#Evolution of Sound

[figtreegif]

Wardrobe // Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman) // Doctor Who Seasons 3 & 4 (2007-2008) + Torchwood Season 2 (2008) + specials

[my-little-random-world]

PAGET BREWSTER 𝒂𝒔 EMILY PRENTISS | Criminal Minds: Evolution Season 18 Episode 3 — Time To Say Goodbye

[marlenacantswim]

underutilized aspect of lassiter's running "i'd rather..." line of dialog is the ability to drop absolutely buckwild pieces of lore with it.

as an example: "i'd rather get stuck in an elevator with Al Gore." his gaze grows distant. "...again."

[drizzledrawings]

Bye bye art student identity hello corporate art world persona

[the---hermit]

I've unlocked a new level of anxiety. My brain is too tired to formulate anxiety thoughts so it's an apparent state of calm, while my body is full in panic mode. This is fun.

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

pez dispenser update, yay!

I am Very Interested in the direction you're taking izuku here. He seems to have come out the other side of this breakdown going, "no look! I trust you guys! Here, I trust you guys so much! You can know about the severe injuries I had as a child that never got a police report!"

It's funny to read izuku's pov vs aizawa. Izuku is just like, wow this all needs to end so I can get back to being the Normal And Awesome Deku I have turned myself into, and aizawa is like thirty seconds from having his own panic attack at having a few months to turn this kid into a functional human being.

You can truly tell that with how izuku keeps insisting on that he's got this by himself, with no understanding how crazy it is to expect his friends and teachers to back out and let him take over, that he, still, still, STILL has simply 0 faith or expectation that his teacher is driven to help the little kid in izuku that he's buried so deep down there. That an authority figure who isn't all might wants to save him. I want to eat his unthinking, warped by trauma thought patterns, they are delicious.

Kinda touching that midoriya foresaw and tried to avert the all might conversation issue. Rip, dude really tried, but baby izuku is like one of those puddles in flooded old buildings you can find videos of people dropping a rock in -- it doesn't look that deep, but if you tried to put your foot in, you would be getting a whole lot more than your shoe wet.

Yeahhhhhh Izuku’s really not handling it the best.

Izuku genuinely didn’t keep everything a secret all these years because he didn’t trust his friends. It wasn’t that he thought they’d react poorly or hurt him with the information or spread it around or anything like that. This was purely due to his own internal issues around it.

But they’re three years deep into being in the fucking trenches together. And Izuku very much is considered a bedrock of the class. You can see it in their internal monologues—everyone trusts him implicitly. It’s Izuku. If one of them was going through something sensitive or painful, he’d be at the top of the list of people to turn to. For like, the entire class.

And while Izuku isn’t per se aware of the fact that the entire class views him as the best of them, he is painfully aware of the fact that they’ve opened up to him over the years. And that this is making it look like he didn’t tell them a single detail about his life before he came to the school. Which is fair, because he sort of didn’t.

So he’s overcompensating. He doesn’t need privacy because he trusts them so so much and this proves it, right?? They can totally know the sordid details of the past he’s in active crisis over.

He’s scared that he’s going to lose the people who have trusted him over the years because he seemingly didn’t trust them back. But they all trust him so much that they’re more beating themselves up than blaming him.

Todoroki and Mirio were in that scene like “uuuuhhhh you look like you’re a second from a panic attack we can totally give you space if it makes you more comfortable” and Izuku’s in a spiral like Why Would I Need Space I Trust You Both Implicitly Please Ignore The Obvious Distress.

Fundamentally, Izuku has never processed what happened to him as a kid. He didn’t tell them because he wasn’t ready to confront how bad it was back then. It wasn’t about trust. Telling them meant saying aloud what happened. He just wasn’t ready for that.

And from the path canon took, I don’t really see Izuku trusting adults. His childhood did absolutely nothing to make him think teachers would protect him. And for all Aizawa did right, I think this is one bag in canon he legitimately dropped.

