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[daxisyzz]

Close encounters

Pairings: avenger!bucky barnes × avenger!reader

Summary: On an undercover mission, you and Bucky pose as a married couple to infiltrate an illegal weapons auction—but when a stolen kiss becomes part of the plan, the line between duty and desire starts to blur.

Word count: 1.2k+

Tags: Flirty Bucky, fight sequence, undercover mission, teasing, kissing.

A/n: I had posted a grumpy Bucky fic but hated it. So I deleted it. I think I like this better. If u ever want grumpy Bucky lemme know. Requests are open. Enjoyyyy!!

Part 2- Double-Edged

The mission was simple: extract intel from a black-market arms dealer, stay undetected, and get out before things went sideways. Simple—until Steve decided to pair you with James Buchanan Barnes.

You stepped out of the limo, adjusting your dress as you scanned the sketchy building for exits and weak points. Bucky stepped out after you, his sharp gaze sweeping over the area before turning toward you. He leaned down, voice low.

“You clean up nice, doll,” he murmured, his breath warm against your ear as he adjusted the clasp of your necklace. His fingers skimmed the back of your neck, sending a shiver down your spine.You rolled your eyes, ignoring the way your pulse picked up.

“Try to focus, Barnes. We have a job to do.”

“I am focused,” he said, smirking.

“On my wife.”You ignored him.

The mission had led you both to an underground auction, where dangerous people gathered to bid on illegal weapons. Your cover: a wealthy couple looking to expand their business.

The plan: Bucky would distract the seller while you slipped into a secure backroom to steal classified files.But first, you had to sell the act.

As you entered the venue, Bucky’s hand found the small of your back, his thumb brushing absentmindedly against your dress. The casual possessiveness of it made your breath hitch—just for a second.

“Relax, doll,” he murmured, voice smooth as ever.

“Gotta make it look real.”You forced yourself to ignore the warmth of his touch, keeping your focus on the room instead.

“Just don’t overdo it, Barnes.”

He smirked. “Too late.”

You took your seats near the auction stage, scanning the crowd for your target. Anton Markov sat in a private booth, surrounded by bodyguards.You turned to Bucky.

“I’ll need five minutes alone in that backroom.”His gaze flickered with something unreadable.

“Then we’ll get you five minutes.”

The auctioneer began presenting rare weapons, but you weren’t paying attention. You were focused on Markov, waiting for an opening.Bucky, however, was focused on you.

You wore a satin dress that fit in all the right places. The ring Steve had made you both wear to sell the act glinted under the chandelier’s warm glow, bringing a smirk to Bucky’s face.

“Stop staring,” you muttered.

“I’m your husband,” he said, leaning in.

“Gotta make it look real.”You shot him a glare.

“You’re enjoying this.”His lips twitched.

“A little.”

Your eyes flicked back to the target as he finally left his booth, heading toward the bar. Now was your chance.You stood, brushing a hand over Bucky’s thigh as you did. The touch was fleeting, unintentional—except for the way he tensed ever so slightly.

“I’ll be back, honey,” you said, keeping up the act.

“Wait for my signal,” you murmured before slipping away.

You moved stealthily through the crowd, unnoticed by the guards.The backroom was locked, but you made quick work of it with your hairpin, slipping inside. Rows of servers lined the walls, buzzing with encrypted data. You approached the main computer, pulling up the classified files. Plugging in a drive, you watched the transfer bar crawl forward. Almost there…

Then—footsteps.

Your stomach dropped. You barely had time to pull your gun from the thigh holster beneath your dress before the door opened.Two guards stepped in.

“Boss said to check the servers,” one muttered.

You held your breath, staying out of their line of sight. The download wasn’t complete. If they noticed…

Before you could form a plan, the door burst open again—and in walked Bucky. His scowl was murderous, jaw clenched tight.He moved fast. One guard barely had time to react before Bucky knocked him out cold. The second reached for his gun, but Bucky grabbed his wrist, twisting until there was a sickening crack.The room fell silent.You exhaled.

“That was not the plan,” you said, stepping out.

“They got suspicious,” Bucky replied, scanning the monitors.

“Had to improvise.”You rolled your eyes.

“You just wanted to be dramatic.”

“Did it impress you?”You ignored him, yanking the drive free just as an alarm blared.

“Time to go.”

Security flooded the halls. Your only escape? A side door leading to a back alley. You sprinted toward it, but a guard rounded the corner—gun raised.

Before you could react, Bucky grabbed you by the waist, spinning you so your back hit the wall, his body shielding yours. His hands found your face, and then—His lips crashed against yours.

Your mind blanked.

He kissed you slowly, deliberately, like there was nowhere else he’d rather be.It took a second to register what was happening. Then your hands gripped the lapels of his suit, the fabric creasing under your tight hold as you kissed him back.A deep sound rumbled from his throat—something between a groan and a satisfied hum.

The guard hesitated, taking you for just another couple sneaking a moment away from the bustling crowd.The second the guard moved on, Bucky pulled away, eyes dark with something unreadable.You swallowed hard.

“What the hell was that?”

“Had to make it convincing,” he said smoothly.

You didn’t get a chance to argue before more guards closed in. Bucky grabbed your hand, pulling you down the hall and out the door.By the time you reached the safe house, your heart was still racing—but not from the escape.

Inside, the chaos of the mission faded into a quiet that felt both relieving and… unsettlingly intimate. You dropped onto a worn couch, still feeling the buzz of adrenaline, while Bucky leaned against the table, a roguish grin playing on his lips.

“Not bad for a ‘just undercover’ kiss,” he said lightly, eyes dancing as he regarded you.

You shifted uncomfortably, trying to mask the quickened beat of your pulse. “That was a necessity, Barnes. Don’t read more into it than you have to.”Bucky stepped closer, his tone teasing.

“Oh, come on. I got a kiss out of you. It was… unexpected, sure, but pretty damn effective.”

You rolled your eyes, a small, involuntary smile tugging at your lips despite your best efforts. “Effective for the mission, maybe. I didn’t exactly plan on playing into any romantic script.”

He brushed a hand lightly along your arm, the contact sending an undeniable shiver through you. “Maybe you didn’t plan it, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make me want to see more of that fire—even if you’re all business most of the time.”

You tried to keep your tone steady, though your cheeks betrayed you. “Barnes, you’re unbelievable. One minute we’re dodging guards, the next you’re flirting like we’re off-duty.”

“Off-duty or not, you did kiss me back,” he replied with a wink. “And honestly, that might just be worth the risk.”

For a long moment, you stared at him, flustered and momentarily at a loss for words. Finally, you cleared your throat. “Maybe. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I’m here to get the job done—nothing more.”

Bucky’s smile softened, though the playful glint in his eyes remained. “Sure, doll. But if you ever do decide to let a little distraction in, I promise I’ll make it worth your while.”

You let out a reluctant laugh, shaking your head. “Keep dreaming, Barnes. Just stick to the mission next time.”He chuckled, leaning in just enough that you felt the warmth of his breath.

“No promises,” he murmured.

“After all, I like finding ways to keep things interesting.”

In that charged, easy moment, the safe house became more than just a hideout. It became a space where even a well-timed kiss could blur the lines between duty and desire.

[saffusthings]

second chances

mob boss! lando norris x reader

part thirty-three: in another life

word count: 5.8k

warnings: this chapter contains themes of grief, neglect, and abandonment. reader discretion is advised.

thirty-two | thirty-three | thirty-four

Lando sat at his desk in silence, pen still in hand though the ink had long since dried. The funeral arrangements were half-finished, a list of names and numbers blurring beneath his gaze. His hand hovered over Daniel’s name more than once, but he couldn’t bring himself to write it down again. It was already there in the headline of every regret in his chest.

Daniel Ricciardo, deceased.

His throat burned.

His eyes stared at the paperwork, at the arrangements, at the tasks that had to be done, but his mind was elsewhere. He could barely focus on the numbers, the calls to make, the words to speak.

The office was too quiet. The hum of the city outside felt like a distant echo, unimportant in comparison to the loss that had shredded through his world like a blade. 

Lando sat there, still in last night’s shirt, the sleeves rolled up and collar wrinkled. The clock ticked, the pen in his hand trembled over a page even he couldn’t bring himself to sign.

Daniel Ricciardo — Funeral Coordination.

It wasn’t just a line item on a checklist. It was a sentence.

A verdict.

And Lando couldn’t read it without his throat closing.

Daniel was dead, and Lando had been too late. 

The papers in front of him blurred at the edges, paragraphs bleeding into one another, unread. Funeral arrangements. Security procedures. Transfer of assets. Unsent messages, unspoken apologies.

The pen hung uselessly in his hand.

He was just trying to work. Work was supposed to be safe, detached, obedient. Work wasn’t supposed to look at him the way he could feel his men look at him now — with eyes full of questions they weren’t brave enough to voice. 

How did this happen? How did you let it?

He should have seen it. He should have done something, for fuck’s sake. 

Daniel’s name had been printed five times in this document alone. It still didn’t feel real. It felt wrong, as if a name so vibrant, so alive, had no business existing inside an administrative file.

The rest of the house was quiet. Not still—there were voices somewhere deep in the walls, movement in the shadows, but it all felt hushed. Muted, like even the house was grieving. He could hardly blame it.

The Reaper wasn’t a sentimental man. He’d made it this far by pushing feelings down, by compartmentalizing everything, keeping the emotional weight locked away, safe from ever pulling him under. But Lando Norris could feel the light that had dimmed around the mansion, the hollow space where the warmth used to live. It wasn’t just the loss of Daniel. It was everything. Everything was colder now.

Lando had always thought of himself as someone who could carry weight. Who could look death in the face and not flinch. Who could be ruthless enough. But when Daniel’s body dropped, when the blood pooled, and when Max collapsed to his knees screaming like something had torn from his chest—Lando hadn't felt ruthless. He'd felt helpless

He couldn’t bring himself to face Max since.

Like a fucking coward.

Verstappen hadn’t said a word since that night—not one word beyond accepting orders or routine updates. Lando hadn’t looked Max Verstappen in the eye since because if he did, he knew what he’d see: Daniel’s ghost.

The house was quiet too. A stillness had settled across the estate, not just of sound but of spirit — a dimming of something once bright. There was no laughter in the halls, no music or footsteps. Only muted conversations and doors that weren’t closed all the way.

The warmth that had once flickered through the mansion in small, unexpected ways – an unguarded laugh from Logan, the smell of Carlos’s shitty microwave popcorn, the sound of Daniel’s boots scuffing the floorboards as he came in too loud, too late, always grinning – was gone, the very air seemingly hollowed out and echoing.

He buried his face in his hands and sat there for a long while. It wasn’t the kind of grief that bled out in sobs. It was quieter, meaner – like a slow rot behind the ribs.

When Max Fewtrell stepped into his boss’s office, he didn’t knock. He was entering as a friend. Even if Lando may never refer to him by that title, today he entered this office as he had done many times before – as someone who noticed the dark circles under Lando's eyes, the rapid emptying of his decanter.

“You’re not eating,” Max said softly.

Lando didn’t lift his head. “Not hungry.”

“You need to eat. You’re no good to anyone like this.”

He still didn’t respond.

There was a pause. Then a chair creaked as Max sat across from him. “You did the best you could.”

But what was the best when your man still bled out on a warehouse floor? When you heard him choke on his own blood over comms and couldn’t get there fast enough?

Lando’s voice was low when it came. “Did I?”

Max didn’t answer that. Just looked at him, tired in the eyes, like he hadn’t slept either. They’d all taken the hit—some closer to the blast than others — but Lando had been at the center. He always was. That was the weight of command, of consequence.

Heavy lies the head that wears the crown.

The service was short.

Just the Reapers’ Circle, and a few of the old boys from the Renault garage who still wore grease under their fingernails – the ones who had known Daniel from the very beginning, back when everything had felt like a dream on the tarmac. 

There were no pretend speeches, no too-holy choir, no annoyingly large floral displays.

Daniel would've hated all that.

The lot of them gathered under gray skies, cold wind skimming off the water. No one said much. A few passed a flask around, a few muttered goodbyes. 

Max had stayed silent, the usual fire in his eyes dulled by something deeper, more painful. He stood still the whole time, hand resting absently on the back of Penelope’s tiny head where she sat bundled on Kelly’s hip, too young to know what was being buried.

Too young to know what she’d lost.

How the hell was he going to explain to her that Uncle Danny wasn’t coming over to play anymore?

Lando had stayed in the background, giving everyone space, but the ache of it all was still there, the weight of it pressing on his chest like a stone that wouldn’t budge. 

He couldn’t be the leader they wanted him to be today. 

He didn’t deserve to.

Not after losing one of their own.

It was hours later, back in his room, when Max Verstappen finally got a moment to himself to breathe, nothing more than a hollow exhale. He’d changed out of his dark coat and was sitting in just a t-shirt now, elbows on his knees, the day’s weight still knotted in his shoulders. Kelly had taken Penelope home early—“She doesn’t need to see you this sad,” she’d said gently.

And maybe she was right.

Max didn’t know how to tell a toddler that Uncle Danny wasn’t coming back. That there wouldn’t be another Sunday where he rolled in with doughnuts and those god-awful glitter stickers she loved so much. That the belly-laughs were over now.

He was still staring at the floor when he heard the soft knock.

It isn’t Logan – his steps are quieter. Carlos’ gait is slower, steadier, more heavy-footed. This is someone different, more uncertain, a little–

Before he could place the sound of the footsteps, the door opened and Lando’s voice came through, tentative and low. “Max?”

The Dutchman blinked, surprised.

What was Lando doing here?

Lando never came to their rooms. He summoned people, made them come to him. It wasn't a rule so much as it was a fact, a simple truth of the way this familiar ecosystem of theirs had always functioned.

Max didn’t say anything at first, just blinked at the door like he wasn’t sure if he wanted company or not. He could hear Lando nudge the door open a little wider, just enough for Lando to step in.

“Shouldn’t you be with the others?” Max muttered, his voice hoarse from the tension he was holding in.

“I came to find you,” Lando replied, his voice quieter than usual, like he wasn’t sure if Max even wanted to see him. But it was too late now; he was here.

“What are you—” Max began, but Lando was already moving.

He didn’t say anything at first. Just stood there in that solemn, self-contained way of his, like he wasn’t sure if this was a mistake. He hesitated for a moment, and then, almost awkwardly, he handed Max a small box. It was simple, unassuming. Just a plain cardboard box, the kind anyone would put their stuff in when it needed to be kept together.

Max frowned, staring at it for a moment. “What’s this?” he asked, but his voice lacked the usual sharpness it had. Instead, there was a soft kind of confusion there, as if he already knew.

Lando shifted uncomfortably on his feet. “I thought you'd want this... Daniel’s things. Some of ‘em. S’not much. Just, like, things from his locker n’ his drawer in my office. He, uh… left things everywhere, really.”

He held out the small box.

Max stared down at the box, at the way Lando was holding it out like it was fragile, like it could break if Max didn’t take it carefully. And for a moment, there was silence. The kind of heavy silence that had followed Daniel’s death, as if the world had paused, unsure of what to do next.

“He would’a wanted you t’have it.”

Max reached for it slowly, like it might shatter in his hands. He opened it on his lap, careful.

Inside were a few photos. There was a cassette tape labeled Take Names, Kick Ass.Max spotted Daniel’s old aviators too, and his lighter with Fuck ‘Em All engraved into the side. And tucked beneath them was a folded note in Daniel’s handwriting, slanted and looping.

Max’s chest tightened.

Lando watched him wince, like the mere act of opening the small slip of paper that once belonged to the friend he’d once sat beside was enough to wind this grown man, like it would physically punch him in the gut.

The paper was soft and flimsy, preserved with each crease still perfectly folded like Daniel had probably kept it in his wallet.

Max dared to open it with shaking hands.

Enjoy the butterflies. Enjoy being naïve. Enjoy the nerves, the pressure, people not knowing your name. Enjoy the process of making a name for yourself, getting faster and faster with each run and meeting some great people along the way. Bring friends along. Bring family along. Don't assume they'll be a distraction. Don't be afraid to surround yourself with people you care about and love.

Max let out a wet laugh, but none of them commented on the fact that it came out more like a choked sob. But his smile was wide even if his eyes were a bit shiny, his heart warm with fondness for his oldest friend.

He smiled, a bittersweet smile, even though he could feel the burn of tears stinging his eyes. He wouldn’t let them fall. Not in front of Lando. Not like this. He wasn’t going to break.

Then, at the very bottom of the box, Max found something else. Something that made his heart clench.

It was Daniel’s watch. The one he’d always worn, the one that had been a staple of Daniel’s character. The one Daniel wore on every trip, every stupid mission, every late-night planning session where he’d point at the glowing numbers and say, “We’ve got exactly this much time to change the world, boys.”

The one Max had joked about stealing, but Daniel had always laughed off, claiming it was ‘priceless.’ But now, holding it in his hands, it felt... different.

Max closed his fingers around it, staring at it for a long moment before, without a word, he slipped it onto his wrist with shaking hands. 

The leather was cracked but familiar, like muscle memory, like time never passed. The fit was perfect, as if it had been made for him all along.

He glanced up at Lando then, wordless, a quiet question in his eyes. Is this okay? Is this... how we carry him now? Am I allowed to carry this much of him?

