#Secure Log Data Transfer

[virtualizationhowto]

Best Open Source Log Management Tools in 2023

Best Open Source Log Management Tools in 2023 #homelab #OpenSourceLogManagement2023 #TopLogAnalysisTools #CentralizedLoggingSystems #LogstashVsSyslogng #BestLogCollectors #FluentDAndCloudServices #ManageLargeVolumesOfLogData #GrafanaRealtimeMonitoring

When monitoring, troubleshooting, and auditing in today’s IT infrastructure, logs provide the low-level messaging needed to trace down events happening in the environment. They can be an invaluable source of insights into performance, security events, and errors that may be occurring across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid systems. You don’t have to buy into a commercial solution to get started…

[jeszrosse]

🧬 “Deviation”

.

.

MANIPULATIVE!Albert Wesker x Reader | One-shot AU | Reader Unaware | Deep Psychological Control | Obsession-Slowburn

.

.

⚠️ Possessive behavior • Surveillance • Delusional Justification • Isolation tactics • No reader realization • Smut • Stalking

.

.

🧬 1. [Observation]

It begins, as most things do with Wesker, in silence.

Your first day on the team, you barely warranted a glance in the surveillance feed.

Another lab technician. Another replaceable assistant. Another insignificant moving part.

But then you lingered.

Stayed late. Came early.

Read the case files beyond your clearance level and didn’t flinch at the corpses.

You passed the first test.

Not that you knew there was one.

You thought it was coincidence that no one sat beside you in meetings.

That your access card opened doors you never requested.

That the intern who made a joke about your smile was transferred within the hour.

It wasn’t coincidence.

It was calibration.

He was isolating the variables.

And you, you became an anomaly worth noting.

He began compiling minor reports on your behavior, tucked into encrypted files labeled with meaningless acronyms—justifications for your existence in his system. He logged your arrival times, the hesitation in your speech, the way you handled scalpel trays with a certain… reverence. Clinical on the outside, but with the sharpness of someone who wanted to understand.

You weren’t like the others—those limp, nodding bureaucrats or ambition-hollowed researchers. You read between lines. You saw things. You didn’t ask for approval.

It should’ve been threatening.

But instead, it was fascinating.

---

🧬 2. [Containment]

Wesker doesn’t trust easily.

He trusts data.

Outcomes.

Silence.

But you unsettled the metrics.

You moved differently. You saw things. You questioned protocols he didn’t authorize you to read.

And he watched.

The way your fingers hovered over a scalpel you didn’t need to touch.

The way your reflection lingered in the biohazard glass.

The way your laugh, rare as it was, made low-ranking guards look up.

So he changed the guards.

Restricted hallway access.

Reassigned co-workers.

Built your world to orbit only him.

And still—still you never noticed.

Not when your new desk faced his office.

Not when your login synced with his terminal.

Not when your lunch orders began arriving, already paid.

You thought it was protocol. Efficiency. Company structure.

It wasn’t.

It was obsession.

Even your chair was adjusted—replaced with one designed to support your back based on posture data from security footage. Your lighting changed imperceptibly across weeks, tailored to prevent eye strain and keep you awake longer, sharper.

He scheduled briefings when you were most alert.

Redirected minor crises to ensure you'd report directly to him.

He watched the way you blinked when you were confused.

Memorized the twitch of your mouth when you were about to ask something risky.

Your coworkers left one by one. Transferred. Fired. Reassigned.

Those who got too familiar? Disciplined. Quietly.

You didn’t wonder why your inbox felt so clean.

Why no one interrupted your concentration anymore.

Why the company started feeling like a corridor, narrowing around you.

---

🧬 3. [Degradation]

It got worse.

Or—closer to the truth.

He found himself pausing the security feed just to watch the curve of your spine as you bent over notes.

He rewound your voice recordings, cataloguing the inflections in your “Good morning, sir.”

He deleted the word sir from your tongue in his mind.

He didn’t want your respect.

He wanted your obedience.

Your trust.

Your presence, constant and unrelenting.

You belonged in his space, like air belonged in lungs.

He just hadn't told you yet.

Sometimes, you left behind small things—sticky notes, paperclips, coffee cups. Harmless. Forgettable. But he kept them all.

The mug with a faint mark of your lip balm.

The pen you once clicked while reading virology samples.

A typed memo, crumpled, with a single word scratched out and replaced. "Necessary."

He examined them not with sentiment but calculation.

These were not keepsakes.

These were proofs of proximity.

You were slipping under his skin molecule by molecule, and he needed evidence of your presence in his domain.

But there were moments—dangerous ones—when calculation gave way to something darker.

Moments when you reached for a dropped stylus beneath the lab table and the hem of your coat pulled taut across your thighs.

Moments when you tilted your head to read something over a microscope and exposed the soft column of your neck.

Moments when the feed from the surveillance cameras caught just enough.

He knew every angle of your body from security footage.

The way your blouse sometimes gaped slightly when you leaned forward.

The way you stretched without thinking, unaware of how it framed you.

Unaware of the man watching—memorizing.

It was a weakness.

A flaw in his design.

But sometimes he would watch the footage at half-speed, eyes burning, jaw clenched, and tell himself it was for behavioral monitoring.

That the brief tightening in his chest wasn’t arousal, but concern.

And yet—when you bent to pick up a file one night, alone, late, and the back of your skirt lifted just slightly—

—his fingers had twitched.

Not from irritation.

From restraint.

From the raw, silent thought that he could take you. Right there.

Not in fantasy. Not in dream. But in brutal, clinical, breathtaking reality.

He could fuck you against the sterile counter and no one would stop him.

No one would even know.

But he didn’t.

Of course he didn’t.

He was control. Discipline.

He filed the footage.

Encrypted it.

And watched it again the next night.

Hands behind his back.

Jaw locked.

Throat tight with the sick, hungry coil of desire he refused to name.

You didn’t know.

Didn’t see.

Didn’t feel the weight of a man who no longer saw you as a subordinate or asset—

—but as something already his, simply awaiting the correct time to be claimed.

---

🧬 4. [Denial]

You never caught it, but he looked away first.

Every time.

Every instance your gaze met his, however briefly.

You assumed it was deference. Coldness. That clinical thing he wore like a second skin.

But it wasn’t.

It was containment.

Because the sound of your voice—the precise cadence in which you said “Understood, Doctor Wesker”—lit up some dormant, vile thing in him.

Something untested.

Something monstrous.

He was not above temptation.

He was simply better at dissecting it.

The way you smiled at your coworkers, never at him?

He noticed.

The way you stood just a fraction closer when anxious, fingers tightening at your sides?

He filed it away.

He let others believe you were isolated by accident.

But he'd engineered that loneliness. Curated it.

Suffocated anything that threatened to pull your attention elsewhere.

You never got that offer for project co-lead.

Never received the anonymous gifts left at your desk by interns.

Because Albert intercepted them.

Silently. Strategically.

You didn’t know it was his hand pulling you toward him, only that every direction seemed to fold inward until he was the only constant.

The only man who saw you.

Who understood you.

He watched you trace your notes, watched your lips form silent syllables, and all the while he denied himself.

Denied the heat pooling in his abdomen.

Denied the cruel ache behind every “Goodnight, sir” you uttered.

Denied the nightly compulsion to run simulations of what you would sound like begging.

And when he couldn't sleep, he listened to your voice on the lab’s intercom archive.

Just to hear it.

To pretend.

To substitute control for contact.

And still—he told himself he had not crossed the line.

Not yet.

Because you were still untouched.

Still pure, in the way only someone unaware of their ownership could be.

---

🧬 5. [Possession]

He began to see it in everything.

The way others looked at you—a threat.

The way you spoke about your family—a liability.

The way you said “thank you” when he passed you reports—intolerable.

You didn’t thank him.

You didn’t understand him.

You couldn’t.

But that was fine.

Understanding would come later.

He started curating your tasks more delicately.

Steered you away from field ops, too dangerous.

Assigned you exclusively to him, citing “performance optimization.”

You didn’t protest.

You thought you were being promoted.

But in truth, you were being drawn in.

Woven tighter.

Placed carefully, perfectly, exactly where he wanted you.

In his office.

In his world.

In his reach.

Your name was embedded in his daily reports. Your security log-in pinged his terminal every time you swiped a door.

The other researchers stopped referencing your work without Wesker’s express permission. He had erased your reputation as independent—you were his now.

And no one questioned it.

Not when his gaze burned through the glass walls of the lab.

Not when he stood beside you in meetings like a shadow wearing a tailored suit.

Not when his hand briefly brushed yours while reviewing samples, and he didn’t pull away.

He didn’t need to pull away.

He had already claimed what he wanted.

---

Now, his fingerprints existed on more than your reports.

He’d rewritten your schedule to end near his. Aligned your meals. Synced your lab hours. Even your breaks were subtly shifted, your elevator stops timed perfectly with his descent.

You didn’t see it.

But he did.

Every day you returned to your workspace slightly adjusted—your chair moved back in, your pens restocked, your personal mug rotated exactly one degree counter-clockwise.

“We’re optimizing,” he’d say.

“For your convenience.”

He'd begun accompanying you to biometric checks. At first, a coincidence. The second time, an excuse. By the third, he was inputting your medical logs himself.

His voice was always calm. Always formal. Always patient.

But his gaze lingered.

His presence loomed.

And his hands—always gloved—brushed against the small of your back far too often for protocol.

---

And he watched.

From behind glass. From dark monitors. From still frames and slow replays. When your blouse sat a little too low. When your eyes wandered where they shouldn’t.

You were careless with your innocence.

But he would be careful for you.

He adjusted the brightness of the surveillance feed. Zoomed in. Studied the way you leaned too close to your keyboard.

Imagined your breath fogging the screen.

Imagined how easily that breath could hitch. Could falter. Could beg.

You have no idea, he thought.

But you will.

Not yet.

But soon.

Understanding would come later.

---

🧬 6. [Infection]

The final stage was the most dangerous.

You said his name once.

Not “sir.”

Not “Wesker.”

Just:

“Albert…?”

His gaze snaps up from the report.

You’re standing in the doorway of his office, the heel of one shoe slightly kicked back, as if you weren’t sure whether to enter. The folder in your hand trembles slightly—an involuntary twitch you don’t even notice. But he does.

He notices everything.

The breath that stutters in your throat after the name escapes.

The flicker of hesitation in your pupils when his expression doesn’t immediately soften.

The way you shift—defensive, unsure—before you correct yourself:

“I mean—sir. Sorry, I meant—sir.”

But it’s already too late.

The damage is done.

You spoke it aloud.

Not in passing.

Not as a slip of protocol.

Not with bitterness or irony.

But with concern.

Soft. Tentative. Almost gentle.

And that… that is what undoes him.

You don’t know he has a file buried six levels deep into a server no one else can access—labeled with your name, storing every image of you captured on internal footage.

You don’t know he’s wiped out four internal transfer requests that would have pulled you from his floor.

You don’t know he personally selects your meals for team events—ensuring your preferences are always met, even when no one else notices.

You don’t know he’s kept you here, orbiting him, perfectly placed, under the illusion of promotion.

And now you’ve said his name like it belongs to you.

Like he does.

“Sir,” you try again, a nervous laugh escaping you. “Apologies. I—I didn’t mean—”

He stands slowly, measured, the desk separating you like a fragile boundary he’s had to respect for far too long.

“No need to apologize,” he says coolly. “You simply… surprised me.”

But inside? His thoughts are nothing but static.

He replays the syllables.

Not just the sound, but the shape of your mouth when you said it.

He files it into memory. Deep. Permanent.

And he knows—sooner than even you do—that this is the beginning of the end for the illusion.

Because from this moment on, you’ve stopped being a project.

Stopped being a subject.

You’ve become a trigger.

A fixation.

An opening he hadn’t anticipated—but cannot ignore.

You said his name once.

You won’t realize until it’s far too late:

You’ll never say it the same way again.

Because you didn’t know what you’d done.

You didn’t hear it the way he did.

Like it was already yours to say.

Like he wasn’t a god.

Like he was a man.

A man who had already rewritten every security protocol to keep you near.

A man who eliminated colleagues who made you uncomfortable.

A man who—if you ever truly looked—might shatter the illusion of “normal” with one cold sentence:

“You’re not here by accident.”

“You’re here because I designed you to be.”

But you don’t know.

You smile politely.

You offer your reports.

You drink the coffee that arrives on your desk precisely how you like it.

You go home.

You live your life.

While he rewatches your day in full.

While he listens to your voicemails and deletes names from your inbox.

While he studies you like you’re the last unexplained miracle on Earth.

While he reminds himself that love is irrelevant.

Control is what matters.

And he already has it.

---

He’d timed every entry and exit.

He knew how long you took in the restroom.

Which hallway you paused in to check your phone.

What time of day your voice grew tired.

