#Gas Line Pressure Test

[millers-girl]

where it hurts

chapter 4 of willow & whiskey

pairing: Joel Miller x f!reader

summary: an injury, an apology, and a lesson in survival bring you and Joel closer – and reminds you what's at stake.

warnings/tags: age gap, adult language, blood and violence, death

word count: 6.5k

series masterlist

Somewhere in western Pennsylvania, Joel stopped the truck at a gas station. You were running out of gas, meaning he’d have to get lucky and siphon fuel from other cars – if there were any who still had some left.

As he worked, with Ellie keeping him company, you remained in the passenger seat of the stationary truck, feet up on the dash, head buried in The Two Towers. 

Save for Ellie and Joel’s conversation, the world outside was quiet. Only the occasional chirp of a bird or the distant rustling of leaves interrupted your silence.

With the windows down, you heard Ellie ask, "So, how does it work?" 

Joel, kneeling on the ground with a tube in hand, answered, "It's a siphon. It's when liquid – travels against gravity – because pressure – umm – "

Ellie was already on the verge of giggling. "You don't know," she accused. 

"I know it works."

You smirked behind the book, flipping to the next page nonchalantly as you cleared up, "It creates a vacuum in the tube so liquid draws up from the car and gravity pushes it down into the red container Joel's holding.” 

Ellie hummed, nodding along before quickly growing bored with the conversation altogether. She stalked toward the tree line. 

"No wandering," you and Joel said at the same time, both your heads snapping to lock eyes with each other. You swallowed, looking away first. 

"Okay," Ellie said, leaning against the back door of the car and pulling a book out of her pack. "This is both your faults then." She flipped to a random page. "It doesn't matter how much you push the envelope, it'll still be stationery." She laughed to herself while you got out of the car. "No Pun Intended, Volume Too by Will Livingston. Volume Too. Look. You get it?" 

"Jesus," Joel mumbled, shaking his head.

Feeling the stiffness in your muscles from sitting too long, you shut your book and got out of the car, stretching your arms above your head before walking over to Joel.

"Need any help?" You asked, leaning against the car he was siphoning gas from.

You weren’t really sure how to approach your conversations with him anymore. The tension had been uncomfortable between you since Bill’s town. He’d crossed a line and hadn’t apologized––not really––but he had given you that book, the one now resting on the hood of the car, as some sort of peace offering.

It wasn’t much, but it was something. Still, the silence between you both stretched too often, the weight of what was said heavy. 

Joel shook his head at your offer, sucking on the end of the tube until gas started pouring out into the red container. His eyes flicked up to yours as he did it, and you bit your lip, fighting the instinct to mutter something inappropriate. Okay, you pick – you want the comment about sucking something while making eye contact with me, or about being on your knees in front of me?

Before, you might've said it, testing the waters, seeing him fluster. Now, you weren’t sure if that door was still open. The space between you felt fragile, like one wrong move would shatter it entirely.

As if sensing the strain, Ellie continued with her jokes until Joel gave her a reaction. "I stayed up all night, wondering where the sun went – “

"No," Joel begged. 

Triumphant, Ellie finished anyway. "Then it dawned on me."

You chuckled as Joel turned to Ellie with exasperation. "Feel free to wait in the truck."

"Ugh, okay," Ellie groaned, conceding. "But, just know – you can't escape Will Livingston. He'll be back... there's nothing you can do to stop him."

She climbed into the truck, and you started to follow until Joel’s voice stopped you, surprising both you and him. "What part of the book you on?" he asked, quieter than you expected.

You turned back, brows furrowed. This was how he wanted to break the tension?

"What? It can't be worse than that joke book."

“It’s not,” you confirmed, though your voice still carried a hint of strain. You tried to keep it lighter. “It’s just…”

"Just what?"

You hesitated, then let it go. If he wasn’t ready to talk about things, you wouldn’t push it.

"Why is it so slow?" You huffed, flipping the book in your hands. "No, seriously. I mean, I flew through the first one. Now, it's taking forever to get through Frodo and Sam's journey to Mordor."

Joel rolled his eyes. "Patience is a virtue. You gotta get through the boring stuff to appreciate the good stuff."

You scoffed. "And why is there no action? The first book was full of it, and now – “

"Not everything in life is fast-paced," Joel said, his voice softer now. "Some things take time. You gotta peel back the layers – doesn't make ‘em any less worth it."

Your breathing hitched, eyes locked onto his. As a chronic overthinker, you couldn’t decide if he was saying that with a double meaning or just as a throwaway comment? Surely, the former. Surely, he was talking about himself – trying to apologize without apologizing again – saying he had a lot of walls up, layers that needed peeling back. And that you were doing it, slowly but surely. And it would be worth it.

You couldn’t tell – but it gave you a little hope.

And that was why you ripped the band-aid off, cocked your head to the side, and joked, "Are you trying to give me life advice? Or get in my pants?"

Joel choked on his water, coughing into his fist. "What?"

"Some things in life are worth the effort," you echoed his words, lowering your voice to mimic him. "Like what, Joel? Are you teasing?"

"I could've meant anything when I said that," Joel retorted, attempting to regain his composure.

You crossed your arms, smirking. "But you didn't."

"You're real forward, you know that?" he deflected. 

“And you're avoiding the question."

Before you could press further, Joel turned back to look at Ellie in the backseat of the truck. "We should get movin’. It's getting late, and we got a long drive ahead."

You sighed, disappointment flickering across your face. For the first time in days, a conversation between you two had felt easy. And just like that, it was over.

Clearing your throat, you muttered, “Right – got a schedule to keep.” 

Joel could hear the shift in your voice, so he cleared his throat too, picking your book off the hood of the car to hand it to you. "Keep readin’. You're almost to the good part."

You took it from him, fingers grazing his. He pulled away quickly, but the warmth lingered.

Climbing into the truck, you stretched your feet up onto the dash. When Joel began to drive again, he tapped your leg once. When you ignored it, he reached over and grasped your ankle, gently pulling it down.

You frowned, making him say, "S’dangerous. What if we crash and the airbags go off? You could get injured."

You rolled your eyes, cheeks flushing. "You have so little faith in your driving skills, old man." Still, you kept your feet off the dash.

When Joel had turned onto the highway and you shifted your eyes down to your book, Ellie’s head popped up in the space between you two. 

"I got something," she announced, holding a cassette tape out. "This make you all nostalgic?" She turned to Joel with a grin.

Joel took the tape from her, glancing at it before stating, "This is actually before my time. It's a winner, though,” He popped the tape into the slot. A moment later, the car filled with music, the static-crackled notes settling over the three of you.

"Got something else," Ellie announced. You could hear her flipping through pages in the back. "It's, uh... light on the reading, but it's got some interesting pictures."

You turned back, eyebrows raised, just in time to see her holding up a porn magazine. Joel caught it in the rear-view mirror at the same time, his entire body stiffening.

Your reaction was immediate. Laughter burst from your chest, bubbling up uncontrollably until tears pricked the corners of your eyes. Joel meanwhile, remained panicked, yet firmly put on his ‘parent voice.’

"Oh. No, no, no. Put that back. That's not for kids. Ellie."

His eyes darted between the road, you, and the rear-view mirror. Wiping a tear away, you simply giggled, “It’s sex ed.” 

“It’s not,” Joel countered, exasperated.

"How would he even walk around with that thing?" Ellie gaped at the photo in front of her.

"Please get rid of it," Joel begged, visibly mortified.

Ellie sighed dramatically. "Hold your horses. I wanna see what all the fuss is about."

Joel turned to you, desperation laced in his voice. "Can you…?”

You huffed, facing forward but holding your hand out for Ellie to hand the magazine over. "Why are all these pages stuck together?" Ellie asked, before shoving the magazine into your grasp. 

You barely had a second to process the words before you recoiled, dropping the magazine like it had burst into flames.

"Ew, Ellie! What the fuck?!" you yelped, wiping your hand on the nearest fabric available – unfortunately, Joel’s jacket.

Joel turned to you with a disgusted look on his face and you both glanced at Ellie. "I'm just fuckin' with ya," she cackled, tossing the magazine out the window. “Bye-bye, dude.” 

Joel made dinner that night, warming canned pasta over a small flame. Ellie scarfed it down.

"Slow down," Joel tried.

"This is slow," she mumbled, mouth full of food. "What am I even eating?"

"That is twenty-year-old Chef Boyardee ravioli."

"That guy was good," Ellie complimented.

"I actually agree," Joel said, making you softly smile. Even if your relationship with him was somewhat strained, you still liked seeing him get along with Ellie. 

Your eyes shifted to the girl in question, whose mood suddenly changed. She’d gone quiet, stirring her food idly. "What's on your mind, love?"

"How long are we staying out here?" she asked.

You turned to Joel. "I figure I sleep tonight... and drive tomorrow all day, all night, get us to Wyoming by next mornin'."

"Why don't you teach me how to drive tomorrow?" you suggested. "We can split the driving."

Joel gave you a flat look. "You don't know how to drive?"

"Must've missed driving lessons in the middle of the world ending."

“Alright, smartass,” he muttered.

Ellie pulled her jacket tighter around her. "Can we start a fire? I'm freezing."

"Now, why am I gonna tell you no?" Joel asked. His tone caught your attention because it was the first time he'd used it with Ellie. It wasn't bad; he just sounded like a dad scolding his kid. 

"Because Infected will see the smoke," Ellie droned, as if she already knew the answer.

Joel shook his head. "No, Fungus ain’t that smart. This is too remote for Infected, anyway."

"People?" Ellie asked, Joel nodded, jaw tight. "So what are they gonna do? Rob us?"

"Oh, they'll have way more in mind than that." 

The way he said it made your stomach twist. Ellie stiffened slightly, and without thinking, you nudged Joel in the side. He shot you a look, rubbing his ribs. 

You knew that comment would stick with Ellie. 

Later that night, you felt Ellie shift beside you in the sleeping bag, restless. "Joel."

"What?"

"Can I ask you a serious question?"

"Yeah."

"Why did the scarecrow get an award?" 

Joel waited a moment. "Because he was outstanding in his field."

Ellie's laughter filled the air around them. "You dick! Did you read this?"

"No." He turned back around. "Now go to sleep."

She then nudged you, whispering, "Hey... those people Joel mentioned... there's no way anyone knows we're here, right? No one's gonna find us?" 

You ran your fingers through her hair, voice soft. "No one's gonna find us."

She sighed, curling deeper into the shared warmth. "Okay."

You should have fallen asleep easily after that, but something gnawed at your gut. Hours passed, and when you blinked awake, a shadowed figure stood a few feet away.

Your breath hitch, heart hammering – until you saw the familiar shape of his shoulders, the familiar line of his stance.

Joel.

He was standing watch. 

Because of Ellie's comment.

You exhaled, tension unraveling from your limbs. Carefully, you slipped out of the sleeping bag, grabbed an extra blanket from the car, and made your way over to him.

“Busted,” you softly teased, grin wide as you plopped down against a tree nearby, draping the blanket over yourself. “How long you been up?” 

He huffed quietly, making his way over to sit next to you under the blanket. “Never fell asleep.” 

“You’re turning into a softie,” you accused. He didn’t deny it. “You want to get some sleep? I can take over.” 

He shook his head. “Naw, I’m good.” 

You silently nodded, but didn’t move, and Joel seemed to understand what that meant. This was you extending an olive branch, giving him the time and space to apologize for what he’d said back at Bill’s town, how he’d treated you. 

A long pause stretched between you before he finally cleared his throat. “Listen, I uh… Back at Bill’s… I shouldn’t have said what I did.” 

And, even though you’d given him the space to fill the silence with an apology, you suddenly found yourself unable to meet his eyes. “Which part?” You quietly asked, pulling at the weeds by your feet and staring ahead at the fire. 

“All of it.” 

Another silence. As far as apologies went, it was pretty shit – even Joel knew.

He forced himself to continue, as uncomfortable as it clearly made him. “I was pissed… Not at you, but I took it out on you anyway. Wasn’t right of me.” 

You swallowed, finding the strength to meet his eyes. “Did you mean it?” 

He frowned. “What?” 

“That my grief is useless,” you said simply, watching his reaction. “That I’m not doing anything with it.” 

He shut his eyes for a moment, silently berating himself for speaking such cruel words to you in the first place. “I didn’t mean it like that… I used to think… I used to think grief was somethin’ you had to carry, hold on to, or it meant you didn’t care.” He swallowed, eyes flickering toward Ellie’s sleeping form before coming back to you. “I was wrong.”

The admission hung between you two, heavier than anything else he’d said.

Your gaze softened. “I’m trying,” you admitted, voice quieter now. “I just don’t know what to do with all of it – I mean, I don’t – Nate would’ve – ” You cut yourself off quickly, realizing you’d let his name slip.

Joel studied you, watching how you froze for a second. And then, in a quiet movement, he reached out. It wasn’t much – the briefest of touches, the backs of his fingers grazing your wrist where your hand rested against your knee. But it was enough to steal the breath from your lungs.

His touch lingered, hesitant. Testing.

You could feel the calluses on his fingers, the warmth of his skin.

Your throat tightened, but he didn’t pull away. “I got no right tellin’ you what you should and shouldn’t do with your feelings,” he said, voice low, rough. “But I… I don’t want you carryin’ it alone. S’not fair.” 

Your chest ached at that. Slowly, carefully, you turned your hand over, letting your fingers brush against his. 

His breath hitched, just barely.

Before you could overthink it, you blurted, “Nate took care of Ellie and I in the QZ. He used to be a guard, but even so, we barely made ends meet… He used to get into these underground boxing fights to get some extra ration cards so we could eat. I told him it was dumb; we’d get them another way, but… he was stubborn.” You chuckled quietly. “I miss that about him.

“He wouldn’t let me go to those fights – said it wasn’t safe… And, one night he went, and he didn’t come back. And all the other guards got rid of his ID, the stuff in his locker, his uniform… like he never existed. They never spoke about him again… I filled in the blanks myself.”

After a beat of silence, Joel spoke up. “Nate,” he tried the name out on his tongue.

“Nathan,” you corrected, with a hint of a smile. “I was the only one he ever let call him that.” After a moment, you concluded. “Nathan. That’s the name behind my grief.” 

Joel met your eyes, feeling his words escaping past his lips before he could try to wrangle them in. “Sarah,” he said in a voice softer than you’d ever heard it, speaking her name for the first time in a long time. “That’s the name behind mine.” 

He didn’t say anything more; he wasn’t ready to. And that was alright by you.

For the first time, you let yourself lean into the proceeding quiet between you, into the way his presence steadied something in you.

And when his fingers finally curled around yours––warm, steady, solid––you let him.

The next day, Joel was slurping coffee like a man starved for it. And only you knew why. Because, with every sip he took, you felt the same bone-deep exhaustion he did. You’d stayed up all night too. Not because he asked you to, not because he let you take watch. Just because you kept him company, watching the dark stretch of road with him, listening to the quiet hum of the night.

Now, in the daylight, the atmosphere was much lighter. In the car, you kept glancing at Joel, a soft smile ghosting your lips. The weight was finally off your shoulders – you felt relief. 

Hours passed with only light conversation and a Hank Williams cassette to fill the silence, until Ellie asked, “What’s his name?” 

"Whose name, love?" you asked, looking up from your book.

"Joel's brother."

"Tommy," Joel answered. 

"Younger or older?"

"Younger," you answered for him without thinking, your eyes flicking up to meet Joel’s. You tilted your head to the side. "Come on. You so give off older brother energy."

"Why isn't he with you?" 

Joel exhaled through his nose, shifting in his seat. "Tommy's what we used to call a 'joiner.' Dreams of becomin' a hero. So he enlisted in the Army right outta high school. A few months later, they ship him off to Desert Storm. Point is, bein' in the Army didn't make him feel much like a hero. Cut to 12 years later, outbreak happens. He convinces me to join a group makin' their way up to Boston, which I did... mostly to keep an eye on him, keep him alive.

"It's where we met Tess. And that whole crew, we, uh... Well, for what it was, it worked. And then Tommy meets Marlene. She talks him into joinin' the Fireflies. Same mistake he made when he was 18. Wants to save the world. Pipe dream. Him, Fireflies, all of 'em... delusional. 'Course last I heard, he quit the Fireflies, too. So now he's on his own out there, and... I gotta go get him."

After a beat of silence, Ellie asked what you were thinking. "If you don't think there's hope for the world, why bother going on? I mean, you gotta try, right?"

"You haven't seen the world, so you don't know. You keep goin' for family. That's about it." 

"I'm not family," Ellie said quietly.

"No... you're cargo. And I made a promise to Tess. And she was like family."

You rolled your eyes at that comment. You knew he didn’t mean it, not really. You could see it, even if he couldn’t. He was starting to look at Ellie differently, starting to protect her like something precious. She wasn’t cargo – he just didn’t know it yet.

So, instead of snapping at him, you turned to Ellie, grabbing hold of her hand and squeezing. “You’re my family. That’s all that matters.” 

You said it simply, with no resentment or sarcasm towards Joel. Ellie looked at you, eyes flickering with love and gratitude before she squeezed back.

An hour later, she was fast asleep in the back, making soft snoring sounds that were music to your ears. And, in the front, Joel was keenly aware of you curled up in a ball on your side of the seat. 

"Look, what I said – "

You were already shaking your head. “I think one apology is enough for today,” you said considerately. “Besides, it’s not like you mean it.” 

