anger evident in his voice. “C-Can I watch too...? I really...Really want revenge too...I...Don’t want to go through that again...Will you please take me with you when you kill them...?” I asked, looking at him for the first time. “Fine. Is that guy in it too?” he asked, obviously already preparing his plans. “U-Uhm...Sort of...He uhm...My mother told him the same...And...W-Well...He was m-more than eager to...Uhm...Get more money, let’s say...Very...Eager...Until he realised he was infertile and my parents made him break the deal...Thankfully...” I confessed the one thing I never thought I’d have the courage to tell anyone, to the one person who seemed most unlikely to care, who so happened to be my husband-to-be as well. “Men with no honour or principals...That’s where this world has come to. Very well. Death is mercy for those like him, I have something far greater prepared for him. And you are going to watch.” he demanded, getting to his feet, ready to leave the room. “W-Wait! Chisaki! Uhm...Thank you...For listening! You...You saved me...And I owe you my life and freedom...So, I didn’t want you to get wronged in this deal. If you decide that I’m no longer useful to you and you want to kill me, it’s fine. But...Thank you.” I told him, as I got to my feet and grasped his hand in both of mine, looking up at him, with a small smile. “I’m not going to kill you. It would be pointless and it would go against the Yakuza Code.” he said, looking down at me, weirdly. “Can I...Can I hug you...Please?” I whispered, biting my lip, and surprisingly, I got an affirmative answer, which made me easily throw my arms around his torso, holding him tightly, his hearbeat soothing my senses. “You’re...Welcome.” was his response, faint, barely audible, but existent.

The most shocking thing he’s ever done in his life, probably a huge shock for him as well, was that he took off his mask, but his arms around me as well, then kissed the top of my head, and stayed there, in silence, letting me hold him until I got tired of it.

Chisaki Kai, the leader of the Yakuza, my husband.

He isn’t the most romantic, or sensitive person in the world.

Hell, he barely even care about anything in this world, except for his goals. But...I never imagined that even he could have a heart, enough to let me into it, and protect me the way he did.

From my parents, from my past, from my abuse, from my memories. He created a new place, a new home, with new memories and new dreams, as weird or evil as they are, but they’re still much better than what I had before.

I was finally free from the burning shackles that kept me chained in the dark void of bad memories and trauma.

He saved me.

[loyalflutist]

Manmade Killer (Pt. 1)