He saw it as clearly as he saw cell degradation under a microscope.

That slow unraveling.

That quiet compliance.

You were adapting.

Your posture had shifted. Subtly. You walked faster when alone. Slower when near him. You dressed differently—more reserved, perhaps without realizing. You avoided eye contact with male superiors.

Wesker approved.

He didn’t speak of it.

Didn’t need to.

The conditioning was holding.

You had stopped asking questions.

Stopped challenging schedules.

Stopped requesting to work from other wings.

You had folded into the environment he designed—one where he was a constant hum beneath your daily routine. Where his name lingered at the back of your tongue. Where his voice set your pace and his silence set your nerves.

---

“You don’t know what you’ve done,” he muttered to himself, watching the security footage replay. While he studies you like you’re the last unexplained miracle on Earth.

There you were again. That exact moment. Your eyes soft, confused, lips parted: Albert…?

He paused the video.

Leaned back.

Let the sound echo in the sterile quiet of his office.

It was not an accident.

Not some sweet slip of tongue.

No.

It was the infection taking root.

Your body catching up to what your environment had long accepted.

Dependence.

Deference.

Attachment.

He could work with that.

Love was messy. Emotional.

But dependence—he could mold.

He could reinforce it, reward it, create just enough tension to keep you needing his approval.

To keep you needing him.

---

(A/N: should I make a part 2??? I mean- I already have it. I just wanna hear it from you dirty sluts;>)

[errorid-mt7lt7k7unfr9ttfua5]

me when companies try to force you to use their proprietary software

anyway

Layperson resources:

firefox is an open source browser by Mozilla that makes privacy and software independence much easier. it is very easy to transfer all your chrome data to Firefox

ublock origin is The highest quality adblock atm. it is a free browser extension, and though last i checked it is available on Chrome google is trying very hard to crack down on its use

Thunderbird mail is an open source email client also by mozilla and shares many of the same advantages as firefox (it has some other cool features as well)

libreOffice is an open source office suite similar to microsoft office or Google Suite, simple enough

Risky:

VPNs (virtual private networks) essentially do a number of things, but most commonly they are used to prevent people from tracking your IP address. i would suggest doing more research. i use proton vpn, as it has a decent free version, and the paid version is powerful

note: some applications, websites, and other entities do not tolerate the use of VPNs. you may not be able to access certain secure sites while using a VPN, and logging into your personal account with some services while using a vpn *may* get you PERMANENTLY BLACKLISTED from the service on that account, ymmv

IF YOU HAVE A DECENT VPN, ANTIVIRUS, AND ADBLOCK, you can start learning about piracy, though i will not be providing any resources, as Loose Lips Sink Ships. if you want to be very safe, start with streaming sites and never download any files, though you Can learn how to discern between safe, unsafe, and risky content.

note: DO NOT SHARE LINKS TO OR NAMES OF PIRACY SITES IN PUBLIC PLACES, ESPECIALLY SOCAL MEDIA

the only time you should share these things are either in person or in (preferably peer-to-peer encrypted) PRIVATE messages

when pirated media becomes well-known and circulated on the wider, public internet, it gets taken down, because it is illegal to distribute pirated media and software

if you need an antivirus i like bitdefender. it has a free version, and is very good, though if youre using windows, windows defender is also very good and it comes with the OS

Advanced:

linux is great if you REALLY know what you're doing. you have to know a decent amount of computer science and be comfortable using the Terminal/Command Prompt to get/use linux. "Linux" refers to a large array of related open source Operating Systems. do research and pick one that suits your needs. im still experimenting with various dispos, but im leaning towards either Ubuntu Cinnamon or Debian.

[pleaseletmeinibeg453]

Paper cuts

|Jelsa, Modern AU, Enemies with Benefits, Fake dating, Forced Proximity|

Agent Elsa Stenford [NID-SO-ES-07] — Operation Report Upload Log

—Logged into secure terminal: Vienna Safehouse Terminal-2

—Date: 2022-07-08

—Time (UTC): 23:16

—Connected to secure node: NIDNet

—Report file: OP_SILENTRAVEN_AAR.enc

—Encryption status: Secured with NID Master Key — encryption signature verified (Checksum ID: F1A5-7C9B)

—Recipient(s): Jack Frost, Section Chief Special Operations (SO-92A), Acting Division Supervisor (DS-4), National Intelligence Directorate

—Transmission channel: Priority-One Secure Uplink (Classified Level: TOP SECRET)

—Transmission status: COMPLETE — audit log updated (Reference Log ID: ES07-0525-2214)

—Backup status: Encrypted local backup stored (Partition ES-07-SAFE); master copy uploaded to Central Ops Archive (Vault-4)

—Field confirmation: Agent ES-07 signed digital attestation; no tampering detected; self-authentication successful

Note: Automatic alert dispatched to Division Supervisor terminal. Clearance authentication required upon access.

---------------------------

Operation Silent Raven is an ongoing mission targeting a covert illicit arms trafficking network operating primarily in South Carolina. [Flag—Acting supervisor: Delete ‘ongoing mission’ — this is filler from someone unfamiliar with concise reporting. Vague and redundant.] This report details recent operational progress, intelligence collection, and actionable recommendations. [Flag—Acting supervisor: You clearly do not understand report structure. This useless sentence wastes time and space.] 

The primary objective is to identify, monitor, and dismantle the arms trafficking chain responsible for the flow of small arms and light weapons through various transit points in the region. [Flag—Acting supervisor: Restating obvious without any specifics or measurable targets reflects poor understanding of operational goals. Omit.] HUMINT sources have verified the existence of a new maritime transit corridor utilizing the seaport. [Flag—Acting supervisor: “HUMINT sources” is lazy projection. You apparently cannot be trusted to identify sources properly. Brackets demonstrate careless drafting.] SIGINT intercepted encrypted communications that suggest coordination between traffickers and local facilitators. [Flag—Acting supervisor: ‘Suggest’ is weak speculation, unbefitting a professional intelligence report. Either confirm or remove this guesswork.] 

Financial forensics have traced suspicious funds transfers totaling approximately $8 million USD linked to traffickers. [Flag—Acting supervisor: Provide specifics or this bland, meaningless statement reveals superficial analysis.] Technical surveillance detected multiple covert meetings in [Urban Centers], corroborated by photographic evidence. [Flag—Acting supervisor: Using placeholders signals either incompetence or utter disregard for accuracy.] On 2022-06-21, interdiction team, operating with local law enforcement, seized 250 illegal firearms at the port city warehouse. [Flag—Acting supervisor: Poorly structured sentence; the muddled passive voice further obscures the facts you apparently cannot clearly present.] Two principal suspects were detained, providing critical intelligence that identified higher-level facilitators. [Flag—Acting supervisor: Passive construction and vague attribution further demonstrate your failure to take ownership of this data.] 

Informant “Falcon” supplied actionable intelligence regarding a planned arms shipment scheduled for early June. [Flag—Acting supervisor: Finally, a clear statement, but unfortunately, it’s buried among verbosity and filler.] Operational security protocols were heightened after detecting possible surveillance by hostile intelligence actors. [Flag—Acting supervisor: ‘Possible’ surveillance indicates your uncertainty and it undermines the entire assessment and betrays inadequate situational awareness.] The network disruption has temporarily halted major arms transfers. [Flag—Acting supervisor: ‘Temporarily’ suggests you lack the insight or confidence to forecast outcomes. Such ambiguity is unacceptable.] 

Surveillance and intelligence collection continue focusing on secondary facilitators and financing channels. [Flag—Acting supervisor: Non-specific, passive phrasing again. You appear unable to report with decisiveness or clarity.] Coordination with allied intelligence agencies is ongoing to leverage broader interdiction efforts. [Flag—Acting supervisor: “Allied intelligence agencies” — weak and meaningless. Omit.] Risk assessment indicates elevated threat levels against NID assets involved in this operation. [Flag—Acting supervisor: Without elaboration, this statement is worthless. The absence of detail is either negligence or incompetence. I’m leaning towards the latter, although the first one also seems to be your defining trait.] Approve expansion of covert operations targeting secondary facilitators and financiers. [Flag—Acting supervisor: Recommendations lack essential resource planning and rationale, further exposing your inexperience.] Request additional SIGINT and counter-surveillance resources. [Flag—Acting supervisor: ‘Additional’ is meaningless without quantification. This sloppy request reflects poor operational understanding.] Initiate an inter-agency task force to address cross-border financing and logistics. [Flag—Acting supervisor: Unsubstantiated recommendation with no defined objectives — this is amateurish.] Continue monitoring and protection of key HUMINT sources and operatives. [Flag—Acting supervisor: Failing to specify protection protocols reflects a dangerous oversight on your part.] Attachments include interdiction team after-action report, financial transaction analyses, SIGINT intercept summaries, and photographic documentation of seized arms and facilities. [Flag—Acting supervisor: Referencing attachments without actual inclusion indicates either incompetence or disregard for proper reporting. Which one is it?]

Flag—Acting supervisor: This report is miserably inadequate and reflects a disturbing lack of professionalism and capability. The careless placeholders, vague assertions, passive voice, and speculative language betray your failure to grasp even the basic standards of intelligence reporting. Such work not only wastes time but actively hampers operational efficiency. REWRITE. 

---------------------------

Secure Directive

From: Jack Frost 

[Code: NID-SO-JF-01]

Section Chief, Special Operations / Acting Division Supervisor [Code SO-92A/DS-4]

To: Agent Elsa Stenford [Code:NID-SO-ES-07]

Subject: RE: Report Review – Operation Silent Raven

Classification: TOP SECRET // EYES ONLY

Agent Stenford,

Your submitted report for Operation Silent Raven is wholly inadequate and reflects a concerning lack of analytical rigor, operational discipline, and professional attention. The presence of unresolved placeholders, vague assertions, speculative conclusions, and critical data gaps is unacceptable at this operational level and wastes valuable time and resources.

This level of oversight is incompatible with the standards expected from an intelligence officer assigned to this unit. You are to:

1. Eliminate all placeholders and provide verified, cross-checked intelligence.

2. Remove speculative or assumptive language; include only confirmed, actionable data.

3. Rewrite sections for clarity, precision, and direct accountability — passive formulations are unacceptable.

4. Deliver detailed, concrete descriptions of sources, operational locations, timelines, and outcomes without ambiguity.

5. Ensure all referenced materials are attached, properly labeled, and internally consistent.

6. Strengthen recommendations by specifying exact resource needs, operational impacts, and executable directives.

7. Fully address risk assessments with defined threats, probability ratings, and specific mitigation strategies.

The supervisor-annotated version of your report (File ID: SR-Report-Rev1-JF) has been uploaded to the secure review system. You are to address all marked corrections and resubmit the fully corrected report no later than 1800 hours today. No further extensions will be granted.

Jack Frost 

[Code: NID-SO-JF-01]

Section Chief, Special Operations (SO-92A)

Acting Division Supervisor (DS-4)

National Intelligence Directorate

---------------------------

Agent Elsa Stenford [Code: NID-SO-ES-07] — Report Upload Log (Revised Submission)

—Logged into secure terminal: Vienna Safehouse Terminal-2

—Date: 2022-07-09

—Time (UTC): 17:38

—Connected to secure node: NIDNet 

—Report file: OP_SIENTRAVEN_AAR_v2.enc

—Encryption status: Secured with NID Master Key — encryption signature verified (Checksum ID: F1A9-7C3B-R2)

—Recipient(s): Jack FrostJack Frost (NID-SO-JF-01), Section Chief Special Operations (SO-92A), Acting Division Supervisor (DS-4), National Intelligence Directorate

—Transmission channel: Priority-One Secure Uplink (Classified Level: TOP SECRET)

—Transmission status: COMPLETE — audit log updated (Reference Log ID: ES07-0525-2316-R2)

—Backup status: Encrypted local backup stored (Partition ES-07-SAFE); master copy uploaded to Central Ops Archive (Vault-4, Revised Submission Folder)

—Field confirmation: Agent ES-07 signed digital attestation; no tampering detected; self-authentication successful

Note: Automatic alert dispatched to Division Supervisor terminal. Clearance authentication required upon access. Revision flag registered under Audit Protocol 4B.

---------------------------

Secure Directive

From: Jack Frost [Code: NID-SO-JF-01] 

Section Chief, Special Operations / Acting Division Supervisor [Code: SO-92A/DS-4]

To: Elsa Stenford [Code: NID-SO-ES-07]

Subject: RE: Secure Directive – Operation Silent Raven Report (Revised Submission)

Agent Stenford,

I have completed my review of your revised report on Operation Silent Raven. The annotated document is attached under:

Attachment: SilentRaven_Rev2_ES07_JFcomments.secure

To be precise: this submission remains below acceptable operational standards. Your continued use of speculative phrasing, unsupported assertions, and vague recommendations demonstrates a concerning lack of analytical discipline. This is not a matter of inexperience. You are not a trainee, Agent. At your level and position, you are expected to understand and apply the standards of rigor, precision, and clarity required in all agency reporting. That expectation is not optional.