His brows furrowed. “What are you talkin’ about?” 

You merely shrugged. “You don’t stay up on lookout all night for someone who’s just ‘cargo.’” 

And, to that, he didn’t have a comeback.

You didn’t need to look at him to know he was chewing on your words, turning them over in that head of his.

The quiet stretched until he hit a road bump – a pileup of cars blocking off the rest of the highway. 

You finally glanced up from your book, frowning. “Where are we?” 

“Kansas City.” Joel sighed, eyes glued to the road. “Can you hand me the map, darlin’?”

You froze for half a second before handing him the map.

Darlin’. 

It was the first time he’d ever called you that. It made you feel warm; your fingers tingled, like they wanted to reach out and take his –

“Screw it,” Joel cut off your thoughts. “We can jog around this tunnel, take the next ramp, and we’re back on the road. Minute tops.” 

You swallowed, pushing whatever that was down, and turned to wake Ellie, knowing she’d want to see the city, even if it was just a glimpse. 

What was meant to be “a minute tops” ended up being much longer. Joel got turned around, and you were no help with the map.

“I don’t know where we are,” you sighed in defeat. 

Joel glanced at the map in your lap. “Don’t look at the state map. Turn it over to the inset.” 

“Ellie’s better at this,” you argued before handing the map to the teenager in the back, hoping she could make sense of it. 

“This is my second day in a fucking car, man,” she defended. 

As they bickered, and Joel kept driving north––eyes constantly shifting between Ellie, the map, and the road––you felt it before you saw him. 

A shift in the air. A sickly dread curled in your stomach, cold and sharp.

Your eyes remained glued to the figure stumbling onto the road.

“Joel,” you tugged at his sleeve, pulse spiking. “Joel!” 

He looked up just in time to see the man clutching his side, blood seeping through his fingers, staggering towards the car.

“Hey!” he cried, voice raw with pain. “Please help!”

Your stomach twisted.

Without taking his eyes off the man, Joel said, “Seatbelts. Now.”

You were already halfway through the motion, hands shaking slightly. You knew what was coming next.

“Aren’t we gonna help him? Ellie asked, voice lined with uncertainty.

“No,” you and Joel said in unison.

Your grip tightened on the dashboard as Joel slammed his foot on the gas.

The man barely had time to dive out of the way before something crashed onto the windshield from above, shattering glass in a spiderweb of cracks. Your heart lurched as the tires then hit a spike strip, the car jerking violently as they deflated.

A second figure appeared from around the corner.

Joel cursed under his breath, yanking the wheel hard. You barely had time to brace before the car crashed straight through a storefront window.

The impact sent shockwaves through your body; the air felt knocked out of you. 

When the car stopped, Joel immediately turned to you. “Are you okay?” You nodded, swallowing hard. Your hands trembled, reaching for his arm as he turned back to Ellie. “You’re not hurt? Nothin’?” 

“I don’t think so,” Ellie answered, just before gunshots rang through the air, aiming at the car. It made all three of you flinch, ducking down before quickly undoing your belts and exiting the car in a crouch.

Joel crouched between you and Ellie, rifle in hand as more gunshots rang through the air. The smell of gunpowder and dust clogged your nostrils, mixing with the metallic tang of your fight or flight response on your tongue.

“Hey,” Joel said, voice low but firm, grabbing your and Ellie’s attention. “You see that hole?” He was referring to one on the adjacent wall, leading through to another room. “Can you squeeze through?” He asked you, knowing Ellie would fit. 

Your breath hitched. “What?” You squeaked. “I’m not leaving you.” Your fingers dug into your pack, pulling out your gun as if that alone would prove your point. 

Joel barely spared it a glance. “When I say go, you two crawl to that wall and squeeze through. You don’t come out until I say, okay?” 

You sighed in frustration as Ellie nodded along, head shifting nervously toward the sound of bullets. “They’re not gonna hit you, love,” you promised, reaching out to squeeze her hand. “Now, can you do as Joel says?” 

Joel turned to you, ready to argue, but you shook your head, pushing closer to him. “I’m not leaving you. Now, are we gonna protect Ellie and get out of this, or you wanna keep arguing?” 

His jaw tightened, but he said nothing.

Instead, he turned to Ellie. “You stay down. You stay low. You stay quiet.” 

Ellie nodded, clearly still nervous. “Okay.” 

“Okay,” Joel echoed. He turned to you, eyes lingering like he was memorizing your face. Then, a sharp nod. “Go!” 

You didn’t wait to see Ellie get to the hole – you had faith in her abilities. Instead, you and Joel both rose from behind the truck bed, guns aimed at the hostiles, and began firing.

Later, you retreated behind a toppled shelf, breath coming in short gasps as you reloaded. Only one hostile left.

When Joel took him down, you both waited a moment. Silence. 

Then, when it was seemingly safe and Joel was fixing the jam in his gun, another body came hurtling through the back exit of the store, crashing into yours and sending you sprawled onto the cold concrete.

Your head smacked against the ground, and for a moment, everything blurred – the world narrowing into muffled noise and a high-pitched ringing. 

Through your haze, you saw Joel pinned beneath the attacker, and your pulse roared to life. You scrambled to your feet, but before you could act, the sharp crack of a gunshot split the air.

Ellie stood a few feet away, arms locked, hands gripping a gun. 

The man collapsed on top of Joel. 

Joel shoved the body off of him, coughing and wheezing to catch his breath. You crouched down beside him, helping him sit up.

The man, now on his back, pressed a trembling and to his spine, pulling it away to see blood. His expression shifted from pain to shock to fear.

He looked up and met Ellie’s eyes past the barrel of her gun. “No, no, no. It’s okay,” he said, voice shaking. “It’s over. We’re not fighting anymore… I’ll go home and tell everyone you’re good.” A sob tore through him. “I don’t know what to do.” 

You glanced down at Joel, sharing a silent, weighted look, before helping him up. His fingers curled around your forearm, grounding himself – or maybe grounding you.

“My legs don’t work,” the man wheezed. “My mom isn’t far, if you could get me to her… We could trade with you guys.” 

A lump formed in your throat. The desperation in his voice clawed at something deep inside you, something you tried not to acknowledge. He was just a kid. Just a scared kid.

Beside you, Joel exhaled sharply, eyes flicking over you. 

“We could be friends,” the man begged. “I didn’t know. I’m Bryan – I’m Bryan. What’s your name? Are you guys sisters?” His gaze darted between you and Ellie.

Your breath stuttered. You turned away, unable to look at him, unable to look at Ellie as tears brimmed your waterline.

From beside you, Joel’s voice came low, firm. “Get back behind the wall.” 

Ellie hesitated, eyes shifting to you. You nodded, biting the inside of your cheek to keep from breaking. A hand covered your mouth, holding in any sound that threatened to slip free.

“No, no, no. I’m sorry – I’m sorry. Please, please – we could just talk. Please, please. No, no no! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” 

Over his shouts, Joel turned to you, voice barely audible. “You too, baby.”

You flinched. He wanted you to go too. To look away.

You bit your bottom lip, wiping away the tears as your grip on his jacket sleeve tightened. “I’m not leaving you,” you whispered.

It wasn’t fair to let him carry this alone. It seemed like he always did. And he always would if you let him.

Joel held your gaze, reading into everything you weren’t saying. He exhaled, nodding once.

The man sobbed, calling for his mother.

You pressed your forehead against Joel’s shoulder, eyes squeezing shut. His warmth seeped through his jacket, grounding you in the chaos and reality of the moment.

Joel raised his gun. The shot echoed in the small space, final and unforgiving.

For a long moment, neither of you moved. 

Then, he turned to you, thumb brushing away a stray tear from your cheek. His touch was fleeting, like he wasn’t sure if he should do it. 

Then, he called out to Ellie, who cleared up the doorway for you two to enter the room she was currently in.

She caught you staring at her––not just you, Joel too––and shrugged off the looks.

“I’m okay,” she said quickly, grabbing her pack off the floor. “I’m good.” She cleared her throat. “What now?” 

While you observed her, Joel answered. “We go up. Hopefully, we can spot a clear route out.” 

You reached for Ellie, a steady hand on her shoulder. She leaned into it for just a second before pulling away.

With one last glance at the wall, behind which the man’s lifeless body now laid, you followed Joel out.

And didn’t look back.

“Are we okay in here?” Ellie asked as the three of you holed up in some abandoned bar. The windows were boarded up with wooden planks and old, yellowed newspapers, their edges curling with age. Dust hung in the air, catching the slivers of light that managed to slip through the cracks.

“For now,” Joel answered before shaking his head. “But they’ll be comin’ through here soon enough.”

The shootout in the store had turned the entire resistance group in Pittsburgh against you. That explained why you hadn’t seen any FEDRA officers or a QZ – just a lawless city now teeming with people hunting you down.

Ellie had spotted a skyscraper a few blocks away. The plan was to wait until the patrols moved further out before making a break for it.

For now, you all settled in as best you could. Joel took a seat at the bar, his posture heavy with exhaustion, while you and Ellie slid to the floor, leaning against the barricaded windows. The wood was rough against your back, but it was better than nothing.

You winced as soon as your head rested against the panes, a sharp sting radiating from your scalp. 

“You okay?” Ellie asked as you reached a tentative hand to your scalp and pulled it back to see your fingers sticky with blood.

As soon as Joel saw, he was kneeling in front of you, brows furrowed deep as he assessed the wound. 

“I’ll be fine,” you murmured, trying to brush off the concern. “Just a cut on my scalp. It’ll stop bleeding if I put some pressure on it.” 

Joel didn’t say anything, just got up and disappeared behind the bar, rummaging through whatever he could find. When he returned, he pressed a makeshift rag––as clean as he could find––firmly against the back of your head. His other hand was gently against your forehead, counterbalancing the force.

Even as he took such good care of you, he wouldn’t meet your eyes. 

You frowned. “What’s wrong?”

He hesitated, then shook his head. “Thing is… I didn’t hear that guy comin’... and if I did, you wouldn’t be bleedin’ and Ellie – “ He looked over at her, his expression pinched with guilt. “You wouldn’t have had to… you shouldn’t have had to… you know.” 

Your stomach twisted as you followed his gaze. Ellie sat stiff, her fingers anxiously picking at a loose thread on her sleeve. You reached up, gently pulling Joel’s hand away so you could shift your focus to Ellie. Running a soothing hand through her hair, you spoke for him.

“I think what Joel means is… you’re only fourteen, love. You shouldn’t know what it means to have to make that decision.”

Joel swallowed hard and nodded. “It was my fault. You shouldn’t’ve had to… and I’m sorry.” 

Ellie’s breath hitched, her fingers curling into fists as she furiously wiped at her eyes. It wasn’t enough. You reached out and pulled her into your arms, pressing a soft kiss to her head as she clung to you. Her shoulders trembled against you, silent tears soaking into your shirt.

“It’s not your fault,” you whispered, your hand moving up and down her back in slow, steady strokes. “You’re okay now. You’re safe. We’re not going to let anything happen to you.” 

You wished you could undo it. Wished you could take back her shot, take away the weight of what she had to do. But, the truth was, you couldn’t shield her from everything. You could only teach her how to survive it. 

You met Joel’s gaze over the top of Ellie’s head, your voice quiet but firm. “Can I have her gun?” 

He silently reached into the back of his jeans, pulling out the gun and handing it over to you. You unloaded the magazine and emptied the chamber before offering it to Ellie.

“Show me your grip,” you said gently.

Ellie adjusted her hold, her fingers wrapping around the handle.

The way she held it had Joel nearly scoffing. “Now, who taught you that?” 

“FEDRA school.” 

“Figures.” He reached over to correct her grip. “There you go. Now, look it.”

He went to snatch the gun from her, but Ellie tightened her grip, holding firm. Joel shook the gun lightly, testing her hold, but she didn’t let go. It made her giggle, and you found yourself smiling, storing away the rare lighthearted moment like a mental picture.

“Okay?” Joel asked, making Ellie beam and nod.

He loaded the gun and glanced your way––you nodded in silent agreement––before offering it back to Ellie, grip first.

“It’s only for emergencies,” you told her, watching as she started to tuck it into the waistband of her pants like Joel did.

“Nuh-uh,” Joel cut in, shaking his head. “You put it in your pack. You’ll shoot your damn ass off.” 

Ellie snorted. You laughed. The sound felt foreign but welcomed nonetheless in the middle of your current predicament.

When it was time to move, and Ellie went to tuck the gun into her bag, you helped Joel pull the barricades from the door. As you lifted one of the heavier planks, you let your fingers brush over his, squeezing gently in silent thanks.

He met your gaze. “We’ll get through this,” he promised. 

You nodded, believing him. “I know.” 

With Ellie between you, the three of you slipped out into the daylight, heading for the skyscraper. .

Climbing up thirty-three flights of stairs was brutal, even for you and Ellie. It hit Joel harder, making him feel his age by the time you reached your destination. As soon as you hit the landing, he dropped onto the floor with a groan. 

Ellie nudged his boot. “Come on. Get up, you lazy ass.” 

Joel scoffed. “Lazy ass?” He pushed himself up with a dramatic grunt. “Fifty-six years old, you little shit.”

You and Ellie giggled, setting up your makeshift beds. In no time, you had them set up – piles of cushions lined up, Ellie’s the furthest from the door, Joel’s the closest, and yours in between.

“I could sleep for five years,” Ellie yawned, sprawling out onto the cushions as her eyes fluttered shut. “Good night.” 

“Yeah, good night,” Joel grumbled from your other side, settling into his bed.

Having used your hoodie for a pillow, you stared up at Joel, meeting his gaze with big, expectant eyes. He took one look and sighed, shrugging his jacket off and tossing it over you. You grinned and pulled it close. 

When he laid on his side, facing you, you frowned and pulled his cushions closer to yours. “What’re you doin’?” He whispered, watching you tug your makeshift pillow between you two, wordlessly offering him the other end. 

After a beat, he shuffled closer, resting his head on the hoodie. You pulled up the extra fabric of his jacket, covering him as well. Then, you settled again, eyes shutting as your breathing began to even out.

He could feel it on his neck, and he wasn’t sure how much sleep he’d get if continued – it was all he could think about.

“Joel,” Ellie whispered, cutting through the silence of the night. He hummed, acknowledging her. “Did you know diarrhea is hereditary?” 

Joel lifted his head up off your hoodie to look at her. “What?” 

He glanced down to see a smile forming at your lips, though your eyes remained shut.

“Yeah,” Ellie continued quietly before snickering. “It runs in your jeans.” 

He pressed his head back down to your hoodie, mumbling, “Jesus,” into it before he began laughing quietly, joining Ellie. “That is so goddamn stupid.” 

Ellie giggled again from your other side. “You laughed, motherfucker.” 

“I didn’t laugh,” he denied. 

“Yes, you did.” 

You peeked an eye open. “You did,” you mumbled with a smile of your own, finding yourself shuffling closer to him. 

“Jesus, I’m losin’ it,” he muttered, barely audible.

“Big time,” you mumbled practically against his chest at this point. 

And for the first time in a long time, you slept soundly. Until Ellie’s voice cut through the silence once more, tensely calling out to you and Joel.

Your eyes snapped open, body tensing at her tone. You immediately sat up, your movement waking Joel, whose body was pressed against yours in sleep. 

You barely had a second to process before you saw it – Ellie, hands up, a gun pointed at her head.

Your eyes moved up the hand holding the gun and settled upon a familiar face.

“Henry?”

.

.

.

taglist: @orcasoul @lizlil@littleshadow17 @joeldjarin @mrsyixingunicorn10 @luvwanda @escaping-reality8 @hoddystark @mmkkzz @victoriaholland @xodilfluvr @mystickittytaco @21tao

[rindreamery]

drive it real far.

michael kaiser finds it hard to focus on the race when he's got you beside him, and a burning jealousy after seeing you talk to another racer. street racer!michael kaiser x reader ─ suggestive, w.c. 600+ ─ content: extremely unsafe driving, not a manual car or else this would not be possible, kaiser is toxic but are we even surprised

note. puri and i spend 90% of our time talking abt kaiser and coming up with potential drabbles, and this is the fruit of one of those conversations (inspired by sports car by tate mcrae 🤭)

with another sharp turn of the car, kaiser’s grip on your thighs tighten.

the way he drives is reckless, like he’s always been— but something is different tonight. he’s tearing down the street with more speed than usual, drifting wide through corners, with the tires of the car screeching loudly in your ears. there’s zero hesitation behind his movements, zero regard for the way he wears his tires thin, zero regard for the way he’s putting unnecessary strain on his transmission. his face remains unchanging, eyes on the road ahead, gleaming with that dangerous focus you’re all-too-familiar with. 

dangerous, from the fact that he’s got half of his focus on winning, half on something else. 

you can tell he’s ticked off— infuriated, even. as much as he tries to keep his face neutral, his anger always slips through the cracks. you can see it in the way his lips press into a tight line, not a single sound slipping past. the flirty, fun, quick-witted banter is, instead, replaced with an unfamiliar silence. and the way his jaw clenches, hard, emphasizing the shadows on the side of his face. 

but you can also feel it in the way his hand lingers on you.

while kaiser’s got a hand on the wheel, the other remains on you. unmoving, unyielding, no matter how many times you remind him to drive with two hands. his fingers are digging into the plush of your thigh, pressing so hard that you can almost feel the heat seeping through the fabric of his gloves, that you can almost imagine the feeling of his skin on you. searing hot. pressing so hard that it almost feels painful, like he’s holding onto you as if you would slip from his grasp. 

it's so unlike him.