It was Christmas. Snow fell down within the city of Shinjuku and friends, families, and couples come together to celebrate the occasion. The night sparkled from decorations. Blue, red, green, white... all kinds of colors brighten the city. Tranquility makes it difficult for much negativity to taint anyone during this holiday. However, Oshima Yuko couldn't celebrate it. In one of the many buildings, on the third floor, the squirrel sat in one of the many desks. An ex-detective that originally came from the Metropolitan Police Department years ago, she came to an early retirement due to a past issue. But nevermind that, the young woman in her mid-20s clicked away on her laptop. Each keystroke was notable in the barely lit premise, a desk lamp the only source of light. Exhaustion. Fatigue. And alone. She desires to sleep, yet won't allow her body to feel the relief. Yuko has to keep on working. Work... work... work... work. The saying "sleep is for the weak" is horribly applicable to the ex-inspector. She furrowed her brows and resisted the temptation to rub her weary eyes. A loud exhale as she continued to tap away on the keyboard. "Yuko? You're still awake?" Thanks to Yuko's mental and physical state, hypersensitivity is prominent. She nearly leaped off from her black rolling chair. Thankfully, the person that called out for her is none other than Special Police Officer Yokoyama Yui. The tall raven-haired woman rested an arm against the doorway between the main workroom and the nap room, her sharp gaze aimed at the squirrel. In comparison to the ex-detective, not a hint of fatigue was shown on her face and body language. Donned with a white collared shirt, black pants, and uniformed blue jacket, the medal "SP" clung to her shirt as a sign of her prestigious position. Although her duty is to protect VIP figures such as politicians and CEOs, the Kyoto-originated female personally requested to be Yuko's bodyguard. Yui's reason for doing so? Well, it wasn't a difficult question to answer. A faint exhale escaped from her partially parted lips. "You should be sleeping." Yuko shook her head. "I can't. Shouldn't you be sleeping in the nap room here?" Another sigh came from Yui's lips when she saw the other female reach towards her cup of coffee. It wasn't necessarily the caffeinated product that concerned her so much. Instead, it was more so with how OLD the coffee is. When the SP Officer checked in for the morning, Yuko was sipping from the same container and drinking the God-knows-how-long-it's-been-made black coffee. It wasn't like the squirrel to forget how to operate normally on daily necessities. Then again, it's not surprising considering the month-long predicament that ate at them. Endlessly taunting them... especially Oshima Yuko. No grave sins were committed to sending her to Hell, but she's experiencing one right now. Rest did not bring any alleviation, agitation gnawing at her nerve. "Yuko..." she said. Yuko readjusted her seat as Yui waltzed over to the clear-glassed window from behind the inspector. Hands in her jacket's pockets, the Kyoto woman stared out to the city view. If it weren't for the heavy atmosphere that weighed on their shoulders, they would've not only celebrated the holiday but share wine with each other just like old times. Maybe even played out in the snow with their teammates. "I know you're trying your best to search for your sister, but I can't protect you from diseases." A scoff. Then, Yuko clicked on the laptop a few times to close all of the web browsers. Whether she was closing them to actually take a break or closing them out of obligation to shut Yui up is up for speculations. Thanks to the brightness of the screen, it somewhat reflected on the window's surface. The SP Officer didn't have to look over her shoulders to see what was on the device. Nevertheless, her eyebrows slightly raised at the sight of a group photo. Oshima Yuko. Yokoyama Yui. Yamamoto Sayaka. Kashiwagi Yuki. Watanabe Mayu. Maeda Atsuko. Matsui Rena. Seven members. A mixture of active and retired officers. A melting pot for the roles they each played. A group primarily focused on stopping a terrorist organization outside of police jurisdiction and limitations. They were after Adrestia. A faceless Japanese terrorist organization bent on taking revenge and delivering retribution to those seemingly "evil" to justice. They were meant to be upheld as a holy figure that would topple the police force. Those victims who died were murmured and whispered amongst the civilians to be truly terrible in society. For the government to lack efficiency in handling these small, but severe problems became a devastating blow to their reputation. Fewer people trusted the police and more on Adrestria. It's almost as if a superhero arose from the crowd and stood up for what is right and what is wrong. However, what made them God? What made them decide what's just and unjust for everyone? Not many were able to perceive this fatal flaw as their criminal acts... might not be so criminal at first glance.   It has been six months since their existence came to light. Their first appearance was no minor introduction. The death of a man who is labeled as a stalker to an idol from AKB48 was their first case. Gunned down by a security guard protecting Team K when they were out on tour around Japan, the man immediately killed himself before he explained why he chose to murder the fan. Either way, Team K have been protected thanks to him. Adrestia made a big note of who they are when they uploaded a video on the Internet about the fan's crimes. He had stalked them, taken photos of them, and sent them Anonymous videos of the dirty actions he did with those pictures. Idols filed a report many times in the past. The police came to protect them but did a lackluster job. He still came to bother them. Over... and over... and over again. One idol even committed suicide because of it. Adrestia took action and protected the group in the police's stead. We are Adrestia and we strive to take revenge on the evils that outlived their days compared to their victims. The Cleansing Day will come when New Year Eve arrives. All in a distorted voice. Eventually, exactly a month after that, another death came to light. Instead of just one victim, there was a total of a whopping twenty. To make matters worse, they were all young adolescents. Their crimes? Bullying hurts but cyberbullying hurts even more. You have no way to distinguish who they are and if they really meant what they said. These twenty students, all between the age of 12 and 22, committed a grave sin. They bullied others on Facebook. Many victims called for help, but no one came to their aid. Police officers and therapists mocked them for their sensitivity. Adrestia did not take this lightly. We took action and protected the bullied users in the police's stead. We are Adrestia and we strive to take revenge on the evils that outlived their days compared to their victims. The Cleansing Day will come when New Year Eve arrives. A more feminine distorted voice, distinguishing itself from the previous video. And so it went on. Month by month, their crimes became horrific. Murders of rapists, child molesters, corrupted government officials, bribers, murderers, stalkers, corrupted officers... It went on. The crimes committed by them were atrocious. Police forces throughout Japan, especially Shinjuku, went haywire. Everyone in the organization used as much force as possible to search for the culprits. Some overexerted and abused their authoritative powers, making innocent civilians go to jail as a way to pat down one of the monthly cases. Lives were at stakes, reputations were at stakes, and most importantly, answers were desperately needed. The group that Yuko had formed alongside with her stepsister, Mayu, had kicked into gear. Beginning the day after the first month's murder, Yuko and everyone spread out to do their research. They were possibly the only ones able to stop Adrestia given their resources and experiences. But every single time they came close to an answer, it slipped through their fingers. In its place, another murder pops up in the name of the terrorist. It was a frustrating cycle. Loads of responsibilities and trouble began to accumulate as the months ticked by. Clues were gathered, but not enough to catch up on the latest events. By the time the ex-detective found an answer, the worst-case scenario unfolded before her eyes. That day, on November 25th... Yuko's thumb ran across Mayu's face on the screened photo. "I have to find my sister." Missing. Mayu is missing-- Er, well, it wasn't to say that she's missing like those found in the missing person poster. Actually, the Special Regions Crime Prevention Office (SRCPO) member is plastered on the bulletin board of this investigative's room as a wanted individual. Alongside, Kashiwagi Yuki went missing. Whether she was found with Mayu or not currently is not clear. Same goes for Matsui Rena. She disappeared the same day as Yuki. Then there's also the other two members-- "I can't forgive her. She murdered Sayanee." Yuko snapped out of her trance-like state at the sharp proclamation from Yui. She turned to look at the officer, her baggy eyes staring straight at the fierce woman. As if to showcase how serious she is with her statement, Yokoyama took the gun out from her holster and toyed with it. She unloaded all of the bullets into her other hand and immediately stuck them back into the cylinder. One-by-one, the gold metallic ammunition went into its original spot. Silence hung in between the two figures. Figuring that Yuko would object to her perspectives, the Special Police Officer raised her chin slightly. "Did you also forget that she murdered your parents?" They may not have been related to each other, but they were adopted together under the two kind parents. They were raised to be an outstanding citizen of society. Yuko and Mayu wished to serve in the police department as a way to give back to the community. Of course, thanks to a mishap, Yuko took early retirement (more like quit) from her position and became independent. Mayu, on the other hand, remains as a counselor and listens in to people's worries during times of emergencies. Regardless of their roles and what they did with