I want to be clear—Aizawa was working at a severe disadvantage. He didn’t even have a lot to tell him the problem existed, let alone how to address it. But it’s specifically the Hero Killer Stain Arc that makes me think that Izuku only would trust Aizawa to a certain point.

After the Hero Killer Stain Arc, Aizawa canonically calls out Iida, Todoroki, and Izuku in front of the entire class. He doesn’t mention what it's about, but he makes it very clear that he knows what happened and that he disapproves. And his criticism is specific: In instances where you are out matched, it is better to run and get help. Iida, Midoriya, and Todoroki need to understand that

The thing is that Izuku and Todoroki both considered that as their first option and then correctly deduced that they'd be burying Iida if they did that.

I will actually die on the hill that is that Izuku and Todoroki did everything right when it came to the Hero Killer Stain. Iida caused the problem, but the fact that he made mistakes was the point of that arc for him. But Izuku and Todoroki?

They both reacted perfectly. And if they had done a single thing differently, they'd have two dead bodies.

When Izuku realizes that Iida's in danger, the city is on fire, Nomu are attacking the train, and his supervisor has fucked off to fight monsters attacking the city. He does not have an adult hero who is free to bring with him, and we know for a fact that he did not have time to hesitate or try to find other options, because he arrives the second before Iida dies as-is. When he's on scene, his absolute first instinct is to run. Izuku canonically clocked the fact that he was out matched, evaluated whether he could safely retreat, and realized he’d never be able to get out of there with Iida and Native. He’d have to leave one or both of them to die.

So he asked for help the safest way he could: sending out the mass text and stalling for time. And canonically, he wasn’t hoping a classmate would show up to the fight. He was hoping they’d report it to their supervisors and get him help, which is exactly what multiple of his classmates did.

Todoroki, for his part, correctly clocked that something was wrong with Izuku when he got the message. And he didn’t just fuck off without telling anyone where he was going. He evaluated the situation, realized the city was on fucking fire and there wasn’t a single hero free to go with them, and told the heroes with him that they needed to go to this exact location the first second they could. And he didn’t have a moment to hesitate or figure something else out, because he also showed up at the very last second before Iida took a sword to his spine.

Frankly, Todoroki and Izuku couldn’t have possibly handled the situation better, but they got absolutely shit on in the aftermath. I don’t recall a single adult who told them they did the right thing, except maybe Native. They had the fucking chief of police telling them they were no better than the guy who tried to kill their teenage friend with a sword and their teacher publicly calling them out in front of the class without the benefit of context.

If I was Izuku, I would have walked out of that entire thing having my preexisting distrust of adults affirmed. Like. There isn’t a world where Izuku realistically looks back on his actions and thinks “damn I really should have left Iida die.” He’s not going to change a fucking thing in what he did. Every single time, he’s going to go save his friend. The only realistic take away Izuku could have from Aizawa’s call out was “wow, that guy is not going to have my back if I have to make a tough call. So if I have to make one, then I’m just not going to him for help.”

Which is kind of where we're at in pez right now, and Aizawa's starting to realize it. Don't get me wrong, Izuku trusts Aizawa more than any teacher he ever had growing up. He doesn't think Aizawa is going to be actively malicious to him. But he also doesn't necessarily think Aizawa's going to have his back.

The crux of it is in chapter 4. Tiny Izuku says that Mr. Aizawa is already on Izuku's side, and Izuku's immediate reply is, "I promise you that Mr. Aizawa has never once been on my side." He back pedals fast, clarifies that he thinks Mr. Aizawa is fair and not on anyone's side, but his knee-jerk reaction is undeniable.

And to me? It's because Aizawa genuinely has not been on Izuku's side since he came to UA. And I don't mean Aizawa has been malicious to Izuku. Fundamentally, the issue is that he misdiagnosed the problem.

Aizawa has spent his entire time with Izuku mistakenly believing that the source of Izuku's issues was the same as Bakugou's. He is only now realizing that his issues were more like Shinsou's.

Fundamentally, Aizawa correctly recognized that Izuku's problems came from the fact that he was raised in an unjust system. But he misunderstood what Izuku's position in it was.