Lando didn’t speak. Instead, he stepped forward, lifted a hand, rested it on Max’s shoulder with a quiet kind of gravity, offering a reassuring squeeze.

There was a beat, and then, softly, a nod.

Max exhaled.

“Yeah,” Lando muttered, his voice soft. He gave him a sad, almost apologetic smile. “We’ll make sure he’s remembered, Max. Don’t worry.”

Max’s lips quivered, a single tear slipping down his cheek despite his best efforts to hold it back. But it was there —fleeting, soft— and he let it fall, not trying to wipe it away.

“Thank you,” he murmured, voice tight.

Lando gave him the best smile he could muster as he turned to leave. He’d only taken a single step in the direction of door, when–

“You kept them,” Lando breathed.

They were photos, taped haphazardly to the wall, overlapping, some curling at the edges from age or wear. They were moments of Max’s life, captured in still moments, frozen on the faded paper.

Before he could even stop and think, Lando’s steps led him closer, his gaze lingering on the photographs, and his chest tightened.

The room was mostly dark, the curtains drawn. But one corner glowed—lit by the soft flicker of a desk lamp and the dull shimmer of taped-up memories.

The photographs covered the wall like old postcards half-forgotten. Some were crooked others curling at the corners from the heat, taped up without symmetry without much care for looks or aesthetic — just need. 

A need to remember. A need to not forget.

The first was of a mountaintop in Hungary, all of them windswept and sun-flushed. Next was a polaroid of Daniel in Austin, smiling beneath a dumb brown cowboy hat that made him look like a drunk tourist, grin wide as ever. There was another too, this one of Kelly and Penelope at a carnival, her daughter mid-laugh, cotton candy stuck to her fingers and Penelope’s tiny hands squishing her mother’s cheeks.

Another one caught his eye. This one was of a beach in Miami, Logan half-buried in the sand. They’d only gone because Logan had been homesick and they were young and high off the thrill of new money and so they had decided there was nothing else to do. 

Going to the beach had never even been part of the original plan – their private jet had flaked after taking the money, and they’d been stranded without a plan or a care. Then, for those two days, there was just laughter. Just bad margaritas and a half-functioning grill and the sound of the tide rolling in like a promise.

Lando stared at the photo.

He could almost smell the salt in the air. Feel the heat beneath his bare feet. He remembered laughter— 

Daniel’s, maybe. Or was it Penelope’s? 

He remembered Logan teasing Oscar until he finally cracked a smile.

He remembered the warmth of the sand. Even standing here, he could still smell the sunscreen Carlos had obnoxiously insisted they all wear.

But just barely.

Now, it felt like a story someone else had told him. Something that belonged to another man, another lifetime. One where he still remembered what it meant to feel full.

He stared at the photographs, something burning behind his ribs. Because even now—even now—his men had warmth in them. Even Verstappen, who wore sharpness like armor. Even Oscar, who barely trusted anyone. Even Daniel, who was gone now.

It was all so human—so alive—in a way that Lando couldn’t remember ever feeling. And then there was the plane ride home, their flight being delayed, stranded at the airport after the money was taken. The photos all held stories, all of them steeped in memories, and they didn’t feel distant. They didn’t feel like past lives. They felt like a life that was still going, that could’ve still been going, if only it hadn’t been stolen.

Lando looked at the picture. He remembered that sand.

Or at least… he tried to.

Back when the water had been warm and Max had been happier and Daniel had still been alive.

He stood there, staring, until the ache in his chest pressed sharp against his ribs. He didn’t think Max noticed him until he shifted.

“You put them up,” Lando said, voice rough.

Max didn’t look at him. “I couldn’t throw them away.”

Lando nodded. Something in his throat pulsed.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen that one,” he said quietly, pointing to a photo where Daniel had Penelope on his shoulders, both of them laughing so hard they were blurry.

Max looked at it. “He was the one who taught her to eat ice cream backwards. Cone first, like shotgunning a beer,” the Dutch smiled fondly.

That pulled a breath from Lando — a laugh that felt broken on its way out. “F’course he did.”

They both let themselves breath in the memory of the ocean air again, before silence fell again.

He had to look away before the ache could settle too deep.

He wondered, as he walked the halls of his own empire, if he was the only one incapable of holding warmth. If it had been beaten out of him, starved out of him, cauterized into nothing.

Even his men—Max, Logan, Daniel—had managed to keep some of it. The good bits. The light.

His fingers twitched at his sides. There were no photos like that in his own room. None he could conjure of himself laughing like that, relaxed like that. At best, he remembered watching. Always from the outside.

He stared at Daniel’s face in one of the prints, smile wide and eyes crinkled at the corners. It didn’t seem right. That someone who could make a place feel warmer just by walking into it was gone. That someone who could make even Max love out loud wasn’t coming back.

Lando felt cold.

And for a moment—just a moment—he wondered what might’ve changed if someone like Daniel had been in his life sooner. If someone like that had taught him that gentleness didn’t mean weakness. That he could be safe and soft and still survive.

His mind betrayed him then.

Brought back the image of her—Y/N—with her steady hands and gentle voice. The girl who had patched him up and made him toast. The girl who had given him sanctuary not because she had to, but because she wanted to. The girl who had touched him like he wasn’t just a blade in human form.

He didn’t deserve it. Not any of it.

But god help him—he wanted her smile again.

Wanted to go back to that morning with her, burnt coffee and all, and press his forehead to hers just to feel something other than the static in his veins.

Unwillingly, he thought of her.

Of the girl who’d bandaged his knuckles without flinching. Of the way her hands had been steady even when her voice trembled. 

He thought of her hair still damp from a shower, curling against her jaw as she’d made him toast. Of her fingers brushing over his cheek like he was something delicate. Of the way she’d touched him—not out of pity, not out of fear, but with something gentler. Something he didn’t have a name for.

But for the first time, he wondered.

Would Daniel still be alive if he’d been the kind of man who knew how to feel things before they were ripped away?

Would he have believed in warmth?

He wasn’t sure.

He stared at the photographs, something burning behind his ribs. Because even now—even now—his men had warmth in them. Even Max, who wore sharpness like armor. Even Logan, who barely trusted anyone. Even Daniel, who was gone now.

They still had something to lose, something they let themselves hold close.

And Lando?

He wasn’t sure what he had anymore.

Except a girl with edified hands and a tired smile who looked at him like he could be something more. Someone whose touch hadn’t recoiled when she saw the blood. Someone who stitched him back together with trembling fingers and whispered reassurances he didn’t know how to believe.

He wondered, not for the first time, if maybe —maybe— if he’d had someone like her when he was younger, someone steady and kind and unrelenting in their softness, if he might’ve turned out different. If he would’ve known how to love people before learning how to protect them. Or how to protect people without ruining them in the process.

He looked at Daniel’s smile in the photograph again, and then turned away.

“I should’ve been better –quicker, or smarter – somethin’. I should’ve done more.” he whispered, his voice low. It was all he could do to keep it from cracking. “He trusted me.”

Max exhaled sharply, his face softening. “We all trusted you, Lando.”

Lando could feel the air sucked out of him.

Fuck. I let all of them down, didn’t I?

“And we still trust you. Do not be stupid, Lando.”

Lando looked at him with some mixture of confusion and shock. It reminded Max how young he was, how human behind the infallible mask. 

“It’s always ‘if, if, if’,” Max sighed, sounding almost defensive. “But Daniel knew.” 

“Knew what?”

“He knew why he trusted you, of course. You are family.”

Family.

Lando didn’t know what to do with that word, how to make it mean something that wasn’t fleeting. He couldn’t even bring himself to feel grief properly, to mourn Daniel as he should. But the more he stood there, staring at the photographs, the more he realized he was mourning. Not just Daniel, but the life he could’ve had. The connection he could’ve allowed himself.

He pulled his eyes away from Max’s desk, his gaze lingering on the photos one last time before he turned to leave, voice barely a whisper. “I won’t forget him.”

Max didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to.

He only smiled.

There’d been a shift in him, small, almost imperceptible. 

Like the way summer ends—not in one clear moment, but slowly. A little less light each day. A little more chill in the breeze.

Even she could tell he’d gone quieter.

Not just the exhausted kind of quiet, the I-haven’t-slept-in-a-week kind. No—this was deeper. A marrow-deep silence that clung to him in the pauses between sentences, in the way he’d drift off mid-thought and forget to finish what he was saying. Instead, it was a sort of hollowness beneath the surface, like he was keeping something down just to make it through the day.

He’d told her, one evening when he was sat on her couch, elbows on his knees, looking more like a boy than he ever had. He’d told her, eventually, about Daniel – about how one of his roommates —one of his brothers, really— died in a sudden car crash.

He’d shown her the photos without her asking, scrolling through his phone with a flat kind of reverence. The boys he’d once called his brothers. Smiling in the sunlight, arms slung around each other like the world hadn’t burned yet.

“This one’s Danny,” he said, swiping through his phone until he found the photo. She looked over to see a photo of a group of boys — grinning, chaotic, arms slung around each other like they believed in forever. He pointed them out by name.

“That’s Oscar. This one’s Max,” he’d murmured. “And this idiot—this was Daniel.”

She hadn’t known what to say. She only looked at the grinning man Liam was pointing to on the screen — eyes warm, arms slung around the shoulders of people he clearly loved — and nodded softly.

“Smiled like an idiot, never shut up. Drove everyone mad.”

She leaned closer. Took in the crinkle of laughter lines around Daniel’s eyes, the way his arm was slung over Max’s shoulder and how Liam himself—surprisingly—was actually laughing in the picture.

Not smirking, not just smiling, but actually laughing.

She’d looked at the face, with a grin so wide it reached his eyes, and felt something in her chest twist. A ghost of a man she never met but already mourned because of what he’d left behind in the man she loved.

The glare of the photo still open on his phone screen reflected back in his irises, but she had a feeling that wasn’t what was causing his eyes to glisten.y

The next thing he knew, Lando felt a small weight come to rest on his shoulder. He turned to find her head resting gently against him, her body curling closer as if to help warm his. “I’m so sorry, Li.”

“Yeah.” His voice barely stirred the air. “Me too.”

And since then, he’d been around more. Not that he explained it. He never asked if he could stay longer, or why her floor was comfier than his own bed, or why his jacket kept finding its way over the back of her chair. He just… stayed.

She let him.

She let him talk when he wanted to and go quiet when he didn’t. Let him sit close in silence, or disappear into his phone, or steal the last of her coffee without asking. Let him fill the space however he needed.

She let him sit on her rug and help her fold laundry without saying much. Let him watch whatever nonsense she had playing on the TV. Let him brush past her in the kitchen, casually stealing the snacks she swore she was saving.

She let him be quiet.

Of course, she worried anyway.

But one day, out of nowhere, he looked up from his phone while she was slicing fruit at the counter and asked her, uncharacteristically. “I was thinkin’ of going out. Can you… Will you let me take you somewhere?”

“What?” she asked carefully, not sure if she stood but also too afraid of having him close himself again. He’d already been so quiet today, but even on his worst day, she’d happily 

“Just… Come with me?”

She glanced over her shoulder. “Now?”

“Now.”

And why would she ever tell him no?

She didn’t ask questions. Y/N just smiled and wiped down her damp hands with a kitchen cloth before she grabbed her coat and followed him out.

They didn’t speak much on the drive.

The streets were quiet, the city slowly exhaling under the weight of dusk. His hand rested on the gear shift. Her hand didn’t reach for it like it sometimes did.

They pulled into a cemetery just outside the city, where the trees grew tall and weeping and the air smelled like rain, even though it hadn’t rained in days.

He didn’t say anything as he led her down a narrow path, past headstones with gold lettering, some freshly cut flowers, others forgotten. When he stopped walking, it was near a pair of small, unremarkable markers.

She glanced at him, unsure. “Whose—”

“My parents,” he said simply.

Her breath hitched. “I… I’m so sorry to hear that.”

His mouth curled slightly. Not into a smile. Not really. “S’alright. They were a bunch of bastards anyway.”

“Oh,” she whispered. “Li, I didn’t know—”

“Don’t,” he cut in gently. Not sharp. Just firm.

“I’m sorry,” she said instead, softer.

He nodded once. Then crouched, like it was instinct, and picked a stray weed off the base of one of the stones. His fingers brushed the stone, just barely. No reverence, no tears.

“It’s been a while since I last came here,” he said after a moment.

Her eyes flicked to his face. His jaw was tight.

“You don’t have to—”

“No,” he muttered. “It’s fine. It’s just…”

He stood again, looked down at the markers like they might talk back if he stared long enough.

“They weren’t, like, bad in the way people think. Just, like… selfish. Greedy. Left me behind when they had the chance to help. Guess they figured I’d die off and save them the trouble.”

She blinked, the ache in her chest blooming.

“But you were just a kid. What happened?”

He shrugged like it didn’t matter anymore.

“Nothing. They just didn’t want me anymore.”

She looked over at him, brows drawn, something tender pooling in her chest.

“I didn’t mean to—”

“Nah, s’fine. You should know.” He shoved his hands in his coat pockets, gaze fixed on the stone like it owed him something. “They were the kind of people who liked the idea of children more than actual ones. As soon as it got hard, they bailed. Left me to rot in Monte Carlo with nothing but my name.”

Her heart twisted, but she didn’t interrupt.

“Yeah, not your typical orphan sob story, huh?” he muttered, hands in his coat pockets, eyes on the names. “They weren’t good people. They weren’t even bad people trying. Just… the kind that think kids are accessories. Until they get too loud. Or hungry. Or start asking why the electricity’s off.”

She stayed quiet.

“Left me to figure it out myself. an off one night, locked the door behind them. I had to learn how to pick it just to get water.”

His voice was calm. Clinical, but there was a hollowness behind it, like he was reciting a file, not a memory.

“I lived on scraps for years. Slept under a train bridge with a knife in my sock and a backpack I’d kill for. Stole from people who didn’t miss it, and then from people who did.” A pause. “Guess that makes me a bastard, too.”

“You were a kid,” she said quietly.

“Yeah,” he said, with a humorless smile. “But even then, I was learnin’ not to need people.”

He glanced at her then. Something sharp in his eyes, something searching. “It’s easier that way, isn’t it? No one to disappoint. No one to lose.”

They stood in silence for a beat.

“They truth s’just that they didn’t want me,” he said, matter-of-fact. “Never did. Simple ‘s that. Gave up the second it got hard. Threw me to the streets when I was still small enough to sleep inside cardboard boxes. So I did. And then I got good at it. Got good at making people fear me. Good at surviving.”

She stepped a little closer.

“I don’t really talk about it,” he added. “Not ‘cause it hurts or anythin’. I just… figured there wasn’t anything to say.”

She watched him, the way he stood so still in the silence, the wind tugging at his jacket.

“You were so brave, Li. But I’m sorry that you even had to be.”

“I thought I was gonna die, that first winter. Some nights, I was ready for it. But then I met some people. Not good ones, but better than what I had.”

He looked at her then, not all the way – just a glance.

“They don’t make it worth it. Losing him. Losing parts of myself. But I wouldn’t change it either.”

She blinked back the sting in her eyes. “You don’t have to explain that to me.”

“I know.” He nudged a toe against the grass. “That’s probably why I brought you.”

There was silence.

“I’ve been thinking about the people I do have,” he continued, quieter now. “The ones who stuck. Max. Oscar. Danny… you.”

Her breath caught.

“And I’ve been wondering,” he said, “if it’s enough. If that’s all life really is—just making sure you have a few people who’d come looking if you went missing.”

She looked at him carefully. “And?”

“And how maybe they don’t make it worth it,” he said, voice flat. “But they make it… less shit.”

“I still think the world’s a shit place,” he said plainly. “And I still think you have to claw for every bit of light you get. But if you asked me if I’d change it… if I’d trade the people I’ve got now for a cleaner start…”

He scoffed once, under his breath, beginning to smile.

“Nah.”

She tilted her head. “Because it made you who you are?”

“No.” He cracked a faint grin. “Because if things had gone different, I might not have ended up at your café that night.”

That startled a smile out of her. “Liam—”

He shrugged, still too cool for his own good. “Don’t make it a thing.”

It was definitely a thing.

“I’m not good at this,” he said, low and clipped. “Feelings. Grave visits. Any of it.”

“I noticed,” she said, with a gentle kind of tease that earned her a rare smirk.

“But…” He hesitated. “You’re the only person I wanted to bring here.”

Her chest ached.

He reached into his coat then, pulled out a small folded piece of paper. No name. No writing. Just something he laid on the base of the grave like it was meant to rot.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Just a list of things they don’t get to take credit for,” he said simply. “Me. The boys. You.”

She looked at him— really looked. Not the man hollowed by loss. Not the kid who had to claw his way to the top. But the man between those things – scarred, hard-edged. But trying – trying to live, to feel.

He noticed her watching and, true to form, scoffed lightly, dragging a hand through his hair.

“Don’t start crying on me or some shit,” he muttered. “You know I’ll trip you if you do.”

She huffed a laugh, soft. “I’m not.”

“Good,” he said, but his voice was gentler now. Like he didn’t quite mean it.

They stood there a while longer after that.

She didn’t say anything, just stood there with him, in the wind and quiet. But then she stepped closer and let her hand gently graze Liam’s, her curled fingers carefully tangling themselves with his.