their life, they loved their adopted parents dearly. So the cold-blooded slaughtering of their parents was the last straw for Oshima. She vividly remembers their death. It was exactly one week after the disappearance of Watanabe Mayu, Kashiwagi Yuki, and Matsui Rena. Yuko returned home with her parents to have dinner with them. There wasn't much to discuss, but the least she could do is bring them comfort during this turbulent time. It was likely that the three were kidnapped by Adrestia, but it's also possible that the trio's disappearances didn't correlate with each other. The independent detective does admit that it was too much of a coincidence to have such scenario occur though... Regardless, the doorbell rang during their quiet mealtime. Yuko went to open the door. A loud gasp came from her direction from the sight of who it was. There stood Watanabe Mayu in the doorway. Her eyes dead. A black collar snapped around her neck as if she were an animal. A handgun held within her two hands. The white police uniform she donned disheveled and dirtied. Yuko didn't even have a chance to register a dialogue before Mayu shoved her way into the house. Two fires came from the weapon. Two screams. Then, silence. Complete and eerie silence. It wasn't long till Mayu walked right out the same doorway as she had entered, ignoring the older female. Darkness from the dimly lit streets engulfed the gunner once she was far enough. Yuko was still standing in awe. Oshima Yuko always wondered why she wasn't able to stop her sister at that time. Was it because of her lingering attachment to Mayu? Was it because she hesitated to pull out her own revolver and shoot Mayu? Was it because she was shocked to think that her sister would return after a week of disappearing? Whatever it was, their parents are dead. A single bullet straight to their forehead. It was a direct hit to their brain. Death is certain for their fates. Still... it was all too strange. How could someone like Mayu not only go off to hurt their teammates, but their very own parents? Sure, they weren't related by blood, but it doesn't excuse the abrupt and violent end they were met with. Something must've caused her younger sibling to react this way. Yuko parted her thumb from the screen and bit the bottom of her lip. Besides, Watanabe harmed someone that she too cared for greatly... Someone that Yuko couldn't understand why either. "There's also Acchan too..." she cracked. Yui nodded in the background. That was right. Not only was Sayaka the victim in this betrayal, but Maeda Atsuko was at the brunt end of it. This didn't happen all in one day. The first victim was Yamamoto Sayaka. Yuko remembered the video that Mayu had personally sent to them, stating that another teammate would be next on her hit list. Her lifeless voice... Her bone-chilling message... Was this really the sister she knew since they were children? Atsuko... oh, Atsuko is someone Oshima loved so much. The ex-detective and a profiler from the Crime Lab at the Metropolitan Police Department. The unlikely duo that became tragically separated by a murderer no one expected. Yuko's hands curled into fists as she shakily exhaled. "Yuihan, I want to talk to her before I bring down her judgment. Even if you want to take revenge on behalf of your lover, I... I can't allow that. She's my sister." The Special Police Officer shifted her attention back to the scenery. She narrowed her eyes. "Well, you better be ready for it. I have a feeling we're going to find her before January 1st." "...right." The sooner, the better. Yuko wanted nothing more than to get this nightmare over with. ---------- In another location, Kashiwagi Yuki, a hacker at the Cyber Crimes Division, felt so useless. It wasn't the useless kind of sensation where one stands on the sideline. At least she could be cheering for someone or something. She could become an influence thanks to those encouraging words. This was a literal uselessness. Physically and mentally. She was stuck in a bright metallic room with nothing but herself. Steel wall surrounds her figure as she huddled in the corner of the mostly dried blood-splattered room. She hugged herself. Comfort was nowhere to be seen... She wasn't safe in isolation from her mind. The terrorist organization has her confined to this premise. No matter how much she screams or pounds at the only exit, no one would respond. Well, she tried to scream, that is. Not a single sound came out of her voice box. The tattered and bruised Yuki that was once kind, gentle, and a good listener to everyone around her is reduced to a silent wreck thanks to Adrestia. Whatever poison or surgical techniques they performed on the unconscious woman... She won't be able to vocalize her thoughts, her concerns, her love, her sorrow... anything anymore. Yuki gave up. The woman's ears perked up when the door creaked open. Her brown eyes peeked over her crossed arms. Watanabe Mayu came back. The door immediately clicked close by another individual once Mayu had taken a step into the confinement. Partially bathed in another person's blood on her clothes, Mayu truly painted an image of a psychopath. A black collar around her neck, the woman barely blinked when she saw Yuki extend her arms out. She acted almost like a baby in need of a mother. Ironic considering the fact that Mayu had a hand solidly gripping a loaded revolver. However, everyone knew that the two would never wish harm upon one another. They've loved each other and still do. Watanabe just doesn't know if she's alive or dead in this state. 'Mayuyu... Oh, Mayuyu...' Mayu was the only person who could bring some sense of peace to the hacker. However, the guilt that weighed on Yuki's shoulders were heavy as she littered long kisses on her lover's cheeks. The raven-haired desperately tried to give as much warmth as possible to the present day Mayu. Usually, the officer would be annoyed by the close treatment as it's reserved for privacy, but it hurts that Mayu isn't flinching or reacting to this at all. Tears streamed down Yuki's face as she wrapped her arms around the armed woman. Both of their brown eyes had no life... A lifeless duo that barely clung onto reality. 'Why did it become like this?' Of course, Mayu has no way of knowing. She's not human anymore... A police officer who once specialized in the Special Regions Crime Prevention Office is now a murderer. She not only raised her revolver at innocent civilians, but she assassinated their comrades. Yamamoto Sayaka and Maeda Atsuko... Someone they once called their allies, their friends... it all went away weeks ago with a bullet to their chest. Mayu may have given them a quick death, but the fact that they're not in this world anymore destroyed Yuki. It wasn't Mayu's fault though. "Neh... Yukirin..." That tone. That voice. Unlike Kashiwagi, Mayu didn't lose the ability to speak. This was a chance for her to tell the official what's on her mind. She was given free rein on what to say. Freedom of speech isn't exactly one hundred percent true in the hands of this terrorist organization though. "I killed our captain." Yuki knew Mayu had pride and conviction to remain true to her ways. Yet the collar that Adrestia's leader snapped around her neck served as a torturing device. Poison contaminated the metallic band. Every single time the girl would raise objections to their beliefs, to the orders they shoved down her throat, to their harsh treatment and abuse with Yuki, the leader allowed the collar to release its chemicals into the officer. The excruciating agony that paralyzed the victim ran on till Mayu sobbed for death to relieve her. Of course, they weren't so kind. A quick antidote brought her to good health within an hour. Then, they shoved their idealisms... their moralistic values... and assassination orders upon the woman once again. If she were to object once again, she would be subjected to the same treatment. "I'm okay... I'm fine." The hacker saw it all since day one of their kidnappings. A date out in broad daylight at a park to take a break from their work turned into a living nightmare. Since Yuki holds no value to the terrorist organization, they simply used her as their pawn to keep Mayu in check. With the police officer's strict outlook on what justice means and why revenge can be justified, their eyes have rested on Mayu. Her ability to use the gun is a bonus to them as she can play the role of an "Executioner". Of course, knowing the ponytailed female, she outright rejected their offer only to undergo horrific treatments. Yuki was there to witness it all in her mute cries and sobs. It's as if Adrestia is training a pet... Like a broken pet to order and reward. Yuki tightened her hold around the crimson-stained girlfriend. When the wet cheeks pressed against her lover, Mayu expressed her opinion in a monotone voice. "You're crying? Are you hurt anywhere?" Hurt... Pain. Oh, Yuki felt pain much worse than the abuse she's been submitted to by the hooded terrorist leader. It's the crushing anguish of her heart being squished to oblivion by an invisible force. The sight of her lover succumbing to cruel punishments for staying true to her ideals and not aligning with the enemies'. The horror of losing her ability to speak. The urge to scream in terror as she frantically and desperately provided as much useless care to Mayu as possible. She buried her face into the gunner's shoulder. 'If only I was strong...' Yuki wasn't trained in the art of firearms like Mayu. Thoughts ran through her head about taking up lessons from her girlfriend. However, Mayu urged that it wasn't necessary. If only the hacker held her stance much stronger back then... Then she might've protected Mayu rather than become dependent on her. More tears ran down her face as she leaned forward, lips close to Watanabe's ear. Just like every single day, Yuki tried her best to formalize words that can be audible rather than incoherent airy whispers. "I'm... sorry..." Did Mayu hear that? Or was that just a figment of Yuki's hallucinations she's constantly had in this confined room that she was able to utter words to her lover? Either way, the curtain will soon descend upon the stage as Adrestia makes their final move. After all, it won't be long till New Year Eve comes around the corner.