“mihya,” you call out to him, voice laced with concern, as you try to pry your way into his mind. “tell me what’s wrong.”

but he doesn’t answer you immediately, choosing to press harder on the gas, sending the car lurching forward. the street lights blur into streaks of red, orange, and blue outside your window. they warp and bend with each miniscule change in the car’s direction, fleeting, and something you can’t grasp onto. you can feel the adrenaline in your veins, thick and surging with each rapid shift of the car, and you can barely keep your breath steady. 

in a breathy, surprised gasp, you call his name again. 

his eyes flick over to you for a second, before they’re back on the road. and even when the corners of his lips curl into something that’s barely a smirk, there is not a hint of amusement in it— it’s so dark, so possessive. 

“saw you getting real cozy with isagi earlier.” kaiser finally answers, his tone low and accusatory.

your brows pinch together, because while it gives reason for his anger, it doesn't make sense to you. “it wasn’t anything like that—” you try to reason, and he scoffs.

the grip on your thigh loosens momentarily. a foolish part of you thinks, for a brief second, that he might’ve actually, somewhat, believed you. but your thoughts are cut off by the feeling of his hand sliding up your thigh, slow and testing, fingers forming a trail of embers on your skin as they go. they inch up, and then more, your heart starting to beat erratically as they inch dangerously close— waiting for you to grab his wrist and stop him.

you can hear the rapid thud of your heart in your ears as he thumbs at your skin, kneading, toying with the pressure. "mihya—" you look at the turn up ahead, and then him, a nervous look in your eyes.

"i find that hard to believe when he was making heart eyes at you." he's practically sneering at the thought, pressing even harder on the gas. "i hate it when he wants something that's mine."

© rindreamery, 2025

[bottledpeaches]

event horizon

SYNOPSIS: what happens when a black hole and a white hole collide?

CHARACTERS: sonic

TAGS: cosmic horror, major character death (sorta), very astronomy and astrophysics heavy fic (there will be an explanation post later), mentions of obsessive behavior, mild yandere if u squint (will still be tagged as such), gn reader, 4.2k+ wc

TAGLIST: @affinitytales, special thanks to @angelitenails and @waayix for being my beta readers! ily 🫶

NOTES: nerded out so hard while writing this that google started showing me physics and astronomy articles in my recommended </3

dividers are from @rookthornesartistry

You hear him before you see him. Millions of light years away on the other far end of the universe, a sound pulled out from deep within the fabric of space reaches your ears. A low-frequency groaning sound, like that belonging to a thousand souls in agony, ripples across space and makes you involuntarily shudder.  

Then you feel him. The fabric of spacetime ripples beneath your fingertips like stormy ocean waves, increasing in frequency and intensity the closer he approaches. He’s quite fast too, you realize as the fabric trembles violently under your touch. If you run now, maybe you can slip under his radar? 

Finally, and unfortunately, you see him. Only faintly at first in the form of a relativistic jet so far away, it barely shows up as a pinprick of light to your eyes. Yet you notice all the same, especially since the stars in that part of space have been going dark as of late. Then the rotating disk of matter slowly spiraling toward him, his gravitational field so intense it warps the path of light on the far side of the disk. All too soon though, he appears before you, bending the space around him and pulling in everything in his path without a care. 

The low groaning sound that was the first warning of his imminent arrival is unbearably loud now as pressure waves from hot gas being sucked in hit you with the force of a thousand supernovas. Specks of electromagnetic radiation being produced from the disk of superheated gas and dust spinning around him sting your face as they’re luckily flung out of his reach at immense speeds. The fabric of spacetime collapses beneath his feet and even though you’re a safe distance away from his gravitational pull, you feel a sudden rush of fear- like you’re standing on the precipice of a great fall, one that you won’t return from. 

He takes the form of an anthropomorphic hedgehog, quills upturned and glowing matter swirling around them. Even at this safe distance several million miles away, you can still feel his gaze searching for something in the cosmos, before honing in on you, his target. His eyes widen and his lips part in a silent gasp. He holds that amazed expression for an unbearably long period of time, drinking in your visage as if you are an oasis and he, a parched man on the verge of death by dehydration, before it morphs into something sickeningly sweet. 

“Hi!” he says cheerfully, and the mere sound of his voice sends a cold realization racing up your spine. “I’ve been looking for you!” 

In the vacuum of space where there shouldn’t be any air or sound, you feel the rush of the wind in your ears like you’re falling and time comes to a stop. 

Somehow, just now, you’ve fallen past the event horizon. 

They say nothing escapes a black hole. At least, nothing they know of escapes a black hole. You might be the only exception, but that doesn’t deter him from showing his true nature. He doesn’t leave you alone after that, always trailing behind like a persistent shadow. He’s always a safe distance away, although his attempts at toeing that line grow bolder with time, much to your trepidation. You should be able to reject his all-encompassing gravitational pull by virtue of your nature, but you’d rather not test it anytime soon… 

He never shuts up too. As you drift through the endless expanse of space, it’s always a guarantee that he’s telling stories of what he’s seen ripping apart galaxies and matter, even if you give zero indication of interest. 

“There exists a little blue dot I’m quite fond of,” he begins one day. He’s lingering much closer than usual today. It’s not enough to pose a real threat, but enough for you to feel a slight tug at the back of your head, like a warning of sorts. 

His hand gestures in the general direction of the planet and you hardly spare a glance, too concerned with distancing yourself from him.

“The inhabitants are a curious bunch, always wanting to know more about what lies beyond their little bubble. I got a little too careless one day and ventured close enough to their planet for them to notice me. They’ve been hooked ever since.”

You wonder what could possibly compel someone to take interest in a being like him. Destructive, greedy, and the ultimate threat to everything. Any species with a shred of self-preservation instincts would know to stay far away from him.

“Are they foolish?”

He grins.

“Far from it, actually. They’re some of the smartest I’ve seen in recent times. They even gave me a name!”

“You have a… name?” you ask incredulously, wondering how stupid they are to give him a name to remember him by. 

“Sure do. It’s Sonic!”

You look out at an empty pocket of space as your mind buffers for a second, the name bouncing around in your mind.

“... Sonic,” you repeat flatly. Your dry disbelief must’ve bled into your tone because the cosmic entity disguised as a hedgehog shrugs. 

“It’s supposed to be an acronym for something, but I couldn’t care less about that. All I care about is how pretty it sounds on your lips.”

You don’t bother hiding your disgust over his poor attempts at flirting. Did he pick up such crude language from them too? 

“A nonsensical name for an equally nonsensical being,” you eventually scoff after getting over your disbelief. He hums and closes his eyes, smiling in delight and tail wagging gently.

“Mhm, that’s it, keep saying my name. I could never get tired of hearing it from you.”

“You’re incorrigible.”

His cheerful demeanor remains unshaken.

“Always have been. Never been the kind of guy to stray too far from my beliefs, y’know?”

“Do your beliefs include uncontrolled greed and destruction in your wake?” you retort, unable to resist the temptation of a good taunt. He has the nerve to look offended, scowling and crossing his arms.

“Rude. That was uncalled for,” he grumbles. 

“It’s the truth,” you argue. 

“No it’s not,” he counters. “It’s protection. I love the universe for everything that it is.”

“Is that why you’re so hell-bent on swallowing it whole?”

His face scrunches up into a scowl you would’ve found adorable under any other circumstance. 

“What better way to preserve it?”

“Some form of preservation that is. Even you too will one day evaporate.”

“But at least they’ll live on inside me, no? Much longer than they would’ve been able to by themselves, that’s for sure.”

“Do they really still exist if they’ve been compressed and compacted into a dot alongside everything else your voracity has gotten the better of?”

He shrugs, as if to say “it’s the thought that counts!”

“It’s either that or they meet a slow, painful demise when the universe does end.”

“That’s the weakest form of justification I’ve ever heard, and I know you’re secretly aware of that fact too.” 

He exhales sharply through his nose and taps his foot impatiently.

“Speak for yourself. I’m just doing what I think is right and that’s all that matters to me.” 

“Your idea of what’s ‘right’ is going to cause the premature end of the universe as we all know it,” you snap, jabbing your finger at him for added emphasis. 

“You’re telling me that’s somehow worse than how the universe will actually end?” he asks, looking indignant. 

You take a step back.

“... You do know how it’ll end, right?”

He shrugs and takes a step closer, his irritated expression vanishing and being replaced by a lazy grin instead. 

“‘Course I do! Can’t say the same for the ones that gave me a name, though. They’ve got more theories for how the universe will end than there are stars in their galaxy.”

“The most widely accepted one though?”

He laughs under his breath, like he finds their theories to be amusing.

“The heat death of the universe is the most common one. Instead of a bang, we’ll all go out with a pathetic, cold whimper.”

“And what’s actually going to happen?”

He flashes a conspiratorial grin at you, like this is a secret only privy to you two. And in a sense, it is. This is forbidden knowledge. 

“Everything will-”

Despite everything he tells you, you still have almost no knowledge of who he is or where he’s from. And maybe that’s intentional. Does he even know himself? You doubt it. He seems like the guy who couldn’t care less about his origins. 

“I really don’t understand you,” you sigh one day. He’s in the middle of stuffing his face with superheated gas and matter from the nearest galaxy he’s devouring as he looks over at you, cheeks puffed out. You’ve come to realize he’s quite the messy eater, as he swallows and wipes the corner of his mouth off with his finger. Fitting for his insatiable hunger. 

“Neither do the inhabitants of the little blue dot. But that doesn’t stop them from being obsessed with my existence, does it?”

“Obsessed… with you?”

He nods.

“Some devote their entire lives to studying me. Not like they’ll learn much with their horrendously short lifespans, but I’m flattered. Really. Guess it’s true we all want what we can’t have.”

“Well, what have they learned about you so far?”

He grins smugly. 

“Practically nothing.”

There’s a hint of pride in his voice. You roll your eyes. How egotistical of him. 

“Good for them. They know some things are better off staying a mystery. Doubt anybody wants you either.”

“Ouch, low blow. Way to destroy a guy’s ego, babe.”

“It’s not a low blow if the bar is nonexistent.”

“Hey, if we’re talking mysteries then you’re the bigger culprit here,” he says. “You’re hypothetical, you know? No one knows if you really exist or not. And yet, here I am with you before me.”

“... You know I exist though,” you state almost dumbly, unsure of what else to say. 

He rolls his eyes.

“Well, obviously I do. But that’s because I’m me. As for everyone else? You only exist because the math says so, and only on paper at that.”

“Well, what do they call me back on your favorite planet?” 

“They call you a ‘white hole’,” he whispers conspiratorially. “A hypothetical region of spacetime and singularity where nothing can enter.”

He plucks a planet from its orbit and chews on it like a piece of bubblegum as he thinks. 

“They say you’re the complete opposite of me. Whereas I consume everything, you reject everything. Pretty poetic, don’t you think?” 

You nudge a star system with your finger. The planetary bodies scatter outwards from each other, repelled by your touch. 

“Suit yourself. I could care less.” 

He grumbles to himself and swallows the planet he was chewing, before resuming his snacking- this time an entire constellation. 

“You know, you’ve been asking me about my origins an awful lot as of late,” he mumbles around a mouthful of matter. “‘Where did I come from?’ I’ve been here since the beginning. I created everything. But you? Where have you been all this time?” 

With shocking speed, he closes much of the distance keeping you safe from him. He’s not close enough to drag you under just yet, but close enough to where you feel yourself precariously teetering on the edge of his event horizon more than ever before. Panic wells up within you and gravity tugs you toward him with increasing persistence, yet you remain frozen, rooted in place by his unnerving smile and unblinking gaze. 

“Well? Where have you been this entire time? Why have you been hiding from me?”

Why have you been hiding from me? The question echoes in your mind and a deep-seated, instinctual wave of quiet horror washes over you. Does this mean he’s been looking for you all along? But why? And for how long? You have no answer to these questions, because there is no answer. Rules and logic don’t apply to a being like him. 

“... Maybe I wasn’t meant to be discovered so early on,” you whisper after a long moment of silence, gaze trained on a faraway galaxy. “The universe has its rules. Something tells me you broke one of them by meeting me.”

Finally, you look at him.

“If you’re the origin, then perhaps I am the end.”

He pauses and raises an eyebrow. After a few seconds, he actually backs away a bit. 

“... Rules?” he scoffs after what you think is a nervous silence. “No rule in the universe can stop a guy like me!”

“You say that, yet you’re woefully ill-prepared for the consequences.”

He rolls his eyes.

“Consequences? Please. Nothing in this universe can catch up with me.” 

“Not even your past self?”

He grins and winks at you. It’s almost amusing, the way he can go from obsessive to his usual self in less time than it would take for you to disrupt the delicate orbits of a star system.

“Not even my past self! I get faster with every passing day.”

At your expression, which, if you had to guess, is a cross between disgust and disbelief, he throws his head back and laughs. 

“But man,” he says once his laughter subsides. “I’m glad I met you this early on. Really can’t imagine where I'd be without you now.”

“You’re just saying that because you’d have no one else to bother otherwise.”

“Touche,” he admits. “But it’s not just that. If there really are consequences to my actions, then I wouldn’t mind dying by your hand, y’know?”

“I can make that a reality. All you have to do is say the word.”

You beckon him over with a wave of your hand. You don’t miss how his tail starts wagging excitedly. 

“Mmm, tempting. But I think I’ll pass. I’d rather it be the other way around. Safe and protected within me, like everything else I love.”

This time, he moves to stand next to you. Spacetime screams in protest as two immeasurable and opposing forces approach each other, yet he completely ignores the irreparable damage he’s doing. He crouches down beside you and raises his hand. Unable to resist the overwhelming gravity, the star system you were toying with earlier is violently stretched and torn apart until even the bonds between atoms disintegrate. What was once multicolored plasma is now nothing more than protons, neutrons, and electrons struggling to escape the overwhelming pull. A blaze of interstellar gas is helplessly sucked around his fist and without any hesitation, he swallows it all in one go. 

“See? Part of me forever now. Hopefully, this’ll be you one day.”

You can only watch on in mute horror. The plume of gas he just ate was a similar shade of white as the matter and energy being expelled from you. For a second, you saw yourself reflected within the vapor, fighting yet doomed all the same. 

His greed toward you truly knows no bounds. You get the strange feeling your fate has been sealed. 

He always has a story for you, regardless of the situation. Sometimes, they have relation to whatever you’re doing at the moment (usually nothing at all). Most of the time, however, there’s no correlation and he’s telling you one because he’s bored or sleepy after running laps around the universe for the umpteenth time that day. 

“The residents of the blue dot have so many stories to explain what they do not know. How did life begin? What exists in the great unknown beyond the skies? It’s almost cute, in a sense. But there exists a story for the former question among the many others that I enjoy hearing, and it goes like this.”

His other hand runs through his quills and the accretion disk around them trembles and shakes violently. Sparks of radiation and matter fly upward, desperate to escape, before the crushing gravity sucks them back in without hesitation. 

“I never said I wanted to hear a story though,” you grumble, even though you know it won’t change a thing. And true to your predictions, he merely laughs. 

“That’s cute. Long ago, one of the ancients sculpted humanity from clay and imparted unto them his wisdom, knowledge, and craft. Later on, he felt pity for their weakness and stole fire from the rest of the ancients, enabling them to build civilizations but at the cost of his eternal punishment.”

“Don’t you grow tired of telling them?”

“Never have and never will!” 

“I don't understand why you’re doing this then.”

“I don’t need a reason to do things. That’s just who I am.”

Incorrigible in the worst way possible. That’s what he is. 

“... The man in the story named Prometheus took what was forbidden and suffered eternally for it. Fire was unknown to humanity at the time and he both blessed and cursed them with its knowledge.”

You turn your gaze to him for the first time in that conversation. He meets your gaze and grins cheekily, overjoyed at having your undivided attention.

“Isn’t one of the morals of the story about the price of knowledge as well?”

He shrugs.

“More or less, yeah. All depends on your interpretation.”

“Then, if I am the hypothetical and thus, forbidden existence of a white hole and you are Prometheus… what is the price you must pay?”

That grin remains on his face, yet his eyes are suddenly devoid of any emotion. 

He doesn’t give you a response. 

You go silent. He whistles a tune as he picks up a galaxy and tosses it between his hands like a ball, before tossing it into his mouth and swallowing it in one go. From the back of your mind, you recall another story he had told you. It was also how the world came to be. One line in particular had stuck out to you. 

“Let there be light.”

You stare at the empty pocket of space that used to house the galaxy he just devoured. And so there was light- until he came and swallowed it all.

“You know, I’ve been thinking about that question you asked me as of late.”

Your ear flicks in his direction as you traverse through space. It’s the only indication he gets that you’re listening, but like he always does, he takes this invitation and runs with it. Give a hedgehog an inch and he’ll take it a mile… 

“What price must I pay for stumbling upon forbidden knowledge? I’ve been thinking about that long and hard and I have an answer now.”

“Is that why you’ve been quieter and much more tolerable lately?”

He leans in with a gloved hand cupped around an ear.

“Hmm, do my ears deceive me? What I’m hearing is how much you’ve missed the sound of my lovely voice.”

“You-!”

“-As I was saying, I finally have an answer now. Wanna hear it?”