He didn’t pull away.

When an indeterminate amount of time had passed and the late autumn wind had sufficiently chilled their faces till their noses were tinged matching shades of pink, Lando finally turned back to his girl with fondness hidden in his smile.

“Come on,” he said after a long moment. “There’s a bakery nearby. You can judge their hot chocolate and ruin someone’s day with your opinions. Probably mine.”

She huffed a soft laugh, swatting his jacket before following as he turned away from the graves. “You love my reviews! In fact, I was thinking we should start a vlog. We’ve been to so many cool places, it’d be so fun! A cute little thing, y’know.”

“Yeah,” he hummed. “Just for us.”

a/n: sorry if the scenes are too long. and if there's any errors, please let me know! i juat wanted to get a chapter out atp lol

as always, i'd love to hear what you think!

[charliedawn]

The Miracle Part 2

Toshinori Yagi x Reader

Link for Part 1:

Tag list: @like-a-clock @decaffeinatedtreewitch

Over the next few days, U.A.’s faculty discreetly launched their investigation.

Aizawa spent hours reviewing security footage from nearby streets and businesses, scanning for any sign of the girl. He analyzed every person who passed through the area that day, narrowing it down to potential matches.

Hound Dog used his enhanced sense of smell, visiting the alley where Toshinori had saved her. If he could pick up even a faint scent from her lingering presence, he might be able to track her movements.

Midnight and Present Mic handled the more social approach, questioning local shop owners and pedestrians. Midnight, with her natural charm, casually asked around, while Present Mic tried a more direct approach—though his enthusiasm tended to scare people off at first.

Meanwhile, Snipe coordinated with police reports, checking if anyone had filed a missing person’s report or an emergency hospital visit around the same time.

And Nezu, ever the strategist, compiled all their findings, using his high-level intelligence to predict possible locations where she might frequent.

While the teachers worked, Toshinori found himself troubled…

It wasn’t just the fact that he hadn’t gotten the girl’s name. It was the strange feeling he’d had ever since he ate those donuts. His body felt different—stronger, steadier. His energy lasted longer, and for the first time in years, he didn’t wake up in pain every morning.

Recovery Girl’s words echoed in his mind:

"Your injury…it’s healing."

But how ?

His Quirk, One For All, had always been about transferring power, not regeneration. And as far as he knew, no known Quirk or medical treatment could reverse the damage All For One had inflicted.

Which meant…That girl was special.

And he had to find her—not just for himself, but to make sure she was safe.

One evening, as Aizawa was reviewing the footage for what felt like the hundredth time, he suddenly paused.

A figure.

A girl, running through the alley. She was carrying grocery bags—the same ones Toshinori had mentioned her dropping during the attack. Aizawa leaned forward, adjusting the video speed. She had (colour) hair, slightly disheveled from running. Her clothes were simple but neat. She turned her head slightly, just enough for the camera to catch a partial glimpse of her face.

Aizawa exhaled sharply.

"Got her."

Without wasting time, he called the others.

Within the hour, the entire faculty was gathered in Nezu’s office, watching the footage.

"This is her ?" Midnight asked.

"Matches the description," Aizawa confirmed.

Nezu steepled his paws together. "Can we track where she went after this ?"

Aizawa shook his head. "Unfortunately, she disappears past this point. No other cameras caught where she went. We know that Toshinori brought her home after that—but he doesn’t remember where her home is exactly."

"But this is a lead," Snipe pointed out. "We know what she looks like now. That’s a start."

Nezu nodded. "Then we proceed to phase two. We identify her."

They all nodded in agreement. The search was narrowing. Now, all they had to do was find her before someone else did.

…

Days passed, and despite their best efforts, the teachers had found nothing else on the mysterious girl. Aizawa had exhausted all security footage. Hound Dog lost her trail. Snipe found no official records of her anywhere. It was as if she had simply vanished.

They reconvened in Nezu’s office, frustration clear on their faces.

"This is ridiculous," Midnight muttered, crossing her arms. "She has to be out there somewhere. A civilian doesn’t just disappear after getting groceries."

"We’ve tried everything," Aizawa said. "I even went to the grocery shop she went to, but the store manager said he didn’t know who she was and since there has been a robbery recently—the camera was off service. At this point, unless she walks into U.A. herself, we’re out of options."

The room fell silent.

Then, suddenly—

"Wait, wait, WAIT !" Present Mic shot up from his chair, eyes gleaming with excitement. "What if…we make her come to us ?"

Aizawa gave him a tired look. "Hizashi, what the hell are you talking about ?"

"Think about it ! We’ve been looking for her quietly, right ? But what if everyone was looking for her ?"

Nezu tilted his head. "Go on."

"We put out an alert," Present Mic continued, grinning. "Make her wanted."

A heavy silence filled the room.

Then, everyone collectively blinked.

"…What ?" Midnight finally said what everyone else was thinking.

"Not actually wanted, obviously," Present Mic waved his hands. "We make it a mistake ! We say she might be ‘involved’ in a case, nothing serious—just enough to get people’s eyes on her. Civilians, heroes, police—everyone will be looking. And when she realizes she’s on the radar, she’ll have no choice but to come forward to clear it up !"

"That…" Snipe rubbed his chin. "Ain’t the worst idea."

"Are you seriously suggesting we frame a civilian ?" Aizawa sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. This was…ridiculous.

"Not frame ! Just…strongly encourage her to show up," Hizashi replied—hoping to convince the group by rewording his suggestion.

Toshinori, who had been silent the whole time, finally spoke up.

"…It’s risky."

"I know, but—" Hizachi started but Toshinori cut him off.

"I understand your frustration and enthusiasm, dear colleague but…what if she gets scared and actually runs ? What if she gets into trouble because of this ?" Toshinori clenched his fists. "I do not want to cause her harm."

Nezu hummed in thought. Then, his eyes gleamed with a hint of mischief.

"There is a way to do this without putting her in danger."

Everyone turned to him.

"We won’t label her a villain. Instead…" Nezu’s whiskers twitched. "We’ll say she’s a witness to a dangerous event. That we need to ‘question’ her for important information. That way, people will look for her—but she won’t be in danger of being treated as a criminal."

Aizawa sighed. "We’re really doing this ?"

Nezu grinned.

"Consider it…a necessary deception."

Toshinori hesitated. But in the end, they had no other choice.

"…Alright."

Once the plan approved unanimously, they all went back to their duties. Toshinori was still bothered about putting the civilian at risk—but he also knew that there was little chance she would come forward otherwise.

He sighed. He hoped their efforts would at least lead to something. He looked out the window. He didn’t know if the plan was going to work but, he sincerely hoped it wouldn’t upset you too much…

Meanwhile in some little cozy apartment:

The warm aroma of spices and sizzling vegetables filled your kitchen as you stirred a pot on the stove, humming softly to yourself. It was a quiet evening, just like any other—until your phone buzzed on the counter. You wiped your hands on a towel before picking it up. The caller ID flashed with a familiar name—your friend Haru.

"Hey ! What’s up, Haru ?" you answered casually, still focused on stirring your food.

Their voice, however, was anything but casual.

"Turn on the TV. Now."

You blinked, caught off guard by the sudden demand. "Uh…what ? Why ?"

"Because your face is on the freaking news !"

Your stirring stopped.

Your heart skipped a beat.

"What ?"

"Just TURN IT ON !"

With slightly shaky hands, you grabbed the remote and flipped the TV to the first news channel you could find. And there, clear as day, was your own face staring back at you.

"Authorities are currently searching for this unidentified young woman, who is believed to have been a witness to a recent incident involving a Pro Hero. Officials are urging her to come forward, as she may have valuable information that could assist in an ongoing investigation—"

You nearly dropped the remote.

"What the hell ?!"

Your friend was still on the line, their voice frantic.

"What did you do ?! Are you in trouble ?!"

"I—I don’t know !" you stammered, your mind racing.

You had done nothing. Nothing at all. Why were they looking for you ? Was this about that weird lizard guy from last time ? But they had arrested him, hadn’t they ? Your eyes darted back to the screen. They were asking people to report any sightings of you. Meaning…everyone was looking for you.

A cold chill ran down your spine.

You needed to figure this out. Fast.

Your heart pounded as you grabbed your phone and quickly dialed the police station. The ringing seemed to last forever before a bored-sounding officer finally answered.

"Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, how can I help you ?"

You took a deep breath, trying to steady your voice. "Hi, um—my name is Y/N, and I just saw the news. The girl they’re looking for ? That’s me."

There was a brief pause. Then, the officer sighed.

"Ma’am, if this is a prank, I’d advise against wasting police resources."

You blinked. "What ? No ! I’m serious ! I am the person you’re looking for ! I don’t even know why I’m on the news, but I just want to clear this up—"

The officer let out another sigh, sounding highly unimpressed by your claim.

"Look, lady, we’ve had over fifty calls in the last hour from people claiming to be this ‘mystery witness.’ Unless you have some actual proof, I’m going to have to end this call."

Your grip on the phone tightened. "But I am—"

Click.

The line went dead.

You stared at your phone in disbelief.

"…Are you kidding me ?!" You ran a hand through your hair, frustration bubbling up inside you. They didn’t believe you. Of course they didn’t—why would they, with so many false reports coming in ?

Which meant if you wanted answers…You were going to have to find them on your own.

…

You paced back and forth in your living room, gripping your phone tightly. The police wouldn’t believe you, and you had no idea why you were being searched for. There was only one place left to go for answers—U.A. But you couldn’t just walk in as yourself. Not when your face was plastered all over the news.

That’s when an idea struck you.

You immediately called your friend, who happened to have an illusion quirk.

"Hey, I need a favor," you said the moment they answered.

There was a pause before they replied suspiciously, "What kind of favor ?"

You took a deep breath. "I need you to make me look like someone else…so I can sneak into U.A."

"WHAT ?!"

You quickly shushed them, glancing around your apartment like someone might be listening. "It’s not like I’m breaking in ! I just… need to talk to them. They’re looking for me, and I don’t know why. If I show up as myself, they’ll probably lock me up or something. But if I go as someone else and pretend to be a witness, I can get more information."

Your friend groaned. "This is insane…"

"But it’s also my only option right now," you pointed out.

There was silence on the other end before they sighed heavily. "You’re lucky I like you."

Not long after, you met up with them in a secluded area. They studied you for a moment before raising their hands, a shimmering glow forming around their fingertips.

"Alright," they muttered. "This illusion will make you look like an old man, but remember—it only lasts an hour. After that, you’ll be back to normal, no matter where you are."

You swallowed hard and nodded. "That’s all I need."

As they worked their magic, you felt a strange sensation wash over you. When it was done, you got your phone out to look at your new appearance. Indeed, you now had the appearance of an old man with glasses. Even your voice had changed slightly.

You turned to your friend with a determined look. "Alright. Time to find out what the hell is going on."

With that, you set off toward U.A. to uncover the truth. Disguised and on high alert, you made your way toward U.A. The massive school loomed in the distance, its gates guarded as always. You had no real plan beyond getting in, asking questions, and hopefully getting out before your illusion wore off. You took a deep breath and approached the front gate. As expected, a security officer stopped you before you could get too close.

"Halt. State your business.”

Time to act the part.

"I—I’m here to report a sighting," you said in your feeble old man voice. "Of that girl. The one on the news. I saw her two days ago near downtown."

The officer immediately perked up. "You saw her ? Did she talk to you ?"

You shook your head quickly. "No, but I got a good look at her. I figured I should come here and tell someone..."

The guard exchanged a glance with his partner before nodding. "Wait here."

He stepped aside and spoke into his earpiece. "Possible witness at the front gate. Bringing them in now."

Your stomach twisted with nerves. This was actually working. Moments later, you were escorted inside the school and led down the hallways toward a meeting room. The walk felt way too long, and every second that ticked by reminded you that your illusion only lasted an hour. Finally, the door opened, and inside were three people—Aizawa, Present Mic, and All Might himself.

You froze. You hadn’t seen All Might since THAT night. What was he doing here ?!

Aizawa spoke first. "You said you saw the girl we’re looking for ?"

You nodded, forcing yourself to stay calm. "Yes. Hum…I am a shop owner. I sell all kinds of products and I remember selling her that big lamp. Very fine craftsmanship if I may say so myself. And I remember her well because hum…" You started thinking about it and suddenly blurted out. "…because she was VERY pretty ! Yeah. So pretty. And because she played with my granddaughter for a moment and I wanted her number because maybe she’d be interested in spending time with her some more and—"

"Did you get it ?" Aizawa interrupted you and you let out a nervous chuckle.

"Me ? Nah. The girl just bought me the lamp and skedaddled. Ahah. Yeah. Totally what happened."

The three men in front of you sighed in defeat.

"Fine. Where’s your shop, Mister…?"

Your eyes widened. Crap. Right. Name and shop. You looked around and started thinking about it. You weren’t all that good at improv…

"Yeah hum…My name is Mister Poulter and I own this shop in the Akishi district. The name of my shop is…Poultry."

You wanted to slap yourself so hard.

Aizawa raised a quizzical eyebrow at you.

"Your name is Poulter and your shop is called…Poultry ?"

Your grin became forced.

"Yeah. It’s hum…advertising stuff. Pretty good, right ?"

None of the men spoke…until the hero you recognised as Present Mic burst out laughing.

"Poultry ! Poulter ! Ahahahah ! Good one, bro !"

You chuckled nervously. Right…Hilarious.

All Might coughed and leaned forward slightly, clearly trying to get back on topic. "Sorry, citizen ! But let us return to the girl ! Did she say anything ? Act strangely in any way ?"

You hesitated, then decided to test the waters. "I don’t know…but she did look like she was in a hurry. Like she was trying to avoid someone. Is she in any trouble ?"

That made them pause. The three teachers exchanged glances before Present Mic smiled at you and shook his head. "Nah ! Not at all ! But we have reason to believe she’s important. Maybe even very—like super duper—important."

Aizawa crossed his arms. "Did you really not notice anything strange about her ?"

You frowned. "Strange how ?"

All Might finally spoke again. "Did she seem…special in any way ?"

Your heart pounded in your chest. They knew something. What did they know ? Were you really in trouble ? What was going on ? Were you in danger ?

"I mean���she seemed normal to me," you lied.

The three men looked at each other before All Might asked another question:

"It may sound a little strange but…did the girl have maybe…donuts with her ? Did she offer you any ?"

Your eyes widened. Wait…The donuts ?

ALL THIS BECAUSE OF DONUTS ?!

You forced to smile again.

"Hum…no. I am sorry. But if I see her again, I will be sure to tell you."

Aizawa exhaled through his nose. "Alright. Thank you. If you remember anything else, contact us immediately."

You nodded quickly and stood up. "Of course. Thank you for listening."

As you walked toward the door, All Might suddenly called after you, "Wait."

You froze. You felt cold sweat rolling down your back. You turned slowly, your breath caught in your throat. He studied you, his sharp blue eyes scanning your face. For a terrifying moment, you thought he knew.

But then he simply smiled. "Thank you for coming forward ! That was very brave of you."

You forced a smile. "It’s nothing…I just hope you find her soon."

With that, you walked out as calmly as you could—though your heart was racing.

You had learned something…but not enough.

And now, you had even more questions than before.

You were so close to making it out. Just a few more steps, and you’d be home free. The illusion was still holding, but you could feel the minutes slipping away.

And then—WHAM !

Something slammed into the side of your head with the force of a truck.

Your vision went black instantly.

The last thing you heard before you hit the ground was a panicked, "OH CRAP ! I DIDN’T MEAN TO—!"

Then everything faded into nothing.

[gyupinkys]

FOUND YOU

Yandere Jihoon x fem reader.

WC: 3.8K

Jihoon was never one for relationships. His stoic behavior tends to bore the ladies, but he's had is fair share of flings. However, when some low life hacker tries to access his files; he cant help but look into you more, and some more, and a little more until he becomes obsessed. Jihoon makes it his mission to find you.

WARNINGS: YANDERE, stalking, DUB CON, phone sex, spying, unconsented filming, use of sex toys, fingering, mention of kidnapping, sugar daddy Jihoon, bratty reader.

A/N: i love this fic and I love you woozi.

One semester left… just one. Why on earth would they raise your tuition by $5,000? Are they forgetting both of your parents are dead and you have no job? The financial aid office is no help and you're already about $10,000 in debt. How nice. You look at your computer, contemplating. There's always that option… no it’s not safe. But damn you need money,  you need your degree, you need to get out of this fucking city and start over. You look down at your cat Bruno sitting at your feet. 

“Should I?”

He just gives you a judgemental look and walks away. This fucking cat…

You have no other choice. You pull out your spare laptop, not risking your pc getting any viruses. A few months ago you drunkenly stumbled upon a website on the dark web that gives you access to IP addresses of major company computers. You very easily figured out how to access their files, you can see everything; their expenses, investments, and payments. It would be so easy to transfer money to an offshore account and cover your traces. Scrolling through the list of companies you try to find one you’ve never heard of. More popular companies tend to have more security. 

“Universe factory?”