[skelenyxx]

//hesitation// ~ I’ll Save You

//No turning back now, I'm moving ahead toward the way out. Don't you hate how, We get left behind in the fallout.//

/*/

A couple more weeks passed. Everything still seemed to be moving painstakingly slow, despite my newfound determination. I still hardy slept, and I still had trouble focusing on class and training, but I was trying, and that was better than anything before I made my promise to Izuku.

I still visited him in the hospital regularly, wracking my brain for any way that I could help him. I scoured the internet for options, but despite my determination, deep down I knew that there was nothing medicine could do. Not even Recovery girl could bring him back.

But I didn't give up. Even if there was no obvious answer at the moment, I knew I had to keep searching, keep trying. If it were me, Izuku would never give up. I owed it to him to keep trying, even if it took me the rest of my life.

And so yet again, I sat in that sterile hospital room, seated beside his bed, my head in my hands as I cursed myself for being so completely useless. What kind of hero can't even save their best friend? All that training and I ended up completely useless. Izuku took the fall for my failed plan in that fight. Nobody vocalized it, but we all knew that Izuku would still be here if I hadn't done what I had, if I hadn't gotten so bold.

"You'll never be a hero, no matter how hard you try."

The words came back to me, and I quickly shook my head, forcing the memory away. I could be a hero, I had to believe that. Izuku believed in me, as did Shoto, Iida, Ochako, and the rest of my friends.

Even if I did nearly get someone killed.

Very often, I wished All Might were still here. He may have been bad at teaching, but he gave great pep talks. He could've said something inspiring that would push me to find my heart again, reminded me of what I could still do. But, who knows, maybe he would've blamed me too. I did put his successor in a coma, after all.

I glanced up at the figure lying in the bed, and I felt my chest constrict again as it so usually did when I looked at him. His cheeks had sunken drastically, casting a dark shadow over his usually bright and smiling face. He had changed so much since I'd met him two and half years ago.  He'd always been a bit taller than me, but now he was much taller, pushing towards six feet tall, with a lean yet muscular build.  His face filled out so it was no longer the soft, round face that I'd met as a 9th grader, but now with a strong jawline and cheekbones.  His hair was still the same strange shade of green and as untruly as ever, but it was shorter than it used to be, which gave him a more mature look.  It was crazy seeing how much he'd grown, but then again, so had I. It was hard to believe we were both 18 now.

"What would you do, Izuku?" I asked aloud, knowing I wouldn't receive an answer. "Tch," I clicked my tongue at myself. "I must sound crazy, asking you. It's not like you can answer me." I wondered about what he was experiencing, being in a coma. Was it like sleeping? Was he dreaming? Or was it almost like dying, where it was just... nothingness? Did he know what had happened to him, and was he truly fighting to come back to us, or did he have no control at all and was at the mercy of his own body? The last thought scared me, because if that were the case, then it was truly unlikely that I would ever see him awake again.

I took a shaky breath, forcing myself to think about something else. Thinking about the extreme possibility of Izuku never waking up just made me feel helpless, and to keep my promise to him I had to look forward and stay positive. Besides, I didn't want Shoto and the others worrying about my mental health anymore than they already did.

A glance at the clock on the wall made me click my tongue in annoyance again, realizing that they still hadn't fixed it from a few days ago when it stopped at 3:03, but judging by the sight of the sun setting over the city, it was time I begin to head back to the dorms. I used to stay late until visiting hours were over, but a rather confrontational conversation with Katsuki made me realize that I ought to be more considerate of my classmates.

"You need to stop staying out so late, you idiot," he had chastised me after waiting up for me in the common room a few days after my conversation with Shoto. "People need to sleep, dumbass."

"You don't have to stay up waiting for me, Kaachan," I mumbled, using the nickname that I had picked up from Izuku a couple years back and was never quite able to shake from my vocabulary.

"You're right, I don't, but the others are going to keep waiting up for you every night until they see you come back safe because they're worried about you for some fucking reason," he growled in annoyance, standing up and stalking towards me. "They need their sleep and it's pretty fucking inconsiderate that you're not taking into account how much sleep they're missing while waiting for you. Deku isn't going anywhere, so it couldn't kill you to come back at a decent fucking hour."

Katsuki acted like an ass, and had apparently been a lot worse before I met him, but he cared, even if he had a weird way of showing it. And his words reminded me that I was, in fact, being selfish. I was focused on my own pain, my own worries, not even paying attention to the fact that my classmates were worried about me and going out of their way to look out for me and my well being. After that, I began coming back to the dorms earlier, before everyone had gone to bed. The class had been pretty shocked to see me the first day I came back early, which wasn't all that surprising since most of them literally didn't see me anywhere other than class despite living in the same building.

"Ava's back?" Mina had practically screeched, throwing herself at me in a tight embrace. "I never get to see you anymore, you're always visiting Midoriya," she continued in a whine.

Mina's words only confirmed what Katsuki had reminded me; I was worrying my classmates, and even if I was off track to graduating in the spring, I should at least remove myself from their list of concerns so that they could focus on what was to come.

Ochako and Iida had ultimately been right; being around my classmates and near my friends had improved my mood, at least a little. They were just as vivacious and fun as they had been when I first met them at the end of our 9th grade year, and that joy was truly infectious sometimes. They were truly all going to make great Pro Heroes.

That wasn't to say they weren't all concerned about Izuku. I knew the smiles and fun was genuine, but I could see it in all of their eyes whenever his condition came up as a topic of conversation. They were as worried as I was, they just had a different way of showing it.

I stood up from my seat, sighing as I grabbed my bag from the floor beside me.  Tomorrow would be Saturday, which meant I could come earlier in the day to see Izuku.  With any luck, I'd be able to see Mrs. Midoriya as well, who'd been in and out earlier in the day when I was still stuck in class.

I moved swiftly down the hospital hallway, hoping to get to the next bus before it arrived in five minutes.  My mind elsewhere, I didn't notice the young woman stand up from her chair in the waiting room, and I found myself colliding into her, knocking the papers from her hands and scattering them across the linoleum floor like flower petals in the wind.

"O-Oh my god, I'm so sorry," I apologized profusely, immediately crouching down to begin picking up her stuff.

"Oh, don't worry about it," she responded kindly, also crouching to begin grabbing them.  "I should've been watching what was around me."

"No, no," I shook my head, handing her the papers I had gathered.  "I was in a hurry and wasn't paying attention."

She smiled as she stood up, her dark hair framing her round face.  Recognition sparked in her eyes and her smile suddenly grew even wider.

"You're that young hero from UA!" she exclaimed.  "Angel Blade, right?"

I sighed internally, but smiled kindly anyway.  "Yes, that's me."

"You were amazing in the fight in Tokyo, against the League of Villains.  Your quirk is so powerful.  I'm so jealous of it!"

I'd always felt a little uncomfortable with the praise of the media.  To me, it felt undeserved, and I guess in a way I was a lot like Mr. Aizawa.  I didn't care for being fawned over just because I was trying to help people.  "It's nothing to be jealous of, really," I admitted.

"I think it is!  You're going to make a great Pro, you and that one kid with the green hair.  What was his name?  Deku, wasn't it?"

I realized I was running short on time to catch the bus, and although I appreciated this woman's enthusiasm, I didn't have much time for it.  "Yeah, that's him," I smiled.  "Uh, I'm sorry, but I really have to go.  I have to-"

She grabbed my wrist, her demeanor suddenly changing from excitement to seriousness.  "Wait," she interrupted me.  "I'm sorry, you probably get a lot of that.  I just... I wanted to say thank you.  You, Deku, and the rest of your team, you saved my life that night."

"We did?" I paused, suddenly listening intently to her words.  I hadn't had the opportunity to interact with any of the victims from that night, other than from the news, and hearing her perspective of that night did mean a lot to me, even if I wasn't one to enjoy public interaction.

"Yeah, I mean, it was the other group of students that pulled me from the rubble of one of the buildings, but you guys were the ones who stopped Shigaraki, and gosh, most of you nearly died in the process.  If you hadn't been there that night, I would've died.  I'm actually really glad I got to run into you.  Um, if it's at all possible, could you also extend my thanks to the others, and especially Deku?"