Here's what Aizawa knows, from the jump: Izuku and Bakugou came from the same school. Both have very powerful Quirks. Both have obvious issues with the other. Izuku specifically moves and looks like he had a professional trainer, meaning someone invested in his training as a hero. Bakugou talks like someone who's been told his entire life that the sun shines out his ass and never got punished for being a little shit. Izuku's more muted, but he came from the same school. Two kids with powerful quirks? Likely were getting away with the exact same shit.

When you have an unjust system, you have the people running it, the people benefitting from it, and the people being victimized by it. If the teachers at Aldera were letting kids with powerful quirks get away with murder, both Izuku and Bakugou were likely benefitting from that. And it is absolutely vital that Aizawa undoes that damage before they debut.

He doesn't even need to think Izuku, specifically, was abusing his position in this power imbalance. The damage is done from how the teachers at aldera were likely treating him. Teachers that produce kids like Bakugou tell talented, powerful kids that they're special, that they're above the rules, that they've got something so fundamentally important about them that they can get away with more. Even if you don't chose to abuse that narrative in the moment, that's a hell of a formative experience.

They're about to have a ridiculous amount of power. They are about to be in charge of enforcing the rules. And people who are in charge of enforcing the rules and think they're above them turn into Endeavor.

Aizawa's approached Izuku from a sort of tough love perspective from the jump. He didn't cut him an ounce of slack, and it's because he genuinely was trying to do right by Izuku. No, he's not going to get to smash up his body and make himself a hazard. Figure it out, or go home.

He's had plenty of time to learn how to manage his quirk, after all.

With Stain? I don't think Aizawa, if he knew the full circumstances, would genuinely say the right call is to have Iida's fucking funeral. I think he'd agree with the decisions Izuku and todoroki made. But he didn't have all the information, and, fatally, he didn't ask. He assumed.

He's got three powerful, bullheaded students who end up in a back alley in the middle of the night, having all separately ditched the heroes they were supposed to be joined at the fucking hip with. He absolutely thinks that they either planned it together or that, when they realized what Iida did, Todoroki and Iida went after him in secret to try to keep Iida from getting in trouble--and almost got them all killed in the process. There is absolutely no way Aizawa knows that they actually tried to run and get help at every turn.

Aizawa made assumptions. And a big reason why he felt comfortable making those assumptions was because he thought he knew what Izuku's problem was. He thought Izuku, like Bakugou, had been benefitting from teachers turning a blind eye to his misbehavior for years. But the problem was the exact opposite. Teachers had been turning a blind eye to his victimization for years.

He shouldn't have been treating him like Bakugou. He should have been treating him like Shinsou.

Aizawa's trying to correct the damage of past teachers. If they've spent years telling Izuku he's god's gift to mankind and it doesn't matter what he does because he's a hero and that makes up for it, Aizawa needs to hold him to the fucking rules. He needs him to understand that he's not special, he's not the main character, he's not intrinsically better or more important or above the rules in some magically important way. He doesn't want to hear excuses. He doesn't want to know why this time it was different. Izuku needs to understand that he has to live by the rules too, because he's going to be in charge of enforcing them soon.

But if they've spent years telling him he's worthless, that people can hurt him and it's okay, that he can never, ever expect help from them because he's not worth it? Then fuck, Aizawa needed to do the opposite. He needed the same end result, don't get me wrong--an understanding that the system equally applies to everyone--but he needs to make Izuku believe that the system will protect him again. That Aizawa will protect him. And Aizawa's combing over every fucking interaction they've ever had, and realizing that he hasn't done that, because he spent all his time trying to correct a problem that didn't exist.

I think Aizawa's been beating his head against the problem that is Midoriya Izuku for the past three years. Because Izuku's a hard-worker. He is brilliant. He is a natural leader. He is the fucking cornerstone of the class. He is shining so bright that it's going to kill him, because Aizawa knows how to recognize a star that's burning out.

For three years, Aizawa has tried and failed to get Izuku to realize he can and should ask for help. And he has failed because he thought the problem was that Izuku didn't think he needed help, when the problem was actually that he thought no one would give it to him.