Hmmm. Doesn't ring a bell. It’s located about fifteen miles from your apartment so you aren't worried about them finding you. Weirdly, you can't find any bank accounts linked to this company. Scouring through some files, this seems to be a music company of sorts? You find samples of songs, lyrics, beats, and oh shit.. Drug shipments? Why is this in the music files? You try to dive deeper only for your connection to completely cut off and your computer blue screens. Fucking hell. The computer won’t turn back on and you won't have a chance to cover your tracks. So much for being computer savvy…

“Fuckkkkk” youre actually fucked. These people are clearly good if they are able to shut off your computer so they may have  already found your address by now. You're hoping your vpn and security walls help you. You get up and start to pace. Why on earth did you think this was a good idea? Of course you somehow chose the shadiest fucking company on earth. There's nothing to do now but stress and wait for your likely impending death.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“The fuck?”

Jihoon’s studio is his safe space. He’s lucky Cheol lets him pursue his passions on the side, this mafia thing tends to take up a lot of his time so being able to unwind in his own space is a treasure. But when he returns to his computer he senses something is wrong. Someone’s gone through his files. Now, Jihoon wouldn't be too worried if all that was on this computer was his music, but recently he’s been using the Universe factory as a coverup to store documents from past business deals. Now this couldnt have been the work of some amaetur, in order to get past all his security takes some real skill, and to be able to do it without a trace? Hm…

Jihoon looks through his files, trying to catalog all the incriminating evidence.

“Tiger’s super wicked diss track?” he speaks in disbelief. When the fuck did Soonyoung get in his studio? And record a fucking distrack? 

Jihoon runs a program to see the location of the last user to access his encrypted files. Nothing? Hmm… This is too random to be a coincidence, this person must've found his IP address and started from there. He decides to be bold and search his IP addresses on his self made database, it wouldn't hurt. 

 “ “FoundYou.com”? What the fuck?”

Well he hit the jackpot. He was able to look at who accessed this website in the past 24 hours and who interacted with the universe factory link. He traced the computer to a rural part of antarctica… ok that's definitely not the real location.  He digs a little deeper finding layers and layers of security. He’s starting to think this may not be some silly hacker and could be a rival mafia pulling at strings. After an hour he’s confident he’s found the real address and hacker. About fifteen miles from him lives a Y/N L/N, full time student, studying in computer science, $10,437.76 in debt and an orphan… hm. He looks up your instagram and woah. He wasn’t expecting you to look like that. He sees your friends, finds their instagrams, just to see more pictures of you cover his bases. Your college friends speak highly of you, your highschool friends love you, oh wow even your elementary school friends still hang out with you. He digs a little deeper, just to know who he’s dealing with. You adopted a cat a year ago, a cat who visits the vet very often. Gestational blockages, broken arm, not eating, bladder infection… This cat seems like a handful. 

“Bruno? Like Bruno Mars or Bruno from Encanto?” he whispers to himself. 

You visited the hospital last year from a broken pinky, your dermatologist keeps increasing the strength of your acne medication, you take very strong pills for your cramps. Car accident when you were 7, therapy for 10 years and dead parents?… Figures. 

Your credit card statement says a lot about you. $7 matcha lattes three times a week despite being in debt. $15 chipotle bowls and 12am Mcdonalds. You really like shopping at Adam and eve… freaky. You bought $100 worth of things from amazon yesterday. You sure do buy a lot of cat toys on amazon, this cat is spoiled. Hair dye, batteries, water bottles, 12 pound bag of skittles? 

“Woozi, what are you doing?” Soonyoung whispers in his ear.

Jihoon jumps, “When did you even get in here?”

“You get too immersed in your work, but why are you on amazon?”

“None of your business get out! AND WHEN DID YOU RECORD A DISS TRACK IN HERE.”

Hoshi’s eyes widen and he quickly makes his exit leaving Jihoon alone again. He knows he’s being a creep but he doesn't have it in him to care. You’re just so interesting.  

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Bruno there's no one at the door stop growling.”

You open the door to show him no one is outside, but low and behold sitting outside your apartment is a large bouquet of hydrangeas… your favorite flower. 

“The fuck?”

You further inspect the flowers, seeing a note in the center.

“My precious little hacker, I’ll be seeing you soon. P.S check your bank account - Woozi’s Universe factory.”

You drop the flowers. Oh my god.You figured something like this would happen but now that it's happening you're freaked out. God, you should have minded your business. Now the little money you had is probably gone as some sort of twisted revenge. As you login to your bank app you're sure you've lost your mind and you're seeing things. $20,000 was wired to your savings account.

“What the fuck.”

You know better than to touch this money. It’s too good to be true. But, this would pay off your debt and get you a better apartment… fuck. You check your email to see what time the money was wired only to see an email from your school saying there were changes made to your account. Can this day get any worse? But it somehow gets better, not only is your tuition paid but all your debt is cleared… you must've suffered a head injury and you're making all of this up while in a coma. 

“Bruno, I might be killed in the next 7 days… Then you’ll have to fend for yourself.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Bruno, I might be killed in the next 7 days.. Then you’ll have to fend for yourself.” your sweet voice rings out. 

Jihoon had to see your reaction to his gift. He’s glad you didn't notice the green dot on your mac as he watched you through the webcam. He loves the way you talk to Bruno like he’s a human.

It took a lot of digging to figure out your favorite flower, it was one of your security questions for your bank app. He hopes you appreciate his generosity, it’s not everyday that he goes out of his way to spoil someone. He sees you looking absolutely bewildered and he can’t help but smile. But this smile quickly drops when you turn to your computer and your eyes widen, presumably seeing your camera is on.

“YOU FUCKING CREEP!” you scream as you power off your computer, leaving him staring at a blank screen.

He just smiles in response. He’s gonna have so much fun with you.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The gifts don't end. Everyday at 4pm you arrive home and on your doorstep is  something new, perfume, jewelry, bags, clothes, cat toys. This person must be rich. Though today the bell never rings. You even stand in your hallway looking for the delivery but it never comes. 

“Well isn't that weird?” you say to yourself as you unlock your door.

“Bruno?” Usually he comes running up to you when you unlock your door.

You see Bruno inspecting a bright red gift box sitting on your kitchen counter. You stop dead in your tracks. How the fuck did they get in your apartment? 

“Bruno! Move away from that.” you say and scoop him up. 

Oh god. This is getting insane. Leaving the gifts on your doorstep is one thing but coming inside? 

You stare at the gift for an hour. You're too afraid to open it. That is until it starts to vibrate. Is this a fucking bomb? You jump and open the box, seeing a brand new phone… Um Ok? The phone is receiving a call from an unknown number and obviously you don't answer it, setting the phone back down only for the same number to call again. You hesitantly answer. 

“Hello?”

“Hi, my love.”

“Who is this?” 

“Don’t worry about it, yet.”

“Ok, I’m gonna hang up.”

“Y/N, I wouldn't do that f I was you.”

“Stop being a fucking creep and sending shit to my door step.”

He just laughs.

“I left one more gift for you, why don’t you go look.”

You sigh and walk to your door, looking out the peephole first and opening it, picking up the large box.

“Are there killer wasps in here?” you sarcastically say.

“No, there are no wasps,” he laughs.

You open the box and pause, turning your head to your computer to see your camera is on.

“Are you watching me?”

“I’m always watching you, love.”

“God, youre a fucking creep, I should call the cops.”

“And tell them what? You tried to hack me and steal money from me? That you're a dirty little hacker and a thief?”

You’re starting to get upset, this is fucking insane.

“Open the box, love.”

You look at the computer and flip him off before opening the box. You gasp. This fucker sent you sex toys? 

“ALL YOU DO IS SHOW ME HOW MUCH OF A FUCKING PERVERT YOU ARE!” you yell into the phone.

“Is it so bad I want my baby to feel good?”

“I’m not your baby! I don’t even fucking know you.”

“I know you don’t know me but I know you. I know everything about you. Your favorite color is blue, your favorite food is Japanese curry, though you eat kimchi fried rice the most. You adopted Bruno because you needed something to keep you company since you don't really date. Your best friend moved away eight months ago and you two don't really talk anymore. Should I continue?”

“What the fuck.” you say with wide eyes.

“Baby, don’t get scared. I’m just so in love with you I need to know everything.”

“Um.” What do you even say to this?

“And don’t pretend this isn’t your darkest fantasy. I’ve seen your tumblr search history.”

Your eyes somehow widen. He got you there. Just the idea of having a clearly rich man obsessed with you would be enough to make you wet if he wasn't a pervert. 

“I want you to take out the shibari.”

You pull out a pretty blue vibrator. It’s even your favorite shade of blue. 

“Ok?” 

“I want you to use it for me.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Baby, I wouldn’t want to do things to make you upset, but I need you to listen to me. I’m not above blackmailing you and I’m sure you wouldn't want me to come snatch you up.”

Your jaw drops. 

“Youre fucking crazy!”

“Baby, you just make me feel so many things for you.”

You groan, cursing yourself for ever being greedy and trying to steal.

“What do you want me to do?” you sigh out.

“Take off your pants and sit on your desk chair.”

“Do I have to?” you pout looking straight into the camera.

“Yes, baby. I want to see you.”

Why is this making you wet? God, you fucking hate that this is exactly the smut you would always search for. You groan at the situation, yourself, at this mystery pervert.

You shimmy out of your pants and sit in your desk chair. You put the phone on speaker and set it down.

“Now what?”

“Turn it on and rub it over your nipples.”

“And if I don’t?”

“I’m sure the guys waiting outside your apartment would love to do it for you.”

Your heart drops to your ass and you turn it on, quickly putting it on your nipple.

Jeez, this thing is powerful. You let out a breathy moan disguised as a sigh.

“Run it down your body.” 

You slowly drag the vibrator down your body, your breathing becoming heavy. 

“Put your legs up on the chair and put it on your clit over your panties, I wanna see you soak through them.”

You put the head of the vibrator on your clit a little too hard making you jump.

“Slow your roll baby.” he laughs, making you roll your eyes.

This vibrator is on a different level from the shitty ones you have. It feels like you're being stimulated throughout your whole body, everything is vibrating and you feel yourself leaking. 

“I can see you getting wetter baby, fuck. I bet that pussy tastes so good.”

You moan, pressing the vibrator harder against you, feeling your toes curl.

“Does it feel good, baby?”

You close your eyes and nod, swallowing the shame. “It feels really good.”

“Move your panties to the side, let me see.”

You pull your soaked panties over and press the vibrator to your swollen clit. He lets out a deep groan. Jihoon can't believe his eyes, it’s like a dream come true. Your pretty pussy dripping wet just for him, you whining and moaning like all you can think about is cumming. He pulls out his hard cock, beginning to stroke himself, imagining he was fucking you. He would give it to you however you wanted, let you come as many times as you desired. No matter how bad you treated him, he would be on his knees begging to make you cum. The hold you have over him is unfathomable.  You’re truly like an angel sent to heaven just for him and he'll be damned if he doesn’t get his hands on you. He doesn't even have it in him to feel bad about watching you, listening to you, exploring you. In his mind you’ve been his from the moment he first saw you. His to worship, spoil, love until the end of time. You’ve become his muse, his lyrics flow out with only you in mind, he makes songs with the purpose of you hearing them. You’ve taken him over completely and he is so irrevocably in love with you. You don’t even need to love him back, he already has enough love for the both of you, and it's not like he wouldn’t be able to force you. A little isolation does wonders on the brain. 

“I need more,” you whine out.

“Tell me what you want.”

You just whine more in response, too embarrassed to speak. “You want to use your fingers?”

You nod furiously, opening your eyes to plead with him.

“Ok baby, slide two in for me. I want you to make yourself feel good.”

You listen and slide your fingers in, pumping them straight into your g-spot. You feel yourself on the verge of an orgasm, your moans becoming louder and more frequent.

“Turn it off”

Your eyes fly open. “What.”

“You heard me baby, turn it off.”

“No, no please I’m so close.”

“Y/N.”

You turn it off and throw it to the side, so insanely frustrated. 

“What is your deal!”

“You’re not cumming unless it's around my cock, baby.”

This man never fails to surprise you. “And what makes you think I’ll fuck you?”

“Trust me when I say that won’t be an issue.”

“What makes you so sure I just won’t finish myself off when I hang up?”

“I’m always watching, baby. It’s crazy how small they make cameras nowadays.”

“Fuck you Woozi’s Universe Factory.” you say not even able to take yourself seriously.

He just laughs. “I’ll be seeing you soon my love.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Is he named after Bruno Mars or Bruno from Encanto?” a deep voice rings out from your couch as you enter your apartment making you scream.

You turn to run out your apartment only to see two giants standing in your hallway blocking your exit. You groan and turn back around seeing Bruno sitting in the man's lap. Woah. Is this your stalker? Because if so, you have zero complaints. You’ve never been one to like guys with long hair, but his curls are just so hot and his lips.. How are they so plump? He’s wearing a tight black turtleneck and slacks with a gold chain. He looks so fucking hot, suddenly your not as pissed that he forced you masturbate for him. 

“Who are you?”

“You know exactly who I am, my love.”

“I don't know your name. Do you want me to call you Woozi’s Universe factory?”

He breathes out a laugh. “My name is Jihoon, love.”

“I’m sure you already know my name and give me my fucking cat.” you go to grab Bruno who hisses at you. You gasp.

“You little traitor.” you growl. “The real Bruno Mars would never treat me like this.” you say threateningly to the cat. 

“Ahh, Bruno Mars. I love that guy.” Jihoon says as he lifts the cat to look him in his eyes. “You want to stay with me don’t you?” to which the cat purrs. 

You’re more shocked at your cat's betrayal than Jihoon breaking into your apartment.

“Y/N, sit with me”

“No.”

He raises a brow at you.

“Fine, but not because you asked.” you pout and sit next to him.

“Are you not scared?”

“Honestly, you're too cute for me to be scared of you. Like look at these cheeks.” you say and squeeze his cheeks making him grab your hand and pull it away from your face.

“You don’t know who you're messing with, my love.”

“I mean if you were going to kill me you would've done it already. And I know you're not going to anyway because why would you waste all this money on someone you were going to kill?”

He smiles. “So smart, baby.”

Why is he calling you baby and love? This is actually kind of spooking you.

“What do you want Jihoon?” 

“I want you to come live with me.” 

Your eyes widen. The fuck? Your feelings must be visible on your face because he continues.

 “So, you just want me to get up and leave with you?”

“Yes.”

“Why would I come with you? You've done nothing but stalk and harrass me!”

“I’ve have not been stalking you, love. Everything I’ve done is a result of your actions. You decided to try to hack me which gave me access to everything.” 

“You're just trying to manipulate me!” you say and stand up.

He looked deeply offended by this. “Manipulate you? Tell me one thing in what I said that's not true.”

He has a point. You're just grasping at straw to be honest. “What If I don’t want to go with you.” you pout and stomp your foot looking like a child.

“Then I’ll take you by force.” he says with a straight face.

Oh. You weigh your options. Would you rather live in this hell hole remaining broke and sad or go with him and drain his pockets? You don’t even know where he’s taking you, he could be bringing you to a cabin in the woods to lock you up and kill you. But it’s not like you have an option and you would much rather do this the easy way.

“Ok fine. But not because you told me to” God, you sound like such a brat.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Six months later

“Jihoonnnnnnn.”

“Yes baby?”

“Can you buy me this?”

He groans. “Baby, what else could you possibly buy? You have it all.”

You show him your phone.

“Baby, you have this bag in three colors.” he deadpans.

“OK? This is my favorite color though.” You say like it's the most obvious thing on the planet.

Despite his grumbling he gets up and takes out his wallet, handing you his black card. Jihoon can never say no to you. Anything you ask for is yours, no matter what. Your life has completely changed since meeting him. You wouldn't say he’s your sugar daddy because you're equally as in love with him as he is with you,  but, lord does he spoil you. You moved into his high rise apartment and completely renovated it to your taste without a single complaint from him. He bought you a new wardrobe, new cars, bags, jewels, anything you could ever dream of. And the sex.. It’s just incredible. And Bruno is as spoiled as ever. He’s Jihoon’s baby despite Jihoon pretending to dislike him. You know what Jihoon does for a living, that's none of your business though. All that you care about is keeping him and yourself happy. You’ve grown more than accustomed to this lifestyle, not knowing how you functioned before meeting him. 

“Thank you Woozipoo”

“Stop calling me that” he groans.

“If you want me to stop you’ll get out this fucking studio and come to bed.”

He rolls his head to you. “Why would I do that?”

“So I can thank you for being so good to me.” you say into his neck making him groan. 

“God, baby don’t say things like that.”

“I can’t tell my man how much I want to fuck him?”

“Get your ass in the bedroom.”

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Amazon Alexa is a graduate of the Darth Vader MBA

Next Tuesday (Oct 31) at 10hPT, the Internet Archive is livestreaming my presentation on my recent book, The Internet Con.

If you own an Alexa, you might enjoy its integration with IFTTT, an easy scripting environment that lets you create your own little voice-controlled apps, like "start my Roomba" or "close the garage door." If so, tough shit, Amazon just nuked IFTTT for Alexa:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/25/23931463/ifttt-amazon-alexa-applets-ending-support-integration-automation

Amazon can do this because the Alexa's operating system sits behind a cryptographic lock, and any tool that bypasses that lock is a felony under Section 1201 of the DMCA, punishable by a 5-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine. That means that it's literally a crime to provide a rival OS that lets users retain functionality that Amazon no longer supports.