I was going to respond with a simple yes, that I would relay her words of thanks, but my expression told more than I intended, and realization struck her again.

"Oh," she breathed.  "Deku is the student that's still hospitalized, isn't he?  Well I guess that makes sense, considering how badly he was injured.  Is that why you're here right now?  Were you visiting him?"

Flustered by how perceptive and unconsciously prying she was, I managed to stutter out a response.  "I-I'm not supposed to discuss his condition w-with anyone."

"Right, right," she facepalmed.  "I'm sorry, I forget how secretive UA is about their students.  I was just asking because, well, you see," she glanced around, like she was afraid of being overheard, before lowering her voice and uttering her next words.  "I can help him."

I furrowed my eyebrows, unsure of her statement, but regardless, I felt my heart leap into my throat.  She could help him?  How?  Even the doctors couldn't do anything, so how could she?  "What do you mean?"

"My quirk," she whispered in response.  "I don't know what his condition is exactly, but I can use my quirk to help him."  She could probably tell how skeptical I was of her statement by the look on my face.  "Look, I know you don't know me and you have no reason to trust what I'm saying, but you guys saved my life. It would be the least that I could do to repay him for it. So please," she smiled kindly again, "I only want to help."

"I..." I wasn't sure how to respond. I'd spent so much time researching to find a way to help him, and then by chance, someone who supposedly had the ability to do just that practically falls into my lap? It felt surreal, almost too good to be true. My heart was screaming at me, pounding in my chest as though it were crying out for me to accept her offer, to let her help him.

But I hesitated. Using a quirk for something like this if you aren't certified is very illegal. I of all people knew that very well. Yes I was desperate to help Izuku, but could I condone breaking the law?

"I'm sorry," I said after a moment. "But I can't allow that. Using your quirk for something like that, even with the best intentions, is illegal. I appreciate the offer, but I can't say yes."

She sighed, nodding in understanding. "I should've figured that'd be your answer. Regardless," she whipped a pen out of her bag and scribbled something on the corner of one of her papers before ripping it off and handing it to me. "If you change your mind, please don't hesitate to text or call me. Repaying him and you for everything you've done would mean the world to me."

/*/

I laid on my bed, staring up at the ceiling with the faint street lights filtering through the curtains.  Glancing at the clock, I could see it was late, way later than I should've been up, but I couldn't settle my mind enough to sleep.

It was silent in the building, all of my classmates and friends having gone to bed hours ago. I could hear my breath, in and out, and my mind whirled with thoughts. The dark encased me like a cocoon, trapping me inside the room I had once felt so comfortable in. What was I supposed to do? What was the right answer?

Was there a right answer?

I hadn't been able to suppress the guilt that had begun to drown me the moment I turned down the young woman's offer at the hospital. I knew that it was illegal and wrong to allow her to use her quirk, but what else had I been expecting to do if I found a way to help him? Was I truly gutless enough to not take the chance because it was against the rules?

I knew Izuku, Shoto, and Iida had gotten in trouble in their first year for unlicensed quirk usage, and hell, I was one of the only people that knew about it. Those three knew first hand the issues that could arise by doing such a thing. If we flaunt and break the rules because it suits our needs, well, that's something only villains do.

I knew Iida would be against it immediately, and likely, so would Ochako. Aspiring heroes need to be outstanding examples of following and upholding the law. Breaking it breaks my promise as a young hero to society to do just that. Granted, Iida has always been a stickler on the rules. Sometimes he really does act like he has a stick up his ass, but for good reason.

I wasn't exactly sure what Shoto would think. He cared about Izuku's well being just as much as I did, and he wasn't exactly shy of breaking or bending the rules if it meant doing the right thing, but would this qualify as doing the right thing? Shoto would do a lot of things, but would he be willing to do what I'm considering doing? I had considered telling him about what had happened at the hospital, seeing what he had to say, but when I came face to face with him when I got back to the dorms, I couldn't get the words out of my mouth. He was one of my closest friends, and I could tell him almost anything, but it felt wrong to further involve him in all of this. His mom was set to be released from the hospital within the next week. He was still dealing with the repercussions of his father's death, and what it meant for him and his family. I didn't want him to concern himself with any of this more than he already was. He, like everyone else, was concerned about Izuku, but adding illegal usage of a quirk in order to somehow save him shouldn't be added on top of it. This was my concern and mine alone.

So then the question arose: what would Izuku do? He had broken the rules so many times over the years in order to do what was right, but if I were the one in that hospital bed and he were the one faced with the decision of whether to break the law for the chance to save me, or to wait to find another option or until I woke up, would he do it?

In my mind's eye, I could picture it, me lying in a hospital bed and him, sitting at my bedside, eyebrows knit in determination. I could hear his voice, making the same vow I had.

I'll save you.

And suddenly, I knew the answer. He would do it, without a doubt, because Izuku was that kind of person. He didn't care about what it meant for himself, whether it meant risking or sacrificing his life, or hell, even breaking the law. If it meant saving someone, he would do it in a heartbeat.

If I lost my chance to be a hero for this decision, then in the end, it didn't matter to me, as long as he was okay. What happened to me was of no consequence, not in comparison to his life.

I turned over, reaching across my bed and grabbing my phone from my nightstand and typing a text to the number I had already save in my contacts.

"So tell me about this quirk of yours that can save Deku."

[divergent-one-1984]

www.ohchr.org

Attached are screenshots of a pdf document I found on the United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner regarding various Torture / Harassment techniques used against targets of organized group and community stalking , often this is a highly organized and coordinated group of people and entities acting together to stalk, psychologically abuse and torture a single individual.

The first screen shot shows the search results that led me to this document. I am pretty sure this was intentional so that I would have a hard time finding it, if at all, because the document gives explanation for many of the tactics targets, including myself, go through on a daily basis. Check out the top result that is from ohchr.org - documents - issues - torture..... When clicking on this link I am taken straight to a 2 page pdf document, which are the two screenshots that follow the first image of the search results.

I have been experiencing this psychological abuse / torture, stalking and harassment since late 2015 while employed at the NYC DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, my harassment began here as WORKPLACE MOBBING IN 2015 and has escalated to WORKPLACE MOBBING in other workplaces and COMMUNITY HARASSMENT, ORGANIZED GROUP STALKING and HARASSMENT

A large part of the harassment involves hacking of personal internet and devices and implementing other illegal surveillance, so this is par for the course, especially when finding articulate information from what most would consider a reputable website, since most of target harassment involves lies about the target regarding their mental health. The harassment involves many of these techniques to make the target look "crazy" in order to discredit them basically so that people wont believe that what they are saying is actually being done to them

[getfuckedstayfucked]

callout post for aineedhelp dumbposting majimaguro

@dumbposting @majimaguro since you've been harassing my friends I figured I'd lay this out for you in no uncertain terms. Kyle, if you read this, scroll down to the bottom where there's a screenshot of Charlie literally telling you to die.