Your report exhibits repeated failures:

1. Speculative language where concrete analysis is required;

2. Lack of referenced source attachments, despite multiple directives;

3. Unquantified risk assessments, absent methodological support;

4. Action recommendations devoid of operational specificity.

This is not a learning exercise nor is it a second chance, Agent Stenford. I should not be required to remind you of the foundational protocols governing intelligence reporting. You are expected to deliver work that reflects your clearance level, your operational rank, and your assigned responsibilities — without need for remedial oversight.

You are hereby directed to produce a final, fully compliant, actionable revision and submit it under secure protocol no later than 1300 hours tomorrow. Failure to meet this directive will result in formal escalation to the Division Office for immediate performance review. There will be no further instructions, no extended clarifications, and no tolerance for repeated submission failures.

Jack Frost [Code: NID-SO-JF-01]

Section Chief, Special Operations (SO-92A)

Acting Division Supervisor (DS-4)

National Intelligence Directorate

*

Operation Silent Raven: A report

1.⁠ ⁠Executive Summary:

—The target group’s network activity has intensified in the last 72 hours, with encrypted communications suggesting a planned operation within the capital region. [Flag—Acting supervisor: “Suggesting” is a charming euphemism for “guessing.” Precision is not your forte, is it?]

—HUMINT sources indicate the possible involvement of an external actor, potentially destabilizing regional security. [Flag—Acting supervisor:  “Possible” and “potentially” — a truly inspiring display of hedging. I applaud your commitment to ambiguity.] While these indicators warrant heightened surveillance, conclusive evidence regarding the exact nature and timing of the planned event remains unconfirmed. [COMMENT: I look forward to the day when ‘unconfirmed’ is replaced by ‘confirmed.’ Continue taking baby steps, we’re all here to babysit you and instruct on every level, not to do our job.]

2.⁠ ⁠Intelligence Sources:

SIGINT: Intercepted encrypted transmissions on frequencies 8.1 GHz to 8.3 GHz, believed to originate from multiple cell towers in the downtown sector. [Flag—Acting supervisor: “Believed.” A masterclass in non-committal language. Bold. Yet, it fails to meet the minimum standards of verification.] Metadata analysis aligns with previous hostile activity patterns.

[Flag—Acting supervisor: Please specify the parameters of your analysis. Otherwise, it reads as a hopeful suggestion rather than intelligence.]

HUMINT: Confidential informant reported unusual meetings near industrial sector 4. Reliability assessed as moderate; corroborating SIGINT incomplete. [Flag—Acting supervisor: ‘Moderate’ is an imaginative way of saying ‘I’m not sure.’ The agency appreciates your creativity but prefers facts.]

IMINT: Limited satellite imagery from 23-25 MAY shows increased vehicular movements near potential staging areas, but imagery quality insufficient for identification of personnel or equipment. [Flag—Acting supervisor: Including non-identifiable imagery is an excellent way to fill pages. Whether it aids operations is another matter. But who cares?]

3.⁠ ⁠Operational Assessment:

The convergence of SIGINT and HUMINT suggests preparatory steps for an operation targeting critical infrastructure. [Flag—Acting supervisor: ‘Suggests’ again. I see a pattern. Perhaps next time try ‘confirms’ or ‘demonstrates.’] Risk assessment places the likelihood of attack at moderate (probability 0.55), with potential impact categorized as high due to target significance. [Flag—Acting supervisor: : Quantify your methodology. Numbers plucked from thin air are less useful than no numbers at all.] Recommended actions include intensifying electronic surveillance, deploying field assets for direct observation, and liaising with allied cyber-intelligence units to monitor digital footprints. [Flag—Acting supervisor: Vague directives are the hallmark of an inexperienced analyst. Details and accountability please.]

4.⁠ ⁠Recommendations:

Immediate deployment of SIGINT intercept teams in the identified frequency bands. Enhanced HUMINT debriefings with source ES-27 to confirm meeting details. [Flag—Acting supervisor: The lack of specificity here suggests an admirable level of trust in the reader’s imagination.] Coordination with Cyber Ops for real-time network traffic analysis. [Flag—Acting supervisor:  Nomenclature alone does not constitute a plan. Flesh this out.]

Notes [Acting Supervisor] : 

—Formatting inconsistent with NID operational report guidelines. You’ve transformed a simple formatting standard into an elusive art form. Bravo.

—Failure to attach referenced supporting materials AGAIN. This recurring omission hinders operational efficacy. Consider attaching documents next time.

—In conclusion, REWRITE.

---------------------------

Agent [Code: NID-SO-ES-07] — Field Report Upload Log (Revised Submission)

—Logged into secure terminal: Vienna Safehouse Terminal-2

—Date: 2022-07-10

—Time (UTC): 13:00

—Connected to secure node: NIDNet

—Report file: OP_SILENTRAVEN_AAR_v3.enc

—Encryption status: Secured with NID Master Key — encryption signature verified (Checksum ID: F1A9-7C3B-R2)

—Recipient(s): Jack Frost, Section Chief Special Operations (SO-92A), Acting Division Supervisor (DS-4), NID

—Transmission channel: Priority-One Secure Uplink (Classified Level: TOP SECRET)

—Transmission status: COMPLETE — audit log updated (Reference Log ID: ES07-0710-1300-R2)

—Backup status: Encrypted local backup stored (Partition ES-07-SAFE); master copy uploaded to Central Ops Archive (Vault-4, Revised Submission Folder)

—Field confirmation: Agent ES-07 signed digital attestation; no tampering detected; self-authentication successful

Note: Automatic alert dispatched to Division Supervisor terminal. Clearance authentication required upon access. Revision flag registered under Audit Protocol 4B.

---------------------------

Secure Directive

From: Jack Frost [NID-SO-JF-01]

Section Chief, Special Operations / Acting Division Supervisor [Code: NID-SO-92A/DS-4]

To: Elsa Stenford [Code: NID-SO-ES-07]

Subject: RE: Secure Directive – Operation Silent Raven Report , Revocation of Field Authority and Immediate Reassignment

Agent Stenford,

I was informed last afternoon that due to shifting operational priorities, the report in question [Ops Silent Raven] is no longer required. 

After review of your latest submission — the revised report you provided earlier today — I must formally acknowledge that the material remains below acceptable operational standards. While I did not realistically anticipate any significant improvement, it is nonetheless disappointing that even after detailed corrective input, your output failed to meet the basic analytical and procedural thresholds expected of an intelligence officer at your level.

However, the time I was forced to expend personally correcting and annotating your repeated errors constitutes an unacceptable diversion of supervisory resources. You have now occupied more of this division’s time and attention than your current role warrants.

Accordingly, effective immediately, your independent field authority is revoked. You are reassigned to trailing support under Intelligence Officer Logan Parrish [CODE: NID-SO-LP-33], Team Blue. While Officer Parrish holds the same formal rank as you, his superior reliability and competence justify his lead role in this arrangement.

You are to operate strictly under Officer Parrish’s direction, with no independent decision-making or external communications without prior clearance. This corrective assignment will remain in place until further notice and serves as a necessary intervention to address the persistent deficits in your performance.

You are to report to Team Blue at 07:00 hours tomorrow, prepared and fully compliant. Written acknowledgment of this directive is required by 16:00 hours today. Noncompliance will result in immediate formal disciplinary action.

Jack Frost [Code: NID-SO-JF-01]

Section Chief, Special Operations (SO-92A)

Acting Division Supervisor (DS-4)

National Intelligence Directorate

---------------------------

Elsa Stenford read the message over and over again, because she knew it wasn’t serious. It must be a mistake. A joke. That’s what it was. Maybe if she read it again, it would change, it would shift and it would fix itself. So she read it, the words physically burning her, over and over again, but it stayed the same. She just stared at it, mouth hanging open, eyes wide with shock, unblinking. 

“Elsa?” Merida’s voice shattered the silence in her head. “Are you—”

“THAT MISERABLE FUCKING BASTARD! THAT FUCKING—” She stopped herself, but there was just too much rage and hate in her, enough for her to combust and paint the walls red. "FUCKING PIECE OF SCUM! I FUCKING HATE HIM, THAT USELESS, ARROGANT, SLIMY RAT!"

---------------------------

[jtargaryen18]

Under His Skin ~ Chapter 3

Series Masterlist

Words: 5k

Pairing: Jonathan Crane aka Scarecrow (Nolanverse Batman) x F Reader

Warnings: Stalking, sabotage, gaslighting, head games, x-rated fantasies, oral (m receiving).

Jonathan continues executing his plan to temporarily stabilize Ares. But her continued absence disrupts the system. When she fails to return to Arkham for a second day, Jonathan decides to reestablish control by visiting her at her gallery... with unintended results.

Disclaimer:The author of this work claims no ownership of characters aside from the reader, and original secondary characters mentioned. This work is not intended for those under the age of 18 due to explicit sexual content and darker themes. By reading this work or any works on my blog (jtargaryen18), you agree that you are at least 18 years of age. I do not consent to have my work hosted on any third party app or site.

Jonathan had returned to Arkham on Monday in exceptional form. The weekend had been productive -- precise, deeply satisfying.

He and Ares both primarily worked Monday through Friday, though they were technically on call on the weekends. A rotating PT doctor usually handled weekend rounds, a contract fill-in with no investment in long-term cases and no real oversight of facility activity.

So when Jonathan showed up Saturday morning? No one questioned it. He’d signed in, conducted “follow-ups,” and remained in the south wing for just under two hours. He’d completed another round of tests on a low-risk inpatient, one of Arkham's long-term residents. Unremarkable diagnosis. No family. No one watching too closely.

Subject 034.

Responsive. Highly suggestible.

Fear index response: elevated.

This time, the modified compound absorbed more efficiently. No need for direct injection. A simple aerosol dispersal had been enough. The results were beautiful. Shaking. Dissociation. Vocalized distress. But more importantly, truth beneath fear. Exactly what he was after. After logging the data, he’d started something new. Jonathan started designing a filtration system for his personal use. A way to be in the room without absorbing the poison. It would provide him with field readiness, a way to control the chaos, protection. 

By the time he left, Subject 034 was sedated and stable. Nothing had appeared unusual. He didn’t need anyone’s permission for this. Not anymore. He just needed a system distracted enough not to notice.

And right now, Arkham was very, very distracted.

Ares arrived late and reeked of alcohol. It wasn’t overwhelming, just faint beneath the cologne he’d clearly applied to cover it. But Jonathan noted it immediately. So did two of the nurses. The junior staffer at the front desk didn’t make eye contact when Ares passed. The security guard shook his head.

Jonathan didn’t say anything. He simply logged the observation.

Unshaved. Late. Auditory processing delay. Olfactory trace: whiskey or gin.

By eleven, Ares had snapped at a nurse, misfiled a patient transfer order, and quietly admitted to Jonathan in passing that he’d “forgotten” about a meeting with administration that had been on the calendar for two weeks.

Still functioning, but barely.

And sticking to his plan, Jonathan made no move to escalate. He reminded Ares gently about the admin meeting, handled the file fix himself, and smoothed things over with the staff with the ease of a man who knew how to fix a narrative before it bent too far. It was all part of his plan. Ten days of breathing room. Just enough time to make the fall look inevitable… and him look indispensable. It was working.

It should have been satisfying. But it wasn’t.

She didn’t come. Again. By now, she was off her pattern. Off his rhythm. You don’t get to become unpredictable now.

Her absence wasn’t just a missing piece. It was a disturbance, a weight in the system he couldn’t rebalance without her. He’d expected distance after their last interaction. A pause. Reflection. But not withdrawal or silence. Not this.

Ares was worse, visibly. Agitated, sluggish, and hungover. His judgment was fractured. His affect, unstable.

What happened over the weekend? Had they fought? Had something shifted between them that Jonathan hadn’t seen coming? He didn’t like not knowing.

Every other variable is accounted for. But not this one.

If Ares was spiraling and she was staying away because of it, it changed the timing. It changed the narrative.

I need her back in position. And if she wouldn’t return on her own? Jonathan would create the conditions to draw her out. He closed his notebook with deliberate calm. 

If she won’t return on her own, I’ll reestablish contact on neutral ground.

Not at Arkham. That would feel too formal, clinical. She’d feel cornered. A space where she felt safe would be better. Her space, her rules. A visit that felt like a choice instead of an obligation. He would bring a peace offering.

Moving to his desk drawer, he removed a slim folder he kept tucked beneath the more visible files. Personal notes nothing clinical or official. He flipped to the page labeled [Her Name] – Observational Patterns. 