He doesn’t even give you a chance to say no before continuing. 

“It’s simple, really. There is no price I have to pay.”

… What?

He grins, as if sensing your inner thoughts. 

“I already told you I’m fast enough to outrun everything, including myself. Whatever the consequences of my past actions have no hope of catching up to me. I answer to nobody as well; therefore, who besides me can dish out punishment?” 

“The universe itself will make you pay.”

He rolls his eyes, looking exasperated.

“Doubtful, considering you and I mirror each other. Can it really be considered accessing forbidden knowledge when I can just repackage it as keeping the universe’s natural balance? You and I were made for each other in that- ouch!”

He’s right, you realize as you shake your hand off after slapping him. Is there really no way to save yourself from your fate anymore? 

“Best to accept whatever happens here on out. Because no one’s coming to help you anymore.”

You knew this day would arrive sooner or later, but that doesn’t make it any easier. There’s nothing outwardly different about him, but you sense it in the air. His tail, stiff and wagging with excitement. His eyes, a little more eager than usual. The way he keeps glancing over at you, as if awaiting something. His foot, tapping with poorly-suppressed impatience a lot more than usual. And perhaps the biggest giveaway of them all is his tongue, constantly darting out to swipe at his lips like he’s hungry. 

For a while, you act normal. Maybe if you pretend to not notice, you can delay the inevitable a little bit longer. But the feeling of his eyes trained on you, like he’s waiting for a moment of weakness, makes you shudder and you can only keep up the act for so long.

“What’s wrong with you today?” you demand. “You’ve always been an obsessive creep since the day we met, but you’re acting even stranger today.”

He merely smiles, a self-satisfied grin at that, like you’ve played right into his hands. 

“Finally gave up, huh? I was wondering how long we’d be playing this game for.”

“Spit it out,” you hiss. “Don’t play games with me this time, hedgehog.”

Fatal mistake on your part.

“If you insist.”

His hand shoots out and grabs your wrist in an iron hold. The very fabric of space tears at the seam, creating a horrible, ripping sound stretching out into the cosmos. You try to jerk your wrist out of his grasp, a difficult task as incredible gravity pulls you further into him. Even with your rejective properties, he refuses to let go, instead clamping down even tighter which earns a pained hiss from you. A gaseous trail extending from you to his accretion disk forms as you are rapidly consumed by him, like you’re the first meal a famished man has laid eyes upon in ages. What’s been sucked in, now stretched out until only atoms remain, seemingly stops in time past a certain point, and you know by then it’s already too late to stop what’s already been set in motion. 

“Like I said, best to give up,” he whispers, tugging you closer until you’re face to face with him. He’s a horrible sight to behold. 

Wisps of white matter and energy gather in long, thin tendrils around his gloved fingers. The accretion disk around his upturned quills expands as more and more of you is lost to him. 

“I’ve finally got you with me forever now. Isn’t that romantic?”

A single, fleeting thought crosses your mind.

I’m going to die.

“Sonic, wait-”

That horrible smile you’ve grown to hate crosses his face. The corners of his eyes crinkle as he gazes down at you tenderly, like how a lover would.

“There you go. You finally called me by my name.”

He blissfully sighs.

“It sounds even better on your lips than I imagined in my head. I could almost die happy right about now.”

I’m on the verge of death and this is what he cares about??

The universe is starting to go blurry before your eyes. All you can see is his brilliant, sickening glow. All you can feel is the crushing pressure of gravity condensed into a singularity ripping you apart and sucking you in. And in the midst of it all, clarity and acceptance wash over you like a tide. But not defeat- no, far from it. 

“I’ll tear you apart from the inside out. I’ll be the end of you.”

Famous last words as you are consumed whole. 

“I look forward to it, sweetheart.”

Powerful gravitational waves ring out as you are ultimately devoured, banging on space time like mallets to a drum. Space stretches and squeezes and the fabric warps as an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. Your eyes close and the cosmic symphony quiets as you finally become one, the silence deafening in its wake. 

Why am I the one being punished when he so brazenly takes what is not his?

His prediction came true. Eternal punishment was never in the works for Prometheus. 

Now all alone in this stretch of the universe, Sonic sighs to himself. You weren’t talkative company most of the time, but he misses the little sounds you’d make and your presence. 

He looks around. All alone with nothing in sight- literally. He’s devoured everything nearby already. Just an endless stretch of spacetime, the fabric so dark it almost makes his head hurt just from staring at it too long. 

Perfect opportunity. 

Sonic reaches a hand up into his quills, patting around as if seemingly looking for something. His hand pauses, eyes lighting up, then grips onto something and yanks it out. 

“There you are! Come on out now!”

Tendrils of glowing white matter coalesce around his hand, clumping together to form your visage. First, your face, set in its usual irritated expression. Then, your torso followed by your arms. The rest of your body remains a gaseous form occasionally taking a shape, constantly being dragged beneath the event horizon as you eternally fight against his gravitational embrace. 

“What do you want?”

“I missed you! Can’t a guy say hi to his lover when he’s feeling sad and lonely?”

Perhaps he was not Prometheus this whole time. Perhaps it was you. In your pursuit to stay hidden behind the curtain of general relativity and mystique, you had caught his attention and been punished for your selfishness. 

“If you’re the origin, then perhaps I am the end.” Even before you were aware of it, his appearance had already spelled your demise. It’s a cycle of mutual destruction and rebirth.

For better or for worse, not even you can escape his event horizon anymore. 

enjoyed this? the taglist is open!

@ bottledpeaches, do not copy, repost, modify, translate, or feed to ai

[dazed--xx]

Everything is gonna be okay

Member: Chan x aFab!Reader

word count:

T/W: Post-Partum Depression, Colicky Baby, TRAUMA, mentions of therapy, mentions of bringing a baby to the hospital, DAD!Chan, mentions of a messy house.

A/N: MAN ITS BEEN A MINUTE BUT IVE DECIDED TO DO A BIG BURST UPLOAD AND HERE IS NUMBER 1. I MISSED YALL SO MUCH AND I HOPE YOU ENJOY.

"Wah!!"

Chan hears as he stands outside his front door. He sighs as his hand hovered over the knob. As he shuts his eyes he takes a deep breath, his daughter's piercing screams ring through the night. How could such a small dainty being's lungs carry so much power? He questioned to himself.

At first, he had panicked. His heart had sunk into his stomach and urgently rushed his daughter to the hospital after minutes, hours, and days of her crying. They had come to understand that the baby was simply colicky. Her temperament and overt fussiness became a part of his everyday life. He hadn't anticipated this when they first saw that positive on her pregnancy test. Life hadn't prepared them for this and for some reason they had skipped that chapter in the baby book due to their parent's words about their lack of colic as babies.

As he unlocked the door and made his way into his home; He scoffs to himself as he sees the utter disarray his home lay in. "Y/N" He calls as he takes a calming breath. He felt his blood boil as for the fourth time this week he had come home to chaos. He couldn't understand what was going on. He tried his best to support his wife, and he truly did, but he didn't understand how cleaning up after yourself was so difficult. He heard his daughter's cries continue to ring through the home and rushed upstairs.

"Babe!" He called out to his wife frustratedly as he shoved open his daughter's bedroom door, expecting Y/N to be inside. He's greeted by his daughter seated in her large octagonal playpen. Her eyes were large and tear-filled as she sat with building blocks in her tiny hands and a beaming smile on her lips. He let out a sigh of relief as he reached for her and she extended her arms toward him. "What is it now, darling?" He asks with a calming tone. "I just got home and I bet your mom has been with you" He states as he picks his daughter up noticing the partially finished bottle and empty plate on the dresser. "You ate..." He remarks as he feels her diaper and finds it empty and double checks the yellow line noticing she doesn't need to be changed.

"Hmmm...." He purses his lips as he presses on her tiny stomach gently and notices how hard it is. "Gas...." He says in delight. As he tries to burp her to no avail and soon flexes her legs trying to relieve the pressure in her stomach and gaining success. "Okay, Daddy's got to go find your mom..." He explains as he places his daughter back in her playpen with a small peck to her cheek. "..So we're going to sit for a second and daddy will be right back, darling" He hands her a stuffed animal before exiting the room leaving the door wide open.

Making his way to the bedroom he calls out for his wife only to receive no response. Hearing the shower from the connected bathroom, he crosses the room and knocks. "Baby?" He questions. "Why was Kali's door closed? It's a crazy mess in here" He states calmly as he leans against the door. Only a small knocking and the sound of the shower can be heard in response. His frustration grows and his patience wears thin "Y/N, you can't just sit in the shower while a 7-month-old screams bloody murder. I get you're overwhelmed but come on" He sighs hoping to get a response. The only sound that can be heard is running water and the knocking which was more rhythmic thumping now that he was in the bathroom.

Chan furrows his eyebrows as he rips open the shower curtain "Y/N, I'm Tal--" His words get stuck in his throat as he sees her sitting in the shower. Her lips were a bright blue as she hugged her knees to her chest. Her head repeatedly slammed backward into the marble-tiled wall. Every time she pulled away Chan noticed a bright red substance on the tile and a copper smell in the air. "Babe!" He exclaimed worriedly. His hand quickly rested on the back of her head creating a cushion between the wall and her head; as he pulled her into a bone-crushing hug. Reaching forward to turn off the cold water he notices it turned on to the highest setting.

"I-Its okay.... y-you're gonna be okay" He comforts as she finally looks like she's snapped back to reality. "Chris?" She questions confused. "When'd you get home?" Y/N asks obliviously. Chan stares at her worriedly, soaked head to toe, his hand-painted with her blood. "Y/N please don't be offended when I say this but you might need help..." He states sadly. The doctor's words from when they brought their daughter home from the hospital ring through his mind.

"Any signs of dissociation, bursts of aggression, or any changes in behavior, please look into therapy as those are signs of Post-Partum Depression..."

He didn't think it would be something that he had to be concerned with. She never showed any signs of it until now, well not that he realized. Maybe her being a little distant from the baby was a sign? Could he have missed the signs? What should he do? Was he being too insensitive? Was this the wrong time to talk about this? His worries are washed away when he hears sobs choke out of her mouth. Her hands cover her eyes. "I do!" She cries "This is so fucking hard, Chan. I love my daughter. I know I love my daughter but when she doesn't stop crying when it just happens for hours and hours, I want to lose it. I just want it to stop" her sobs grow harder at every word. "I love her but I hate her. I'm such a bad mother, how can I hate my kid? What's wrong with me?" Chan responds before she can say anymore.

"Nothing, there's nothing wrong with you. You just need help and a break. I'll take a few days off to help with Kali and you can just go out and do something to get your mind off me and the baby and we can make you an appointment with your therapist and figure this out it's okay, Babe. You're a new mom PPD is a real thing. You're going to be okay. You'll get closer to Kali you have her entire life." He soothes as he helps her off the ground. "but first let's get you to a doctor. I'll call my sister to watch Kali and we should get you dressed okay?"

No matter how his feelings betrayed his words he could never let her know. He felt his heart sink into his stomach as tears built in his eyes as he held his dear wife close.

"Everything is going to be okay..."

Taglist: @fiestaplum-skz @yangbbokari @lovesunshinefelix @threeopossumsinacoat @isabellah29 @hope-maine @minhwa @tr-mha-fan @whoa-jo @kibs-and-bits @your-favorite-pirate @summercoldstuff @bx-lov3 @multi-fandommaniac @yunho-leeknow @ka0ila @seungminsteddybear @jaquisos @nchhuhi @havenwithleeknow @galaxy4489 @hannahhhhs-things @captainchrisstan @skzfairyyydreamz @kyrennetwork

[frownyalfred]

"#you want a barrier sometimes #but if that's airtight then you have pressure issues"

Is this like a general knowledge thing or something you had to research? Also, how much random stuff do you think you've learnt since you got into this fandom? I can imagine that you've had to Google loads of random stuff for the fics you've written

I mean...it was a guess but I just did a dive into "Diving-related Ocular Barotrauma" so it looks like it's a thing. When you have rapid changes in pressure (like during a fight involving metas or magic) that could affect the goggles/masks themselves if they're fully sealed, which would be very bad for the eyes. That was just me spitballing, since eyes are very sensitive to changes in pressure. But it looks like it could be an actual consideration in goggle usage, which would be relevant to superheroes like the Batfamily. Again, I'm no expert -- I was just guessing, and it looks like I was on the right path.

I've googled SO much stuff since starting to write fics. I have gathered so much random information across a variety of bizarre subjects. Police call codes in different states, how to reduce pediatric fractures with protrusion, weird bits of language translation, gun stuff. I'm not smart enough to retain or really use this information in a meaningful way, but for about 30 minutes I feel like I almost grasp maybe 2% of it.

My google search history when writing a fic is hilarious, I should definitely post it one day. I know just enough to be dangerous. Which is to say, I know enough to know I should know more about this, and I'm probably going to summarize this information in a way that does a disservice to experts, but. It's for a fic, and as long as it passes the sniff test, I'm fine with it.

Though I will say, while I'm at it (since I'm petty at heart) the Kwik Trip in my recent Trinity fic was researched AND correctly used as the gas station of choice. People were trying to ding me for using a gas station brand that's too "large" for Kansas and not like the normal, traditional brands they find close to home, but they were wrong! In the fic, Clark mentions that the Kwik Trip was built recently. Kwik Trip is slowly buying up those old gas station chains and building new stores across the Midwest, including Kansas. So it actually makes a lot of sense that they stopped at a Kwik Trip which is 1) a novelty compared to normal gas stations 2) more likely to be present than other smaller chains in 2025 (and near a major city) and 3) is referenced to have been built recently, which lines up with national trends. Also, I googled Kwik Trips near Wichita and there's a ton. So there's a great example of a huge amount of time I spent researching something to be right, and people still told me I was wrong lmao. And also it was probably not worth the fic-writing time to be right about.

[wynndigogh]

A TMNT tale

The Perfect Trap

Part 5: Despoilation Nonnegotiable Authorized

Warning: No Minors, 18+ ONLY

SYNOPSIS:

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles face a new threat when Baxter Stockman returns with a cunning plan and a deadly new weapon. As they battle his latest creations, the turtles realize their enemy is always one step ahead.

But the danger hits closer to home when Leonardo’s relationship with his girlfriend is put to the test, forcing him to balance his duty as leader with his heart.

With danger closing in from all sides, the turtles must uncover the truth behind Stockman's scheme before it destroys them and everything they hold dear.

But as secrets come to light, they learn that the stakes are higher than they ever imagined—and one of their own may be caught in the crossfire.

Read Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

☄☄☄☄☄☄☄☄☄☄☄☄☄☄☄☄☄☄☄☄☄

Eight heavy metal spheres slam into the ground encircling the turtle brothers.

“Whoa, what are these things”, an apprehensive Michelangelo inquires while taking a step back as a precaution.

As if to answer his question, the metallic units emit a hiss of escaping pressurized gas and begin to unfold. The terrapins gasp as the alloy objects unfurl into eight humanoid robots, each brandishing dual fighting swords and with four additional cylindrical appendages on their backs.

“D’hey look like foot bots on steroids”, Raph growls and braces in his fighting stance.

Michelangelo quips, “Actually, they look like foot- bot peacocks, oh let’s call them foot-peas?  No-no, foot-cocks!”

“Shut up idiot”, the red brute grumbles in annoyance, “I don’t care what der called, with only eight of dem, dis is gonna be a piece of cake taking dem out.”

“Don’t go getting cocky, Raph, we don’t know this enemy”, Leonardo warns.

The robots fan out, taking up strategic positions around the turtles.  With a sleek metal zinging sound, four additional sword blades extend from the four arms on their backs.

“Oh boy”, Leonardo exclaims, stressing over the development.

“Uh, Leo, with those additional swords, each mechanic fighter is going to be able to perform significantly intricate techniques at substantial speeds.  Essentially, master swordsman levels”, Donatello explains, “it’s gonna be like fighting eight Master Splinters”.

“And we’re not at the top of our game due to the party”, the blue banded terrapin laments.

 “What we do, Leo,” Raphael asking getting antsy and ready to charge.

“My order from earlier still stands, don’t get killed”, the leader replies as the first of the bots leads the charge in.

The sounds of metal clashes against metal and wood as the robots’ weapons collide with the turtles’ weapons.  The turtle brothers are moving fast, eyes watching as many open angles as possible to avoid being skewered through by a blade.

“Rocksteady, I believe this is our cue to exit”, Bebop whispers to his companion above the sounds of battle.  The two mutants dash down the pier to the waiting submersible that wis hiding below the line of sight from the docks.

“They’re getting away”, Donnie relays to Leonardo.

“Let them go”, Leo responds as two sweeping blades miss the top of his scaled head by centimeters, “we’ve got our hands full here.  Something’s not right about this situation”.

“Ya think!”, the sarcastic retort is tossed at Leonardo from the Raph who is holding two swords locked in his sais , dodging the rest of that robot’s arms, while simultaneously kicking a second robot backwards, preventing it from being within critical striking distance of his stationary body.

Mikey looks like a tumbling flea on speed, jumping from one spot to another, trying to stay ahead of the mechanical fighters’ blade arches and Donnie is utilizing the long reach of his bo staff to establish a perimeter of safety around himself while trying to trip up the anatomical machines and take out their legs.

Something is off about this fight.  

Leonardo’s keen fighter’s sense knows this setup, this location, is all wrong.  