Hi Charlie. I deadass had to make a tumblr for this bullshit because your lying has really gotten excessive. I mean really? Telling people you’re 23? Telling people that you were groomed by us? Telling people we forced you to ditch your friends when all you’d do is complain to us about how uncomfortable x person would make you with their requests for sexual roleplay, or their aggressive demeanor, or their shipping wants? Telling people you were abused by us when you clearly have done this more than twice to different friend groups and when one group falls apart you move on to the next and start your predatory cycle all over again???

I can see you do this for every friend group you make, no matter who it is, where they are. You know how I see this? Because you are saying that we did what you told us your old friends were doing - Jasper, Robin, and Merc. You’ve moved the narrative that THEY were sexually abusive groomers/manipulators over to us since your new group of friends doesn’t know about them outside of the parts those new friends (your dear friends who never hurt you ever even though you consistently complain about said new friends behind their backs!) play and now, suddenly, WE were sexually abusive groomers/manipulators because you milked the attention and pity you could get out of us over the awful things you said about Jasper, Robin, and Merc, and in the process you eventually abused the two people who had the patience to stick out that behaviour SO MUCH and for SO LONG that you alienated them. Once they were over how you treated them, then suddenly, they were the bad guys. And you wouldn’t stop rocking the boat because you needed to have your endless little baby tantrum. Now that you’ve pulled the trigger, you can’t unshoot that bullet.

Newsflash? When these people told you THEIR BOUNDARIES - something that amazingly seems to only be valid when you do it - you got pissed at them. When people told you THEY COULDN’T HANDLE SOMETHING - like, oh, you know, detailed descriptions of severe animal trauma/death, or being told repetitively and graphically that you were going to kill yourself/how you were going to do it, they were suddenly awful. Well, you know what? That is textbook manipulation, to use a phrase you seem so fond of. Guilting people for having boundaries and making them feel bad for drawing lines because they want to have a healthy relationship with their friends isn’t bad, you just don’t like it because it means you can no longer do what you want or treat people like crap without repercussions. 

You are a cruel person. You don’t care about anybody but yourself. You are a self-serving, self-driven, emotionless asshole that knows how to twist situations to be in your favor because your favorite tactic is to divide people up from one another so they have less and less outside views of what your treatment is actually like. It takes a lot of practice to be able to do something like you do for so long and so aggressively so I imagine you’ve been doing this for years. You hook someone - or multiple someones - in by being nice and personable and funny and relatable, then you destroy your friend groups by pitting people against one another and when you’ve isolated the people you’re obsessing over, you flip the switch and start to abuse them in private.

And you know what? You are not the victim in this narrative. You are just another abusive jerk who knows you can get that attention from someone somewhere as long as you twist the narrative to fit your ‘I’ve been abused my friends all treat me horribly’ angle. And you know what? I’m sick of you. I’m sick of how you treat my friends, I’m sick of how you treat people in general. You make me sick and if you’re proud of that, that’s not a badge of honor or pride. That means that you are exactly like your father. 

You don’t get to be out here and be like ‘oh no! it was me who was hurt by these people!’ when you're the one harassing them with your nasty, miserable anon hate even though they’ve blocked you time and time again. 

Steven showed me the conversation where you exploded at him for saying he needed a moment, because apparently it’s fucked up to not be able to handle graphic depictions of an animal’s death, and somehow saying that he couldn’t handle that in that moment was a personal attack and he was betraying you by being an unsupportive friend? People have triggers, hunty, you aren’t god’s gift to this earth and you aren’t the only person to have those! HE tried to set his boundaries and what did you do? You shit all over them. You only care about boundaries if they’re your own and if anybody else has one they try to set with you they’re suddenly awful and someone to be tossed aside. 

And you know what else? You forcing Sam to deal with your maladjusted stalking all the time because you’re out here harassing him via tumblr dot com isn't cute. You’re entirely, creepily obsessed with him and irrationally upset that he stood up for himself and got tired of you treating him like your own personal emotional punching-bag. You are a pathetic, vengeful little person who has no life and nothing to do but troll the internet for victims and people you can trick into giving you sympathy until you inevitably wring them dry too and then you abandon them because they won’t give you what you want anymore.

Go fuck yourself. Get fucked, stay fucked. You complained to us and cried to us about Merc and Jasper and Robin and how they either wouldn’t stop bothering you for sexual RP or wouldn’t stop guilting you or pushing you in that direction, or how Robin wouldn’t stop trying to force you to say what she wanted you to say, and now you’re LITERALLY saying that about Steve and Sam? You are not. The fucking. Victim. Here. You are the orchestrator to an amazingly convoluted drama that rotates around you and you alone and I’m sick of this and I’m sick of you and I’m sick of having to hear about the lies you’re posting about my friends.

By the way? You aren’t 23. You are 27 by now! De-aging yourself to seem younger and more vulnerable only works when people don’t know you’re actually older - which, by the way, is SUPER creepy of you to do because it gets you closer to a younger demographic and endears you to them because oh! wow! You’re young and abused just like them! Do you know how fucked up it is to position yourself closer to younger, less experienced, vulnerable people like that? Do you know how fucked up it is to try and net those poor kids with your sob stories and how these ‘bad oldew peopow abewsed yew uwu’ even though that wasn’t the case? It puts you in a position of power and it gives you the reigns in any interactions you have with anybody younger than you and that is creepy and disgusting and you are creepy and disgusting for doing it, especially since your tumblr is filled with a mixture of sfw and 18+ content with zero 18+ follower requirement.

And you know what-- in the same vein, you use your being autistic as a sob story point to make it sound like one more way that you’ve been taken advantage of, but in reality you’re actually the one out here taking advantage of those around you and you’re being ableist while you do it? Wow. Wowiee wow wow.

You infantilize autistic people and say in the process that, in a blanket statement, ALL autistic people can’t fend for themselves or see anything coming at them from a mile away. On top of that, you shit on other autistic people’s special interests? Do you have any idea how many autistic people are out there with special interests focused around kid’s shows, or cartoons in general, or anime, or fandoms? No? Well, here’s a clue: there’s a lot of us (and yes, I am autistic, and yes, I do have special interests involving anime and fandoms, and no, I’m not a predator and I am DEFINITELY not the one out here creepily de-aging themselves to endear themselves to younger people like you are) with special interests ranging from anything from MLP to mushrooms to My Hero Academia (which is, for the record, one of Steve’s special interests, which you shit on him for, you ableist fuck) to Stephen King’s IT and you don’t get to say it’s predatory to have special interests in these areas!!!!!