This is the proverbial gun on the mantelpiece, a moral hazard and invitation to mischief that tempts Amazon executives to run a bait-and-switch con where they sell you a gadget with five features and then remotely kill-switch two of them. This is prime directive of the Darth Vader MBA: "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further."

So many companies got their business-plan at the Darth Vader MBA. The ability to revoke features after the fact means that companies can fuck around, but never find out. Apple sold millions of tracks via iTunes with the promise of letting you stream them to any other device you owned. After a couple years of this, the company caught some heat from the record labels, so they just pushed an update that killed the feature:

https://memex.craphound.com/2004/10/30/apple-to-ipod-owners-eat-shit-and-die-updated/

That gun on the mantelpiece went off all the way back in 2004 and it turns out it was a starter-pistol. Pretty soon, everyone was getting in on the act. If you find an alert on your printer screen demanding that you install a "security update" there's a damned good chance that the "update" is designed to block you from using third-party ink cartridges in a printer that you (sorta) own:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer

Selling your Tesla? Have fun being poor. The upgrades you spent thousands of dollars on go up in a puff of smoke the minute you trade the car into the dealer, annihilating the resale value of your car at the speed of light:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/23/how-to-fix-cars-by-breaking-felony-contempt-of-business-model/

Telsa has to detect the ownership transfer first. But once a product is sufficiently cloud-based, they can destroy your property from a distance without any warning or intervention on your part. That's what Adobe did last year, when it literally stole the colors from your Photoshop files, in history's SaaSiest heist caper:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/28/fade-to-black/#trust-the-process

And yet, when we hear about remote killswitches in the news, it's most often as part of a PR blitz for their virtues. Russia's invasion of Ukraine kicked off a new genre of these PR pieces, celebrating the fact that a John Deere dealership was able to remotely brick looted tractors that had been removed to Chechnya:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/08/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors/

Today, Deere's PR minions are pitching search-and-replace versions of this story about Israeli tractors that Hamas is said to have looted, which were also remotely bricked.

But the main use of this remote killswitch isn't confounding war-looters: it's preventing farmers from fixing their own tractors without paying rent to John Deere. An even bigger omission from this narrative is the fact that John Deere is objectively Very Bad At Security, which means that the world's fleet of critical agricultural equipment is one breach away from being rendered permanently inert:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/23/reputation-laundry/#deere-john

There are plenty of good and honorable people working at big companies, from Adobe to Apple to Deere to Tesla to Amazon. But those people have to convince their colleagues that they should do the right thing. Those debates weigh the expected gains from scammy, immoral behavior against the expected costs.

Without DMCA 1201, Amazon would have to worry that their decision to revoke IFTTT functionality would motivate customers to seek out alternative software for their Alexas. This is a big deal: once a customer learns how to de-Amazon their Alexa, Amazon might never recapture that customer. Such a switch wouldn't have to come from a scrappy startup or a hacker's DIY solution, either. Take away DMCA 1201 and Walmart could step up, offering an alternative Alexa software stack that let you switch your purchases away from Amazon.

Money talks, bullshit walks. In any boardroom argument about whether to shift value away from customers to the company, a credible argument about how the company will suffer a net loss as a result has a better chance of prevailing than an argument that's just about the ethics of such a course of action:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/

Inevitably, these killswitches are pitched as a paternalistic tool for protecting customers. An HP rep once told me that they push deceptive security updates to brick third-party ink cartridges so that printer owners aren't tricked into printing out cherished family photos with ink that fades over time. Apple insists that its ability to push iOS updates that revoke functionality is about keeping mobile users safe – not monopolizing repair:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/22/vin-locking/#thought-differently

John Deere's killswitches protect you from looters. Adobe's killswitches let them add valuable functionality to their products. Tesla? Well, Tesla at least is refreshingly honest: "We have a killswitch because fuck you, that's why."

These excuses ring hollow because they conspicuously omit the possibility that you could have the benefits without the harms. Like, your tractor could come with a killswitch that you could bypass, meaning you could brick it at a distance, and still fix it yourself. Same with your phone. Software updates that take away functionality you want can be mitigated with the ability to roll back those updates – and by giving users the ability to apply part of a patch, but not the whole patch.

Cloud computing and software as a service are a choice. "Local first" computing is possible, and desirable:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/03/there-is-no-cloud/#only-other-peoples-computers

The cheapest rhetorical trick of the tech sector is the "indivisibility gambit" – the idea that these prix-fixe menus could never be served a la carte. Wanna talk to your friends online? Sorry there's just no way to help you do that without spying on you:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/08/divisibility/#technognosticism

One important argument over smart-speakers was poisoned by this false dichotomy: the debate about accessibility and IoT gadgets. Every IoT privacy or revocation scandal would provoke blanket statements from technically savvy people like, "No one should ever use one of these." The replies would then swiftly follow: "That's an ableist statement: I rely on my automation because I have a disability and I would otherwise be reliant on a caregiver or have to go without."

But the excluded middle here is: "No one should use one of these because they are killswitched. This is especially bad when a smart speaker is an assistive technology, because those applications are too important to leave up to the whims of giant companies that might brick them or revoke their features due to their own commercial imperatives, callousness, or financial straits."

Like the problem with the "bionic eyes" that Second Sight bricked wasn't that they helped visually impaired people see – it was that they couldn't be operated without the company's ongoing support and consent:

https://spectrum.ieee.org/bionic-eye-obsolete

It's perfectly possible to imagine a bionic eye whose software can be maintained by third parties, whose parts and schematics are widely available. The challenge of making this assistive technology fail gracefully isn't technical – it's commercial.

We're meant to believe that no bionic eye company could survive unless they devise their assistive technology such that it fails catastrophically if the business goes under. But it turns out that a bionic eye company can't survive even if they are allowed to do this.

Even if you believe Milton Friedman's Big Lie that a company is legally obligated to "maximize shareholder value," not even Friedman says that you are legally obligated to maximize companies' shareholder value. The fact that a company can make more money by defrauding you by revoking or bricking the things you buy from them doesn't oblige you to stand up for their right to do this.

Indeed, all of this conduct is arguably illegal, under Section 5 of the FTC Act, which prohibits "unfair and deceptive business practices":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

"No one should ever use a smart speaker" lacks nuance. "Anyone who uses a smart speaker should be insulated from unilateral revocations by the manufacturer, both through legal restrictions that bind the manufacturer, and legal rights that empower others to modify our devices to help us," is a much better formulation.

It's only in the land of the Darth Vader MBA that the deal is "take it or leave it." In a good world, we should be able to take the parts that work, and throw away the parts that don't.

(Image: Stock Catalog/https://www.quotecatalog.com, Sam Howzit; CC BY 2.0; modified)

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/26/hit-with-a-brick/#graceful-failure

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Hocus Potus. http://Newsday.com/matt :: Matt Davies

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 13, 2025

Heather Cox Richardson

Apr 14, 2025

This evening, lawyers for the Department of Justice told a federal court that the administration does not believe it has a legal obligation to return Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia to the United States, despite a court order to do so.

The 29-year-old Abrego Garcia came to the U.S. about 2011 when he was 16 to escape threats from a gang that was terrorizing his family. He settled in Maryland with his older brother, a U.S. citizen, and lived there until in 2019 he was picked up by police as he waited at a Home Depot to be picked up for work as a day laborer. Police transferred him to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE). After a hearing, an immigration judge rejected his claim for asylum but said he could not be sent back to El Salvador, finding it credible that the Barrio 18 gang had been “targeting him and threatening him with death because of his family’s pupusa business.”

Ever since, Abrego Garcia has checked in annually with ICE as directed. He lives with his wife and their three children, and has never been charged with any crime. The Department of Homeland Security issued him a work permit, and he joined a union, working full time as a sheet metal apprentice.

On March 12, ICE agents pulled his car over, told his wife to come pick up their disabled son, and incarcerated Abrego Garcia, pressing him to say he was a member of MS-13. On March 15 the government rendered Abrego Garcia to the infamous CECOT prison for terrorists in El Salvador, alleged to be the site of human rights abuses, torture, extrajudicial killings. The U.S. government is paying El Salvador $6 million a year to incarcerate the individuals it sends there.

On March 24, Abrego Garcia’s family sued the administration over his removal.

On March 31 the government admitted that its arrest and rendition of Abrego Garcia happened because of “administrative error” but said he couldn’t be brought back because, in El Salvador, he is outside the jurisdiction of the United States. It also accused him of being a member of the MS-13 gang and said that bringing him back to the U.S. would threaten the public.

On April 4, U.S. District Court Judge Paula Xinis ordered the government to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S. no later than 11:59 pm on April 7.

In her opinion, filed April 6, Judge Xinis wrote that “[a]lthough the legal basis for the mass removal of hundreds of individuals to El Salvador remains disturbingly unclear, Abrego Garcia’s case is categorically different—there were no legal grounds whatsoever for his arrest, detention, or removal.…. [H]is detention appears wholly lawless.” It is “a clear constitutional violation.” And yet administration officials “cling to the stunning proposition that they can forcibly remove any person—migrant and U.S. citizen alike—to prisons outside the United States, and then baldly assert they have no way to effectuate return because they are no longer the 'custodian,' and the Court thus lacks jurisdiction.”

The administration had already appealed her April 4 order to the Supreme Court, which handed down a 9–0 decision on Thursday, April 10, requiring the Trump administration “to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador,” but asking the district court to clarify what it meant by “effectuate,” that release, noting that it must give “due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.”

The Supreme Court also ordered that “the Government should be prepared to share what it can concerning the steps it has taken and the prospect of further steps.” Judge Xinis ordered the government to file an update by 9:30 a.m. on April 11 explaining where Abrego Garcia is, what the government is doing to get him back, and what more it will do. She planned an in-person hearing at 1:00 p.m.

But the administration evidently does not intend to comply. On April 11, the lawyer representing the government, Drew Ensign, said he did not have information about where Abrego Garcia is and ignored her order to provide information about what the government was doing to bring him back. Saturday, it said Abrego Garcia is “alive and secure” in CECOT. Today, it said it had no new information about him, but said that Abrego Garcia is no longer eligible for the immigration judge’s order not to send him to El Salvador “because of his membership in MS-13 which is now a designated foreign terrorist organization.”

There is still no evidence that Abrego Garcia is a member of MS-13.

Today, administration lawyers used the Supreme Court’s warning that the court must give “due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs” to lay out a chilling argument. They ignored the Supreme Court’s agreement that the government must get Abrego Garcia out of El Salvador, as well as the court’s requirement that the administration explain what it’s doing to make that happen.

Instead, the lawyers argued that because Abrego Garcia is now outside the country, any attempt to get him back would intrude on the president’s power to conduct foreign affairs. Similarly, they argue that the president cannot be ordered to do anything but remove domestic obstacles from Abrego Garcia’s return. Because Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, is currently in the U.S. for a visit with Trump, they suggest they will not share any more updates about Abrego Garcia and the court should not ask for them because it would intrude on “sensitive” foreign policy issues.

Let’s be very clear about exactly what’s happening here: President Donald J. Trump is claiming the power to ignore the due process of the law guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, declare someone is a criminal, kidnap them, send them to prison in a third country, and then claim that there is no way to get that person back.

All people in the United States are entitled to due process, but Trump and his officers have tried to convince Americans that noncitizens are not. They have also pushed the idea that those they are offshoring are criminals, but a Bloomberg investigation showed that of the 238 men sent to CECOT in the first group, only five of them had been charged with or convicted of felony assault or gun violations. Three had been charged with misdemeanors like petty theft. Two were charged with human smuggling. In any case, in the U.S., criminals are entitled to due process.

Make no mistake: as Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson recently warned, if the administration can take noncitizens off the streets, render them to prison in another country, and then claim it is helpless to correct the error either because the person is out of reach of U.S. jurisdiction, it could do the same thing to citizens.

Trump has said he would “love” to do exactly that, and would even be “honored” to, and Bukele has been offering to hold U.S. citizens. Dasha Burns and Myah Ward of Politico reported Friday that former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince is pitching a plan to expand renditions to El Salvador to at least 100,000 criminal offenders from U.S. prisons and to avoid legal challenges by making part of CECOT American territory, then leasing it back to El Salvador to run.

When White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt says, “The president's idea for American citizens to potentially be deported, these would be heinous violent criminals who have broken our nation's laws repeatedly," remember that just days ago, Trump suggested that a former government employee was guilty of treason for writing a book about his time in the first Trump administration that Trump claimed was “designed to sow chaos and distrust” in the government.

Here’s the thing: Once you give up the idea that we are all equal before the law and have the right to due process, you have given up the whole game. You have admitted the principle that some people have more rights than others. Once you have replaced the principle of equality before the law with the idea that some people have no rights, you have granted your approval to the idea of an authoritarian government. At that point, all you can do is to hope that the dictator and his henchmen overlook you.

At least some people understand this. The president of North America’s Building Trades Unions, Sean McGarvey, received a standing ovation when he said to a room full of his fellow union workers: “We need to make our voices heard. We’re not red, we’re not blue. We’re the building trades, the backbone of America. You want to build a $5 billion data center? Want more six-figure careers with health care, retirement, and no college debt? You don’t call Elon Musk, you call us!... And yeah, that means all of us. All of us. Including our brother [International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers] apprentice Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who we demand to be returned to us and his family now! Bring him home!”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[midnightfantasiez]

Watch It | Lee Sangyeon

SUMMARY: you were summoned to stop the crime spree of the renowned group The Boyz by hacking into one of the systems to retrieve information about a specified location before it's too late. what you did not expect was that their leader has been spying on every move you make from the shadows and eventually confronting you about it, which then turns into your biggest nightmare.

PAIRING: criminal Sangyeon x hacker f!reader

GENRE: smut (18+ MDNI!!)

WARNINGS: kissing, petnames (sweetheart, baby, princess), mentions about violence/illegal business (stealing), size kink, voyeurism, dirty talk, public sex, rough sex, fingering, handjob, p in v sex, unprotected sex, they went for rounds, mean dom! Sangyeon

WORD COUNT: 3,235

A/N: let me explain. it was the ✨stare✨ from the concept pic itself that gave me ideas for this fic 😭 huge thanks to my bubba @juyeonszn for beta reading this & convincing me to change my theme ily forever 🥺💜 also shoutout to @daisyvisions @snowflakewhispers for fueling me with ideas / validating my horniness oops— (but ily both so much 😘)

“Agent Y/N, are you in position?” 

“Yes, sir. I am waiting for the right moment to jump into the enemy’s territory.” 

With one click on the earpiece, you immediately turned off the buzzing sound from the headquarters as you needed to focus and ensure that you were all alone and secure as you entered the place of interest.

As you flung your backpack onto your back, you quietly peeked through the few trucks parked in the parking lot right outside the abandoned building. Given that your job was to hack into the system and you needed good internet service, conducting it outdoors would be much more ideal than inside the building itself. 

You and your team received a transmission hours ago about how this group of individuals has been conducting illegal business, such as stealing information from multiple laboratories—specifically ones located on the outskirts of Seoul to avoid detection and arrest. According to your team’s analysts, they have also discovered how they had been stealing chemical solutions that were pretty much hazardous to the public, and god knows whatever they will be using them for.

In other words, they are a pretty suspicious gang, and someone has to look into their spree of crimes before things get out of control. Being one of the best hackers on the team, you were sent to the actual location to hack into their system as best as you could. 

So here you were, in the depths of the night, staking out the parking lot alone, hoping that all goes well and that you can quickly do the job and get out of there as soon as possible. Frankly, it all felt super eerie, especially when it was this late at night, and there weren’t many street lamps to provide enough light to make you feel safe by yourself. 

After looking thoroughly and confirming with your eyes that you were alone, you slowly moved towards the multiple trucks parked in the middle of the parking lot. You managed to squeeze yourself through them and get to a well-lit area; that was when you finally took your laptop out of your backpack and started hacking away. 

To the best of your abilities, you were able to sneak into the laboratory’s system fairly quickly, and you ran over their live security camera footage to check if the criminals were within the building. Immediately, the security camera footage popped up on the screen, and you could quickly identify several men scattered throughout the different labs within the facility. 

“They were probably looking for the right chemical, " you thought, as they were all split up and divided into three groups in each laboratory. While they were trying to find the liquid, you had to quickly hack into the database to retrieve all of the information regarding the facility and the chemicals produced over the years and quickly send them back to your headquarters for analysis. 

After about 10 minutes of transferring all of the files, it was time for you to get out of there and return to let the other agents that were on their way to take over and confront the criminals themselves. You weren’t a field agent, so you couldn’t do much physical combat against the criminals themselves. As much as you wanted to, you weren’t ready for your title as an agent to be stripped off you anytime soon; hence respecting the laws and just doing as you were told would be the wisest decision for now.  

You quickly phoned the headquarters, letting them know you had retrieved all the necessary documents and would finally return to report. As you were permitted to do so, you got up and were going to keep all of your belongings back in your backpack until one of the security cameras began flashing. 

You quickly got back down again, trying to see what was happening. That was when you remembered a crucial detail. 

According to the information you guys have had so far, you knew that the group of criminals consisted of 11 members, so you decided to do a headcount one by one on the screen, starting from 1 to 11.

“8…9…and 10.”

10? 

Someone was missing, but who?