In this last chapter, Izuku finally said aloud the reason behind the core issue Aizawa’s had with him his entire time at UA: Growing up, he thought that there was literally one man on the planet who would care enough to save him. He was the most hero-obsessed boy Aizawa’s ever met, and he thought All Might was the only hero alive he could count on to care if he lived or died.

There it is. The exact answer about every scrap of self destructive behavior that Aizawa’s been trying and failing to remedy for years. Why the fuck would he ask for help when he needs it? He’s spent his entire life living in a world where people wouldn’t piss on him if he were on fire. Aizawa needed every day of those three years to reverse that kind of damage, and he’s out of fucking time.

Aizawa is legitimately terrified that he fucked up and that it's going to kill Izuku.

Izuku’s Quirklessness is the missing piece of the puzzle that makes everything fall into place—which is why he’s so pissed at All Might for not telling him. Aizawa’s actually kicking himself for not noticing the obvious discrepancies in Izuku’s past. The fact that he grew up with a powerful Quirk was the factor that made him return to the same incorrect conclusion again and again. There were enough hints that he feels guilty for not figuring it out anyway, but if he had known about Izuku’s Quirklessness from the start? He would have figured it out in seconds.

Now that he knows, Aizawa’s changed how he handles Izuku. He doesn’t let there be a single doubt about what he’s doing or why. He makes Izuku explain himself, so that way there’s no more miscommunications around what he means. He makes sure to compliment him whenever he does something right—he’s trying to change courses, but he’s panicking that it’s too little, too late.

And now he’s got this goddamn criminal investigation that Izuku wants to bury, and it’s killing him. Because that’s his student, and he was hurt horribly. And his student just cannot comprehend why Aizawa cannot let it go.

And then there’s All Might.

All Might’s conversation with baby Izuku, for me, forecloses the possibility that explaining OfA is a solution here.

All Might really went in and knocked it out of the park with the best possible attempt at convincing Tiny Izuku that he’s himself. He immediately failed, albeit, but he honestly couldn’t have done better.

There he is, Izuku’s lifelong hero. And he’s there to say the things Izuku’s spent his whole life wanting to hear. All Might met him, and Izuku inspired him. He reminded him of himself when he was young. He thought he could be a hero. He was so impressed he offered to personally mentor Izuku.

And he loved him. Believe you are him, because I loved you too much to ever let anyone take you from me. There is a fundamental flaw in your theory that simply no one cared enough to notice or stop him, because I love you with all of me. I would have noticed. I would have saved you.

If there is absolutely anything that could have convinced Tiny Izuku, it would be that. This isn’t about quality of the explanation. There’s an internal issue that needs to be fixed before Tiny Izuku will believe any of this.

And I think Izuku recognizes this, on a level. As much as he and Tiny Izuku clash, Izuku gets him. He can typically predict Tiny Izuku’s exact responses to things.

But he’s never approached Tiny Izuku like someone he can explain this to. He’s spent this entire time trying to cheat code his way out of this situation. He wants Mr. Aizawa to erase him or to go find the Quirk user and find away to negate the Quirk. He’s never actually even considered explaining this all to himself as a solution.

Because he knows that there’s some kind of fundamental impossibility about it. Even if he can’t say exactly what it is, he knows that there’s an internal issue that means he’s not going to be able to just tell Tiny Izuku the truth.

Voice of God, he is dead fucking right about Tiny Izuku not buying OfA and being liable to tell everyone out of spite. Tiny Izuku would have that shit on the news.

Fundamentally, Izuku is aware that there is a deeper problem driving Tiny Izuku. He knows that it’s not about the quality of the explanation. There is something deeply, profoundly wrong because of what happened to him that makes him absolutely unable to accept that Izuku is him.

But Izuku has never known how to solve the mental wounds his childhood left him with. He still has them himself. He’s been burying them for years, and he can’t anymore.

When action opens in pez, Izuku himself is not okay. He’s just… bleeding internally. He knows how to hurt in ways people can’t see. But you can see how much his childhood is still bothering him in his defense of Mirio. He has never been able to let go of what happened to him. The wounds never healed.