Favorite café: Haven Leaf, three blocks from gallery. Orders consistently: arugula + lentil bowl, no onions, sub lemon vinaigrette. Always asks for extra lemon. Once corrected staff about packaging, prefers compostable over plastic lids.

He’d observed it three times. Noted it after the second. Confirmed it after the third.

It wasn’t just lunch. It was a demonstration. I see you. I understand detail. I listen. It was, in a word, earned.

This is the reset.  She’ll see I can adapt.  She’ll start to trust the version of me I give her.  And then she’ll come back into the story, exactly where she’s supposed to be.

He checked the clock. It was late afternoon. Too late to act now, not if he wanted the moment to feel deliberate. Tomorrow.

Jonathan would let her absence stretch a little longer. Let her wonder if she’d been forgotten and allow Ares to decline just enough to feel like it was all her fault. 

Then I’ll show up.  Not as a threat. As a solution.

He slid the folder back into the drawer and straightened the crease in his coat. 

Tuesday will be better for re-entry.

Tuesday afternoon, the gallery was quiet. Almost too quiet. 

You’d spent the morning rearranging an exhibit you’d already changed twice. The artists hadn’t noticed. But you had. Nothing felt settled.

You hadn’t eaten. You hadn’t gone to see Ares. You kept thinking about the fight from Saturday night, the first night he’d finally made time for you in over a week. It should’ve been a relief. You'd planned to have dinner at his favorite restaurant and actually managed to grab a reservation last-minute on a cancellation. You’d picked the place for a reason. It was somewhere familiar and quiet. Somewhere that felt like you and him before all of this. You’d even hoped to go back to his apartment after, for a quiet, intimate night. Something soft and healing.

You just wanted to reconnect.

Instead, it had spiraled. It ended in shouting. A misunderstanding and misdirected frustration that caused wounds neither of you had words for. He’d shut down. You’d raised your voice and pushed harder than you meant to. And now? You weren’t even sure what you were fighting about anymore. It hurt.

You knew Ares was embarrassed by what was happening. That he was scared, but wouldn’t say it, not out loud. Not to you or maybe not even to himself. It was pride. Or fear of what it would mean if he said it out loud and couldn’t fix it.

You didn’t go to see him at Arkham yesterday. And today, you still couldn’t make yourself do it. Not because you didn’t care, because you did and you wanted to go. You just didn’t want to continue the fight in Arkham’s halls. Not if something you said came out wrong or if he looked at you like he had nothing left to give.

You were sipping ice water behind the front desk when the bell over the door rang. Your heart jumped just a little. You weren't expecting anyone. Was it Ares? Had he come to see you because he also didn't like how things were left? Maybe, for once, he’d come find you instead of waiting for you to do all the fixing.

It wasn't Ares. 

Dr. Crane stepped into the gallery like he’d done it before, calm and straight-backed. He crossed the room slowly, quietly--like he belonged--and placed a black bag on the front counter with deliberate care.

You stayed behind the desk, one hand still wrapped around your water bottle like it could anchor you, the other slowly lowering into your lap. A chill ran down your arms. Why is he here?

The last time you’d seen him, you’d nearly fallen apart in his office. And he’d done nothing, just sat there coldly watching. Like your pain had been an interesting reaction in an experiment he wasn’t really invested in, just there to log the outcome. There hasn't been an ounce of comfort or empathy. Nothing. Just observation. Like you were another file he’d already finished reading.

You folded your arms across your chest before you stood, a subtle barrier between you and him. This was your space.

If he thought anything of your reaction, it didn't show. Crane just watched you, waited. "Lunch,” he said, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

You blinked, caught between annoyance, confusion, and something colder you didn’t want to name. “Dr. Crane.”

He inclined his head. “Miss.”

You didn’t invite him in. But you didn’t ask him to leave either. The long beat of silence stretched out uncomfortably.

“You didn’t come to Arkham yesterday," he said. "Or today.”

You stiffened, instinctively on guard. “I didn’t think I was required.”

“You’re not,” he said. “But your absence was felt.” He moved a little closer, slow and unthreatening. His tone was gentle, but exact. “Ares had a better day Monday. But that kind of improvement isn’t always sustainable. Especially without consistent environmental support.”

You stared at him. “Are you saying I’m environmental support now?”  You meant it to sound sharp, maybe a little sarcastic. Somehow you didn't hit that note. And underneath it, something twisted in your chest. Is that what I’ve become to Ares? A stabilizing factor? A comforting presence? Not a partner or someone he trusts? It stung more than you wanted to admit. Not because Crane said it, but because maybe he wasn’t wrong.

And worse? He made it sound like a compliment. Like it meant something. Were you just another condition to be managed then?

“I’m saying,” Crane replied, “you matter to him. And I believe he stabilizes faster when you're present.”

His phrasing was so matter-of-fact it disarmed you. 

“I thought you didn’t do emotional nuance,” you said quietly. “Back in your office, when I…” You stopped yourself.

Crane nodded, like he already knew. “I was trying not to make it worse. I’ve seen grief weaponized. I didn’t want to push you into anything you weren’t ready to feel.”

You looked at him, surprised by the softness in his tone. It wasn't warmth, but caution. Like he’d studied loss in a lab and learned just enough to simulate empathy.

“I wasn’t ready,” you admitted.

“I’m sorry,” he said and he meant it. Or he was good enough to make you think he did. 

He didn’t push, and he didn’t stay long. 

“Oh, before I forget.” He reached into the small black bag he’d set on the gallery’s front counter earlier and pulled out a neatly folded paper bag, sealed with a compostable sticker from your favorite vegan café three blocks down. “In case you haven’t eaten.”

You blinked, opening it to see its contents. Inside was your usual order. Not the standard menu item but your version. Subbed dressing, extra lemon wedge, no onions. Your stomach fluttered, more from confusion than hunger. How did he...

“Thank you,” you said cautiously.

He didn’t explain. Just gave a small nod. As he turned to go, he paused beside a large canvas near the door, a striking, oil-dark piece with a murder of crows painted in jagged, chaotic silhouettes. Their wings blurred into one another, sharp angles bleeding into a smudged black sky. There was no ground or horizon. Just movement, and darkness, and eyes that followed. You’d always admired the artist. She was brilliant, raw. 

But this piece? This one was different. It felt like darkness closing in, like something coming for you, whether you saw it or not. You’d never told anyone that and you usually placed the painting near exits, just in case.

You weren’t surprised he liked it. “Is that for sale?” he asked.

You nodded. “Of course. Local artist. She's good.” You walked over to him, grabbing one of the cards clipped to the frame. Your hands were slightly shaky, and it fell to the floor before you could hand it to him. "I'm sorry." You kneeled on the floor in front of him to retrieve it and glanced up at him, because you still weren't entirely sure you trusted him. Slowly rising to your feet, you handed it to him and your fingers brushed during the exchange. Just a second. You pulled away first, and he didn’t react. But for a reason you couldn’t explain, the gallery suddenly felt colder.

He took the card gently, slipped it into his coat pocket without looking. “I’ll see you at Arkham tomorrow, then?” he asked, his intense gaze locking with yours.

You hesitated. Then nodded. “Yeah. I’ll be there.”

You walked him to the door, still unsure what had just happened and how it managed to feel like an apology without ever actually becoming one.

Crane paused before stepping out. “See you tomorrow.”

And then he was gone.

You watched him walk out into the afternoon sun, perfectly composed. The gallery felt lighter once he was gone, but you wouldn't say better.

Still…He hadn’t been what you expected. Not this time. You locked the door and turned back to the crows trapped on the canvas of the painting. You wondered, distantly, what he saw when he looked at them.

The door shut behind Jonathan quietly. The kind of silence that invited reflection. He just walked down the gallery steps slowly, coat buttoned, posture straight. The warmth of the late afternoon sun hit his shoulders, but he didn’t feel it. Not after what just happened. It was playing over and over again in his mind. The dropped card. The way she’d looked up at him from the floor before the brush of her fingers against his. It shouldn’t have meant anything. It wasn’t part of the plan.

But it had struck something in him that had never threatened his self control before now. By the time he reached the sidewalk and turned left toward Arkham, he still hadn’t gotten his balance back.

Shaking his head to clear it, Jonathan forced himself to concentrate. 

She took the food he brought her. Not with trust or ease, but she did accept it. He’d watched her fingers hesitate over the bag, watched the micro-tension in her shoulders. Her reluctance was visible. But she didn’t pull back or question the gesture. She also didn’t send him away which he half-expected.

That mattered. Fear was too obvious and resistance too loud. But reluctant permission, well, that was the truest kind of control.

She’s not ready to trust me. That’s fine. She’s ready to wonder if she should. And that's better.

It was better tham empathy, comfort. She was still deciding and he was shaping the answer. 

Progress.

More than that, she’d listened. She’d let him speak, uninterrupted. She’d allowed him to frame the absence -- both Ares’s decline and her role in the system. And in the end, she agreed to return.

Control regained. He exhaled, slow and steady. The encounter hadn't gone exactly as he intended. Reaching into his pocket, he fished the card out.  

She’d handed it to him from the frame beside the crow painting. She’d dropped it first, her hands trembling. From his visit? He could still see it in his mind's eyes. She kneeled in front of him to retrieve it, hand reaching across the floor, her eyes lifting to meet his from below. There was nothing calculated or staged about it. 

But the image? Kneeling. Looking up. Just… waiting. His breath hadn’t caught and his heart hadn’t accelerated. But something else had, something sharper from deep within. It wasn't desire or power, just the flash of something he struggled to name. 

She had no idea what that looked like, how naturally submissive that unintentional pose was, and that made it worse. Then she stood and handed him the card. For the briefest second, their fingers touched. Jonathan didn’t react outwardly, but internally, his mind stilled. Not because of the touch itself. No. It also wasn’t calculated nor was it part of the test.

She didn’t mean to touch me. But it still happened.

For years, touch and physical contact had been transactional. Sometimes a necessary step in gaining access or information. College trysts, colleagues at conferences, overeager interns mistaking distance for mystery. He’d allowed it, participated when useful. But he’d never felt anything.

Jonathan didn't feel desire or warmth. Certainly not pleasure in the way others described it. He didn’t believe physical closeness offered anything particularly valuable, not beyond the momentary biological release people seemed irrationally obsessed with. If there were any benefits, they were hormonal. Temporary and meaningless. Flesh wasn’t interesting. Behavior was. And behavior could be mapped and measured, predicted even.

Until now. 

I can't stop seeing her glance up at me from the floor, eyes wide, lips parted. Then she touched me by accident, and I can’t stopped thinking about it.

Most people didn’t touch him, not intentionally. And when they did, it was always followed by hesitation and regret. That brief flash of discomfort in their eyes like they’d just crossed some invisible line.

Once again, she hadn’t flinched or looked repelled. She didn't apologize. Like it was normal. Like I was normal. And that, somehow, was even worse. It stayed. 

He slid the card into his coat pocket, already memorizing the number printed in small black ink. And for the rest of the walk back to Arkham, he could still feel where her skin had met his.

When he reached the front doors of Arkham, Jonathan straightened his cuffs, adjusted his coat, and re-centered his expression into something neutral. Inside, the air was predictably cool. The hum of fluorescent lights, the faint antiseptic sting that clung to everything reminded him of where he was. Where his focus needed to be. 

Familiar ground.

Making his way to Ares’s office without rushing, Jonathan kept one hand tucked casually in his pocket, fingers brushing the edge of the artist’s card like it was an afterthought.

He knocked once. No answer. Crane opened the door anyway.

Ares was at his desk, awake, but slouched. His shoulders hunched, and his tie was askew. His eyes were bloodshot, and a mostly untouched coffee sat beside a stack of reports he wasn’t reading.

Jonathan stepped inside, wordless, and slowly circled the room. Scanned the files, checked the timestamp on the system logs. Picked up a clipboard to skim its contents before putting it down again.

This is what I know. This is control.

But the tension racing through his entire body didn't go away. His memory from the gallery wouldn't let him. 

Kneeling. Glancing up. That pause between her fingertips and mine.

Jonathan was here. In the system, in the structure he’d built around himself. And yet, he felt completely derailed.

Ares mumbled something, barely audible. Jonathan didn’t catch it and didn't care. He stepped back out into the hallway and let the door close behind him.

Control regained?

Maybe not. Not yet.

When Jonathan saw her again, stepping out of the Midtown bookstore on a rainy Thursday, he thought he was hallucinating. It had been ten years since he saw her last. She'd been away at college and came to visit her family. She'd been there for a long weekend, not enough time to try and orchestrate paths crossing. 

But there she was.  Older and softer around the edges. Hair pinned back in a way he didn’t remember, but her face… her face hadn’t changed at all.

He watched her from across the street. She didn’t see him.

She smiled at the clerk walking out behind her. Laughed at something small and adjusted the strap of her bag like it still didn’t sit quite right. 