Why would an ambush come out in the open like this?  There are too many variables available for this ambush to be infallible.  Why didn’t whoever is giving orders Bebop and Rocksteady have the mutant duo choose a more secure and controlled location? What is the purpose?

Leo is pulled from his mental analysis by Raphael’s yowl of pain.  The scaled behemoth has a bleeding slice across his shoulder and other wet red spots can be seen developing around his arms.  His close combat techniques aren’t a match for the two robots that have him encaged.  As if one yelp of pain wasn’t enough, the blue banded turtle hears a similar shocked cry come from his right, Donnie’s arm is lowered, protecting his side which is now showing a splotch of red.

We’ve got to do something; we can’t hold them off indefinitely.

“Donnie”, the leader yells, “are you able to do anything about shutting these things down?”

Donatello uses his staff to pole vault out of the center of the two surrounding him, gaining some open space, keeping the mechanical fighters coming at him from one direction.  “If they are transmitting, I may be able to hack into their systems remotely, but I’ll need some space and time.”

“Right,” Leonardo replies, “Raph, Mikey, back-to-back, keep Donnie covered in the middle.”

The three brothers cocoon Donatello in the middle of them, forming a triangle of protection around the computer wiz.  The eight robotic fighters encircle them, multiple arms swinging at once.  The area is a blur of deadly robotic arms and swooshing sounds.  Each brother feels a nick here, a stab of pain there, but they try to keep up as best they can while Donatello works on his halo screens and keyboards to scan the robots systems.

“Come on, come on…”, the purple genius talks to himself as lines of code speed across the halo screen, “there!  Yes!  Their transmitting, the encryption is…spectacular.”

“Donnie.”, Leonardo warns, when Donatello seeing interesting tech he can get distracted if not kept on task.

“Right, it’s complex but not Donnie-proof, just one sec, Leo.”

His long, dexterous fingers flying over the halo keyboard typing with feverish speed.  “Okay, I have some good news and some bad news”, he yells over the chaos.

“I’m gonna be yer bad news IF YA DON’T HURRY DA HELL UP!”, Raph growls in frustration as the takes another hit across one of his shoulders.

“Guys, my health bar is depleting.  I need a reset”, Mikey exclaims, using gamer lingo to express his dire straits.  He’s dodging and swinging his ‘chucks to parry the blades coming at him but with each passing second his speed and technique is floundering. His round cherub face is nicked all over from blades narrowly missing a death blow.

“Talk to me Donnie”, Leo orders while trying to block as many blows as possible coming at him and his two brothers.

“Good news I’m in, the bad news is I can’t shut them down, I can only slow them down”, Donnie explains.

“Do it!”, Leo instructs, “Raph, Mikey, get ready for one last surge”.

 With a few taps to his halo keyboard, Donnie uploads his own code to infiltrate and swamp the processors inside the units.  Within seconds, the speed of the robotic arms is slowed as the fighters’ processors strain to filter out Donnie’s mass of code from actual system commands.

The delay in the robots’ swings is all that is needed for the turtles to make their stand.  As the sword arms of each robot delay a second from initial start of the swing to the follow through, the momentary pause is enough of an opening for the brothers to do their own damage.  

Raphael’s sais stab into the under pit of each frontal arm, sending sparks flying.  With the rumbling roar of the mixture of pain, frustration, and physical effort, the brute rips the front facing arms off each of the robots in front of him.  

Donnie sails over the brute’s head and lands behind the backs of the units, using his staff to bar-lock the back paneled arms into a trapped position, leaving them open and vulnerable.  Raphs three-pronged weapons spear into the faces of the two mechanical fighters.  The two tall terrapins share a quick fist bump before turning and helping the baby of the bunch to take down the three attackers in his corner.

Leonardo uses the last of his speed and every technique his father ever showed him to parry the blades of the three robots facing him.  His wrist and hand wraps are seeping red from the open wounds on his forearms, but he doesn’t feel any pain as he pushes his mind into space between thought and action.  

The space where only instinct and the will to survive is paramount.  The space where the momentary pause of his opponent gives me all the opening that he needs to go in for the strike.

The sound of metal clashing and zinging is barely audible above the hammering of his own heart.  With a quick slice here, and a back-pass of his blade there, the arms of the foot bots are falling away piece by piece.

By the time he becomes aware of his own breath huffing in his ears, his broad chest heaving from the exertion, the metallic fighters are laying in a heap of scrap metal at his feet.

He takes a moment to survey those in his care.  Michelangelo dramatically falls to the ground to rest, Donatello is leaning on his knees trying to steady his breathing, and Raph is pacing in agitation.

His brothers are worn, cut and blood washed, but alive.  That is what matters. 

“Who’s motha’fuckng ass am I beating for dis shit?”, Raphael’s anger rolls off him in palpable waves.

“Well, my guess would be Stockman”, Donnie huffs out between breaths, “the encryption, the system setup, everything about these bots has me putting my bets on him.”

“There’s still something off about this situation”, Leonardo replies as much to himself as to the team.

A hissing release of pressurized gas emits from the chest compartments of the units and panel sides open on each.  From each of the eight openings, a tiny sphere the size of grapefruits exits quickly, shooting off down the dock, and splashes into the water below.

“What was that?”, an alarmed Mikey jumps up from the ground and moves closer to the safety of his older brothers.

Leonardo and Donatello exchange looks.  Donnie doesn’t give an indication of what he thinks it may be and only shrugs.

“Whatever happened here tonight, I have a feeling that this is just the beginning”, Leonardo speculates aloud. 

🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖

@thelaundrybitch

[brawlstars-dragon-au]

Sketch dump time! A whole bunch of requests from the crazy ex-bird app

In Order: Maisie, Pam, Colette, Buster, Chester, Chuster ❤️🧡 (and a teeny Gus), Leon and Sandy (Leondy 💚💜), Bull, El Primo, and Mandy!

Extra notes about each sketch:

Maisie:

Her breath attack is a condensed foam material, similar to that of a fire extinguisher. Using a gas similar to a pressurized CO² (based on gas-based fire extinguishers!), she shoots it out at high speeds. These hits can potentially cause frostbite and even severe damage to the body if left unattended. She's quite powerful in this AU due to this ability 👀👀 being able to put out the fires and overpower another dragon's breath? Now THAT'S some queen moves right there! She can also simply spray out the foam substance at short range without that pressurized gas. This helps with more close range fire fighting work.

Her right wing and front leg were undeveloped, a disability she'd had since she hatched. However! With the help of mechanics, she uses these prosthetics to help her fly. Still gotta test out how to draw it to make sense, as well as sort out how it stays in place. I've been using inspiration from Toothless (HTTYD) and his tail that Hiccup made.

Pam:

Pam is a bulkier dragon, very much on the larger side of all of them. I'm at odds with myself to figure out whether ot not she'll have wings 🤔 so I had two copies there! Perhaps her wings may be a bit smaller if I do give her them.

Pam spits out molten magma that's stored up inside her as an attack. However, it can also be chunks of scrap metal that she stores up. Otherwise, it's just magma.

Though I didn't draw this, I want Pam to be very resilient to fire in general, as her species/family of dragon use their ability to spew this magma (technically Lava after ut leaves her body? I'll do more research on this...) in order to craft and shape metal. While other dragons need to spend some time to build up a fire hot enough, the Junker family line is able to do this much more easily. (Amber is a close second, though)

Her skin has the ability to crack and seep up lava out of it, potentially coating her body in this to give herself a temporary lava shield, something extremely hard to break through. (In the future, little Jessie may also be able to do this... however, Pam doesn't think she's ready at the moment and avoids the topic or any ideas of teaching her how.)

Colette:

Colette flies in a sort of funny way, twirling around and flapping her wings to maintain somewhat of a chaotic flight pattern. Think of a snake slithering through the sky, but with large wings and the grace of... a teenage dragon (not much, but it does work).

When she gets better at flying...pray and hope she isn't able to catch up to her favourite brawlers cause she isn't ever gonna let go of them 💀 It makes for a great attack, actually! Charging at enemies and coiling around them like a snake to prevent movement, like a big hug ❤️ she just loves everyone SO much 😍

Buster:

Finally kinda set on a design for this funky guy! He's a larger dragon (smaller than El Primo or Frank, but still definitely up there in size)

His wings never quite grew fully, so he wouldn't be able to fly 😔 however, that'll never stop him and his dreams of being a cool movie star 🧡🧡

Buster, at the heart of it, is an unstoppable force when he sets his mind to something. He'll charge in with the same ferocity as his favouite protagonists, rivalling the audacity and hard-headed nature of even Bull! All while doing so for his friends 💪 we love Buster in this AU frfr

Chester:

Chester always has theatrics when he flies. Flips, spins, and fun aerodynamic movements up in the sky! He's gotta compensate for his lack of speed compared to other wyverns after all, but he thinks he's pretty great 😎

Loved drawing this kinda unique pose tbh! That's what I loved with these drawings, I got to experiment without really thinking too much for em with how polished and clean that look. It was very fun! 🔥

Chuster ft. Gus❤️🧡:

We love some goofy gays here 🥹❤️🧡 I just wanted to let em have a little nuzzle + smooch! Dragons don't necessarily kiss, but little side boops like this are the equivalent of a cheek kiss.

Also, a little Gus on the side 🥹🥹 I love this sort of found family dynamic that have! Buster being the cool dad vibe/big bro to Gus, and then Buster being in a relationship with Chester so that he's also a cool dad too 😎 Gus loved these two guys from the very start, they're funny 🤭 never a boring day for these silly lads.

Leondy 💚💜:

My beloveds 🤲 I really do cherish the ship, as well as strong friendship Sandy and Leon have. (Btw in my HCs, Leon and Sandy are 13 & 14 respectively, just to clear that up!)

Sandy, I've mentioned a few times, is very inspired by Capybaras, so Leon finding one is just perfect 🤭 silly little deadpan face lads.

Bull:

BULLDOZERRRR- What a lad! Bull is inspired by- uh, Bulls! Great creatures, large bodies and thick necks to support those headstrong charges 🐂 I love making his posture all confident, strong steps to say, "Yeah. You TRY and stand up to me. I DARE you." Don't wanna mess with him on most days 🏃‍♀️💨💨

El Primo:

Still figuring out a full-body for El Primo, bit he's roughly the same size as Bull! (Maybe a bit bigger)

El Primo has got really small wings, similar to his El Dragón skin. Even his scales and horns are inspired by that mostly! Love when characters have preexisting dragon themed skins 🤭 makes it a lot easier to make ideas!

His "mask" is actually just body paint. He has similar paint on his body, really showing off the vibrant colours and persona he puts on for the crowds.

He WILL beat up his enemies into a pulp in matches. Thank goodness there's the gem powered regeneration and the respawn system in place 😭 I plan to give him a very strong body and tail, enough to support him when he needs to go on his hind legs and overpower his opponents. Buster is designed in a similar way as well!

Mandy:

Last but not least, the Queen of Candy herself. Not even the Dragon AU let's her escape fast food work 😔😔

Her super attack is purely a magical sugar-based rainbow blast, as shown in the sketch. Also, I'm now realizing that I forgot her red spots oml- No wonder she looks so empty 💀 uhh sorry about that, lads 😭 I'll redraw her one day to show off that glowing effect of her spots 🥹🥹

And that's all! Thank you for reading if you made it this far! Hopefully I can make more of these sketch dumps 🤭✨️ maybe take reqs from here too! We shall see. Take care y'all!

[itsnotamatterofif]

Goood morning campers, I’ve been awake since 6am for reasons unknown so I put our lad through suffering. Have a bit of ‘Hydra gets over pressured during testing’, hope this is okay!

✨Want a mini fic? Send me an ask!✨

17012020 - an unknown stretch of land south of Manchester.

For likely the first time since he's been conscious, the new DOT-113 tanker has been left alone.

It's cold out, incredibly cold, but that doesn't bother him - he's cold all the time anyway, the chill has become second nature to him, but the snow that settles by their wheels is new. It has a fun texture too, as he scrunches a ball of flakes into his hands with a satisfying crunch.

Frustratingly, he doesn't know why he's been left alone. He's left the research centre a few times, sure, but usually to be taken from one repair shop to another for various parts and upgrades before hastily taken back again. This time, they pulled to a stop on a stretch of exposed track, fields stretching around them as far as the thick January fog will allow. The diesel that brought them here - a kindly, older chap with a well-worn dent in his left side - uncoupled quietly, wishing them well, and making his way further down the track, leaving DOT-113 abandoned.

At first, this was fine; the tanker knows someone will come back for them eventually. There's been far too much work put into them to be dumped in the middle of a random track, plus leaving him here to rot would pretty much be polluting, which is almost entirely what the company stands against. It's just the why that's messing with him - this feels intentional, from the engine leaving him behind to the specific placement of him down the track, but he can't figure out what test needs him out of the yard and onto the tracks like this. There's a grogginess in him today, though, like all of their new parts that were put on yesterday aren't quite fitting together properly, which isn't helped by the bleakness of his surroundings

There's a crackling in his ear, static and painful, and he jumps at the suddenness of it all; the speaker has only been used once before, a strange test a few months ago where all the engineers had  to bunker down in a distant room, watching through cameras dotted around the room like hawks, and he didn't much like it then either.

"All clear," a voice reads through the speaker, and he spins to anticipate movement, but nothing shifts. As if the world holds a breath, nothing around him dares to even move; even the glass, dancing in slight breeze, seems to hold its position, but nothing changes. There's no jump scares, no explosion, no unexpected traffic on the lines, nothing. So they relax, roll their shoulders that were filled with tension, and take a deep breath of cold, wet January air.

Then pressure starts to build.

It's not an unfamiliar feeling, definitely not painful; they've been over pressured before, quite frequently in fact. Pressure capacity has been something that's been tested on him time and time again in various environments, so he knows this routine. In a few seconds his safety valves will blow - if pressure is still rising after ten more seconds, he's to activate the manual release which should solve the issue.

As expected, there's the familiar whistling pop of the safety valves on his collar, one then the other in perfect rhythm. Shutting his eyes tightly, he waits, ten, nine, eight, seven...

This is becoming uncomfortable.

Once they hit one, scrambling hands reach for the hand crank, peeling away the layers of padding and armour to reach the pop out wheel. With a hiss, the system gives, the familiar, if slightly strange looking vent in their right side opening wide; a cloud of gas erupts from it, white and cold against their hands as the water from the air seems to freeze against the vent instantly. There’s a second of relief as they take that second to grab one shuddering breath, before it soars back up. The billowing of gas from out of the two safety values and the relief vent doesn’t seem to be letting up, and the top half of his blank, unpainted armour is frosting over as he watches solid ice forming on all three valves.

Trembling hands drag blunt nails across the valve on his side, scratching and digging at the ice obscuring the exit. A few pieces shave off, but no large chunks like he wanted, and he can feel the ends of his fingers go numb as desperation sets in. Whatever pressure is stuck within him just isn’t shifting and he needs it to shift, he needs it to shift soon; he can’t see his gauges, but he can imagine exactly what they’re saying.

“Uh, Sir?” They call out to the expanse, praying there’s someone around to hear, “it’s not- the pressure’s not shifting like usual, something’s wrong- shit.”

A series of quiet warning beeps alert them to the fact that their left most safely valve is an icicle, and there’s a distinct lack of gas billowing from in. Instead, the pain is building as he grabs a stick to try and poke at the ice, like knifes or forceful hands in his tank, pushing and scraping and wrenching-

He can’t die here, he’s survived every test so far, he has so much to do. He doesn’t even have a name yet.

Something cracks and shatters forcefully; the ice, on their safety valve, the force of the escaping gas finally stronger than the ice. They’d breathe a sigh of relief if he could, but the pressure is so that they cannot expand their chest to breathe. So he goes back to digging at the bigger vent on his side, stabbing at it now, just trying to create whatever gaps in the ice they can before everything freezes completely-

“Air moisture overpressure scenario complete,” a staticky voice from the speaker says, and its distant in the tanker’s hearing to the point where he hardly registers it under the panic, “hold right there, DOT-113A60W, an engineering crew will be with you shortly.”

He nods mutely, ears mostly full of the cracking of ice and the rush of escaping gas. The pain has tunnel-visioned him, but he’s determined, now; he’s got to hold out until the team get here, because he’s strong and he survived this, and he wants them to know that.

They just have to hope they get here soon.

[vthx]

📼📼📼📼📼📼📼📼📼📼📼📼📼📼📼📼📼📼📼📼📼📼📼📼📼📼📼📼📼📼📼📼📼📼📼📼📼📼📼📼📼📼📼📼📼📼��📼📼📼

Eh, this is probably somewhere around 150 lines. Enjoy!

Steve's POV (in progress) for the lead up to the Sword of Damocles:

Keith Miller is ugly. Like God, who'd ever fuck him kind of ugly. The hair cut's unflattering, his clothes are baggy, he clearly never washes his face with acne like that, and his teeth are crooked. He's got weird hands and what Steve's dad always calls a "weak chin", and even though he's criminally tall, he slouches all the time. If Steve had gotten lucky enough to get be several inches over six feet, he'd have made a college team for sure, maybe even the NBA. That height is wasted on Keith.

Steve also makes the mistake of ranting out loud about this to Robin, who sits there with her arms crossed, eyebrows up.

"You know he's poor, right, Steve?" she asks, and it's pointed in a way that lets Steve know he's already fucked up somehow.