And he doesn’t know how to go to these people he loves and tell them that what they’re trying fundamentally will fail, because he knows he’s been hiding this fucking shipwreck of his own mental health for the past three years but they don’t have a fucking clue at the scale of the problem.

At the end of the day, All Might went in there because he wanted to save Izuku. And Izuku told him not to because he cannot imagine himself being saved.

[clannfearrunt]

side order stages like

[front-facing-pokemon]

[bednbunfast]

worm... evolution....

[kittykatninja321]

I’m sorry but I just don’t think any other “name-bin” abbreviations for the Robins work as well as “Jaybin”. Jaybin sounds like the name of a tiny creature you’d see in the trees while walking through an enchanted forest and Dickbin sounds like. Well

[sunmaylight]

LCF/TCF AU - Yandere Choi Han

((Something I am finally transferring over from Twitter that I’ve forgotten about for over four years))

Looking back, this is more possessive Choi Han but does have the potential to go darker.

Anyways, spoilers for WEBTOON readers as this is part of the webnovel.

Set in the Empire Arc with Adin

Yandere Choi Han that’s triggered as his darkness is evolving. Instead of becoming what is known in the novel, it becomes twisted. Only wanting to be with Cale and destroy everything else.

The change is triggered when Prince Adin decides to make an almost lethal strike at Cale as Choi Han’s powers are evolving.

Choi Han knows logically that Cale will be fine because Raon is with him, but mentally he sees Cale coughing blood and being drenched in his own blood.

Looking like he is at death’s door.

Something inside Choi Han snaps as he decides enough is enough. He doesn’t want Cale, his rock (his precious person), to be hurt anymore. Not by their enemies, or especially by that idiot’s plans where CALE is the one getting hurt.

He doesn’t register the fact that his aura swallowed Adin and his attack. Not even the way that Raon flinches and disappears when the dragon sees him. He miss the way Cale flinches at his aura devouring all of the dead mana around them.

All Choi Han can focus on is Cale Henitus.

Choi Han’s aura moves at his subconscious will, surrounding Cale in a possessive embrace while the man himself goes to pick up Cale in a bridal carry.

Cale is asking Choi Han what he is doing, but he ignores the red hair noble as he asks Raon to teleport them back home.

Raon obliges with the request and teleports them home.

Choi Han quickly jumps to Cale’s room while giving Raon a request -never a demand or else Cale will be disappointed with Choi Han- to barricade the room to make sure no one can enter and no one can here them.

The dragon does he is requested to do and vanishes from Choi Han’s senses.

Finally, the two are alone. Choi Han gently placed the quiet Cale on his bed then removed his cloak. Followed by removing his own shoes and Cale’s.

Choi Han would have removed his bloody clothes, but Raon already used magic to make him and Cale spotless.

What an intuitive dragon.

Cale is asking him what he is doing, but Choi Han only hums and pushes Cale on the bed so that the noble is laying down on his back.

Choi Han joins him and hugs Cale in his arms. He strokes the other man’s head possessively. Not registering the fact that his aura coils around the both of them in a strong hold.

“Choi Han, what are you doing? This doesn’t seem like you.” Cale asks Choi Han in a calm manner.

Choi Han smiles innocently, “Don’t worry Cale-nim. I will make sure that what is mine will never get hurt again. Not by our enemies, friends, or even yourself,” Cale flinches but Choi Han ignores it as he continues to talk, “I will make sure to definitely find a way to bring you back to my home and keep you safe.

“Choi Han, what are you- mmph” Cale is cut off by Choi Han passionately kissing him

“Don’t worry Cale-nim. Just let me love you.

My lord”

—

That is a wrap. Wow, I don’t know what I was thinking when I made this on Twitter in October of 2021. But go me for trying something new

I’ll post the tumblr link to Twitter and have a Twitter link that will be broken in the future

[chimeride]

Moropus with four arms please.