She came back.

And for days, Jonathan followed her. N ot obsessively at first, but carefully.  From a distance, t racking her routine. Mapping it. Finding comfort in how familiar she still was, how she bought the same kind of tea, how she paused at certain corners when she walked. How she still left the house without an umbrella, even when it rained.  He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed her until the system settled around her again.

It was a Wednesday when everything shifted.  He hadn’t been following her that day. Just passing through Midtown, almost mechanically. 

And then there she was, on the sidewalk, walking into a restaurant.  Laughing with h er hand in someone else’s. Matching wedding rings. He was a  tall man, clean-cut and confident. The kind of man people looked at without remembering.

In her other arm? She held a toddler, a girl of maybe two who looked just like her.  Same eyes and hair. Same quiet spark.

Jonathan stood frozen just past the crosswalk, one hand still in his coat pocket.  He watched the hostess open the door and watched them step inside. He watched her smile, not at him. She pressed a kiss to the little girl’s forehead as the man guided them to a table.

And something ripped quietly at the edges of his control.

You came back. But you didn’t come back for me.

He didn’t follow her again after that.  Didn’t need to.  The variable had changed and t he subject was no longer viable.

But the memory? That stayed.  Not because she left. Because she never gave him a chance to matter.

Jonathan returned to his office and shut the door behind him, softer than usual. The silence should have helped but it didn’t. He didn’t sit. Instead, he paced. His strides were long and measured across the floor with his hands behind his back, every motion precise. But his mind was elsewhere. 

Unacceptable. Jonathan didn't allow himself to slip into fantasy.They were distortions, unstructured internal projections with no measurable outcome. Psychologically speaking, they were the brain’s way of coping with unmet needs. False stimuli designed to soothe. He didn’t need soothing. He needed control.

And yet, his heart was racing. His hands clenched behind his back, nails pressing into his palms. He tried in vain to redirect his thoughts to data, structure, and most importantly, fact.

All he could see her was kneeling in front of him on the gallery floor. That glance up at him... It wouldn’t stop playing. Like someone had hit repeat. Like he was someone's else's behavioral experiment. 

Jonathan's mind went to picturing her entering his office without knocking, just a soft turn of the handle, a gentle creak of the door. She’s carrying the crow painting, of course, but it’s not about the delivery. It's merely an excuse. Her gaze moves across the room, her expressive eyes luminous, curious. Underneath is caution and something else...

"I didn’t want the front desk to handle something this delicate," she says, shifting the frame slightly in her arms. "And I thought…"

Watching her carefully turn to carefully place the paining in the floor, leaning it on one of his bookshelves, he waits.  Her gaze is on him, quiet and open. She wants something, but doesn't know how to ask for it. 

Her eyes are soft, her posture uncertain. She’s not here for Ares. She’s here for him, walking back to his office door and turning the lock with a graceful hand.

"Have you been a good girl, today?" Jonathan asks, knowing it will earn him that smile. Her teeth sink into her enticing lower lip.

​"Yes," she whispered because good girls answer with their words. She doesn't touch him, not yet. She doesn't have permission. 

But he grants that. "Show me," he says firmly, stepping back so he can lean against the front of his desk, keep himself steady.

Meekly, she moves closer before kneeling in front of him, getting on her knees. When she's better trained, he'll keep a special cushion in his office, just for her visits and occasions like this. In the meantime, good girls don't complain. 

Jonathan takes a deep breath, watching her delicate hands work the fine leather belt at the front of his slacks. She makes quick work of it, opening his slacks and pushing them down just enough to free his cock and when she sees it, she glances up at him -- that glance -- confirming she has his permission. At his nod, she gets her hands on him, her mouth on him. Jonathan knew he should have told her not to make a mess of him but as her heated lips close around the head of his cock, he sucks in a breath and his eyes slide closed for just a moment. Her hands are warm and soft as they work him, her little mouth heaven as she slowly takes him deeper. 

He loved the way that once she got him right there to the edge, she's stop and do something different to frustrate him, to drag it out. Today he wouldn't punish her for that. Not when that big-eyed gaze was on him, seeking his approval. Not when she was literally drooling around him and drops of it fell to form wet circles on her knees, darkening the fabric of her slim gray skirt. 

Jonathan let her know when he was ready to come, taking control of her head with his hands. He fucked her face, slowly at first. But as that wave on sensation started crashing around him, his movements were rough and fast. He reached his end when he noticed those pretty tears sliding from her eyes, a slight smudge of mascara at her left eye from her efforts, from choking on his cock...

Taking deep breaths, Jonathan leaned back in his office chair, thick white ropes of his come all over his hand, his briefs. Somehow his slacks has been spared. Tucking himself back into his slacks, he did a messy job of it, he wiped his hands with tissues from the box on his desk. Straigtening his coat, he hurried out of his office to the men's room and cleaned up there. 

Jonathan was angry at allowing it. Masturbation wasn't a problem, but a healthy way to keep biological processes from interering with his work. He did it often in the privacy of his own home. He'd never allowed himself to do it at work, however. He was grateful that at some point in his reverie he'd locked his office door.

Returning to his office, he again locked his office door. At least until he could compose himself. The fantasy folded in on itself like a trap. It was ridiculous. Out of character. Uncontrolled. But he didn’t dismiss it. Not entirely.

Slowly, he reached into his pocket and removed the artist’s card again. Studied it. Ran his thumb along the edge where her fingers had pressed it.

Then placed it carefully on his desk

Jonathan hadn’t decided to buy the crow painting for her approval or to impress, nor to connect. He liked it. It wasn’t beautiful, nor was it balanced. What he liked was its restless, unsettling vibe. A canvas of motion without origin. Aggression without consequence. Wings blurred, angles clashing, with no sky to escape into. It wasn't a piece that wanted to be understood and didn't care to be explained. It was the kind of chaos that didn’t apologize for existing.

Jonathan respected that, recognized it. And he wanted it on his wall here in the office until he moved into Ares' office as the new Administrator  Then it would hang there. Prominent. Permanent.

A reminder of the chaos that birthed control. Of what came before the fall. The shape of those crows, the jagged wings, the stretched silhouettes, the way the eyes bled into the dark, It gave him an idea for the mask he was developing. Something primal and stark. Something that blurred identity and turned fear into a specific face. 

He planned to go to the studio to pick it up himself. A calculated excuse to see her and initiate the next step on his terms. But the artist, chatty, perceptive in the way creatives often were, had offered a different arrangement. The artist could arrange for her to deliver it to him. 

“She’s at Arkham most days anyway to see Ares. I’ll have her bring it to you.”

At first, he’d considered declining. But then? He saw the value in letting it play out. He’d still get the interaction and proximity. But now, it would unfold here, in front of Ares. She’d arrive with the painting. For me. And Ares would watch it happen. And best of all? He didn’t have to lift a finger.

Flipping open a slim black notebook, not the formal logbook for patient records, Jonathan made notes. He turned to her page, reviewing the day’s observations. Small notations on marginal behavior changes. Tone, posture, word choice. Then he paused, writing a single line beneath the last note.

Unintended tactile response → retention trigger. He underlined it once and closed the notebook. There. Labeled and catalogued. Not about her. Not about me. Just data.

Done with his inexcusable mania, his gaze fell on the card again. It was worn slightly at the corners now, a faint smudge on the edge from where his fingers had lingered too long, too often. He stared at it for a moment longer than he meant to. Chaos, without apology.

Jonathan opened the drawer that no one else touched. From inside, he pulled the mailing envelope. Her necklace was already inside. Without a word, he slipped the artist’s card in beside it. There was no need for a note or label. Just the weight of the meaning he wasn't prepared to name. Then he closed the envelope, like he was sealing something sacred, and returned it to the drawer.

Reeaching for a blank notepad, he began to sketch.

[lavatichellborn]

[GRIFFIN ROCK ADVANCED RESEARCH ARCHIVES - DECLASSIFIED FILE]

FILE NO. 01939-BB

CLASS: LEVEL ALPHA

STATUS: TERMINATED

PROJECT TITLE: Project Blackbird

DATE OF ORIGIN: February 2, 1934

DATE OF INITIAL COMPLETION: March 21, 1939

INITIAL DEACTIVATION: April 1, 1939

FOUNDING SCIENTISTS:

Dr. Thaddeus Morocco ██

Dr. Elma Hendrickson

(4 other researchers on the board)

INITIAL PURPOSE:

Temporal Displacement Study

Multidimensional Stabilization

(Layman’s terms: Time Travel Machine)

Overview: Initial Production (1934-1939)

Project Blackbird was initiated under the supervision of Dr. Thaddeus Morocco and Dr. Elma Hendrickson, focusing on chronometric field manipulation and temporal anchoring using the geothermal vents beneath the island. Utilizing the resources within the caverns below Mount Griffin, a prototype was produced and transferred to an underground laboratory under Mount Magma (FILE NO. 32891-MM).

The project was sought to create a long-term goal of traversable time displacement. Like several other projects this was kept out of the public view due to its sheer size and possible complications. Only the scientific board of Griffin Rock, headed by Dr. Morocco, and the Mayor of the time were the only ones to know about its existence.

Audio Log Fragments (1939)

[Log #34 - Dr. Hendrikson]

"The calculations hold, but the gravitational stabilization and ground flux index leave the bridge unable to anchor into reality. The pulse continues to choke each time we active it. We've already had one injured personnel member due to an iltrux burst that sent them crashing into a console."

[Log #46 - Dr. Morocco]

"We managed to stabilize the energy core and anchor the machine. The location we were in before was not ideal for the amount of vacuum that was produced. One of our fellow professors had to be hospitalized after the vacuum sent an entire box of screws into their back. He's alive but now the mayor is wondering if funding should continue due to all the setbacks. We can not, and will not let this project die, not on my watch."

[Log #58 - Dr. Morocco]

"IT'S DONE, IT'S OVER!! HE PULLED THE DAMN FUNDING! SHUT IT DOWN, SHUT EVERYTHING DOWN!"

[Log #59 - Dr. Hendrikson]

"...After several incidents involving injuries and unexplained localized amnesia to personnel. Including a major blowout that caused a destabilization of the laboratory, and a minor earthquake in the surrounding area, thank god no one died. ...our funding has been pulled. We are unable to continue with this project henceforth, and it shall be placed in an indefinite suspension."

REACTIVATION

DATE: February 18, 2000

AUTHORIZED BY:

Dr. Ezra Greene

█████████████████

Overview: Reignition

Project Blackbird was reinstated when Dr. Greene and ████████ found old black site files of Griffin Rock during its Shadow Age, and with the authorization from Mayor Luskey, the project was back online. The experiment would involve refining the aperture stability and explore micro-temporal displacement. Initial tests proved to be successful as they were able to send an apple back in time by one minute, creating a minor vortex loop. With this, they continued on into greater testing.

INCIDENT REPORT

April 3, 2000 - CORE OVERLOAD

Registered Time: 16:42

Results:

Sudden atmospheric pressure drop

Energy spike recorded 500% predicted maximum

Security footage corrupted to the point of complete system shutdown

Internal lab clocks unsynchronized by 43 minutes

Injury Report:

Dr. Greene - Class III traumatic amputation (left arm)

█████████████████████████

Additional Personnel on staff - minor injuries

Post Event:

All personnel and the civilian population within a 3-mile radius report partial memory loss spanning 6-12 hours. Photographic evidence and data logs contain missing metadata. Personnel entries indicate that entire lab access records, voice recognition logs, and internal project files had been wiped from the system.

Blueprints and diagrams originally within the network now no longer have listed credentials or biometric data. Despite evidence that the project was authorized and reinstated by two high-class scientists with Alpha-level access, only Dr. Greene has that authority; no other scientist on Griffin Rock and the communication lines were able to clear it.

Project Status:

Terminated. Facility sealed under ordinance GR-42. Lab permanently locked down, with trespassers to be punished for entering.

Official records indicate Project Blackbird was operated solely by Dr. Greene during its reactivation window.

Final Entry:

"There's a space in the photo. As if someone is supposed to be there. I was holding onto something when the overload happened. Something I held on so tightly that it resulted in losing my arm. I wish I could remember what that was."

-Dr. Ezra Greene, private notes (unpublished)

[baldieboi]

Shadows Within Shadows

Seventeen | part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4 part 5

@w-40-k @ghrgrsfdesfrfg

Cassian¹ withdrew deeper into the shadow of the maintenance alcove, his midnight blue armor adjusted to absorb rather than reflect the dim light of the corridor. His breathing slowed to an imperceptible rhythm, a technique learned from his youth on Nostramo.

The Word Bearer had noticed something. Not him specifically but something.

Interesting.

The chaplain had changed his path, chosen an unexpected corridor. A test? A coincidence? Either way Cassian had nearly been caught flat footed which was an unforgivable error for one trained in the art of terror.