"So?" Steve says, and it's the wrong thing to say, but he has no idea what the right thing is, so he braces himself for beration.

"So you think us poor kids can afford your fancy face wash?" she asks. "I'm lucky. I have good skin and straight teeth, but if I didn't, my parents couldn't have afforded braces or acne treatment."

"Okay, but his clothes—" Steve knows he should shut up, should stop trying to defend himself and take his licks, but Keith's shirt today could have fit two of him inside it. Why the hell does he have on a shirt that's probably an XXL when he's a large at most?

"Yeah, Steve! His clothes! That he gets off the rack or at Goodwill. He's tall—"

"Yeah, I know," Steve interrupts. Isn't sulking about all that NBA height being lost on a nerd.

"Tall but thin. His arms are crazy long. Like monkey long! His sleeves didn't even cover his wrists. The only way clothes are going to look good on him is if he gets them tailored or learns how to sew. Does he look like the kind of guy who sews?"

"His face is still ugly," Steve mutters, because he's an idiot.

"Yeah, we can really help our genes, dingus," Robin scoffs.

It's been months since she called him dingus, not since she got it out of him that everyone called him an idiot, and even if it was true, it still sucked. Relatedly: Steve is no longer smoking weed around Robin. He might have earned this 'dingus', but he gives her the—fine, undeserved—silent treatment for the rest of their shift. He does bring her a blueberry muffin the next morning as an apology, one of those fancy ones with the sugar crumbles on top. ("Muffins aren't an apology, Steve." "It has sugar crumble, Robin.")

Once he cools down after Robin's scolding and gives her a begrudging but verbal apology, he gives the whole Keith situation more thought.

Steve doesn't get what it means to be poor, not really. Yeah, his dad cut him off to "teach him a lesson" for not getting into college—which, aside, was total bullshit. Steve doesn't test well—he might have bombed both the ACT and SAT—and he's not great at essays. His only extracurriculars were sports, and he spent a fair bit of his senior year on the bench after Hargrove fucked up his head… anyway, none of that was news to his dad. Steve applied to the good schools his dad was pressuring him to apply to, ones that "matched his potential", and he should have applied to safety schools, and he meant to, but college applications sucked to fill out, and besides, who doesn't get into—

Anyway, never mind. He didn't get into college is the point. But his dad's "lesson on taking his future seriously" is cutting off his allowance. That's it. They still stock the food in the house, pay the bills, and don't charge him rent. His mom buys him clothes whenever the mood strikes her, which is often. Steve's job mostly has to cover gas, eating out, dates, and similar things. He stashes a fair bit of it away as his "follow where Robin goes" savings.

He has no idea how much the electricity is, the gas, his parent's mortgage. He doesn't buy the groceries. He's got an idea of how much his clothes cost, and… those alone would eat up a large chunk of every paycheck, because Steve's mom likes name brands from the department stores in Indy. Steve's not even sure what all bills his parents pay.

He should probably figure that out before he has his own place.

He wishes he could ask his mom how to budget because she's the one who doesn't explain things like he's an idiot, but unfortunately, the only thing she knows how to do is stay under the allowance Steve's dad gives her. His dad's actually happy to walk him through it when Steve asks, saying, "It's about time you took some accountability for being an adult instead of coasting and mooching off your mom and I." And come on, how is Steve supposed to know he needs to know this stuff if no one (say, his parents) tells him? It's not like he has a checklist somewhere of "stuff Steve doesn't know" that he's ignoring.

His dad walks him through the numbers, and he budgets for so many more things than Steve realizes, like the BMW's still under his dad's name and his dad pays the car payment and the insurance on it. That number is… high. Really high. It's a nice car, and his dad has total coverage on it. His dad covers Steve's health insurance, and there's insurance on the house, and the phone bill, and money set aside every month for car maintenance and repairs or in case the appliances need to be replaced. His dad had to replace the furnace last year and Jesus, the one he bought cost more than Steve makes in a year.

This is the point Robin's trying to make: Steve can survive on what he makes at Family Video, but he can't live his current life on it. He can't have his BMW and excellent heath insurance and never have to worry about food on the table or heat in winter. Steve thought he'd saved up a lot: it's not going to go anywhere near as far as he expected once he moves out. His dad helps him find apartment listings in the newspaper in Hawkins. He warns Steve that rent will be a little higher in a mid-sized city like Indianapolis, but 'criminally' higher in large, popular cities Chicago, New York, or Los Angeles. He works Steve through a mock budget of rent, groceries, and bills.

Having hard numbers in front of him gives Steve perspective that Robin's "He's poor," didn't quite manage, helps him concretely wrap his head around the difference in twenty-five cents for a thrift store T-shirt and twenty dollars for a new one. His mom, when he asks, shows him the bills from her tailor and ouch, that is not going in Steve's mock budget. Steve's broader and shorter than Keith: off the rack fits him in a way it never will Keith, and now Steve feels a bad about mocking Keith's ill-fitting shirt in a way he doesn't know how to fix.

Keith doesn't like Steve and he sets the roster, so they're never scheduled together if there's another option. It's not like Steve plans to apologize for the shitty things he said behind Keith's back—the only thing worse than having said them is saying them to Keith's face before owns up to the mistake—but he figures he can do something to make it up to him.

Keith sees each nice gesture Steve makes as an attempt to suck up, to sway Keith into giving him a raise or better shifts, no matter how often Steve insists that's not what's going on. This insistence is sabotaged by the fact that Steve can't tell Keith what is going on without admitting to being just as awful as Keith always assumes he is, and "I'm just being nice," isn't anything Keith buys.

Steve gives up after awhile; they aren't around each other much anyway. At least not until after they kick Vecna's ass and close the Upside Down for what is definitely, for sure, one hundred per cent the last time. Yeah, Steve's sticking around for a couple years. The Upside Down can't keep it's creepy invasion out of Hawkins for longer than about a year, so two should be past the danger point. Unfortunately, this latest round of mayhem left everyone's parents in the know, and while Steve's so, so glad the kids are safely away from any chance of a Vecna repeat, it's lonely, especially with Robin gone to college and his parents moved to Chicago. They talk on the phone all the time, but it's not the same.

After Vecna, so many people have left Hawkins and more are bailing every day, settling down in new towns and cities, half the homes and jobs in Hawkins destroyed by the widening and spreading cracks. With everything settling and stabilizing, Steve's one of the few employees left. Keith should be scheduling them for solo shifts, but Family Video's one of places still doing business and cutting hours means people don't get paid. Keith's a grump and a jerk, but he's got a heart. The employees still in Hawkins have full time work, even if that means Keith has to put up with Steve.

When Steve was a kid, his brain used to freeze. He'd be looking at something and then… his eyes wouldn't move. He'd be entranced, locked in on whatever it was, unable to look away. This wasn't a problem when he was staring at something inanimate, but when it was people… he got a lot of grief as a kid for staring, until he learned to blink and break himself out of it. Until he learned to turn that brain stall into a weapon, mocking whatever it was that had the audacity to draw his eye: a nose, the hairs on someone's arm, the shape of an ear. All the fascinating ways people varied, that Steve couldn't stop his brain from drinking down, that he threw back with vitriol because it was better to be an asshole than the weirdo who couldn't stop staring.

He's gotten better at reigning it in since he was a kid, catches it faster, learns to keep his eyes to himself. And then he works with Keith, and Steve can't stop staring at Keith's hands. They're oddly elongated, long palm with long fingers, and the joints are a little knobby: hypnotic. Keith loves to snap them in front of Steve's face to get his attention, and only the fact that he yanks them back keeps Steve from getting caught looking. Steve sneaks peeks when he can, hoping that if he looks at them long enough, he'll fill whatever part of his brain is so obsessed with them.

And then he thinks about sucking on them for the first time while he's jerking off, and it's over. He's never getting free of them. He wonders how they'd feel in his mouth or just inside him, if they'd feel different than Steve's own fingers. He starts worrying about getting turned on at work because Keith's hands are right there, in reality instead of fantasy.

And then there's his hair. And the cut could be more flattering—how hard could it be to learn to cut hair? Could Steve learn? Could he fix it?—but the hair itself fluffs up and it looks soft. Steve's hair is soft, before he puts the products in, but he always has to choose between soft and styled and… he's vain. He'd rather look good than have his hair float around his face. Steve crosses his arms at work a lot, keeping that insane impulse to run his hands through Keith's hair in check.

The acne scars are the worst, because they're right on Keith's face. It's absolutely the worst place to stare because if Keith notices, Steve's going to have to get creepy or get mean, and he's trying not to be that person anymore. He wants to be the guy Robin's proud to have as a friend, isn't afraid to introduce to people. But those cheeks. Steve accidentally sees them up close once, the way the pores are closer to crags, creating tiny valleys and mountains on his face. Steve's not a poet, but it's like looking at the moon, and he never wants to stop.

Like the absolute idiot he is, he keeps finding ways to get close to Keith's face, just for a glimpse. Keith's never going to let him look is fill, so leaning over the desk obnoxiously to "check his shifts" when Keith's trying to put the work roster together or timing his turn around so they nearly collide or asking for Keith to explain something on the computer so he has to lean in close, face near Steve's.

That last one's a mistake, because he ends up close enough that Steve can smell whatever soap he's using, or shampoo, or something that itches at his brain, makes him want to figure out exactly what scents make it up. He can't make a habit of getting close to Keith. Steve's got a reputation, well earned, as a lady's man that has covered his more egalitarian indiscretions, but if he gets a reputation for being a queer… it's going to be a long year left in Hawkins if those rumors go around with the wrong crowd. If Keith had been in the theater clique instead of one of the dungeons and dragons nerds, Steve would be more confident in crusing him a little, seeing if something sticks.

It takes Steve a tragically long time to realize what's going on.

In the end, it's the not looking that tips Steve off. Steve's so busy being careful about how he looks at Keith, priding himself on never getting caught, that he misses for months that Keith is making it easy for him. Keith is always so careful about never looking at Steve unless he doesn't have a choice, and maybe if Steve was straight, it wouldn't seem odd. But once Steve starts paying attention, it's the way he doesn't look at Steve—or at any of the cute boys their age who come in—that tips him off. Keith is causal with women, with older people, with kids. He doesn't guard where he looks. He does with the boys who come in. He does with Steve.

Man, he must hate it that he thinks Steve is hot.

Steve maybe makes it a little rough for him. He's a recovering asshole; he's not perfect. He wears his shirts a little short, stretching his arms over his head to make the hems rise up, showing off his stomach. He wears the tightest jeans he has, bends over to pick up boxes with his back instead of his legs—he's twenty, he'll be fine if he doesn't lift with his legs; god, Keith, chill out and enjoy the view—while conveniently forgetting to close the office door. Hey, how's he supposed to open it with a box in hand? Keith getting a good view of his ass is just a bonus.

That office desk starts featuring in more of Steve's fantasies than he'll ever admit.

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Brazil environmental agency capitulates over oil drilling in the Mouth of the Amazon River

Brazil’s environmental regulator, Ibama, has capitulated. On Monday, May 19, the agency paved the way to authorize drilling by Petrobras of an exploratory well in Block 59, in the Foz do Amazonas area. The decision made by Ibama’s president, Rodrigo Agostinho, stands in opposition to an opinion issued by 29 of the agency’s technical staff members. In February, those advisors recommended the license continue to be denied, as Agostinho had himself determined in May 2023. Petrobras appealed the decision at that time. Block 59 sits 160 kilometers offshore from Oiapoque, Amapá, in an extremely environmentally sensitive area.

The decision to finalize the license was made less than six months before COP30 in Belém. It will be the first time the climate conference will take place in the Amazon, where discussions will be held on how to put into practice the gradual elimination of fossil fuels, which account for over 75% of planet-warming gas emissions. Despite the climate emergency, Ibama is under political pressure to issue the licenses, with consecutive statements along these lines being made by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Workers’ Party), his cabinet, and politicians like Senate president Davi Alcolumbre (União Brasil party) and the government’s leader in Congress, Randolfe Rodrigues (Workers’ Party). Both of these senators are from Amapá, an economically poor state in the Brazilian Amazon where drilling for oil is marketed as a guarantee of prosperity.

Ibama announced Agostinho’s decision on Monday evening, May 19. The agency said the sixth and most recent plan submitted by Petrobras to protect wildlife in the Block 59 licensing process had been approved. This plan to rescue birds and marine animals, including turtles and manatees, was the last of what were referred to as the “conceptual” conditions in the process. Now that it has been approved, all that is left is for the state-owned company to run an oil spill accident response drill. This practical test, to be held in the area where drilling is planned, is known as a Pre-Operational Assessment. 

SUMAÚMA had access to the official order containing the details of Rodrigo Agostinho’s decision. He recognizes that the technical team indicated a “possible lack of feasibility” in Petrobras’s wildlife protection plan in its February opinion, “regarding the enormous logistical and environmental challenges in the region.” He nevertheless goes on to say that there were no “larger questions” about the size of the resources submitted by the company to rescue the animals. This led him to conclude that “the most effective way to resolve the uncertainties raised” by the technical staff “is to hold a Pre-Operational Assessment.” 

Continue reading.

[starset21]

When to Let Go

Standard disclaimer: I do not consent to the posting, translating, or publishing of my work to any 3rd party site, the only place it may currently be found is on tumblr and Wattpad under the name @.itswildflower

A/N: Here's pt. 2 to Going to War!

Looking for more? Chicago Fire Collection Masterlist 

Word count: 2.4k

Warnings: cannon typical depictions of fires/accidents and injuries, medical inaccuracies?

“Pop tried to play the hero. He forgot he was in his 60s with a bum ticker,” Jay huffs. “Yeah, well. This is your fault to begin with. Stick me in that fire trap,” Pat Halstead coughed. “Pop, stop talking,” Will tells him. “You said you liked the place,” Jay reminded him as he pushed Will and the Nurse away, insisting he didn’t need this. “Paramedics said you were complaining of chest pain. Did you forget you had a quadruple bypass a few weeks ago? Come on, stay still,” Will huffs. “Hey, if it isn't my favorite patient. How you doing, Mr. Halstead?,” Connor greets. “Fine,” the older man grumbles. “So you felt some tightness in your chest, huh?” Conner asks. “It's nothing.” Jay gives him a look. “Well, you might be right. I don't see any ST elevation or depression. No left access deviation. Looks like a strong and healthy heart to me.” Pat sighs. “Oh good. Are we done?” he asks. “Nope, not yet. You still have a pretty nasty inhalation injury. Can I get a CBC, CMP, and a carboxyhemoglobin? And add a full cardiac workup,” Rhodes tells the nurse. “Dr. Rhodes, you’re needed for a consultation,” Maggie pops in and tells him. “Yeah. Mr. Halstead, a pleasure as always,” Rhodes tells him before leaving. Will stops him for a moment, “Thank you, Connor.” Connor nods before heading to his consult. “I don't need all this,” Pat huffs again. “Calm down, you're getting yourself worked up,” Jay tells him. “What do you know? You're no doctor,” Pat grumbles. “Pop,” Will warns. “Forget it,” Jay tells him, turning away for a moment. “You had no right to sell my house,” he shouts. “You want to talk about this again? It was a wreck. You couldn't take care of the place,” Jay tells him. “You just wanted my money,” Pat throws at him. “Hey,” Will tries to intervene. “You don't have any money, you thankless old prick,” Jay says before walking out. 

“Hey, how are you guys doing?” Maggie asks the 4 firefighters standing just outside Dani’s room. “Choi kicked us out,” Kelly tells her. “Yeah, he needs room to work, Kelly. Try to be patient,” Maggie sighs before moving on. Kelly watches as Choi and the nurses move around Dani, tears lined his eyes again but he didn’t allow them to fall. “Get her on the vent and make sure she's 100% oxygenated,” Choi tells April. “Right,” she responds, beginning to prep things when Dani starts sputtering and coughing, trying to sit up. “She's waking up. Push 4 milligrams of midazolam,” Choi orders. “Whoa, easy, easy. Easy, easy. All right. - Easy, Dani,” the nurses and Choi try to soothe her. “BP and heart rate are stable. She's settling down,” April tells him. “Draw a blood gas with carboxyhemoglobin,” Choi tells them before stepping back and discarding his gloves. “Hey... what's happening?” Kelly asks as Choi steps out into the hallway. “Her vitals are holding, but she's in pretty bad shape. We're running some tests and should know more soon,” Choi tells those gathered outside her room. An alarm begins going off in her room. “Blood pressure and sats are dropping,” April calls out and Choi rushes back in, accessing her. “All right, she's bleeding in her airway. Hang a unit on the rapid transfuser, suction her ET tube, and get a chest X-ray,” Choi orders.  “Blood's coming too fast. Every time I suction the tube, it fills back up again,” April sighs. “Hang another unit and just do your best to keep up,” Choi tells April. “Where’s the X-Ray?” Rhodes asks, walking in. “Here you go,” A nurse told him as soon as they had taken the image. “She's got a massive hemorrhage in her right lung. It's impossible to say where it's coming from. All right, call the blood bank, trigger the MTP,” Rhodes orders. “Can you find it?” Kelly asks, looking from Dani to Dr. Rhodes. “First I've gotta find it. Let's set up for a bronchoscopy, someone fill in the Halstead brothers please.”