[maximura]

[whatudottu]

Now I’m curious on what your takes on how Cerebrocrustaceans speak are, given how we’ve been given three separate dubiously canon explanations in the form of “electrostatically vibrating gaseous or liquid mediums”, “mentally projecting their thoughts”, and “secret mind link”

Oh well, if I continue to give cerebrocrustaceans gizzards then I'm totally locking in "electrostatically vibrating gaseous or liquid mediums" because for as much as I do love the sci-fantasy of Ben 10, I also like to kinda pseudo ground biology headcanons in a more uh... naturalistic evolutionary way so that Mutants and Magic au shenanigans can shenanigan and leave room for psychics and [x]pathies hehe-! Honestly Dr Psychobos could probably have one of the two latter ones, having been listed as a 'mutant' cerebrocrustacean despite mostly only having cybernetic enhancements (I wonder if they'd act as the opposite and are psychic limiters a la Saiki K., it's just more convenient to have it on the brain than as external clips *thinking thinking*).

Did you know: Fish on Earth make sounds? It's a lot of clicking, humming, popping, purring, grunting, whooping, snapping, laughing, and foghorns! Some of those sounds technically resemble the buzzing whirr of electricity, or at least the sound of electricity burning gases rather than electricity itself, it's not like it produces soundwaves. I imagine that cerebrocrustaceans especially early on in their history when they were still mostly underwater would have developed a language that sounds like this, especially since sound travels very easily very far underwater, even if only benefiting longer noises over rapid switching of vocalisation as clarity is diminished.

It used to be exclusively electrostatic vibration of water, as it tended to just be there as a basic understanding of life on Encephalonus (the original), where vocalisation and language came from the gizzard. The gizzard often remains empty so that cerebrocrustaceans don't choke on water when feeling hungry and only intakes water to have a pressurised system to push the water out, but to use it in communication would be to hold the water in the gizzard and use the water as a conductor of vibration thus a medium for sound induced by electric organs akin to those in the electric eel. These electric organs, present in the brain as a defense mechanism turned useful tool, were initially present in the gizzard to aid in prey consumption but found a second useage in communication. And even if muffled, a cerebrocrustacean can in fact speak with their mouth full with full cohesion.

When cerebrocrustaceans moved to drier environments, their water-based communication stopped being as effective due to the reliance of needing to be underwater to speak, but with their electric organs working just as fine in the air as in the sea this is where they began learning out to speak with gas. Breathing wise technically cerebrocrustaceans are still exclusively water-breathers, hence the rebreathers over their gills, but their mouth doesn't connect to the respiratory system. Instead their gizzards, using their muscles to depressurise the organ and allow air (and it's specific chemical make up, whatever that ends up being) to fill the gizzards like they would with water, allowing the air and mainly the gizzard itself to vibrate with electrical induction. Functionally, it's a different enough way of speaking that the sounds - even if one can find comparisons between the two and understand that they are of similar phonetics - similar phonetics does not mean the same phonetics and some sounds cannot be produced in the air; all cerebrocrustaceans are functionally bilingual if only due to the fact that water speaking and air speaking are phonotactically unique enough from each other to be considered different languages, even if they never live anywhere else or live exclusively in one environ over the other, global Encephalonus school systems always have water and air dialects on the curriculum in language classes.

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

Baby Taylor's baby voice is so endearing and it's going to be bittersweet to "lose" that on the TVs, but I'm really excited to hear how they clean up (or not) the production on Debut. I mean I know they're going to make it as accurate as possible to the originals, but I mean in the actual sound mixing and stuff. Because I feel like this album could benefit the most from some of that! Which is not to say that the original is bad BECAUSE IT'S NOT, but I think there is subtle stuff they can do with the mixing/blending/instrumentals/treble/etc. to make it shine even more.

[thetomorrowshow]

i came to take up your offer

posted to ao3 19 November 2024

this is a fic that was a dream i had :)

~

Grian’s been trying to leave for months, now. Years, even. 

When one’s home world turns to war, though, the portals all close. There are ways to get out, but hubs tend to ban the presence of refugees, so if you escape you have to be well-disguised and have quick entrance to another world.