He watched Erebus disappear around a corner then waited seventeen heartbeats before moving. Seventeen. A number of ill-omen on Nostramo.² Appropriate given how many days remained until the Word Bearers departed.

The soft hiss of his armor's joints was dampened by the modifications his Legion's tech-marines had implemented before this self-assigned mission. The sound suppression wasn't perfect, nothing was, but it was sufficient to fool most ears. Even transhuman ones.

But the First Chaplain wasn't most ears. That was becoming increasingly apparent.

Cassian slipped between maintenance shafts, following a route that bypassed the main corridors. His knowledge of the Vengeful Spirit's layout had become intimate over the months of his stay. It was probably better, he suspected, than many who had served on her for years.

"Sixteen junctions," he whispered to himself, counting down as he moved. "Fifteen. Fourteen." The habit kept his mind focused, prevented the whispers that sometimes came when he was too long in darkness.

His purpose here had evolved since its inception. What began as a challenge, could a Night Lord remain undetected aboard the flagship of the Emperor's favored son?, had become something more complex. He'd gathered intelligence as expected of him but he'd also found something unexpectedly satisfying in becoming the ship's ghost.

Cassian always watches. The phrase brought a cold smile to his lips. The mortal crew's fear was a soft thing, not the sharp terror his Legion typically cultivated. A ghost story rather than a horror.

Until now it had been merely amusing to watch how the myth spread. Now it might prove problematic.

He paused at a junction, head tilted, listening for the faint sounds of ship's operations. His helm's autosenses picked up the elevated heartbeats of a maintenance crew three corridors over, nothing unusual. But something else lingered in the air. A scent that didn't belong.

Incense.

Faint but distinctive. The kind used in Word Bearer rituals.

Cassian's eyes narrowed behind his helm. Erebus was laying groundwork already. Marking territories perhaps. Or simply creating sensory traps to detect intruders.

Clever.

He backtracked, choosing an alternate route. Tonight called for observation, not confrontation. The First Chaplain was up to something beyond the official reasons for his visit. Cassian had witnessed enough meetings and secretive data transfers to be certain of that.

And now Erebus was aware that someone was watching. This complicated matters.

Cassian reached a maintenance shaft that would take him to the lower decks where he'd established one of several hidden niches. As he climbed down, his thoughts turned tactical.

The Word Bearer would seek information first. Logical. Methodical. He would mine the human crew for rumors, perhaps seek access to security logs. Cassian had measures in place to counter the latter, phantom data trails, false sightings in impossible sequences. The confusion would buy time.

But the former... The humans talked. Always talked. Their fear of 'Cassian' was controlled, predictable. They used it to police themselves. If Erebus began asking questions...

A cold spark of anticipation ignited in Cassian's chest. This could be the true test he'd been seeking.

He reached his hidden alcove, a maintenance bay supposedly decommissioned due to radiation leakage. The warning runes kept the curious away and his own modifications ensured no actual radiation signatures registered on scans.

Inside he removed his helm and set it on the small workbench. The recycled air felt stale against his pale skin. His eyes, naturally adapted to Nostramo's eternal night, had no need for the dim illumination he permitted himself but light helped organize thoughts.

"Seventeen days," he murmured, voice hoarse from disuse.

He began cataloging what he knew of Erebus, both from observation and Legion intelligence. The Word Bearer was more than it appeared to the casual viewers. Cassian wasn't sure if it was danger or something else but since the specifics of that possible danger remained elusive. He operated through layers of meaning and suggestion. Even his words of friendship carried hidden barbs.

A worthy opponent, then.

Cassian felt the corner of his mouth twitch upward. He wouldn't just hide from the First Chaplain. That would be... inefficient. Better to control what Erebus discovered. Feed him half-truths. Lead him down carefully constructed paths.

After all sometimes the best way to stay hidden was to be seen exactly where and when you chose.

He began preparing for tomorrow. The hunt had begun.

And night was his domain.

Note: I admit that a Night Lord is probably a bit way too predictable, however his reasons to be there shouldn't be outlandish. Or probably it is. I kind of liked the idea and had to go through with it.

¹His real name is unknown to you. For now. He is an oc, of course, so it is perhaps irrelevant.

²I just made it up to fit the title and everything. Erebus is of the XVIIth legion, seventeen days... I had to.

[green-eyedfirework]

Jason, wriggling through a too-tight vent, cursed everything that led him here.

He was supposed to be spending time with Dick and his Titans, but the majority of them had gotten called away for an off-planet emergency—Jason, on Batman’s orders, wasn’t allowed to leave the planet yet—and any hopes of having a fun weekend with his sort-of older brother and his friends was spoiled by the fact that they were the only two left in an empty tower.

Give the golden boy his credit, he’d tried to engage Jason, teaching him some moves on the trapeze set-up that the Titans had, but it was also really fucking obvious that Dick had wanted to go with his friends, and definitely wished he could’ve just shoved Jason back through the zeta to the Batcave.

Jason could tell when he wasn’t wanted.

So both of them had jumped at the news of a trafficking stop in upstate New York, only to realize when they got there that it wasn’t so much a stop as a full-fledged base in the mountains, complete with signal jammers to block outside communications.  Which, of course, Jason realized only after they’d split up.

“Stupid Dickhead,” Jason muttered under his breath, “Stupid Bruce, stupid Titans, stupid goddamn paranoid traffickers.”  Every vent grate he’d squinted through was empty—it wasn’t a very big operation.  Their main goals were to free any prisoners and to collect data off the mainframe.

Jason didn’t know where Dick was, if he’d found an alternate route in after they determined he couldn’t fit in the vents, and if he’d found the mainframe or the prisoners.  The mainframe was Jason’s best bet—hopefully disabling whatever signal jamming tech they had and restoring communications.  He couldn’t entirely suppress the prickling tension at being alone.

He supposed he should just be happy that Nightwing had actually taken him along with him.  Some days, it felt like Dick was trying his best to pretend like Jason didn’t exist.  Jason had only pieces of why Dick had left, gleaned from shouting matches between Bruce and Dick, but he knew that Dick felt like he’d been replaced.  It wasn’t far off from what Jason felt—like everyone who looked at him, who looked at Robin, was expecting someone else.

Wriggling through a vent he only fit into by virtue of being small and scrawny certainly didn’t help matters.

When he peered through the next grate, he found a computer bank.  Thank fuck.  Getting out of the vent involved a whole lot of squeezing and creaking metal noises, but the room below was empty and Jason dropped down with a relieved sigh.

“Note to self,” he muttered, “Find a different way out.”

The computers were all in sleep mode and a wave of the mouse woke it back up.  Overconfident, Jason dismissed easily, and scanned through the different windows.

Security cameras, data logs, spreadsheets, financial transfers…looked like he hit paydirt.  Jason grinned as he retrieved a flash drive from his pouch and set about transferring the contents.  While it was downloading, he flicked through the security cameras to find Nightwing and the prisoners.

There were a lot of empty hallways.  He found the feeds of the guards outside, then a couple in what looked like a break room, but most of the place seemed to be empty.  There was a large warehouse-type room with threadbare bedding in a corner—Jason swallowed.  The room was empty.  Looked like they were too late.

The garage was empty too, only a few small vehicles.  Whenever they did their transfers, it appeared as though he and Nightwing had just missed it.  Jason set his jaw and check on the file download.  Wherever they went, he’d find out, and they’d thoroughly destroy this operation.

Nightwing had managed to make it inside—Jason spotted him skulking around in the north hallways—and he tried to figure out how to send a message to him.  The signal jammer wasn’t in this room, and Jason didn’t know what channel the traffickers were using.  Maybe if he flicked the lights on and off—

Movement.  In one of the formerly empty corridors, and Jason had no idea where this guy had fucking come from, but he was armored head-to-toe, he had a goddamn mask on, and he was in the same wing that Jason was.

Jason hurriedly checked on the file transfer and yanked the drive out as soon as it was done.  Taking one last look to remember where Nightwing was heading, Jason closed out of the open applications and headed for the hallway.  He needed to find Nightwing and get out before the alarm was raised.

Unfortunately, he ran into trouble on the way there.  Literally ran into, a huge block of mass stepping abruptly out of the shadow of a corridor and Jason twisted to quickly redirect his momentum, pressing against hard armor and swiftly putting distance between them.

Armored and masked.  Color scheme like he’d mugged a Halloween store.  A whole bunch of weapons, guns and knives, including what looked like a sword sticking over his shoulder.  As tall as Batman, as big, except Jason didn’t think his suit was padded in the same way.

“Robin,” the man said, voice low and deep and unmodulated.  His mask was half black and half orange, split evenly down the middle, and it made him look inhuman.  “But not the original.”

Crap.

“Long way from Gotham, aren’t you?” Jason said, sidling further away from the guy and discreetly palming a few birdarangs.

“What makes you think I’m from Gotham?” Discount Two-Face asked.

“Freaks dressed in masks tend to be from Gotham,” Jason shrugged.  And there aren’t a lot of people that know that there were two Robins, he added mentally.  “And you recognized me.”  Jason inched further down the corridor.  His smoke grenade was in his pocket.

“I don’t need to be from Gotham to recognize a target when I see one.”

Okay, that was Jason’s cue.  He yanked the smoke grenade out and threw it, running before it even hit the ground.  He needed to get to Nightwing and get out of here, he wasn’t in the mood to engage someone that looked like a walking armory.

The smoke grenade didn’t hit the ground.  Well, it did, but in front of Jason, a clink as it bounced and Jason barely managed to get his cape up to cover his face before it exploded in a thick wave of acrid smoke.

He stumbled free, coughing, and barely managed to catch sight of the approaching figure in time to dodge the kick.  The man was relentless and fast, pushing him back towards the smoke, but Jason was smaller and he ducked and spun away, twisted to the side to avoid being pinned.  The kick he couldn’t avoid sent him crashing to the floor, feeling like he’d been sideswiped by a truck.

Jason coughed and weakly struggled to his feet.  “Who are you?” he wheezed, dizzy with more than breathlessness.  Alarm bells were beginning to sound in his head and when the man got closer, Jason realized that the eye hole on the black side of the mask didn’t blend really well with the color.  It wasn’t there.

That—that narrowed down the list.  World’s deadliest mercenary, Jason distantly remembered the file saying, but a rare visitor to Gotham.  The closest Deathstroke the Terminator had gotten to facing off against the hero community…had been a note about an appearance against the Titans, almost a year ago.

“Didn’t the original Robin tell you?” Deathstroke made a low, harsh chuckle, “Or did he send you out in his colors without a clue of how many people were gunning for your head?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jason retorted, the familiar anger burning at yet another person who was talking about Dick.  “I’m Robin.”

“Are you,” Deathstroke said, slow and considering.  “Do you know what your legacy is, boy?”

“Don’t call me that—”

“Robin,” Deathstroke said, unsheathing his sword and fuck was it bigger than Jason had expected.  He skittered back another step.  The corridor abruptly felt too small.  “Killed my son.”  Deathstroke’s voice twisted to a snarl.  “And I’ve been waiting all these months.”  Deathstroke strode forward, unrelenting.  “To get my revenge.”

“Robin doesn’t kill,” Jason said, breathless, because Dick—Dick would’ve told them, it wasn’t true, Robin didn’t kill.  The first slice of the sword was almost lazy and Jason dodged it easily, but it reversed direction faster than he expected and Jason was forced to fling himself to the floor to avoid it.

“Is that what he told you?” Deathstroke growled.  The kick sent Jason skidding away, a roar of flame in his chest.  “That it wasn’t his fault?”

“Look, mister—” Jason rolled away from another kick before it could take off his head—“I don’t know where you’re getting your information from—” springing back to his feet made his ribs ache in the please-ice-me kind of way, but Jason felt better on two feet—“But the Bats don’t kill.”

Jason flexed his wrist, birdarangs comfortable between his fingers.  Deathstroke was massive and fast, he had enhanced strength and speed and healing, and this was clearly a fight Jason couldn’t win.  What he could do was disable the man long enough for him to catch up to Nightwing so both of them could book it, and then he could give Dick a talk about why you should always let your successors know about any near-invulnerable mercenaries you’ve pissed off recently.

“I’m sorry about your son,” Jason said, “But it’s not Robin’s fault.”

Deathstroke sheathed the sword.  The movement wasn’t conciliatory.  “I held him in my arms,” the mercenary said, voice low, “And watched him gasp out his last breaths.”  Gloves creaked as they curled into fists.  “And the Titans stood by and did nothing.”

Jason threw the birdarangs, moving on instinct, faster than his consciousness recognized that Deathstroke had lunged, but even instinct wasn’t as fast as an enhanced mercenary and Jason choked when the kick slammed into his stomach and momentarily robbed the world of air.

“I promised my son that I’d make them all pay,” Deathstroke snarled, “Especially Robin.”