Just then, a deep husky voice broke you off from your attention on the screen, and you looked around to see where it was coming from. Finally, you landed your eyes towards one of the vehicles right across you, and there he was—one of the criminals sitting right on top of the truck with both his legs spread wide apart, looking down towards you. 

“Aren’t you pretty good at your job, sweetheart?” 

Oh no. You were busted. 

“U-umm…sorry…it’s just that…I was supposed to write a report regarding this facility, so I am here to look around.”

“At this hour? Close to midnight? I highly doubt that, princess.” 

Immediately, he hopped down from the vehicle in one swift movement and began approaching you slowly. You instinctively shut your laptop, hugged it close to your chest, and backed away. 

“I-I’m sorry! It seems I came at the wrong time! I will take my leave now, then. I’m sorry to have disrupted you!” You bowed down profusely before turning your heel and tried to run as quickly as you could until he grabbed your wrist and pulled it upwards, turning back in his direction. 

There was this smug yet dangerous look on his face, contradicting the pure and innocent look he had on before. That sent a chill up your spine, and you quickly gulped before he slowly pushed you till your back finally hit against one of the trucks. You closed your eyes upon the impact and elicited a quiet yelp with his movement. 

Suddenly, you felt his fingers lift your chin, and he commanded you to open your eyes to look straight at him. 

“Now sweetheart, we weren’t done having our little fun conversation yet, were we? It breaks my heart that you decided to take off running before we even started.” 

You were panicking as his grip slightly tightened around your wrist, pushing it back against the truck, signalling that you would be dead meat if you tried something funny again next time. You were stuck, and there was no way you could ring the headquarters as that would blow up your cover and the location of the base of operations. 

The only thing you could do was to pray that the field agents would make their way over to you soon until you heard a mild static and a voice calling through the earpiece.

“T-there isn’t much ser-service here, b-but we will be sli-slightly late d-due to the he-heavy traffic. H-hang in t-there, a-agent Y/N! W-we’ll surely be c-coming—” 

And then it all went silent. 

Your only hope was lost, as the enemy threatened and pinned you with little to no help coming your way anytime soon. You could use your physical combat skills to fight against the man before you, but something in your gut told you that it would be a horrible idea to try anything funny with him right now. 

With that, you could only take a deep breath and try to talk things out with him for a bit, stalling some time before help eventually arrived. 

“W-what…what do you want from me?” You questioned, or more like stammered. It was clear that you were trembling in your voice. 

The man chuckles slightly as he smiles back at you. “See, sweetheart. I’m afraid I can’t let you off that easily, knowing that you were spying on us and retrieving crucial evidence and information that would hinder our mission.”

This time, his fingers on your chin slowly travelled down to your neck and chest. It was the way he took his time gently sliding his finger down and touching your bare skin that made you let out a gasp. 

“I’d like to play a little game with you, princess.”

“W-what do you…” You were beginning to lose your mind as he brushed his fingers across your lips, smudging the lipstick that you’d put on prior. 

“I’d like to see how much you can handle, and trust me, we will have so much fun. I’ll make sure that you won’t be heading back to your headquarters anytime soon.”

Within seconds after that last sentence, he crashed his lips with yours and began savouring them as a tingling sensation ran through your body. He quickly deepened the kiss, his lips moving against yours with urgency. 

It was wrong. This was all so wrong.

You knew how bad this situation was because he was your enemy. But then, something about his lips made you crave more. His kisses tasted like honey, and the way he moved his lips against yours drove you insane. 

Without you knowing, your grip against the laptop slowly loosened, and eventually, he took it away from you and gently placed it on the ground, his hands quickly moving back up to your cargo pants, rubbing the spot in between your thighs, earning a gasp from you. 

He smiled as you gave him the reaction that he wanted, and he began to untie your pants before pulling them down, his fingers now brushing over your sensitive spot through the lace underwear that you were wearing. Slowly, he began to feel that you were starting to get wet, and that was his cue to hook his finger under the seam of your underwear before pulling them down, revealing your now wet clit all exposed. 

You hissed as the cold air from the atmosphere came in contact with your clit, and it took the enemy a moment to reconnect his fingers to your wet sensitive spot, rubbing it again before slowly inserting two fingers into you. 

“Aah…aaah…”

“I’ll be a dear and tell you my name, princess. Call me Sangyeon, moan for me,” he leaned towards you and whispered. 

“S-sangyeon….”

“That’s it, baby. You’re doing so good for me. I shall grant you your next reward now, hmm?” 

As he removed his fingers from your clit, he quickly moved them to his pants, unzipped and shoved them down rather hastily. It was the way you immediately noticed the erection through his boxers, and your eyes widened from just that alone. Sangyeon smirked at your reaction and reconnected his lips to yours to give you a few pecks. 

“Look at you already can’t stop staring at my big cock. Oh, baby. I’ll make sure that you won’t regret playing with it.” 

Immediately, he grabbed your free hand and guided you to touch his erection. You gasped from that alone while Sangyeon let out a soft groan. You couldn’t help but naturally start rubbing his tip, which made Sangyeon moan for you. 

“Touch me, baby.” He commanded. 

Guiding your hands again, he allowed you to pull his boxers down, and your mouth watered at the sight of his massive bulge. You wrapped your hands around his cock before you began gliding your hands up and down his member. In return, he inserted his fingers back into your clit once again, and the both of you were now a moaning mess.

“S-sangyeon…kiss me…please…” you whined, wanting to taste his sweet honey-like lips once again. 

“Oh, honey. You love the way my tongue twirls around yours?”

“Y-yes…very much…aaahh—” 

Just like that, he was now back to kissing you breathless. As his tongue slid into your mouth, he began sucking your tongue, and you shut your eyes tightly from the sensation. It made you forget entirely about how you were supposed to escape this guy as soon as possible, trying to find a potential hideout place to wait for your fellow agents. 

It seemed as if Sangyeon had wrapped you around his fingertips, just as he had planned to, and he would make sure that you wouldn’t be leaving this place anytime soon. He would proceed to the next step of his plan anytime now. 

He gently removed your hands away from his bulge as he took it himself to align the tip towards your entrance, and you knew that you were in big trouble. Now, you tried to move forward when his hand, still grabbing your wrist, tightened again and pushed it back towards the truck again. 

“Oh no, princess. We’re just getting started. Stay here with me, and I’ll give you the best fucking sex you’ll ever have.” 

As soon as those words slipped out of his mouth, he immediately slid himself into you, and you all but screamed, a teardrop falling from the corners of your eyes. Sangyeon didn’t even give you enough time to adjust to his huge size fully and eventually began slamming into you hard. 

“Fuck—fuck.” It was all that you could’ve said because you had already lost your mind ever since he kissed you for the first time. Now that he was within you? Oh, you were far, long gone from reality. 

Given the way he was fucking you so hard, even the truck that you were leaning against began rocking back and forth following your pace. 

Your eyes watered as he hit every single spot within you, causing you to cry out loud. If you were to be honest, it actually did hurt, especially which such a large and hard dick like his. But the pleasure far exceeded the pain, and you cried out for more. 

“Sangyeon…sangyeon…”

“Tell me what exactly you want, baby.”

“Keep it going…please…”

“Just like that? Are you sure that is enough?”

“I…want you to fuck me faster and harder—”

“Anything else?” He was now picking up the pace, and it was visible that his chest was rising up and down much quicker than before as he tried his best to catch his breath. 

“I…want you to fuck me till my legs feel numb, give me more and more…aaah—”

“That is what exactly I like to hear, sweetheart.” 

As he slammed into you hard, you felt a tight knot form around your stomach, signalling that you were about to reach your high and cum. Sangyeon noticed your demeanour as you buckled your hips and spread your legs wider for him to gain more access to you. 

“I’m cumming! I’m cumming!” You screamed.

“Do it, baby. Cum all over my cock, I want you to be dripping wet just for me.” He growled. 

With a few more pushes, you eventually released and spilled all of your juices all around his cock, so much so that it was oozing out of you, and it all splattered on the ground. 

You breathe in heavily before Sangyeon gives you a gentle kiss on the lips, reassuring you that you have done so well for him.

“That’s it, princess. What a good girl you’ve been. But unfortunately, there is more to come baby.” 

He grabbed both of your shoulders before turning you around rather aggressively, so now you were facing the truck instead. If you were to be honest, that rough act of his turned you on more than it was painful. It was a few seconds before you felt his grip return to you on both sides of your hips, as you felt his cock rubbing up and down once again on your dripping wet clit.

Sangyeon leaned forward to whisper in your ear, sending you a chill down your spine. “Give me some more, baby. You know you can do it.”

As he pushed his cock back into you, an immense moan spilt out from your mouth as he began pounding into you again. You had already had sex and felt his member all around you just a minute prior, yet you were still struggling to adjust to his bulge. 

“God, sweetheart. I’ve already fucked you hard, and yet you’re still so tight. I guess I wasn’t rough enough.” 

As he pounds into you, your hands that were pressed against the truck begin pushing the vehicle once again. If only there were someone around, you swear to god that the car's movement would be more than enough to prove that something wasn’t right and that there were people everywhere in the empty parking lot. 

But your comrades are still nowhere to be seen, and you were still bounded by the criminal himself, fucking you till you were sore to the point that you would not be able to walk on your own after this. 

“S-sangyeon…I-I wanna cum again for you so badly…” You whimpered. 

This time, he moved one of his hands up to grab a chunk of your hair and pulled it back; that firm sudden grip caused you to scream once again for him.

“Do it then. Cum with me this time.” He commanded, pulling your hair and pounding into you even harder. 

“Fuck—fuck—fuck—Sangyeon!! I’m cumming!!” 

With one final hard thrust, both of you released your liquids before slowing down the momentum and catching your breaths together. He removed his grip from your hair before he grabbed your chin and turned your head back for him to kiss you again. You snaked your hands up to his neck to return the favour. 

Just then, you heard sirens coming from afar, and you heard static in your earpiece again. 

“Agent Y/N, please respond! We’re finally here to infiltrate the facility; please head out, return to the back of our vehicle, and stay put!” 

It was your cue to leave now, and there was no more extended point in you staying here. 

You gulped before you pulled away from Sangyeon, mustering up the courage to reject him for good this time. 

“S-sangyeon…I have to go…I can’t stay here any more.” You stammered, hoping that he would finally let you leave this time, especially since he had already gotten what he wanted. 

But you should’ve known better because his familiar dark and dangerous look was plastered on his face again, and he pushed you back against the truck. 

“You know, now that your comrades are here, I’m afraid there’s more reason for me not to let you leave now, hmm? I’ve been stalling time for my boys to get what they want in the facility before your agents arrive to ruin our plan. While they were doing that, I was out here guarding the area, making sure nobody was to sabotage our plan.” 

So that was why he played this little dirty game with you.

“Knowing my boys, I’m pretty sure that they have gotten everything we need, and all they have to do is defeat your fellow agents, and then we will leave. And while they are doing that, you will keep me company until they’re done.” He threatened. 

This time, he grabbed your wrist and dragged you towards the front of the car, directly where you could see clearly how your fellow agents were confronting the criminals. Within seconds, a fight has broken out between them across the facility, and you have no choice but to stay here helplessly and be unable to provide them with any aid. 

Before you could say anything, Sangyeon yanked you down towards the hood of the car so that you were lying on top of it, and he prepared to go for a third round with you.

“I want you to watch closely with how you and your fellow agents are going to fail this mission terribly while I fuck you real good till you’re begging for more.”

masterlist

taglist: @deoboyznet @kflixnet @flwoie @heemingyu @snowflakewhispers (join my permenant taglist here!)

[prettybaby-reid]

Heroine

Chapter one: It Starts With The Spins

Aaron Hotchner x Reader Content warnings: General Criminal Minds level violence, Inaccuracies of how the Federal Government works, Age Gap (both legal adults), Word Count: 1.6k

When applying to the BAU, you weren't very nervous. Section Chief Erin Strauss had been nice enough during the interview process, stating that your rather…unique past was something that made you a highly considerable candidate to fill the BAU’s open position. It wouldn’t be the first (and probably not the last) time the Brass hired someone with no formal education. With that and your years of experience were enough to secure you the job.

Right now though, you look more like a deer caught in headlights, rather than a highly specialized agent. The BAU headquarters is busy with agents running around and you feel slightly overwhelmed with all of the new faces as you stand next to the elevator. You’re broken out of your thoughts by a mellifluous voice, "I'm Unit Chief, Supervisory Special Agent Aaron Hotchner. You must be our new agent." You look up, stunned at the impressively tall man in front of you, before introducing yourself, “Yes. Nice to meet you, sir”. It’s glaringly obvious that you’re new to this, green with inexperience and rife with nerves. It doesn’t take a profiler to know that, and you’re absolutely sure that he can tell. It’s not the job itself that you’re scared of, you’d taken down your fair share of criminals over the years. Between terrorist threats and psy-ops, you’d seen more than enough. It was the more personal aspect of the job. When transferring from the CIA to the FBI you’d been warned by every single person handling your transferral that the FBI was different, to which you’d reply without fail, “Duh”. It wasn’t until your final meeting with the higher ups, before you were to meet with Agent Strauss- who approved you to work in her section expeditiously fast, before even knowing what unit you were applying to- that you realized just how different the FBI would be. Blood and guts weren’t what had your heart caught in your throat, you’d seen (and faked) enough deaths to give the grim reaper a run for his money. No, what had your stomach in knots was how close the BAU was. You weren’t used to close knit teams like this. You were used to being sent away from the office on missions with a team that would be immediately disbanded, sent back to their original stations, just for the cycle to rinse and repeat. You were not used to your team being friends and those friends becoming family, so yeah, you were pretty unnerved. 

If Agent Hotchner had noticed your nervous demeanor or the way you were practically peeling your nail polish off, he didn’t mention it. Instead, he continues the conversation, motioning for you to follow him to his office. “So how was Strauss?” His tone is less investigative, more sarcastic and light than others recounts of interactions with him would lead you to believe. “She was nice enough.” His brow slightly quirks, as if the thought of anyone referring to Erin Strauss as nice was unbelievable. He sits down at his desk, waiting for you to sit across from him “Alright, your file says you worked with the CIA for 5 years? Long time for someone so young.” And there it was, the first of what you assumed would be many comments made about your age. You couldn’t blame anyone, but you could be silently annoyed. “Um, yes, sir. 5 yea-” before you can finish he cuts you off, “No need for sir, I’m not that old yet. Hotch is fine.” Okay, so you’re in the nickname category already. Cool. “Yes, Hotch. 5 years with the CIA.” You can see the corner of his mouth tick up for a split second before returning to a stoic demeanor, done with the lighthearted banter, you’ve now entered the interrogation part of the interview it seems. “Why Behavioral Analysis? It seems like you were doing quite well with counter intelligence, why not stay or join a division more closely aligned?” It’s a basic question, but the way he asks it lets you know he’s not particularly interested in your answer, moreso interested in the way you answer and trying to decipher who the hell you are. “It wasn’t particularly my choice to join the CIA, I was doing well but I decided I’d prefer to work domestically.” He nods his head, you can tell he doesn’t fully buy it, but he doesn’t press you further. You’re sure he’s ticked off some box in his head about you ‘closed off’ or ‘distant’, it doesn’t particularly bother you though. You’ve been keeping track of the “infamous Agent Hotchner” as well.

For example, his right hand instinctively moves to fidget with his ring finger far too often for it to just be a coincidence, there’s pictures of a small boy around his office but surrounding them there are either empty frames or ones filled with what you assume to be the rest of his team, an odd choice for a boss. The frames are old and worn but the pictures inside were new, crisp, clean. Quick replacements to fill the void. He was divorced. Recently. Pictures of his son and his team, but none of a partner, a wife. No pictures of siblings or parents, yet his demeanor gives off the authoritative aura of an older sibling. Someone who had grown up telling another what to do and how to do it right. Probably estranged, at least from his parents. No diplomas or degrees hung up on his wall, no medals or awards or anything celebratory. So either he sucks at his job or he’s not one to show off his achievements, considering all the flattery you’d had shoved down your throat about the man in your transfer and application process, you assume it’s the latter. 