You are not only perpetuating stereotypes about autistic people but you’re encouraging them because these stereotypes suit you and your current narrative! You’re using the same exact arguments that neurotypicals use! And you know what ELSE? Way to suggest that autistic people who have special interests that aren’t ‘adult’ are predators, too, you nasty little weasel. That’s the kind of narrative that gets autistic people killed!!! How selfish ARE you?

But wait, we really, really aren’t done here. I would really like to address your obsession with accusing people of being groomers and/or predators. 

YOU LITERALLY ROLEPLAYED EDDIE KASPBRACK. YOU ROLEPLAYED HIM AS AGE SIXTEEN AND YOU HAVE DONE SO IN A SEXUAL AND SEXUAL-ADJACENT MANNER. YOU SMUT ROLEPLAYED SEXUAL CONTENT ON A CHARACTER THAT WAS SIXTEEN. YOU ALSO ROLEPLAY AS SHERRY BIRKIN FROM RESIDENT EVIL. SHE IS TEN. YOU CAN’T SAY SHIT. YOU. CAN’T. SAY. SHIT. YOU WROTE SMUT AS UNDERAGE CHARACTERS WHILE USING REAL LIFE UNDERAGE FACECLAIMS AND NOW YOU’RE OUT HERE SAYING THAT SIMPLY WATCHING THESE SHOWS AND BEING INTO THESE FANDOMS IS PEDOPHILIC? I don’t think so. I really, really do not think so.

Saying stuff like ‘reblogging anime posts or gifs or art is child porn’ also belittles and undermines actual CSA/pedophilia victims which is one more tally on the list of fucked up shit you’ve done. Way to be one of those people out there who do their best to divert valuable time and resources that could be spent on actual CSA victims instead of fictional fucking people.

This is a two-way street. You rant about how this is a 13+ site and how adults are responsible for kids in their spaces WHEN THEY HAVE ALREADY GONE TO REASONABLE LENGTHS TO PREVENT MINORS FROM GETTING AT THEIR CONTENT, but you’re always going on about getting high and doing drugs and talking about onlyfans which is AN ADULT SUBSCRIPTION WEBSITE GEARED TOWARDS PEOPLE WHO MAKE PORN OR FETISH CONTENT. You have absolutely ZERO 18+ content warning or follower requirement on your blog! Which is made creepier by the fact that you’ve de-aged yourself by a whole four years, you’re making yourself out to be some kind of abused child who was manipulated by older people, and you’re trying to speak for children. It’s wack. 

For the record, being mentally ill is not an excuse for any of this at all whatsoever. If you hurt someone and you are mentally ill that is still on you. It is on you to learn to live with mental illness and not hurt those around you. When your shitty actions give someone else trauma, that is your fault, and it does have an effect on them, and it does hurt them. Fuck off with that 'no accountability' bullshit you're peddling. That's not how life works. Your actions have affected those around you and it takes a massive amount of willful ignorance to go around acting like you don't fucking know that already, especially considering that other people’s mental illnesses hurt you-- unless you were lying to us about that, too. 

Get some fucking help and get out of our collective DMs........ Or don’t and get high like you always do instead of accepting responsibility for your actions, Mr. 'I'm lucid enough to be able to blame my mental illness for my own behaviour when that bs wouldn't even hold up in court'. Whatever.

I’m done with your shit.

Here's some receipts. Kyle, whoever you are, I suggest you run the fuck away before they start doing to you what they've done to Steve and Sam. Good luck having a friend who non-jokingly says they wish you would die because that is extraordinarily fucked up. 

---

----

-----

-----

Some tea about how you were fed up with the people treating you like shit instead of you being forced to ditch these people 

----

[thesides]

born from resistance [can’t keep me tied down]

Fandom: Sanders Sides (duh) Pairings: None, yet! Chapter: 1 Read:  AO3 Notes: I have no idea where I’m going with this, but I promise you the next chapters will be WAY better! Tag List:  @neetrash @lonewolfmemories @trash-can-so-do-i @half-blood-geek @topspintessa @sweetie2136 @tragicrevenge @babyboylittlepupper

“Virgil remembered the nights when he was a kid, begging for someone to whisk him away from the constant judging. He could remember the shrieking and the crying, hoping that one day it would change.

It never did. ”

Sanders Sides Demigod AU

Virgil wasn’t normal.

That much, he definitely knew. Because as he walked down the street, he could practically count every side glance he’d get. So far, he was at twenty, but his high score was fifty in an hour. How bad was his life that his best achievement was how many people looked at him with disgust? Well, Virgil thought, it wasn’t that bad. He had known a lot of other of people who had it almost as bad as he did - sometimes, worse. And it was those people that he managed to befriend, in his own odd, weird way.

Honestly, Virgil wasn’t even sure how they became his friends, but he wasn’t gonna question it. Not now.

Virgil tugged at his hoodie strings, cursing under his breath as he bumped into someone.

“Sorry,” Virgil muttered, looking down and forcing himself to keep moving. He could hear them groan about ‘Teens these days,’ and Virgil just kept walking, tightening his fists at the veiled insult. Keep walking, Virgil thought, just ignore them. It shouldn’t hurt as much as it did, since, at this point, it was practically routine. Go outside, crash into someone, get insulted, go home. It almost made him want to stay inside all day - almost. Contrary to the nosy middle-aged neighbors, Virgil did have a social life, thank you very much. It just… wasn’t as prominent as everyone else’s. Could you blame him, Virgil thought out, shaking his head.

With the looks everyone gave him constantly, you’d think people would understand that ‘Hey, this guy is outed by society! He’s screwed in the friendship department!’

Apparently, Virgil overestimated people’s intelligence. Never again, he thought, people were exactly as dumb as they looked. They didn’t even know him- yet… Everyone knew he was wrong. A dud.

Shoving his hands in his pocket, Virgil walked towards the train. The crowd was forming rapidly, and anxiety shot up in his spine. He licked his lips, fingering the small amount of cash before walking forward. Virgil quickly paid, practically jumping into the train before the doors slammed shut. He looked around for a seat, faintly noting that the train was a wreck. Sure, it wasn’t a dumpster, but… Virgil sat down on a mangled seat, thread sticking out of it on all sides. Yeah, the train was definitely high class.

He sighed, leaning back against the train’s walls. Virgil winced as the chatter of the train picked up. Sure enough, a group of tourists were blabbering right in front of him, and Virgil wanted to groan out. Of course… Virgil whipped out his headphones, thanking whatever higher deity in existence that they weren’t tangled. He popped them in, listening to some song before closing his eyes.

Virgil felt the train move, and he let his mind drift. What was he thinking about, again? Oh… right. According to literally every person in existence, he was a heathen with purple hair and an emo/angsty background. Yay. Virgil couldn’t help the bitter taste in his mouth at that description - damn, he was getting too good at being right. Because he knew that everyone thought of him that way - even people who didn’t know him at all. And it wasn’t even his fault - he didn’t want to be this way. Virgil remembered the nights when he was a kid, begging for someone to whisk him away from the constant judging. He could remember the shrieking and the crying, hoping that one day it would change.