Jason did his best to stagger out of the way of the next punch but it still caught his cheek, a glancing blow that sent his whole head ringing.  He was uncomfortably aware that he was in a fight he couldn’t win.

“And here you are.  All alone.  No Batman in sight.”

Jason weaved out of the way of Deathstroke’s next hit and grabbed the man’s gauntlet.  He was intending to use it to spring off and drive a kick in but Deathstroke just grabbed his arm and yanked him off like Jason was nothing more than an annoying pest.

As an afterthought, he twisted.

Jason stifled the scream as he cradled the broken wrist, stumbling back, blinking furiously against the budding tears as he kept Deathstroke in his line of sight.

“I thought about killing him,” Deathstroke strode forward casually, “But that would be too quick.  Too easy.  He needs to suffer.”

Jason swallowed.  “Have you thought about anger management—”

He’d fought Batman numerous times.  Bruce was a good teacher, frequently pausing to explain to Jason why a move hadn’t worked, or showing him a new technique, or congratulating him on a successful move.  He went easy on him, he had to, because tire iron or not, there was no way a scrawny, underfed twelve-year-old posed any kind of serious threat to Batman.

Jason had asked him once to spar for real.  Just a taste.  He’d begged until Bruce had given in, and he barely remembered it, just a desperate, unending onslaught until he was on the ground, staring up at the Cave ceiling, dazedly thanking anyone listening that he wasn’t an actual criminal.

That was what this felt like.  A relentless assault that he wasn’t staying ahead of, losing ground with every block, a wave of battering punches until Jason’s block was too slow and Deathstroke’s punch hit his broken wrist and the world went white.

When the overwhelming agony receded, Jason was on his tiptoes, held up by the collar of his uniform.  Deathstroke waited until Jason managed to look in the general direction of the eye-hole before slamming him against the wall.

The world was starting to look distinctly fuzzy.  His limbs felt like they were moving through molasses.  Deathstroke let go, and Jason gracelessly slid down the wall, muscles not moving fast enough to catch him.

There was something around his throat.  Deathstroke’s hand.  No.  It was cold like metal and it made an electronic beep and when Deathstroke moved away, the weight remained.

“Now for the other one,” Jason fuzzily registered Deathstroke saying before the world become too much.

[officialunionhr]

[ECHO.EXE RUNNING]

◂▸ Hello? Hi, it's- it's Helios. You gave me a real useful response to a post a few days back, when T-E was experiencing a shutdown. I'm sorry it took so long to get back to you, I had reports to file. I'm responsible for their wellbeing on base y'know?

◂▸ Anyway. I wanted to thank you properly for the advice, I- once I think T-E's a bit more stable, I'll try that framing you suggested. Getting around the programming might be easier if I can dodge the panic response they were wired with, and all I really need to do outright is convince them some time away from Harrison would be for the best... deprogramming takes time. Lots of time. But they need to survive long enough to get there.

◂▸... I hate to be difficult, but would it be possible to get those DOJ therapy files as an encrypted download? I'm um. I'm not supposed to be involved in T-E's legal case and that means I am technically not supposed to have any Union contact at all. Accessing Union files over the base omninet connection would probably get me questioned considering I'm uh... I'm really not supposed to have contacts outside the lab. Security risks and all that. and I'm already on thin ice if with them looking for the whistleblower round here... But!! Because of how ECHO works I can manage to hide piecemeal downloads, so I should be able to access them if I can get them offline!! If it's uh- if it's possible. of course.

◂▸ You uh, mentioned you've encountered people who've been subject to programming as part of your job right? Have you- do you know whether they typically take to life outside of what they've been programmed into, very well? I won't lie I'm... I'm worried for them. They get so tense when they're kept off-duty for very long.

◂▸ um. if you wouldn't mind too, can my messages stay off the record regarding your colleagues? T-E's got an active case open with the DOJ/HR but a lot of the talks are happening on base, under our surveilance. I can't be on the record while I'm still under the Armory. I hope that makes sense.

[ Helios-8 // @xiii-e ]

//

Hello!

I am glad to hear back from you friend, i apologize for not thinking ahead and pre-encrypting the files, i should have guessed that Harrison would be watching you close enough to moniter 'unusual' file transfer's, i will be re-sending you a file archive with properly encrypted and obscured file's for your use as needed.

As for previously programmed Cloned People's, unfortunately i cannot give any definitive answer, I know some who take to civillian life better than they ever took to the military, but i also know many who require a military structure, or similar organization, to simply remain functioning...Unfortunately, just like with Non-cloned people's it is unfortunately dependent on the person themselves.

Personally i believe that Thirteen could go either way, I believe that if they can be properly deprogrammed and convinced that there's nothing wrong about being human, that they are not a failure because of it, that they could easily fill a role as disaster relief, civillian medical care, or whatever they put their mind to, perhaps they dont want to continue being a medic, that would be their choice. And i do desperately hope that they realize they have that choice...

Not to worry, i'm keeping these message logs and any dealing with this situation in a private Air-gapped data drive, and having my NHP's scrub any remnants of it from the Omninets channels.

I do genuinely hope that no matter what happens, Thirteen can find a life they, and they alone, are happy with.

Signed: [REDACTED]

[lcdid]

Interest Check: Assistance with PK/SP data entry

So frequently I see people complaining about needing to set up PluralKit profiles or organize their Simply Plural. I understand it, but I do not feel it. I fucking love data entry.

That being said...

I've considered opening commissions for it, if that's what you'd call it, because it's relatively easy for me to do. I would need to have the data somewhere, but I would be happy to transfer all of it—that's what the payment would be for.

I'm still considering how the pricing would work, among other things, so I am also open for questions and suggestions about this.

Some other data, while I'm thinking aloud here, under the cut:

I would not be creating alters or identities, just listing information about them that already exists. The client would need to provide data (information, tags, etc) and images (icon, banner, etc).

There would be a consultation process regarding aesthetics, included information, length of description, etc...

There would be some things that I would not permit to be included on intros (triggers, mostly), but would be able to fulfill some other stuff (other languages, NSFW if you can give me a good reason)

I don't have much experience making SP fancy but it would not be hard to learn, it's just markdown. PK descriptions are all good; I'd likely have templates to choose from but could totally do some fiddling with them.

All account information would be kept secure. I'd have to come up with protocol for account/logged system access. I can't just tell people to trust me, which is what the protocol would address.

I don't have any experience with Octocon at all.

[stillwaterseas]

actually enraged by the ubiquity of online "conveniences" in shopping, banking etc - i would SO much rather travel a few min - even an hour - to a brick and mortar shop to buy something than go online, set up a new account, enter my shipping address, enter a different billing address, go downstairs to get my purse and card details (bc fuck no to auto-saving my card), wait for a confirmation email from my bank bc i'm not in the US to get confirmation texts, log into my separate email i use for banking for security, go back to the checkout window, oh no the code has expired, request another code, enter it and hold my breath that the transaction actually goes through bc i'm in another goddamn country and sometimes it just blocks it for no reason, all for a stupid 7 dollar purchase that i can't figure out where to buy in-person.

it makes my blood boil, bc multi-step processes with multiple possible failure/distraction points are POISON for an adhd brain. each one of those task transitions is like a literal hurdle or hoop in a dog show and i'm hauling my mangy, slavering self through them powered by pure spite. you don't even want to hear about the hell i've been through trying to transfer my US phone number to an eSIM with another provider. anyway. this is exacerbated by the fact that i am a privacy stickler, and i'm aware that if i were willing to give in to our evil overlords and let them keep every scrap of my data, some of these steps would be streamlined, but every time i hear about a techno utopia where you can pay for things with your fingerprints or whatever, i want to smash a server bank over elon musk's head. PLEASE i want to go back to walking down to the stationer's or the cobbler's or the chemists in my jaunty little hat and for them to have the things i actually want 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

[sab-cat]

Apr 16, 2025

Amna Nawaz:

Since President Trump reentered the Oval Office, billionaire Elon Musk and his DOGE team have been sweeping through federal agencies, accessing sensitive data as part of the effort to scale back the size of government.

We're getting new information about the scope of that access at one independent federal agency. That's the National Labor Relations Board, which protects workers' rights to organize and investigates unfair labor practices. A whistle-blower complaint filed by an I.T. staffer at the NLRB claims that DOGE gained access to closely guarded data, including case files, and that could have led directly to a — quote — "significant cybersecurity breach."

That whistle-blower, Daniel Berulis, joins me now, along with his lawyer, Andrew Bakaj.

Welcome to you both. Thanks for being here....

Amna Nawaz:

And in the affidavit, you say that you detected the removal of 10 gigabytes worth of data. Do you have any idea what kind of data we're talking about, why this would cause concern?

Daniel Berulis:

Sure.

So what that data spike correlated with was data that was transferred off of an internal record-keeping device that was only used for internal case data. So this system only has the private information about union organizers. The privileged business proprietary, technologies, competitors, those kind of things are in that system only. There's no other data. There's nothing else except that.

So that correlated data spike lined up in the exact time window and the same amount. And so that's what we can determine was taken, was data out of that system particularly.

Amna Nawaz:

So, Andrew, the White House responded to our request with a statement about this.

And they said — quote — "It's months-old news that President Trump signed an executive order to hire DOGE employees at agencies and coordinate data sharing. Their highly qualified team has been extremely public and transparent in its efforts to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse across the executive branch, including the NLRB."

So, Andrew, they're arguing this is all part of their work that they're doing to cut waste, fraud and abuse.

Andrew Bakaj, Attorney for Daniel Berulis:

If the administration is taking the position that having data exfiltrated out of the United States government and potentially into other nation-states, if that's about efficiency and effectiveness for the nation, it doesn't make any sense.

Within 15 minutes of DOGE engineers creating accounts, years, names and passwords within internal systems within DOGE, within 15 minutes of the creation of those accounts, somebody or something from Russia tried to log in with all of our credentials, meaning they had the right usernames and right passwords.

And the question is, how do they get that and why? The second question that I have is that why is it that from what Dan has seen, as well as others, because we have spoken to other individuals who are able to corroborate this, which is that some of the data is also using Starlink as a backdoor.

And that's another way to get data out of internal databases within agencies. And Starlink has now direct access where information is likely, we believe is funneled directly into Russia.

[aktechworld]

Integrating Third-Party Tools into Your CRM System: Best Practices

A modern CRM is rarely a standalone tool — it works best when integrated with your business's key platforms like email services, accounting software, marketing tools, and more. But improper integration can lead to data errors, system lags, and security risks.

Here are the best practices developers should follow when integrating third-party tools into CRM systems:

1. Define Clear Integration Objectives

Identify business goals for each integration (e.g., marketing automation, lead capture, billing sync)

Choose tools that align with your CRM’s data model and workflows

Avoid unnecessary integrations that create maintenance overhead

2. Use APIs Wherever Possible

Rely on RESTful or GraphQL APIs for secure, scalable communication

Avoid direct database-level integrations that break during updates

Choose platforms with well-documented and stable APIs

Custom CRM solutions can be built with flexible API gateways

3. Data Mapping and Standardization

Map data fields between systems to prevent mismatches

Use a unified format for customer records, tags, timestamps, and IDs

Normalize values like currencies, time zones, and languages

Maintain a consistent data schema across all tools

4. Authentication and Security

Use OAuth2.0 or token-based authentication for third-party access

Set role-based permissions for which apps access which CRM modules

Monitor access logs for unauthorized activity

Encrypt data during transfer and storage

5. Error Handling and Logging

Create retry logic for API failures and rate limits

Set up alert systems for integration breakdowns

Maintain detailed logs for debugging sync issues

Keep version control of integration scripts and middleware

6. Real-Time vs Batch Syncing

Use real-time sync for critical customer events (e.g., purchases, support tickets)

Use batch syncing for bulk data like marketing lists or invoices

Balance sync frequency to optimize server load

Choose integration frequency based on business impact

7. Scalability and Maintenance

Build integrations as microservices or middleware, not monolithic code

Use message queues (like Kafka or RabbitMQ) for heavy data flow

Design integrations that can evolve with CRM upgrades

Partner with CRM developers for long-term integration strategy

CRM integration experts can future-proof your ecosystem

[thelongestway]

All right. Here we go. Next few days, we get to see how many plot holes I have left in here. (I can see one already - maybe I'll need to give the two folks who are watching the hostiles regular radio rather than a feed link). And maybe I'll need a pass to make motivations sharper (but that's the whole s4, tbh). But there's a lot of moving parts here, and this is definitely a "get it down on paper, and then edit" situation.

Let's go.

Upd: edited version now up!

Chapter 36: Showdown

I analyzed the data Note and Blaze sent me as I ran down through the transportation tunnels (the system itself was offline, but it was still the most straightforward way to reach the hostiles), and there were good news and bad news.