“Very well. Your file is impressive, agent. 5 years, international criminals, terrorist cells, corrupt politicians all taken down on your assignments…nothing to bat an eye at.” He’s not wrong, you’d spent a long-time crime fighting, and while you weren’t one to flaunt, you weren’t particularly shy about it either. “Thank you.” You can see the cogs in his head turning, fingers drumming against the mahogany desk. “Agent, I say this respectfully; you have no formal FBI experience outside of base level academy training, no college and you’re young.” And there it is. The doubt. You knew it had been too good to be true.  At least he was blunt. “You’re not wrong…”

You could see him scanning you, as if he was trying to tell everything about you from the outfit you chose to wear. A satiny white button up, quite normal for an agent. Less typical is the drop shoulder leather jacket draped over it. Most people walking into his office for an interview are a bit more formal, dressy pants and blazers instead of black cargos and leather. Then again, you aren’t here for an interview, Strauss already gave you the job. And Hotch knows better than anyone that first looks can be deceiving. But everything about you screams young, intelligent, your confidence teeters on the edge of cockiness. “I don’t mean to doubt your skill and ability- it’s clear you have plenty- but are you sure you’re a fit for the BAU? We work as one team; we don’t do solo assignments and from your file it’s clear you’ve rarely worked with the same group twice.” Once again, he’s not wrong, but it’s not the hard-hitting analysis you’d expected from the esteemed Aaron Hotchner. His criticisms are airy, filled less with doubts about you joining the team and more with a slight distaste for the fact that he likely didn’t have a choice in the adding of a new member to his team, and while he’s not aiming his animosity at you, quite the opposite, you can tell he’d prefer if you changed your mind about what unit you were joining. Unfortunately for Agent Hotchner, you were a stubborn bitch. “I understand your concerns, but I know that my skills are valuable to your team. I may not be used to working with the same people for long periods of time, but I know that I’m capable.” His fingers finally stop tapping against the desk, his right hand meeting his left as his actions still. “And you’re sure of this, you know what this job entails?” He’s challenging you, gauging to see how dedicated you are, how prepared you were, how much you want this. “Yes, I’m sure. Give me one case, one case to prove it to you.” And if luck hadn’t already been on your side, it definitely was now. There’s a knock on his door right before it swings open, and in walks a lean woman with almost pitch-black hair. “Hotch, we have a- Oh my god, Y/n?”. You look up at her, a shocked smile on your face, “Emily, hi, it’s been a while” you let out with a soft giggle. You two barely have any time to greet each other before you’re cut off, “Is there something you need, Prentiss?”. She straightens herself, clearing her throat, “uh, yeah, Jj said we have a new case”. He nods, looking at Emily, then at you, then back to Emily. She stands awkwardly at the door for a moment, sensing the tension, before walking out. He focuses his attention back to you, his lips in a tight line before letting out a reluctant sigh, “One case.”, he relents. You have to bite your tongue to suppress the smirk that wants to rise onto your face. He stands up, beginning to head to the bullpen, and if you weren’t so caught up in your successful negotiation, you’d have noticed the barely there smile on his face at your excitement.

Tag list- @withyoutilltheendofthismess @jazzimac1967 @gfksz @anime-lover-forever-1127

[smaller-comfort]

Extremely rambly thoughts on necrontyr society/marriage headcanon stuff. Some of this dovetails with the snecron biology stuff; you get 'gestational parent' and 'inseminating parent' as concepts because I'm not going to be more creative with words tonight.

At the upper levels of society, marriage is solely for cementing political alliances and the transfer of wealth. That's it. It's a legal contract between two families, and the contract lays out how wealth and power are shared and inherited between them.

Courtship would vary wildly between dynasties and even between different vassal states within a dynasty (a lot of this gets flattened out post-biotransference, alas). But before then, culturally, a dynasty from the eastern fringe might be nearly as alien to a dynasty in the west as any of the Unclean. (The fact that they've got mutually intelligible language across the galaxy is hilariously the biggest science-fantasy leap for me, I'll be honest.) Also, space-mormon Ithakas is weird as hell to everyone.

So, for example: Nihilakh crownworld nobility courtship customs involve, first and foremost, a team of lawyers, on both sides. Immediate members of the Phaeron's household probably have to get permission from the Yyth seer before even beginning the process. Courtship gifts are wildly expensive and extravagant and meticulously documented, with particular emphasis placed on the provenance of unique rarities. The exchange of courtship gifts is always a public spectacle- 'subtle' is for crypteks and lawyers.

At higher levels of society, the two people getting married might not even meet until after the paperwork is filed. Mid and lower level nobles are a bit more relaxed about it, but they're also not dealing with quite the same scale of wealth. Weddings are still ridiculously over-the-top affairs that can and will bankrupt smaller houses hoping to secure a politically advantageous match to a larger family.

Meanwhile, on Solemnace, you do see a similar emphasis on legal documentation, and rare or unique courtship gifts, but they're much less extravagant about the displays of wealth. Gifts are more often exchanged in private, and though weddings can get elaborate, it tends to be more about tasteful, elegant luxury than extravagant excess. Is this at least in part to keep their Overlord from stealing the silverware at the wedding? It's impossible to say.

Over on Mandragora, you announce your intention to court by challenging your intended to a duel. The date and time of the duel is the anticipated date of the nuptuals. Generally the intended couple will not actually fight one another, but the wedding will involve a lot of demonstrations of martial prowess, and usually there will be a ritualized duel of some sort between representatives of each family. Whichever family wins gets to officiate the wedding, and keeps the larger share of the dowry.

On Gidrim, no dueling is required, but it's customary to present your intended with some sort of hunting trophy. There'd be some kind of annual tourney or major gaming event where young necrontyr might dedicate their victories to their intended- think medieval tourneys, and knights jousting for tokens from their beloved. Now, given that gender parity is standard, this potentially means that you end up fighting against the person you're trying to court. This sort of thing is frequently the subject of romantic comedies and dramas. Gidrim weddings usually last several days, with feasting and recitations of long form epic military ballads and more games/martial demonstrations. The subsequent hangover may last up to a week, if you're doing it right.

Those would all be courtship practices for a primary spouse or consort for higher-level nobility. Polyamory is common, both for the purpose of providing heirs, and because at the end of the day a marriage contract is a business contract, and why wouldn't you try to form as many alliances as possible?

So it's not uncommon for third or fourth children to be married off as secondary spouses to vassal houses, to reinforce political ties between families. Since everyone is dying of turbo cancer, it's also not uncommon for these secondary marriage contracts to include a clause for what happens when the fourth kid in the line of succession becomes the heir apparent. (Divorce practices vary between dynasties as well, but by and large it is a fast process out of necessity.)

Secondary spouse courtship and weddings can be just as elaborate as consort matches, depending on the status/wealth of everyone involved. Usually they're not quite as involved- on the other hand, if your new intended is the Phaeron's fourth daughter, you're damn well going to go all out, or suffer the consequences.

Because of rampant fertility issues due to turbo cancer and a not insignificant amount of inbreeding among the nobility in certain dynasties, inheritance and succession frequently have nothing to do with parentage or genetics. Heirs are adopted from subsidiary families all the time. There are some families where heirs are always adopted, to reduce infighting among the actual children, or to avoid particular genetic defects.

That said, some dynasties do place a lot of weight on genetics and familial lines, so contract marriages or concubines/surrogates are frequently used to produce heirs. Any children produced via concubine are legally members of the family who owns/employs the concubine. Doesn't matter who the inseminating or gestational parent is; legally, the child has legitimate status as a member of that household. (This can afford the concubine a certain amount of status as well, or at least security; fertility is a highly sought after trait.)

(Sidebar on contraception and eugenics: contraceptive implants are used most frequently among nobility/merchant class/military officers. The further down the social ladder you go, the less available any kind of medical technology is, never mind contraceptives, and commoners/serfs/slaves are encouraged to reproduce as often as possible. Rank and file miltary, however, would be surgically sterilized, and have any viable gametes extracted for genetic testing and possible use by surrogates. Sometimes this is reversible; most of the time it isn't, because it's assumed they're going to die before they'd be able to retire and have children anyway. A majority of pregnancies result in miscarriage; many children don't make it out of infancy because of birth defects. Infanticide is still common in some parts of the galaxy, but they'll usually try to terminate a pregnancy early if it looks like it'll be nonviable.) (Maybe they do lay clutches of eggs, I'm fuzzy on a lot of these details, honestly. Not all of them- but a lot of them.)

(Zahndrekh does not get to retire to a remote garden on a mountain with Obyron to write terrible poetry and raise a bunch of fat, happy children. He thinks about it sometimes, though.) (Obyron does not want to imagine how impossibly unruly Zahndrekh's progeny would be, and is frequently, fervently glad that he's sterile.) (Also he's pretty sure 'retirement' is just what happens when you meet the wrong end of a pike.)

Circling back around to Ithakas being fucking weird, it's traditional for Ithakan dynasts to practice either parthenogenesis or self-fertilization, which is considered either taboo or just kind of gross in most other parts of the galaxy. (Not everywhere- but definitely a lot of places. Parthenogenesis is actually a fairly rare trait for necrontyr; it was considered one of the things that made Ithakka the Lawmaker holy by the original separatist cult. It's not something all of their descendents have shared due to the general weirdness/instability of necrontyr genetics.) So there's no mention of Oltyx and Djoseras's mother, because they only ever had one parent. (Does this make everything about Unnas ever so slightly worse? Sure does!)

If biotransference hadn't happened when it did, Djoseras would've been expected to start producing children as soon as it became clear that Oltyx wasn't going to live past the age of 20. (At one point someone probably floated the idea of ending the Ithakas-Ogdobekh war by marrying Oltyx to Zultanekh. Djoseras would've shot down that idea- and whoever suggested it- with extreme prejudice.) (Zultanekh still laughs about this on occasion. No one ever told Oltyx; Zultanekh certainly isn't going to.) (Zuktanekh would have suggested a contract marriage between himself and Djoseras; after all, would Zultanekh not have birthed the most magnificent sons to be seen in the history of either dynasty? Yes, yes he would have! Alas, it was not to be. Djoseras rejected Zultanekh's courting gift of sulfur wine, and anyway, Anathrosis and Unnas would have come together united in abject horror and rage at the idea.)

Ogdobekh courtship usually starts with gifts of food or wine, followed by fine metalwork- either weapons and armor, or jewelry. Ithakas courtship has similar beats, since they were an Ogdobekh subsidiary originally. They're more about subtle gestures and acts of service than material gifts, though. (Oltyx is not really aware of any of this; as kynazh, he would've been explicitly forbidden from courting because, again, Ithakas is fucking weird. Yenekh, on the other hand, would be familiar with the process, and probably had no shortage of suitors pre-biotransference. He was a little too busy being a war hero to entertain any of them seriously.) (His first true love is the sea the void fancy spaceships fancy swords duty to the dynasty.)

(Drazak courtship usually starts with fighting side by side in the horde; sharing kills, sharing food, sharing flesh. The hunger is always easier to bear when you find someone to share it with.)

Cryptek conclaves can get weird and varied as well; some are extremely insular, and any children born to members of the conclave would be raised and trained there. Others will excommunicate anyone who gets pregnant, because pregnancy interferes with certain schools of technomancy. (You cannot have a pregnant plasmancer. It ends badly for everyone involved. Chronomancy also tends to have unpredictable effects on developing embryos.) Those conclaves actively recruit new members from military and commoner castes, rather than relying on existing members to keep the population going. Generally, crypteks don't marry, because their legal obligations are to their conclave first, and then their patron.

Cryptek/noble or cryptek/merchant couples would be vanishingly rare, because most crypteks don't have the wealth or status to make a politically advantageous match. (Orikan is kind of an exception to that rule, and he would've had a number of people vying for his favor, though not so much in a courtship-leading-to-marriage kind of way. I'm torn between the idea of him slutting it up in the Sautekh court, or being universally repulsed by anyone he considers less intelligent than him. Could go either way.) Pre-biotransference, crypteks of different schools who didn't see each other as competition would be the most common pairing, but even then actual marriage would be rare. There's no wealth or power to inherit or share, so couples would be more common-law/informal.

Otherwise, it'd be bullshit academia rules dialed up to 11. "Did they...you know...publish research together?" "No, they were fucking in the library." "Oh, I thought it was something scandalous. Nevermind then."

[juanmillerr]

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[jades-typurriter]

Secure Connection

As promised: more Posie!! I wrote this one toward the end of last Spring after a couple of conversations with friends regarding the malleability of digital bodies (as well as still having Many Thoughts about the way code can give them new compulsions, after writing something about Annie and a new taur-shaped chassis for a friend's Patreon). Enjoy reading about her dealing with a corporate-mandated "hardware" update!

CW: Genital TF, this is another one that's As About Sex as it can possibly be without being about sex

Posie sat, sulking—steaming, even—in her office. It was a small side room off of the main floor of IT personnel, system engineers, and other technical employees of her corporation. Much like a central server, it was placed for easy access to the department-wide administrative assistant, and much like a server room, it was snug, windowless, and awash with the calming drone and relaxing warmth of an array of exhaust fans. Though she was free to project herself nearly anywhere on the company’s campus, this was where her consciousness was housed, and where she felt most at home. It was also the only place she could get any damn privacy, a luxury that she was deeply grateful for at present.

A newly-downloaded file weighed on the back of the Renamon’s mind. More literally, it was somewhere in the racks of drives that made up her long-term memory, to and from which mission-critical information was transferred in the course of doing business. Had somebody asked where exactly the file was stored, she would have been able to list the specific drive and the exact directory address, but she had de-prioritized the allocation of her processing resources for the download. Once again, she had received an assignment from her superiors, and once again, she was hesitant. She may even have admitted to being recalcitrant. She resented the orders.

The package of data in question was an update for her own software, a suite of new tools to allow management to offload yet more menial tasks onto her in the name of “efficiency”. Forget that she could diagnose a software issue faster than any of the engineers could even open a remote connection to the malfunctioning device. Instead of allowing her to take the reins, they saw fit to divert more of her attention to the least impressive among talents, and the one she already put to use the most often: transferring data.

This wouldn’t have been much of a problem, ordinarily. After all, Posie resided in the beating heart of the network, the nexus through which the vast majority of information was sent and received. It could be… meditative. Parsing streams of ones and zeroes, overseeing the flow of packets, redirecting traffic to equally spread the load across modems and routers so as to optimize travel time. It could even have been considered relaxing, if a worker of her caliber needed to relax. Instead of offering her a vacation (pah!), however, the update felt more like it heralded a demotion, denying her even the ability to pluck like harpstrings the miles of copper and gold that lined her facility. She was expected to deliver this data on foot.

Management justified this humiliation with practical concerns: some information, much like the old records she was often tasked to dispose of, was so confidential that it could not be sent via wireless transmission. Even hardwired connections were too fallible for the likes of next-generation schematics and financial access keys—a single compromised workstation, or compromised worker, could spell the loss of the company’s upper hand in its market. She wasn’t even going to be afforded the dignity of carrying an external hard drive to the destination. That would require the slow and tedious process of physically moving from one place to the next; this was one of the only times that she regretted the freedom of movement that was so coveted by her flesh-and-blood peers.

With no room to make exceptions for security protocol, she gripped the edge of her desk, brow furrowing, eyes squinted shut in consternation. Eventually, she huffed, rose, and turned her attention to her “physical body”, summoning up the file in much the same way that one would approach a plate of food with a pungent odor. The Renamon steeled herself and began to more closely examine its contents. She read the raw code similarly to how one might read words on a page; however, where the turning gears of the organic mind would, almost unconsciously, conjure up an image as a result of those words, her mind kicked off a series of involuntary, autonomic processes.

Her body carried out the instructions on her behalf. Once she started, she had no control until she finally reached a stopcode; it was the nature of being a program herself that code had as much of an influence on her mind and body as her own thoughts, her own will. In opening the package, she reluctantly consented to the changes that management saw fit to make to her. It was better than the eventual forced-deadline sort of update that software companies were so keen on using nowadays, and at least choosing the time and place allowed her to make herself presentable again before having to face another person.

Having parts of her code—her very body—rewritten by the update was a strange sensation, not unlike having your thoughts dictated to you by an outside force. Stranger still was that she could feel the exact delineation between her previous self and the patches of… well, the patch. She could feel it quite strongly, as a matter of fact: beneath her skirt of simulated sky-blue fur, between her legs, she could feel her mesh being edited. Stretched. Reshaped. The vectors that made up the triangles of her wireframe soul were being rewritten, mathematically transformed. A shape began to protrude from the once-flat span at the bottom of her torso, at first round and indistinct, but quickly increasing in resolution.

The Renamon struggled to process the sensations as a long, slender connector began to take shape. This often happened with changes to her body plan; inputs streamed into her mind from directions, locations, that previously never sent any signals, and the new additions seldom had their sensitivity adjusted downward for her convenience. In this case, it was highly sensitive, delivering reams of data to the base of her skull just from brushing up against her own fur, or the gentle flow of air from the computers in her office. It made sense, given that it was supposed to be a high-capacity transfer tool, but she was too busy buckling at the knees and clutching at the desk behind her so she didn’t fall flat on her rear for the thought to occur to her.

Her processors demanded more cooling, kicking into high gear as they formatted the two new storage devices that accompanied the connector, tailor-made for packing confidential data as tightly as possible. The sound of whirring fans filled the room, stirring her fur and sending shivers up and down her back; she could only hope that the rushing exhaust made enough noise to drown her out, whimpering despite herself. The new drives were larger (and more unwieldy) than the ones that were built into her chest, much to her chagrin. She was forced to adjust her stance and her gait as she found her footing again, spreading her legs wider than she was accustomed in order to give them enough room.

The spinning in her head slowly settling down, she slowly began to compose herself once again, taking stock of the new additions. They were cumbersome, to be sure, and she lamented how they jutted out from her otherwise sleek form and burdened her with less-graceful posture. It didn’t even match her fur! The software engineers that had concocted the code had at least included one small mercy: a compartment for the connector to retract into, nestled in the fur above the storage drives. No such luck for the drives themselves. She supposed she would just have to adjust to walking with delicate hardware in tow. As she went to smooth her fur over her lap again, her paw recoiled away. Some kind of… static discharge was left in the fluff. A memory leak, perhaps? The fact that such a malfunction could be caused just from having the connector brush up against her fur appalled her, deepening her frustration even more. They couldn’t even test the update for bugs before shipping it out to her. She shook out her paw and finished arranging her skirt as best she could before working up the composure to finally leave her office.