“Jay!” Matt calls out when he finds the detective. “Casey?” Jay asks, turning around. “Is Dani ok?” Matt shakes his head, walking up to him as Jay furrows his brow. “What’s happened?” he asks. “She ran out of air, she had a pulse but wasn't breathing, they had to intubate her, she’s down in the ER with Choi and Rhodes,” Matt tells him. Jay’s breath hitched. “Does Will know?” Jay asks. “Someone should be telling him as we speak,” Matt reassures him. “What are we standing around here for? Let’s go,” Jay tells him and the two of them take off for the emergency room.  

“She's lost a significant amount of blood. Unfortunately, the only way we can be sure to completely stop her bleeding is to remove her entire lung,” Rhodes tells him. “What?” Kelly asks. “Kelly, it's the best chance we have of saving Dani's life,” Choi tells him. “She can't be a firefighter if she only has one lung. There's gotta be something else you can do. April?” Kelly asks his friend. “What if we tried Ekmo? It would rest her lung so we have enough time to locate the bleed…” April trailed off. “No. We'd have to give her anticoagulants to keep the lines open,” Rhodes tells her. “Isn’t it worth the shot?” April asks. “It would make her bleed even worse. She's too unstable,” Choi tells them. “Believe me, Kelly, this is the best course of action,” Rhodes tells him. “Sounds to me like you've thrown in the towel before you even tried to save her lung. Being a firefighter is the only thing Dani cares about. I'm not gonna let you do it,” Kelly shakes his head. “I'm sorry. But it's not up to you,” Choi tells him. Will and Jay come quickly around the corner with Matt and Stella. “What’s going on?” Will asks. “She’s losing blood from a massive hemorrhage in her right lung. The only way we can be sure to completely stop her bleeding is to remove her entire lung, but of course the ultimate decision is yielded to the family,” Rhodes tells him. Will looks at Jay who looks lost and unsure. “She can't be a firefighter if she only has one lung,” Kelly tells them, practically pleading with them to tell them to do it some other way. Will looks at Dani laying on the bed, intubated with machines hooked up in the trauma bay. “Do whatever you have to to save her life, but if you can, save the lung,” Will tells him. “Get her upstairs,” Rhodes tells them quickly before starting to walk away. 

Kelly sent Will a grateful look before walking off with the other firefighters. “Dr. Halstead, Mr. Halstead, there was a problem with your father,” a nurse comes up to them. As if the day couldn’t get any worse for the Halstead family. “How long before sinus rhythm was restored?” Will asked. “He was down for around five minutes,” the nurse who had helped with the code tells him. “Well, that's consistent with what I'm seeing. Almost no EEG waveforms,” Dr. Abrams speaks up. “Are we not seeing some brain activity?” Jay asks, wiping a hand down his face. “Artifacts. Distortion, interference. Dust on the window,” Abrams tells him. “Okay, I am... I'm not following,” Jay tells him. “Your father's brain-dead,” Abrams tells him simply. “So he's just not coming back? Like, you... you're saying that there's... there's no chance?” Jay asks. “If I had to calculate the odds, I'd say 1,000 to 1 against. This vent could be put to better use,” Abrams says, turning to Will. “Are you serious?” Jay asks. “Jay-” Will tries to calm him. “The hell is wrong with you, man? Are you kidding me?” Jay asks. “We'll talk about it. Thanks, Sam,” Will says with a firm nod. Abrams narrows his eyes and nods before leaving. 

“I don't like that guy, man. I want a second opinion,” Jay tells Will when they were out in a hallway. “He's our top neurosurgeon,” Will counters. “So all your degrees, all that money, all those years in school, this is the best you can do?” Jay nearly shouts. “Jay, Dad almost died two years ago. He's been living on borrowed time,” Will tries to reason with him. “Abrams didn't say Dad had no chance,” Jay huffs. “1,000 to 1 is no chance. I'm trying to be realistic. I've seen a lot of patients in his condition,” Will tells him. “There goes that doctor's voice,” Jay says sarcastically, throwing his hands up in surrender. “I'm sorry, but I am a doctor,” Will tells him, crossing his arms. “Yeah, don't worry, we got that message,” Jay scoffed. “And Dad knew you thought you were better than us. We always came in second, you weren't there, and now you want to decide what happens?” Will runs a hand through his hair. “That is not true, Jay, you know-” he starts to tell him. “There you are,” a woman comes up to them. Will sighs and turns to her. “Ms. Garrett, this is my brother, Jay,” Will introduces. “Yes. I'm the hospital's COO. I heard about your father. I'm very sorry,” she tells them. “I want you both to know that there's no hurry in making any decisions about Mr. Halstead. You have the full support of this hospital. And we will provide your father with any and all resources,” she tells them. “I appreciate that,” Will tells her. “We take care of our own. This... is my cell phone. You call me if you need anything,” she tells Jay, handing him her card before walking away. “It's decided. We're not giving up. I’m going to go see if there’s any news on Dani,” Jay stated with a finality before walking away.

“Dani’s still in surgery last I checked,” Jay says as Will first walks into the room, not even looking up from their father’s face. He had come straight back after he hadn't been told of any updates to Dani's condition. Will decided to file that information away for now, focusing on this and the information he had just learned. “Hey, Jay. We gotta take Dad off the vent.” This causes Jay to look at him. “No, no, no. He… I've been sitting with him, and he blinks his eyes. And I grabbed his hand, and he squeezed my hand. He squeezed my hand.” Will looked at his younger brother with sympathy. “Those are just reflexes. They don't mean anything,” Will tells him softly. “I'm telling you, man, he knows that I'm here,” Jay insists looking back at their dad. “He doesn't. He can't,” Will places a hand on his shoulder. “We can't. He's… He's gotta come back, man, 'cause... that can't be the last conversation I ever have with him,” Jay tells him, wiping his eyes. “Look, whatever regrets you have, you're not gonna resolve them here. You just gotta accept that.” Jay glares at Will. “Don't tell me what I got to accept.” Will was trying his best to keep it together. “Jay, the reason Gwen encouraged us to take our time with Dad? His bypass was 29 days ago. If he dies before 30 days are up, regardless of why, it's a fatality for the hospital. So Gwen's just trying to keep Dad alive for one more day so the hospital doesn't take the hit,” he explains. “I get it. You feel betrayed but I don't care. I care about Dad,” Jay tells him. “And you think he'd want to be kept alive to buff some numbers?” Will asks. “You need to get out. You gotta get out, man,” Jay shouts. “They're using him,” Will tells him calmly as he steps back towards the door. “That's your problem,” Jay seethes with anger. “Jay, he's gone,” Will finishes before leaving. 

“You guys put me in a terrible position. But... we were able to isolate the bleed, and we only had to take out a portion of her lung. It was a thoracoscopic procedure, minimally invasive. That's all to say that... she should be back to work in no time,” Rhodes tells the firefighters from Truck 81 gathered in one of the waiting rooms. “Oh, thank God. Dr. Rhodes... you're the man,” Herrmann tells him, shaking his hand. “Yeah, you guys are okay too,” he chuckles before turning to April, “Go find Kelly, let him know, I’m heading for Will and Jay.” April nods before walking off. Matt shakes Connor’s hand with a firm nod before heading down the hallway with Sylvie, Stella and Herrmann to go tell Boden and the others.

“Kelly. She's awake. Wants to see you,” April calls into one of the various waiting rooms. Kelly let out a sigh of relief, thanking whatever higher power that she made it through ok. April nodded her head to the door, silently telling him ‘let’s go’ and he stands, following after her. He stops for a moment in the doorway, simply taking her in. Dani turned her head and looked at him, she was a little groggy but she smiled. Kelly smiled too, moving to her bedside and leaning over to press a kiss to her forehead. He pulled a chair closer and sat down, taking her hand in his and squeezing it. “I’m so glad you made it,” he tells her. “Of course, I’m always going to come back to you,” she tells him quietly, her throat still a little bit sore. “Come here,” she tells him, and he leans over, laying his head in the crook of her arm to which she wraps around his head and plays with the short ends of his hair, pressing a kiss of her own to his head. Kelly shudders a little and Dani knows he’s probably crying again so she continues playing with his hair and holding him the best she could.

[transgenderer]

The Goodyear Inflatoplane was an inflatable experimental aircraft made by the Goodyear Aircraft Company, a subsidiary of Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, well known for the Goodyear blimp. Although it seemed an improbable project, the finished aircraft proved to be capable of meeting its design objectives, although orders were never forthcoming from the military. A total of 12 prototypes were built between 1956 and 1959, and testing continued until 1972, when the project was finally cancelled.

The original concept of an all-fabric inflatable aircraft was based on Taylor McDaniel's inflatable rubber glider experiments in 1931. Designed and built in only 12 weeks, the Goodyear Inflatoplane was built in 1956, with the idea that it could be used by the military as a rescue plane to be dropped in a hardened container behind enemy lines. The 44 cubic ft (1.25 cubic meter) container could also be transported by truck, jeep trailer or aircraft.[1] The inflatable surface of this aircraft was actually a sandwich of two rubber-type materials connected by a mesh of nylon threads, forming an I-beam. When the nylon was exposed to air, it absorbed and repelled water as it stiffened,[clarification needed] giving the aircraft its shape and rigidity. Structural integrity was retained in flight with forced air being continually circulated by the aircraft's motor. This continuous pressure supply enabled the aircraft to have a degree of puncture resilience, the testing of airmat showing that it could be punctured by up to six .30 calibre bullets and retain pressure.[2][3] Goodyear inflatoplane on display at the Smithsonian Institution

There were at least two versions: The GA-468 was a single-seater. It took about five minutes to inflate to about 25 psi (170 kPa); at full size, it was 19 ft 7 in (5.97 m) long, with a 22 ft (6.7 m) wingspan. A pilot would then hand-start the two-stroke cycle,[1] 40 horsepower (30 kW) Nelson engine, and takeoff with a maximum load of 240 pounds (110 kg). On 20 US gallons (76 L) of fuel, the aircraft could fly 390 miles (630 km), with an endurance of 6.5 hours. Maximum speed was 72 miles per hour (116 km/h), with a cruise speed of 60 mph. Later, a 42 horsepower (31 kW) engine was used in the aircraft.

Takeoff from turf was in 250 feet with 575 feet needed to clear a 50-foot obstacle. It landed in 350 feet. Rate of climb was 550 feet per minute. Its service ceiling was estimated at 10,000 ft.

The test program at Goodyear's facilities near Wingfoot Lake, Akron, Ohio showed that the inflation could be accomplished with as little as 8 psi (544 mbar), less than a car tire.[1] The flight test program had a fatal crash when Army aviator Lt. "Pug" Wallace was killed. The aircraft was in a descending turn when one of the control cables under the wing came off the pulley and was wedged in the pulley bracket, locking the stick. The turn tightened until one of the wings folded up over the propeller and was chopped up. With the wings flapping because of loss of air, one of the aluminum wing tip skids hit the pilot in the head, as was clear from marks on his helmet. Wallace was pitched out, over the nose of the aircraft and fell into the shallow lake. His parachute never opened.[4]

To Die For the InflatoPlane

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

Webb finds early galaxies weren’t too big for their britches after all

It got called the crisis in cosmology. But now astronomers can explain some surprising recent discoveries.

When astronomers got their first glimpses of galaxies in the early universe from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, they were expecting to find galactic pipsqueaks, but instead they found what appeared to be a bevy of Olympic bodybuilders. Some galaxies appeared to have grown so massive, so quickly, that simulations couldn’t account for them. Some researchers suggested this meant that something might be wrong with the theory that explains what the universe is made of and how it has evolved since the big bang, known as the standard model of cosmology.

According to a new study in the Astronomical Journal led by University of Texas at Austin graduate student Katherine Chworowsky, some of those early galaxies are in fact much less massive than they first appeared. Black holes in some of these galaxies make them appear much brighter and bigger than they really are.

“We are still seeing more galaxies than predicted, although none of them are so massive that they ‘break’ the universe,” Chworowsky said.

The evidence was provided by Webb’s Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) Survey, led by Steven Finkelstein, a professor of astronomy at UT Austin and study co-author.

Black Holes Add to Brightness

According to this latest study, the galaxies that appeared overly massive likely host black holes rapidly consuming gas. Friction in the fast-moving gas emits heat and light, making these galaxies much brighter than they would be if that light emanated just from stars. This extra light can make it appear that the galaxies contain many more stars, and hence are more massive, than we would otherwise estimate. When scientists remove these galaxies, dubbed “little red dots” (based on their red color and small size), from the analysis, the remaining early galaxies are not too massive to fit within predictions of the standard model.

“So, the bottom line is there is no crisis in terms of the standard model of cosmology,” Finkelstein said. “Any time you have a theory that has stood the test of time for so long, you have to have overwhelming evidence to really throw it out. And that’s simply not the case.”

Efficient Star Factories

Although they’ve settled the main dilemma, a less thorny problem remains: There are still roughly twice as many massive galaxies in Webb’s data of the early universe than expected from the standard model. One possible reason might be that stars formed more quickly in the early universe than they do today.

“Maybe in the early universe, galaxies were better at turning gas into stars,” Chworowsky said.

Star formation happens when hot gas cools enough to succumb to gravity and condense into one or more stars. But as the gas contracts, it heats up, generating outward pressure. In our region of the universe, the balance of these opposing forces tends to make the star formation process very slow. But perhaps, according to some theories, because the early universe was denser than today, it was harder to blow gas out during star formation, allowing the process to go faster.

More Evidence of Black Holes

Concurrently, astronomers have been analyzing the spectra of "little red dots" discovered with Webb, with researchers in both the CEERS team and others finding evidence of fast-moving hydrogen gas, a signature of black hole accretion disks. This supports the idea that at least some of the light coming from these compact, red objects comes from gas swirling around black holes, rather than stars – reinforcing Chworowsky and their team’s conclusion that they are probably not as massive as astronomers initially thought.  However, further observations of these intriguing objects are incoming, and should help solve the puzzle about how much light comes from stars versus gas around black holes.

Often in science, when you answer one question, that leads to new questions. While Chworowsky and their colleagues have shown that the standard model of cosmology likely isn’t broken, their work points to the need for new ideas in star formation.

“And so there is still that sense of intrigue,” Chworowsky said. “Not everything is fully understood. That’s what makes doing this kind of science fun, because it’d be a terribly boring field if one paper figured everything out, or there were no more questions to answer.”The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).

[remotelyturbulentzephyr]

Maintaining Your Boiler: Essential Tips for Winnipeg Homeowners

Introduction

Winnipeg, known for its http://the-great-blog-1677.mozellosite.com cold winters, relies heavily on efficient heating systems to keep homes warm and comfortable. Among the many types of heating solutions available, boilers stand out for their reliability and effectiveness. Yet, like any other home appliance, they require regular maintenance to ensure optimal performance. In this article, we will delve into Maintaining Your Boiler: Essential Tips for Winnipeg Homeowners, providing a comprehensive guide that includes everything from routine checks to professional boiler service options in Winnipeg.

Understanding Your Boiler System What is a Boiler?

A boiler is a closed vessel where water or another fluid is heated. The generated steam or hot fluid then circulates through pipes to provide heating in various areas of your home. There are several types of boilers—combi, system, and conventional—that cater to different heating needs.

How Does a Boiler Work?

Boilers work by heating water using natural gas, oil, or electricity. The heated water is then circulated through radiators or underfloor heating systems. Understanding your boiler's mechanics can help you identify potential issues early on.

The Importance of Regular Maintenance Why Maintain Your Boiler?

Regular maintenance ensures your boiler operates efficiently and safely. A well-maintained boiler can lead to energy savings and prevent costly repairs down the line.

Signs Your Boiler Needs Attention Unusual noises (gurgling, banging) Increased energy bills Inconsistent heating Leaks around the unit Routine Maintenance Tasks for Homeowners Monthly Checks Inspect Pressure Levels: Ensure the pressure gauge reads between 1-2 bars. Bleed Radiators: Release trapped air in your radiators every few months. Check the Thermostat: Make sure it’s functioning correctly and effectively regulating temperature. Seasonal Maintenance Flushing the System: This helps remove sludge build-up that can hinder efficiency. Inspecting Vents: Ensure there are no blockages in exhaust vents that could lead to dangerous fumes entering your home. Professional Services You May Need Boiler Service Winnipeg

Consider scheduling an annual boiler service with a qualified technician to perform comprehensive checks, including safety inspections and efficiency tests.

HVAC Inspection Winnipeg

An HVAC inspection can help identify any underlying issues across your entire heating system, ensuring everything works harmoniously together.

Energy Efficiency Tips for Your Boiler Upgrading Your System

Older boilers may not be as efficient as newer models. If you're considering an upgrade, look into options such as Geo heat pumps, which provide excellent energy efficiency.

HVAC Energy Audits Winnipeg

A professional energy audit will highlight areas where you can improve efficiency—this might include insulation upgrades or ductwork improvements.

Safety Considerations When Maintaining Your Boiler Carbon Monoxide Detectors

Install carbon monoxide detectors near sleeping areas and ensure they are functioning correctly—this is c

[tachimichishrine]

Okay sooooo I’ve been reading your stuff for a couple of days now and IM OBSESSED I love the way you write tachi so if it’s okay, could I request an x reader where the reader is a weapon’s engineer? bonus points if she’s a chemical engineer by profession IF YOU WRITE THIS THANK YOU SO MUCHHHHH have a great day

<AKH TYSM??? giggling isn't a strong enough word i'm rolling on the floor blushing,,, sorry for the long build up and it had less tachi appearances than i intended agagagagagh I hope this is what you wanted, have a lovely day darling ♡>

"blown away"

⫭◦⨝◦⫬

tachihara michizou x fem! chem eng! reader

warnings: none :) just fluff n plot, slight cursing n intended lowercase

a searing sting, ringing in ears, ash fluttering all in the surroundings; the world has become a wasteland, and you were nestled warmly in the safety of a suit designed to handle the radiation from the outside. you watched the blocks of metal melt lopsidedly, a displeased tsk accompanying your scowl at the failure. they were not meant to come apart so easily.