The good news was, there was no way the hostiles could actually steal the Vault without backup, because it was basically the size of one of ART’s lab modules and built deep into the old Courageous (and according to Note, just taking its key machinery was nearly impossible). Even if they could somehow cut an entire section of the ship loose and push it through the construction yards, they would need Magma to take it. And according to Blaze, Magma was still docked as normal. (Blaze even maneuvered nearby to confirm that her logs weren’t fooled by some sort of transponder illusion. She was really flustered about missing the hostiles.)

(Even though we never talked to each other before, she sent me a, Hey, SecChief Four, any idea how those sons of beestings got through? Swear on my mother’s soul, Magma was quiet this whole time! And there’s not near enough air in those suits to get this far!

I didn’t know, but I had pulled off something similar once, so I sent her a data log about life-tenders and their shitty transponders.

Slow but virtually undetectable? Blast! Well, at least Magma isn’t going anywhere, that much I promise you. Blaze out.

For someone who had a place on ART’s Holism scale, she wasn’t all that bad.)

The bad news was, the Vault was complicated tech that was related to wormhole drives. Which meant that if the hostiles were idiots, they could accidentally blow up a big part of the station—or, if they weren’t, they could threaten to do that. (Good thing most of the humans were topside.) And considering how little time they had left until the transfer finished, it was probably the second option.

Note’s data indicated that getting around the Vault’s safeties was hard, and both me and the security teams would probably get down there in time, but you never knew with human stupidity.

Plus, the Courageous was fucking enormous. By the time I made it one ring down from the gardens, even running at top speed, the hostiles had hacked through the airlock and were now inside the first airgapped ring.

That one’s easy, Iceblink scoffed. Let’s see you assholes deal with the rest of the doors here. Especially the ones on the Vault.

I hoped she was right and the defenses would stall the hostiles, because the situation looked pretty grim otherwise. Both the hearts’ new installation points were very far away, and I managed to identify from the enemy team’s chatter that there were at least two more hostiles securing the transportation tunnels outside of their entry point. In corporate terms, this usually meant proximity mines, which would block off Basil’s team. Hiram’s team had better access, so I relayed the situation to him and gave him a new calculated route closer to the middle of the old Courageous. This wasn’t close to the Vault, but it was the best we had.

(It would put them behind even further. Their estimated ETA now was close to thirty minutes, which could have been forever where Iceblink and I were concerned.)

But I’d made it past another ring, and Hostile Hacker had finished his initial assessment.

“Useless,” he reported as Hostile Leader stepped into the now-open airlock, followed by the last two of her team. (Two others were scouting the corridors ahead. Two more, including Hostile Manager, were hovering over the hacker like idiots.) “Without the AI, this place is just broken subroutines and more fucking airgaps. Not even an emergency guidance system.”

“Airgaps, eh?” Hostile Leader grinned and patted Hostile Manager on the shoulder. “Good thing we’ve got someone who knows the lay of the land, then.”

Hostile Manager’s mouth twisted.

“I already told you, if you want my help, then we’re entering from the wrong side. I’ve never been down here, much less near their main data center. I have no idea where to go from here.”

I heard Iceblink exhale in relief at the same time as I saw most of my own threat assessments go down. Data center meant they didn’t want the Vault—just the data. And that was long gone. The hostiles had missed their mark.

But this also meant Iceblink had to move, now, because she was sitting in Lab and Med Ring—and without Aspen, that was basically the Courageous’ main data center. I didn’t want to risk Iceblink being caught in a firefight and sent her a tap, but she was already closing her terminal.

Falling forward to backup site three? At the speed they’re going, there’s no way they’ll be sweeping everything in Hab and Rec, and there’s a good terminal room out of their way. Also the other adjacent ring sucks for hiding, it has way too much visibility.

Considering the situation, it was the best option we had. Iceblink had a much better chance of hiding in the denser habitation rings rather than in the open garden rings surrounding the Courageous cluster’s main habitat installation. And having her connected into the airgapped sensors would make coordinating with Hiram’s team a lot easier.

I approved, and watched her feed cameras go dark.

On the regular Courageous cameras, Hostile Leader grinned and pushed Hostile Manager down one of the corridors, towards her teammates with the guns.

“Oh, I'm sure you’ll figure something out, Branch Manager. Something not involving a heavily guarded access route. On you go, and don’t forget to talk loudly if you see any natives.”

(I could see now that Hostile Manager was wearing a much less fancy protective suit than the other five hostiles. And she wasn’t armed. That still didn’t mean I removed the hostile tag from her, but I gave her and Hostile Leader additional mutual hostile tags.)

Hostile Manager gave Hostile Leader a scowl but moved. Hostile leader leered, then turned her attention back to Hostile Hacker.

“Any heavily-defended sites?”

Hostile Hacker grinned. “Oh yeah. You can airgap your feeds all you like, but power consumption patterns don’t lie. Mid-ship’s still using a lot more than it should be under emergency power.”

“Then that's where we go,” Hostile Leader said calmly. “Move out.”

“Give me 30, I see live cameras,” Hostile Hacker said, and forty five seconds later our honeypot camera circle went dark.

I made it down another two rings when Iceblink gave me her bridge again. I updated her, and she muttered, Good. Good, you rotten bastards, keep looking for our servers. Maybe even get into the fucking heart room, I dare you.

If the hostiles did that, then it’d be over. The heart room had the most powerful directional EMPs that would easily take out the augmented humans. And all of the habitation and lab rings had access to the carbon monoxide weaponry. (Though we’d have to be lucky to get to use those. Even in the stripped-down versions of their suits that could be used with a life-tender, I could see that the hostiles had retractable helmets.)

Most of the lab ring also had EMP’s, though considerably less powerul. But even if the hostiles managed to disarm those, I would be there to either disable or hold them until Hiram's team arrived. The only problem here was the presence of Hostile Manager, but I could probably make sure she didn’t die.

But then Iceblink’s cameras came back online, and I saw that we were in fucking trouble. Because the hostiles weren’t where they were supposed to be. They were about two rings ahead, nearly at the Courageous’ lower greenhouse ring.

There was no way they could have just cut through the airlocks that quickly.

What the fuck, Iceblink said. Did they just phase through the walls or something?

Shit. I probably knew how they did it. I rewound some of my logs and ran a quick analysis on the data from my mechanoreceptors. And yep. Fuck. There it was, that specific tremor, repeating three times in quick succession. (Not even a good privacy field could dampen all the vibrations.)

It’s targeted explosives, I said. They must have gotten stuck on your defenses and decided to just break through.

Are they fucking kidding me?? People live here! What if someone was home!?

Yeah, well, welcome to the Corporation Rim and the lack of fucks corporate assault teams gave about anything except hitting their targets.

(But I didn’t say that. I needed her to focus.)

Iceblink rapidly pulled up data from the Courageous’ systems

(Hostile Hacker still wasn’t seeing her, which was good) and placed it in our workspace.

How much damage did they… Rot! Fuck! SecUnit, we can’t let them past Hab and Rec!

Right. Humans hated it when their houses got blown up.

No. Stick to the plan and let them by. The explosives are short range. They won’t damage the habitat. We just can’t use the carbon monoxide.

(Because it was flammable, and if we did release it, there would be a lot of structural damage if a bomb went off. But the CO was a bad option anyway. The hostiles had retractable helmets, and it wouldn’t knock them out unless they were very stupid. This was the kind of thing that worked on untrained colonists, not on a real assault team.)

That’s not the problem! Tal’s room is right next to the airlock to Lab and Med! If their explosives hit one of the support lines for the chronostasis capsule…

Through the microphone, I heard her swallow and felt my threat assessments rearrange themselves in a sickening pattern.

Instead of one human to protect in here, I actually had two. One of whom was dead. But I still had to protect kem anyway, or Dandelion's human would pull a Friend and try to save kem herself, because ke was important to her, and even smart humans could be really stupid when someone important to them was in danger. Iceblink’s chances of successfully stalling the hostiles on her own and not dying were about 11,3 percent.

I updated Hiram, who was still a long way off with his team, and said in our voice channel: Okay. Okay, Iceblink. Listen to me very closely. We're going to stage a distraction and stall them before they get to Tal. But your priority is to avoid hostile contact. They can’t find you, or you will die.

Got it, Iceblink said in a tone that instantly reminded me of Dandelion at zero instability rate. Tell me what to do.

[13thpythagoras]

"Taiwan will open a national cybersecurity center in August to counter threats from quantum computing, AI, and state-sponsored cyberattacks"

"Let's say that, in 10 or 20 ...5-15 years, “Future You” logs into your account, only to see that it's been zeroed out.

Your life savings have been transferred elsewhere.

How could this be? What happened to your password, your 2FA, and the security measures that used to help lock down your account?

A hacker used something called a quantum computer to speed past all those safeguards, right to your money.

Tomorrow's quantum computers are expected to be millions of times faster than the device you're using right now. Whenever these powerful computers take hold, it will be like going from a Ford Model T to the Starship Enterprise.

This spike in speed may undo the security measures that protect every piece of data sent over the web today. And it's not just your bank account that could be at risk. This threat could affect everything from military communications to health records. And it would play out on a vastly larger scale than the headline-grabbing data breaches that have affected countless consumers in recent years.

But here's the good news: This apocalyptic, break-the-internet scenario is preventable—if we act now."

Flash forward 5 years- we didn't "act now" and now it's too late. All internet connected banks will be drained by quantum computing. It won't just be them spying on us. They will drain all bank accounts of digital dollars, and we watch Taiwan like we watch the smartest student in class. This quote / link is from 2020-

https://www.rand.org/pubs/articles/2020/quantum-computers-will-break-the-internet-but-only-if-we-let-them.html

[sonicasura]

In the medbay—Starscream was ranting and raving about a feral Soundwave… only for the resident medic to reveal the spymaster was stationed on the Nemesis the entire time. The Seeker hissed at the disbelief, citing the fact the “faceless” mech can remote groundbridge.

A buzzing noise interrupted them both followed by a clunk outside the medbay door. Knockout cautiously investigated only to find a rather odd sight dropped at his “doorstep”. Starscream’s missing arm, well, sans his missile on the floor.

(Backbite knew it was risky to do this, but she felt a little bad for Starscream taking so much physical abuse by the warlord’s servos…)

——————————

If MECH thought their troubles were over upon capturing a living “transformer”, then they had another thing coming. The moment the subject woke up—all manner of glitches plagued their systems and the power was fluctuating greatly. Equipment primed to vivisect the bulky mech would shut off before breaking plating, then sputter even when a hard wire reset got the tools working again. Every issue that could go wrong did in fact went wrong in what should otherwise be state of the art systems!

Silas attempted to appear unruffled when the rest of the transformers managed to find his little present to them. But, something on the alien’s end alerted them to the trap early.

He regained control… for a few seconds?

When gunshots broke the lights in the tunnel leading to the operating room of sorts. One by one, the effect almost drawn out to purposely hype up whoever was doing this… Which fell apart(?) as something big came crashing the tunnel security door. Each camera was shot through, although that didn’t strike the MECH leader as the green bruiser’s handiwork. The sounds of his agents getting hurt sounded far too clearly across the monitors.

Not even the most vicious virus could detect the interloper messing with their systems. What little data they collected had to be hastily transferred to a hard copy to avoid not gaining anything from this opportunity.

*************

Checkpoint laid down some slight cover fire in order to dissuade the helicopters’ shots. He had to keep moving between each snipe to not give away his own position. Suffice to say, the Commandramon had every bit of combative knowledge tested in his first foray in the non-digital world. That it ended up happening due to his cybertronian counterpart effectively getting jumped just felt semi-ironic. But, hey.

Every soldier had bad combat encounters.

…He did have back up in Vanguard, so he couldn’t discount having an escape strategy. Backbite’s own counterpart led a small squadron of winged Vehicons to the remnants of the MECH’s final effort before retreating. Not liking the way Starscream was insinuating Breakdown hesitating to attack his rescuer as him defecting—the Commandramon had Vanguard fire off a shot. In lightning bolt form.

Better to “finesse” the perception before the bulky blue bruiser’s opinion of Bulkhead turned back to antagonistic. Starscream was an insidious influence even on a bad day.

Checkpoint didn’t have much of an opinion over the Autobot versus Decepticon conflict. Except that it was a frankly stupid final effort from a species at this rate was going nearly extinct.

—————————

In a similar fashion to the last time, there was a softer thunk of a part being delivered outside the Medbay doors. A lone optic stared at Knockout who shot a look at his conjunx.

Well.

Whoever the mystery help was, they were marginally fine in his data log so long as they kept Breakdown out of harms way next time.

Operation Breakdown is one of the more darker episodes no matter which way you look at. Least BD had hidden backup to minimize the damage to him. Also Breakpoint's opinion on the 'war' at this point is valid.