Grian’s seventeen when the war breaks out, and the draft comes for him as soon as he’s eighteen. He escapes when he’s twenty-three, after fighting in this stupid war for five years.

There’s a small group of friends that he’s gathered—people from high school, fellow soldiers, et cetera—that are all waiting on a message from him at any time, telling them when and where. Grian’s not sure how he ended up in a leadership position, but he promises them that he’ll work on it, and until then he fights this bloody war and hates every second of it.

Then it happens.

Twenty-three years old, about to march into a battle. He’s out on the field already, scoping out the place, taking notes on where they ought to line up their cannons, when he passes over a patch of land that makes his stomach swoop.

Grian blinks.

Then he backs up, walks over it again.

It’s just a bit of grass, a space no bigger than a meter squared, nestled between the roots of a massive, gnarled willow tree. He’d thought that hiding under the shadow of the tree might keep them hidden, give them a moment of surprise against the opposing army, but now he quickly leaves it, noting down that it is not an advisable place for anyone to be.

There’s a portal under the grass, he’s sure of it. One that no one had caught, hidden as it was.

He sends out the message that night. They’re all there, camped on the other side of the hill from the battlefield, but he doesn’t dare to whisper of their plans aloud. Plans to desert could just as easily get them executed as the battle tomorrow.

Found it , he writes. Meet me after the battle if you survive .

None of them respond. He doesn’t expect them to.

-

This battle is no different from any of the others. Grian considers himself lucky that he’s on the winning side, because it leaves him with less of a likelihood that he won’t make it. He sits in a trench for days, tnt exploding all around him, bullets whizzing past his ears, and occasionally pops his head up and fires at the lines opposite.

By the afternoon of the fifth day, they’ve won this one. The other army retreats, and the soldiers all around Grian breathe silent sighs of relief as they haul themselves out of the mud and trudge on back to camp.

Grian hangs back, volunteering to start digging graves. Nobody else wants to, of course, when they have the chance to go back to camp and wash off and sleep, so they let Grian stay and lead the gravedigging, a handful of others helping him.

Once the rest of the army has disappeared over the hill, Grian turns to Martyn.

“By the willow tree,” he says shortly, and Martyn nods once.

It isn’t too deeply buried. They dig for maybe half an hour before BigB’s shovel vanishes entirely, and from there, they dig carefully, handfuls at a time, to completely unearth the small square of swirling, purple portal.

Grian’s never cared too much for purple, but right now, in this final moment, it’s the most beautiful color in the world.

They stand in silence, gathered around it, all eyes drawn to it. Finally, Grian pulls his gaze away, quickly counts everyone there.

“We’re missing someone,” he murmurs. There’s only nine of them, including himself. Shouldn’t there be ten? “Who are we missing?”

“Timmy,” Martyn supplies. Grian bites his lip, glances behind himself at the bloodied and torn ground.

“Did he. . . ?”

“No,” Netty’s quick to assure. “No, I saw him. I think he’s on the hill.”

On the hill? Why hadn’t he come down to help them?

Grian huffs, adjusts his pack over his shoulders. “Right. I’ll go find him. Pretend to dig graves.”

He isn’t the oldest among them, but somehow, he’s become the leader. They trust him—maybe it’s because he was able to get in contact with an enemy soldier and convince him to join their group, or maybe it’s because he’s willing to admin a world once they get out to create a safe place for them, or maybe it’s because he’s an ordained minister and he married Martyn and Netty for free. Maybe none of that.

Maybe he’s just the only one who dared.

So Grian, the leader, heads back out from under the shade of the old willow tree.

He doesn’t want to go looking for Jimmy. He knew they were supposed to gather after the battle, and he should have seen them getting ready. If certain members of his group weren’t such bleeding hearts, he would have just left him behind.

Having to take the time to look for him could put their entire escape at risk.

He finds him, and not nearly quickly enough. He searches for what must be almost an hour, trekking across uneven, exploded ground and limp bodies, before he eventually spots a figure sitting on the side of the hill. He’d had to go all the way to the other side of the battlefield to see him, angled to look out toward the setting sun as he was.