"goddamn it!" you yanked the zipper that lined your chest, tearing it off until the oversized suit was open enough to slump off. with a fury that caused every man watching you to clear their throats, become incredibly interested in a speck on their shoes or take a step back out of fear, you pulled off the costume and threw it to the ground. you even spat on it, grumbling vexedly, "that should've worked."

the admiral looked at you with a raised brow, clearly not impressed by your childish reaction. you couldn't care less; this was your one chance of hitting it big. you were hired by the government to create a chemical similar to sleeping gas capable of only targeting the enemy, except they didn't quite want their enemies to take a nap. you had a logical solution, and worked on it with your team for months; today was the demonstration to show all the important men what their money had been funding.

yes, what you did was despicable. you created weapons of mass destruction, turned simple assortments of molecules and rearranged them in a way that could turn a solider inside-out. however, the scope was beyond you; you simply made the tools, and their use was not up to you. many of your colleagues knew about the kind of iron stomach needed to work in this field, and no one ever said a word. you had a cadaver which you mutilated during trials of reactions with the flesh, and not a single person looked each other in the eyes during the tests. yet you all knew that you were more powerful than those who wielded the codes, those who held the guns and those whose whispers into a phone could turn an entire city to rubble. all because you had the ability to create such horrifying devices.

this one had been working up until today's demonstration. it was a highly pressurized container that, when detonated, would slowly disperse in the air and corrode everything except the metal blocks you coated in the other substance that would negate its effects, cancel out the reaction and subsequently keep the bearers intact. however, something seemed to have happened and the bearers were very much not intact.

you were now stripped of the protective gear, walking in the toxic chemicals freely like it was a breath of fresh air. the colonels and officials gawked at you from behind their protective screen, to which you snapped out of your fury and chuckled, seeming almost embarrassed. you didn't know which ones were up to date on abilities, but you decided that it wasn't your job to explain to them that you have the gift of immunity to toxic substances. the suit was a decoration, more than anything, designed to be worn by the rest of your team who were sulking behind you at the disappointing results.

"[_____], knock it off," one of them placed a hand on your shoulder and tried to bring you back to reality. "we were monitoring the conditions, so we'll just have to take a look to see what caused the error."

you scowled, not wanting to admit that they were right. with a shrug to get rid of their hand, you excused yourself and walked over to the pressurized door that separated you from your clients. you threw it open, your clothes starting to fray at the exposure (quite slowly, given that your sweat was doing a pretty good job at protecting them from the chemicals), and stormed inside. the man who'd initially approached you for this job - a nameless colonel, a man whose face you could barely remember - was walking away, disappointed. you didn't like the feeling of failure, but this added insult to injury.

yet, you barely had a choice to follow him and explain that this was a one-off, that your process and methodology was sound and would be peer-reviewed if it wasn't highly politicized and you could publish your work. you left everyone behind as you walked the hallways of the facility to find him.

of course the place was a maze. every hallway looked identical, every door and every room the same and god forbid you put a map somewhere. soon enough, the layout had engulfed you whole and there was nothing you could do to stop it except continue walking and hope you would get out, never mind find the admiral.

you caught a glimpse of a strongly built man, tuffs of white sprouting out the back of his head and you called out to get his attention, given that the way he was walking made it appear that he knew where he was going. he turned around; it was a living legend.

a chance encounter led to you babbling like a fan girl about how incredible the fukuchi ochi was, and he seemed to be enjoying the praise because he walked you down to his office and offered you hard liquor at 2 in the afternoon. you told him that alcohol didn't affect you (your body treated it like a toxic substance and isolated it from your system), but he thought you were exaggerating and challenged you to a drink-off. your day was already ruined from what had just happened, and you figured that this kind of opportunity doesn't come around every day.

you told yourself that it didn't matter and pulled yourself a seat with a grin.

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turns out you were one lucky bastard.

even though you clearly beat him at his challenge, he seemed to take a liking to your spirit and heard you out when you explained your current situation. he must've made some calls or talked to some people, because your funding had not only not vanished the next day, but you were told it was tripling. you had a hard time convincing your coworkers that you didn't give the admiral one hell of a blowjob to make this happen.

you didn't dare venture through the facility and risk being locked out in an area where you didn't have clearance, so you just politely asked around for fukuchi's location in order to properly thank him.

it took a while, but you were told to head to some kind of training grounds at the back of the building. the place itself was mostly underground, given that most of the research happening was highly classified or highly controversial, so you were slightly surprised to find out people actually used the first floor. your clearance didn't let you get in, but you laundered around the door pretending to be on a phone call long enough for someone who did have clearance to open it and be careless enough to let you waltz in behind them.

once you reached what amounted to the backyard of the government facility, you saw fukuchi sitting down lazily, a hand waving around messily while he energetically said something at the two men who were doing alternating pull ups on a bar and a little girl who was doing one-handed push ups while smiling widely at him.

you stepped outside, a little uncertain of what you were intruding on given that it seemed like they were soldiers, but the entire group seemed to be painfully unorganized. despite this, you were set on thanking the old man for what he did, so you took another step.

a man was running towards you on the left, the sweat dripping down his arms and face signaling that he's been running for a long time, and you only heard his footsteps too late. he was zoned in and you were zoned out; your bodies collided and soon enough you were laying on the ground while he teetered on one foot and managed not to follow you downwards.

however, he looked pissed. "who the fuck are you?" he held his hand out, and a pistol levitated from who knows where to snap into his grasp, then pointed at your face.

an ability user. you put your hands up in a sign of innocence, reaching to your government id and pass to explain to him that you worked here and were just looking to talk to fukuchi in regards to your project. he didn't seem convinced.

"look," you sighed, slowly getting yourself up and dusting off the dirt from your clothes, "I didn't mean to run into you, so why don't you just let me walk on over there and talk to the guy?"

he glared at you as you did, and the other three soldiers (you presumed they were, even though you couldn't explain the little girl) noticed your presence and gave you about the same reaction as the redhead did. you regretted coming here, and told yourself that you would just thank fukuchi and get the hell out of here.

you waved at him cautiously, and began to thank him for getting you your funding.

he didn't know who the hell you were.

you knew he was drunk, but it was a logical assumption that he would at least remember your face vaguely, or would've made those calls while sober. apparently this wasn't logical, and right now you were ready to evaporate into the atmosphere and never return.

your brows were furrowed in confusion, and you stammered your way out while trying not to provoke the other people watching you. "I'm so sorry for disturbing you... ahem... hey, how's it going... I'm just gonna walk 'round ya ahah... uh... sorry..."

you ran out nervously before the redhead could point his gun at you again.

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"oh my god, it was awful," you blabbered to your colleagues, recounting the story in vivid detail while burying your face in your palms and bending your torso onto the table. you had a chalkboard up with your new data, and screens were displaying models and atomic structures, since you were three days after the disastrous demonstration and still couldn't figure out what went wrong. "he looked at me like he'd never seen me in his life."

"you sure you didn't just hallucinate the whole encounter?" someone snickered, and you threw your empty coffee cup at them.

"yeah, it happens to me all the time when I forget to sleep for a few days. trust me, it's a sign of greatness."

"oh, shut up," you chuckled, glad you were taking your mind off of things. you all collectively decided to pick up another project in the meantime to show that you were indeed real engineers and could actually do your jobs properly. it was some kind of rocket launching mechanism, and you couldn't do your part until the basic concepts were made so you were just lounging around with the rest of your team, making paper airplanes and throwing them around.

so, you were doing absolutely nothing when the same man from yesterday walked in through the door.

he was wearing a uniform, unlike previously when he was wearing some more breathable clothes for training. he wasn't sweaty and breathing heavily either; in fact, he seemed to clean up quite well. you barely registered his face last time given the circumstances, but it didn't take very long for your posture to fix up and for you to try and fluff your hair in a reflexive response to how nice he looked. the solider seemed to be evaluating the room, your coworkers and you, then cleared his throat.

"your id said you worked in the weapons manufacturing division," he stated as some kind of greeting. you shot looks to the people sitting next to you, who got the hint that this was the guy you were talking about from before. you smiled at him as to not seem like you were guilty of something.

"yeah, I'm [_____]," you restated, hesitating between getting up and offered him your hand or just staying where you were. the latter felt safer, and you just gave him a short introduction of your team and what you did. "once again, I didn't mean to barge in yesterday, it was a misunderstanding. sorry about that."

he shook his head, a little relieved once he confirmed that you weren't some kind of spy or something. you noticed that he was a little more mellowed out while in uniform, almost like he was just angry yesterday because of all the running he did. you stared a bit too long at his features and let him say something you barely registered, turning around to leave.

your body acted alone and you sprouted up to your feet to follow him. "wait, your clearance isn't going to work here, let me-"

the door unclicked on its own and he shot you a coy smirk before leaving.

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your leg bounced nervously as you sat down at an empty desk in an office that wasn't yours. weeks had passed, and the admiral was starting to value your team a bit more now that you had a few concept designs that proved valuable. for some reason, though, he called only you to come and meet him face to face.

that was nearly 30 minutes ago.

you didn't care much for punctuality, but people like him typically did so why on earth were you waiting so long? you couldn't leave, not when you had no idea what the meeting was about. so, you waited patiently and tried your very best not to explode out of your skin.

finally, a knock at the door that was ajar behind you. your head whipped around, and it wasn't the man you were expecting.

"commander fukuchi," you stated, shocked. "I thought my meeting was with..."

he laughed heartily as he took a seat, throwing himself onto the chair so vigorously you thought it would snap in half. "oh, don't mind him. I was told that since I left such a strong recommendation for you, I should hand-deliver this message."

you addressed the first part before the second. "you were told, sir? so you really don't recall us drinking together in your office?"

he laughed again, and you smelled the faint sweetness of alcohol on his tongue. figures. "another thing you shouldn't worry about, [_____]. I'm sure I meant what I said," he added with a nonchalant wave of his hand in the air.

trying not to let your 'don't meet your heroes' moment show too much, you mimicked his laugh and asked the second part of your question. "you mentioned hand-delivering a message?"

the message was actually an assignment: his military division called the hunting dogs were having trouble with their transportation pods. you thought this meant they had a car or something that was totaled, but no, it was an actual transportation pod. he led you out of the room to bring you up to some hangar where you saw the metal contraptions.

he did a really bad job at explaining how they worked, but the concept felt pretty self explanatory when you inspected it. fukuchi told you that some higher-ups are on his back to stop destroying these every mission, and he admitted with a chuckle and rub of the back of his neck that he and his subordinates don't take very well to having it malfunction.

you told him that you would take a look at it, and he burped as an affirmation and strolled out rather happy.

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the project lasted a few weeks.

it was a hinge and wiring problem, things anyone with half a brain could fix in less than a day, but something stupid happened on your first day walking into the hangar to take a look at it.

the man from before was there.

he didn't seem like he wanted to be here, but it was just him so you assumed he was here on some kind of assignment, just like you. you greeted him with the same smile at the previous time, and he didn't bother to return it. he explained that he was here to help you get this thing fixed.

"are you... an engineer?" you raised a brow, careful with your words given that you knew nothing about him except that he was part of the deadliest military division in the country.

his reaction was hard to decipher, a scoff accompanying it when he flicked his wrist upwards and the transportation pod floated up in the air. "no, that's why I'm here."

ferrokinesis. you'd be lying if you said the ease with which he controlled such a large mass wasn't impressive, but it wasn't your place to irritate him even more by talking. you nodded an apology then got back to assessing the device.

you asked him to flip it onto its side, and he did. after you asked, you paused, realizing you still didn't have a name to call him. tachihara, he told you. your lips curled up and you told him that it was nice to finally put a name to his face.

the next day, you tried to speak with him more as you took down measurements in order to create the model and reprint the defective parts. only, he didn't seem to want to talk to you about himself at all, and you hit a dead end.

you kept trying.

it was a mission within a mission, a side quest to this assignment if you will, but you were determined to get to know him. you considered every time you got him to mildly chuckle to be a huge victory, and every word he said was another point for you. you still spent every other day working with your team on the defective toxic gas device, but this project was hand-delivered to you by a man who didn't give you a deadline or a budget, so you considered it a freebie to do anything you want for as long as you wanted. you decided just to redesign the entre thing, and the bonus of spending time with tachihara made it even sweeter.

instead of flat out asking him on a date, you settled for hanging out in the huge hangar, just you and him for hours. he admitted once that it was a nice break from all the weirdos in the hunting dogs, and you just laughed and told him that you liked the little escape too. sometimes you got him to give you feedback about your designs since he would be using these pods, and other times you just tried to scooch your body as close as possible to him while he told you about his most interesting spy missions.

by the time you couldn't stretch out the project any further, you got him to bend the metal plaques into the final shapes you needed and decided that maybe you really should ask him out.

you didn't. you just dropped the final designs onto the desk of your boss and went home regretting your decision.

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you and your team finally got your device to work.

it was something about the concentration, about how you failed to account for the room pressure and how it would vary with the consumption of one substance into another, and you felt triumphant when, this time, you left your protective suit on and watched certain blocks of metal stay intact while others melted into nothingness. you walked over to the ones that were dissolving to run your fingers through it, what was once solid turning into butter as you raked your fingers through it. you gave your coworkers, who were watching from behind the screen this time, a thumbs up which they barely caught from the way they were jumping up and down and hugging each other from glee. the government officials seemed impressed, and it was hard not to burst from the feeling of pride at your success.

they greeted you once you traversed from one side to the other, telling you just how much this will serve the country and save millions. honestly, you knew that they couldn't care less about saving millions, and so did you; you were just happy your product worked.

you were even happier when you saw tachihara watching the entire thing from the corner, smirking at you with his arms crossed over his chest.

almost floating over to him, you asked him about a thousand questions about why he was here, how he knew that you'd be here, what he thought of the demonstration and if he'd want to go out on a date with you.

you had a whole lot of wins that day, but the one that had you smiling into your pillow that night was a three letter word.

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"sssh, shut up, we're gonna get caught!"

you giggled even as you sealed his mouth shut with the palm of your hand, bodies pressed up against each other as you hid inside a janitor's closet.

tachihara was showing you around the entire facility, since you kept asking him about how he had clearance to go anywhere and everywhere without needing a badge. the first date, you took him out, but ever since then he's been showing you spots around the facility that no one ever goes to, ranging from the inaccessible roof to a very sketchy basement spot in which he said privacy was needed before kissing you for hours on end.

this time, you were venturing around a spot where neither of you were allowed and you'd heard footsteps coming from around the corner. you pulled him with you into the closet and could barely contain all of your giggles. he whispered that you were doing this on purpose, and you just pressed a kiss to his forehead as a response.

"you know," you said softly while waiting for the footsteps to disappear, "I never asked how the pods went."

"oh, teruko and tecchou destroyed it anyways," he chuckled. "you were given an impossible task, we all knew it from the start."

"well, thanks for letting me know now," you giggled and your hands rested gently at his hips.

you never thought you'd fall in love for any of the heartless government pawns that worked in the building, but no one could build a weapon so powerful over your heart than him.

[estellardreams]

With Black Arms sonic, you mentioned that it took “careful manipulation and gaslighting to get him on their side.” How long did that process take exactly? Until Sonic was sure that this was what he was supposed to do and where he surely belonged? Curious 👀

The gaslighting began pretty instateously ever since Sonic began having memory problems, which was at least a year into the process. He was very stubborn and as such Doom had a very difficult time breaking him.

And even with the paralysis gas leaving Sonic docile, it didn't dimish his firey spirit, just... Buried it far down.

The gaslighting itself was along the lines of the black comet being his home, being one of the black arms but just a late bloomer (that never existed. That's a lie), and how he was Doom's creation and as such he is his parental figure. Keep in mind Sonic doesn't exactly have parents of his own. He'd been alone since childhood.

And at first, Sonic didn't believe it. But it wasn't until the hivemind finally connected to him that it began to reinforce those thoughts.

Doom continued to pressure Sonic through more tests and trying to get the hedgehog to cooperate, no matter how much he tried to fight back.

It wasn't until three years in, that Sonic finally... Gave up. There was no use fighting this because there was no way he'd be able to return home. And with that initiation, it let Doom begin to bring on more DNA into Sonic and slowly transform him into the being he is today.

After that he kept reaffirming the hedgehog's new role and how he was his greatest soldier, willing to follow his every command like the obedient son he is.

And soon enough... Sonic began to believe it. He kept believing in it. He followed Doom around like some sort of pet and did whatever was told of him. He upheld the monarchy whenever he was busy and kept his younger brother (Eclipse) in line.

He underwent a lot of training and upgrades to his skills, gaining much more enhanced powers and abilities that could easily rival Shadow and Eclipse.

And at this point, five years in and at the age of 11, Sonic completely forgot his old life back on earth besides the vague notion that he accidentally crashed into the planet as a child and was rescued by his father as soon as possible.

No recollection of his friends, enemies, nothing. Just... A general idea of what happened to him.