It never did. Such was his life.

Virgil wished he’d accepted that fact sooner.

Everyone knew he wasn’t normal. He was an outlier, the unknown - Virgil wasn’t supposed to exist. It didn’t take a genius to figure it out. He was supposed to be this, act like that. But it never happened - he was just Virgil.

Virgil gave off this ‘bad vibe,’ according to literally everyone that walked past him. People always gave him that ‘look’, for reasons that Virgil didn’t even care anymore. Some small part of him broke whenever someone would cuss him out under their breath, but for some reason, it only managed to make Virgil come back with a furious hatred for the world.

Virgil knew he wasn’t normal. There was something wrong with him. Especially when he saw things jump out at him in the middle of the night. They were… monsters, in every way possible. He recalled one time when he was walking in a Subway. Never again, he promised. Subway was evil. But there were always things that happened to him. Feral dogs that seemed to be at least double his own size attacked him out in the blue. Buffed out people with only one eye stalked him whenever he walked out in the park - one even tried to kill him. But whenever he tried to explain it to someone… Apparently, that dog was a kitten and that person was an elderly.

Yep, totally makes sense.

Virgil forced himself to open his eyes, feeling the train coming to a stop. He glanced up at the sign, squinting as he tried to make out the floating letters. Nope. Wasn’t his stop. Virgil leaned back, sighing as he turned up the volume.

The train moved again and Virgil hummed along with the tune of Over My Head, tapping his fingers against his leg. If he had to sit on a thirty minute trip across the city, then at least he’d have his music. For a second, Virgil managed to relax, leaning his head back and just enjoying the blast of music.

And then, of course, someone had to sit next to him.

Immediately, Virgil stiffened, instinctively turning down the volume blasting from his headphones. The last thing he wanted was someone to start a lecture about ‘modern music.’ Yeah, so what if the Beatles were really the hit in the 70s? He didn’t. Care.

So Virgil forced himself to just sit in silence, swallowing at the sudden awkwardness bursting between them. Seriously, who sits next to a person when there’s about ten other spots-

“Ah, yes, I forgot to ask, do you mind?” Virgil blinked at the voice, whipping his head around to the person sitting next to him.

“No.” Was all Virgil managed to say, well, muttered as the person sat straight up.

“Great. I apologize for not asking sooner.” The guy was… weird, Virgil noted. He talked like a textbook - looked like one, too. He wore a necktie and a dark blue shirt, matched with black skinny jeans. Oh, and glasses, because this guy was really trying hard for that nerd look. Or maybe he really was one? Wait, why did Virgil care? “I needed company for the experiment I am engaging in.”

“Ex… Experiment?” Oh no, Virgil was not liking where this was going. He swallowed and berated himself for stuttering. Yeah, great English, Verge-

“Yes.” The man adjusted his glasses and pushed them up at the sides. “I was unable to gather any other information via the Library and the ‘Internet. You seem to be in the same situation as I am.”

“What?” Virgil blinked, feeling his hackles rise and his brain started screaming at him. “Look, I don’t care what drugs or thing you’re selling. I don’t want it.”

Traveling around the city, you were bound to run into one of those ragtag groups that practically pressured you into buying some sort of drug. Virgil had had his handful of interactions, and he’d always barely escaped them. But… The guy didn’t look like one of those people. He looked nice.

And he also looked very, very confused. “No…” He began, “That wasn’t what I meant. Was my statement not trustworthy enough? Allow me to rephrase- I believe that another person will help me in my studies. I can’t be the only one experiencing these… anomalies.”

“Yeah,” Virgil snorted, the guy was a living textbook, “Right. You literally just met me and suddenly we’re the same. Keep talkin’, lunatic.”

“I do not appreciate you insulting me. And frankly, I was simply trying to conduct an experiment-”

“Whatever- I don’t appreciate you ‘experimenting’ on me. Can you just lay off?”

People were turning their way, eyes looking at him. Shit, he thought, all he wanted to do was go home in peace.

The nerd had the nerve to huff, rolling his eyes before leaning back in his seat.  “Fine. I will not intrude further. I just…” He adjusted his glasses, and Virgil faintly noticed the bags under the guy's eyes.

Oh no, his mind said, no, we’re not going to feel bad for a stranger. None of that. Weren’t we just insulting the guy two seconds ago? He was but… Virgil couldn’t help but feel just a bit bad. The guy looked- well, he looked just like him. The nerdy look probably didn’t help with being social, and the way he talked probably didn’t get him any points in some club or something. And Virgil couldn’t help the understanding. Sure, Virgil wasn’t a ray of sunshine, but he wasn’t going to ruin a guy’s fucking day because he wanted to.

“Ah, fuck it…” Virgil muttered, turning to face the nerd. “Go ahead, show me what you got.”

The nerd’s face actually brightened. “Very well. I assure you, the time will not be of waste. I have gathered a series of plausible factions and various-”

“Whoa, whoa, slow down. Just tell me what you wanted to do.” Virgil slowly spoke out, and he briefly regretted his decision, just for a second.

“Right- I… I have been seeing these sort of images in the middle of crowds or chaos. Yet, whenever I discuss these with the authorities, it seems as though they never existed. They just weren’t there.” Virgil felt his blood go cold as the geek kept talking, “I have tried to collect photos, but it never worked. I have sketched out diagrams-”

“Wait.” The train slowed, and Virgil could barely make out anything. “Wait- What’s your name, geek?”

“Logan. Logan Everill.”

Someone- Someone was like him? “Logan- Logan, do they ever attack? What do they look like?”

He couldn’t help the pounding in his chest, the beating of his heart, the rapid breathing in and out. Virgil wasn’t alone. Someone saw the things he saw. Normal, Normal, Normal. The words repeated like a mantra, the only thing burning into his mind. Logan Everill was like him. He saw the things lurking in the darkness -  saw the feral dogs growling at him. Logan saw the things he did… he wasn’t alone.

“I… I cannot describe them. They look like-”

Suddenly, the train lurched forward and Virgil felt his back slam into the pole next to him. He gasped, mind spinning before whipping his head towards the front. The tourists in front of him were launched forward, screaming. Logan was right behind him, standing up and gripping the pole desperately.

Virgil’s eyes widened and his heart jumped out of his chest. “No…”

For a split second, Virgil wished for someone to say anything, do anything just to make sure he wasn’t dreaming. And then a little girl cried out, screaming. It sunk in, and people started yelling and he could see out of the corner of his eyes the girl was kneeling on the ground. Logan moved forward, eyes wide and fist tightened. People kept on shrieking and Virgil couldn’t help the shaking in his bones.

This… This couldn’t be happening, he thought dumbly. There’s no way…

Because the front of the train was gone and in its place was a dog the size of his own apartment.

“Yeah,” Virgil heard Logan whisper under his breath, “They look like that.”

The dog looked up, and Virgil screamed.