Grian huffs when he sees him, starts hiking up the hill. Of course, he had to be on a different side of the hill instead of the one that faced that battlefield.

Why didn’t he come down? He knew what was happening, why didn’t he help them?

Jimmy’s face is smudged with dirt and soot and a bit of crusted blood, his helmet in the grass beside him, his hair limp and greasy. His uniform is barely recognizable under all the grime, even worse than some of the others of their group. He must have been near an explosion.

He’s just sitting there, knees pulled up to his chest, gazing out at the reddening sky. He doesn’t even look at Grian, not more than a glance to the side.

“Come on,” Grian says, folding his arms. He’s out of breath from the walk up, exhausted down to his bones. He hasn’t slept in almost two days straight, far longer than any soldier is supposed to go (but about the amount of time that all of them spend, anyhow). “Let’s go. We’ve already dug it up, we’re just waiting on you.”

Jimmy doesn’t respond.

“Let’s go,” Grian complains. “Get up, we’re going. Unless—”

“I can’t hear you,” Jimmy says bluntly.

Grian rolls his eyes, then sits down in front of Jimmy, the grass crunching under him. Jimmy’s eyes focus on him, weary and irritated and bloodshot.

After a staring contest that Grian quite decidedly wins, Jimmy groans, digs in his pocket. His dirt-stained fingers pull out a hearing aid, gingerly fit it into his right ear.

“We’re leaving,” Grian says, once Jimmy stops fiddling with it. “We’ve got the portal, we’re all about to go in. You coming?”

Jimmy sighs. “What’s the point?”

“What’s the point? The point is that we get out of here. We’ll never have to fight again, come on.”

“Wherever we go, it’ll turn to war eventually. That’s just how it is.”

“Not on my server,” Grian says firmly. “I’m gonna admin a world. It’ll be peaceful, I swear.”

It’s clear that Jimmy doesn’t believe him. He shifts, just a bit, so that he can see the sunset over Grian’s shoulder.

There’s something odd in his expression, under the layers of battle. Something dark. Something . . . disturbed.

Well, he tried.

When Grian rejoins the group around the portal, Martyn raises an eyebrow.

“He didn’t want to,” Grian says by way of explanation. Martyn sighs.

“I’ll go talk to him,” he says, heading off in that direction. “Don’t wait up, all right?”

They don’t.

Grian goes first. He went to a hub once, when he was thirteen. The one he lands in isn’t so different from that one, but Grian doesn’t stick around in its portal room for long. He heads to the first public restroom he can spot (just off the main room, the sign visible from far off), where he takes off his shirt and balls it up, shoves it into the trash can. He sticks his dog tags into his pocket, then scrubs the grime off his face until he’s moderately presentable.

His trousers are plain enough that they won’t immediately call him out as a soldier on the run, and his white tee is dirt stained but passable. He has all the money he’s ever earned in his backpack, which he transfers to the front pocket of his trousers.

Tom slips into the restroom, stripping his shirt off. Grian pats him on the shoulder and walks out, then confidently strides to the nearest information desk.

“I’d like to buy a world,” he says, his eyes following Netty and Salem as they fall into the hub together. The woman at the desk surveys him for a moment, then slides a paper to him.

“Fill out the form.”

-

They call it Evo, and it’s everything Grian’s ever wanted.

Evo. It’s an old, abandoned world (absurdly old, honestly), the cheapest available. Grian had spent every coin he had to purchase it, much to his chagrin. Even so, this rusty old dump is safe, and has respawns, and they can all live here in peace.

He loves it.

He gets to properly build for the first time in his life. He has his own place, where he can feel the clay under his feet and feel the salty breeze against his cheeks and it’s perfect.

Grian doesn’t spend much time around spawn, usually out in the ocean, working on his base, but he stops by to fix up a rail on his little train track and notices that Jimmy’s there, sitting atop the Property Police station.

He’s staring at the sunset, legs drawn up to his chest.

Grian doesn’t call up to him. He doesn’t do anything.

He just watches him for a moment, then heads back home.