Picking up the payload for which all this fanfare had been arranged was at least a quick, easy process. She stopped into the office of the manager that had assigned her the task; she offered a businesslike nod and, knowing that she was always itching to skip niceties in the name of saving time, he offered a straightforward wave at his personal terminal. She held a paw over the computer tower and, in the time it took for electricity to arc to her fingertip with a tinny zzzrt, she had already searched his directory for the relevant test files and copied them to the newly-installed drives. Wireless transfer, yes, but only technically. The engineers had specifically asked a member of another division, whose computer network wasn’t connected to their own; it was as though she had picked a folder up from his desk and walked out with it.

Moving the file was just as uneventful. It was far from the first time that she’d navigated the sprawling corporate property, and even if it were, the maps existed just outside the orbit of her thoughts, ready to be summoned to mind at a simple impulse. What she was not expecting, however, was the technician who was waiting in the server room to which she was asked to deliver the file. While she preferred to work in the isolation of rooms that were set aside specifically for hardware, she was far from unused to being in the presence of the other people responsible for maintaining the company’s systems. That said…

“Can I help you?” The Renamon icily asked.

“Oh, I don’t need anything! I’m just here to take notes on the transfer.” Her tone was cheery; evidently, she wasn’t aware how compromising the new additions were. “The time it takes, any obvious issues. I’ll be the one checking the files against the originals, too,” she concluded, hooking a thumb over her shoulder at a monitor behind her.

“I see,” Posie replied through gritted teeth. “You have clearance to see these files, then?”

“Well, they’re just dummy data, ma’am.” At least she was respectful.

“And the proprietary hardware I’ve been… equipped with?” she forced out, keeping her synthesized voice even.

“Oh, for sure I do. I designed it!”

Oh! she seethed. So she knows pre-cise-ly the position he’s put me in.

“Well. I suppose there’s no point in delaying things, then.”

“Ready when you are!”

With tense shoulders, she turned toward the server rack, eyes darting over it, searching for where exactly she was supposed to connect to the array. After glancing over the contents of each drive, she found the one she was supposed to copy the data into—deposit would be more apt, as it was her understanding that the files would be automatically flushed from her system—and found a port that would allow her to access it. Conveniently, it was around waist height. She wondered, crossly, whether that had been an intentional design decision by this engineer as well. As she looked at it, she felt a twinge from the connector; on its own, like a Bluetooth device automatically searching for signals, it slid itself out from its fuzzy little compartment.

Her skin was abuzz, and her fur stood on end. She couldn’t quite tell if it was coming from the connector itself, or if it was the feeling of the programmer’s eyes on her If she could take a deep breath, she would have then. Without any way to stall further, or to tell the leering young woman to take her test files and store them somewhere indecent, she simply pushed forward with dropping off the damned data.

The instant the connector grazed the metal of the port, lightning shot into it, through her body, and into her head, making it swim with electrical potential. A stuttering, lagging thought made its way to the surface of her mind: they really had overtuned the sensitivity. She stifled a gasp and suppressed the urge to lay into the engineer (electrons were eager to flow out of her even without proper alignment with the contacts in the port, and didn’t she know that discharge like that could damage a piece of hardware?!), willing her body to keep pressing the stupid connector into the socket.

Even as she tried to get it over with already, something in the back of her mind compelled her to draw back a bit. If she had been restraining herself from reprimanding the engineer for risking the hardware, then she should at least do it the service of ensuring she was properly aligned, shouldn’t she? She obliged the impulse, and the motion all at once became much jerkier, less controlled. The friction of the port against her connector was enough to send her tail snapping back and forth, and she could tell that the temperature in her own server’s room had risen by a fair few degrees. Back and forth, wiggling side to side, she continued to readjust and realign herself, driven by unfamiliar code and overwhelmed by the signals pouring into her. She lost herself in the task, forgetting herself, forgetting her surroundings, until finally the technician cleared her throat.

“Ma’am,” she ventured, blushing and wide-eyed. “What, um. What are you doing? You should just need to plug it in.”

“I’m.” Her interruption had snapped the Renamon back to reality. She was mortified, tail sticking straight out and back ramrod straight. Her cheeks burned mercilessly. “I’m calibrating the connection.”

“Calibrating?”

“Did you want your files transferred with or without corrupted and incomplete data?” She snapped, hoping that her authoritative tone would head off any debate. “Assign me experimental hardware and then ask me to be reckless with it, hm? Should I be taking notes to give to our superiors?”

“I—alright, I guess you can’t be too careful,” she stammered, sheepishly pressing her legs together. “That was even something I tried to work into the design, so, c-carry on?”

“Thank you,” Posie blustered, turning back to the server rack. She did so slowly, reluctantly relishing the feeling of sliding around within the socket. She allowed herself one or two more “practice” attempts, hoping that it wouldn’t arouse too much suspicion from the engineer. Ultimately, just like before, there was no use in continuing to stall, and when she was able to bring her body to a stop, the rational part of herself was eager to be done with this entire torrid affair.

With more force, she pressed the connector inward one final time, trembling as the latch began to press against the opening. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, she continued, overwhelmed by the volume of electricity surging into her. The latch gave, compressing as it continued to slide inside, until finally it clicked into place, securing her to the array of drives and finalizing the connection.

All at once, a torrent of data poured out of her, an electron tsunami that felt like it threatened to spill out of the socket in which she was hilted. More data was transferred in the span of a few seconds than she was used to consciously processing, having cultivated such skill in delegating and compartmentalizing with background processes. Once again, the world around her was utterly drowned out; the strength fled her legs, and she clung to the steel bar that reinforced the top of the server rack, threatening to topple the entire system. Her self-control abandoned her as well and, forgetting the engineer, she cried out with an airy, wild, distinctly foxlike yelp. She screamed in surprise, gasped at the deluge of information, moaned because there was no room left in her mind for thought to do anything else.

Quickly, the disks of the server rack had finished writing the files she had carried to them, and her own drives were thoroughly purged. In another building, the radiators serving her processors shed heat at their absolute limits, and fans worked overtime to bring her back within her safe operational range. As her overworked circuitry began to chug through the backlog of sensory information, the entire experience caught up with her—including the detail that this entire shameless display had been carried out in front of that underhanded little engineer. She blinked, hard, and whipped her head to face her. For as hot as her own ears felt, the young woman’s face appeared to be glowing even brighter.

“What. Was that.”

“Um—”

“I’m used to new adjustments requiring desensitization, or even adjustment on their gain,” she growled, voice low and eerily even. “But that was a bridge too far to just have been miscalibration. Why did you design it like that?”

“Well, y-you remember how I mentioned, um, having considered an early disconnection?” Posie’s frosty glare didn’t waver, so the tech continued, answering her own rhetorical question. “That was, uh, the safeguard. Against early disconnection. I, figured it’d just be easier to make it so you wouldn’t want to unplug—”

“Do you think you have the au-thor-ity to go making changes to my mind, young lady?!”

“I-I can roll back the update if you want—”

“I think you’ve done QUITE enough!” The Renamon declared, despite herself. Perhaps it was genuine distrust, or perhaps—perhaps she truly couldn’t tell which desires were her own, at the moment. This would require careful study of her own system files.

Another small click broke the silence following her outburst, and the dongle began to retract from the server’s port and back into Posie’s body. Now free to move around, she dusted and fluffed her skirt and leaned down to look the engineer in the eye.

“I trust that you can report to your supervisor that I performed to your expectations,” she hissed. “And that there will be no need for any further discussion of your little project.” The programmer nodded, eyes even wider than before—and cheeks even redder? The Renamon scoffed, sneered, and spun, storming out the door, already allotting time in her schedule for the next time that she would be called upon for such a delivery.

Utterly unsurprisingly, she had been correct in her assessment that her superiors would take every opportunity to save their organic employees��� time at her expense. Confidential deliveries became a regular part of her routine, and though she had great disdain for being reduced to a mere courier for so much of the workday, she insisted upon completing the task to her usual, lofty standards.

Posie was as prompt as she always was, dropping everything to ferry information between privileged parties, striving to reduce latency even in more analogue forms of communication. There was the occasional complaint about how long downloads took once she had finally arrived at her location, but she was quick to remind such impatient recipients that the decision to follow this protocol came from on-high, and that even for someone who worked as quickly as her, great care for the safety of the data was a corner that simply could not be cut in the name of rushing around.

She was as meticulous about ensuring proper alignment with the port, fine-tuning her contact with the wires within, as the first time she had experimented with the new tools, and complaints about noise from the server room were easily dismissed as the usual stress of supporting her formidable computational power. After all, she was often venturing out of the range of her home network, hosting herself entirely on the recipients’ systems; was she at fault when they couldn’t handle the information throughput they asked of her?

Once the deliveries had become more routine, and none of her peers bothered to check in when they felt it was taking too long or getting too noisy, she began to find enjoyment in the solitude of her work, just as with the other, admittedly more tedious, tasks she was expected to carry out. With fewer prying eyes to judge her performance, she could make herself more comfortable while handling transfers. She didn’t have to worry that anybody would walk in on her in the debased state she often found herself in while connected directly to a data center, leaning her full weight on the poor rack, tongue lolling out and chest heaving air to keep her cool. 

Then again, if somebody—especially that little technician who’d saddled her with these “upgrades”—wanted to question her efficacy, that was more than fine by her. Posie was a woman who prided herself in her work, and would seldom turn down a chance to demonstrate her first-rate hardware and unparalleled optimization. She would be more than happy to demonstrate just how quickly she could pump out information, and just how much throughput she was capable of.

Thank you for reading! If you want to see more of my work, you can check it out here and here!

[minosbull]

This evening, lawyers for the Department of Justice told a federal court that the administration does not believe it has a legal obligation to return Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia to the United States, despite a court order to do so.

The 29-year-old Abrego Garcia came to the U.S. about 2011 when he was 16 to escape threats from a gang that was terrorizing his family. He settled in Maryland with his older brother, a U.S. citizen, and lived there until in 2019 he was picked up by police as he waited at a Home Depot to be picked up for work as a day laborer. Police transferred him to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE). After a hearing, an immigration judge rejected his claim for asylum but said he could not be sent back to El Salvador, finding it credible that the Barrio 18 gang had been “targeting him and threatening him with death because of his family’s pupusa business.”

Ever since, Abrego Garcia has checked in annually with ICE as directed. He lives with his wife and their three children, and has never been charged with any crime. The Department of Homeland Security issued him a work permit, and he joined a union, working full time as a sheet metal apprentice.

On March 12, ICE agents pulled his car over, told his wife to come pick up their disabled son, and incarcerated Abrego Garcia, pressing him to say he was a member of MS-13. On March 15 the government rendered Abrego Garcia to the infamous CECOT prison for terrorists in El Salvador, alleged to be the site of human rights abuses, torture, extrajudicial killings. The U.S. government is paying El Salvador $6 million a year to incarcerate the individuals it sends there.

On March 24, Abrego Garcia’s family sued the administration over his removal.

On March 31 the government admitted that its arrest and rendition of Abrego Garcia happened because of “administrative error” but said he couldn’t be brought back because, in El Salvador, he is outside the jurisdiction of the United States. It also accused him of being a member of the MS-13 gang and said that bringing him back to the U.S. would threaten the public.

On April 4, U.S. District Court Judge Paula Xinis ordered the government to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S. no later than 11:59 pm on April 7.

In her opinion, filed April 6, Judge Xinis wrote that “[a]lthough the legal basis for the mass removal of hundreds of individuals to El Salvador remains disturbingly unclear, Abrego Garcia’s case is categorically different—there were no legal grounds whatsoever for his arrest, detention, or removal.…. [H]is detention appears wholly lawless.” It is “a clear constitutional violation.” And yet administration officials “cling to the stunning proposition that they can forcibly remove any person—migrant and U.S. citizen alike—to prisons outside the United States, and then baldly assert they have no way to effectuate return because they are no longer the 'custodian,' and the Court thus lacks jurisdiction.”

The administration had already appealed her April 4 order to the Supreme Court, which handed down a 9–0 decision on Thursday, April 10, requiring the Trump administration “to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador,” but asking the district court to clarify what it meant by “effectuate,” that release, noting that it must give “due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.”

The Supreme Court also ordered that “the Government should be prepared to share what it can concerning the steps it has taken and the prospect of further steps.” Judge Xinis ordered the government to file an update by 9:30 a.m. on April 11 explaining where Abrego Garcia is, what the government is doing to get him back, and what more it will do. She planned an in-person hearing at 1:00 p.m.

But the administration evidently does not intend to comply. On April 11, the lawyer representing the government, Drew Ensign, said he did not have information about where Abrego Garcia is and ignored her order to provide information about what the government was doing to bring him back. Saturday, it said Abrego Garcia is “alive and secure” in CECOT. Today, it said it had no new information about him, but said that Abrego Garcia is no longer eligible for the immigration judge’s order not to send him to El Salvador “because of his membership in MS-13 which is now a designated foreign terrorist organization.”

There is still no evidence that Abrego Garcia is a member of MS-13.

Today, administration lawyers used the Supreme Court’s warning that the court must give “due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs” to lay out a chilling argument. They ignored the Supreme Court’s agreement that the government must get Abrego Garcia out of El Salvador, as well as the court’s requirement that the administration explain what it’s doing to make that happen.

Instead, the lawyers argued that because Abrego Garcia is now outside the country, any attempt to get him back would intrude on the president’s power to conduct foreign affairs. Similarly, they argue that the president cannot be ordered to do anything but remove domestic obstacles from Abrego Garcia’s return. Because Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, is currently in the U.S. for a visit with Trump, they suggest they will not share any more updates about Abrego Garcia and the court should not ask for them because it would intrude on “sensitive” foreign policy issues.

Let’s be very clear about exactly what’s happening here: President Donald J. Trump is claiming the power to ignore the due process of the law guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, declare someone is a criminal, kidnap them, send them to prison in a third country, and then claim that there is no way to get that person back.

All people in the United States are entitled to due process, but Trump and his officers have tried to convince Americans that noncitizens are not. They have also pushed the idea that those they are offshoring are criminals, but a Bloomberg investigation showed that of the 238 men sent to CECOT in the first group, only five of them had been charged with or convicted of felony assault or gun violations. Three had been charged with misdemeanors like petty theft. Two were charged with human smuggling. In any case, in the U.S., criminals are entitled to due process.

Make no mistake: as Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson recently warned, if the administration can take noncitizens off the streets, render them to prison in another country, and then claim it is helpless to correct the error either because the person is out of reach of U.S. jurisdiction, it could do the same thing to citizens.

Trump has said he would “love” to do exactly that, and would even be “honored” to, and Bukele has been offering to hold U.S. citizens. Dasha Burns and Myah Ward of Politico reported Friday that former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince is pitching a plan to expand renditions to El Salvador to at least 100,000 criminal offenders from U.S. prisons and to avoid legal challenges by making part of CECOT American territory, then leasing it back to El Salvador to run.

When White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt says, “The president's idea for American citizens to potentially be deported, these would be heinous violent criminals who have broken our nation's laws repeatedly," remember that just days ago, Trump suggested that a former government employee was guilty of treason for writing a book about his time in the first Trump administration that Trump claimed was “designed to sow chaos and distrust” in the government.

Here’s the thing: Once you give up the idea that we are all equal before the law and have the right to due process, you have given up the whole game. You have admitted the principle that some people have more rights than others. Once you have replaced the principle of equality before the law with the idea that some people have no rights, you have granted your approval to the idea of an authoritarian government. At that point, all you can do is to hope that the dictator and his henchmen overlook you.

At least some people understand this. The president of North America’s Building Trades Unions, Sean McGarvey, received a standing ovation when he said to a room full of his fellow union workers: “We need to make our voices heard. We’re not red, we’re not blue. We’re the building trades, the backbone of America. You want to build a $5 billion data center? Want more six-figure careers with health care, retirement, and no college debt? You don’t call Elon Musk, you call us!... And yeah, that means all of us. All of us. Including our brother [International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers] apprentice Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who we demand to be returned to us and his family now! Bring him home!”

—

Notes:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.578815/gov.uscourts.mdd.578815.31.0.pdf

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.578815/gov.uscourts.mdd.578815.65.0.pdf

https://apnews.com/article/who-is-abrego-garcia-e1b2af6528f915a1f0ec60f9a1c73cdd

Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance

The Supreme Court Finally Rules

Late this afternoon, the Supreme Court issued a 9-0 response to the government’s application to vacate federal District Judge Paula Xinis’ order that the Trump administration return Kilmar Abrego Garcia from prison in El Salvador to the United States. Xinis had ordered him returned by the end of the day on Monday. The Supreme Court let him sit for an ad…

Read more

3 days ago · 3264 likes · 348 comments · Joyce Vance

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.578815/gov.uscourts.mdd.578815.64.0.pdf

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-records-show-about-migrants-sent-to-salvadoran-prison-60-minutes-transcript/

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2025-04-10/about-90-of-migrants-sent-to-el-salvador-lacked-u-s-criminal-record

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-09/about-90-of-migrants-sent-to-salvador-lacked-us-criminal-record

https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/will-the-trump-administration-try-to-deport-u-s-citizens-trump-has-floated-the-idea/3890350/

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/addressing-risks-associated-with-an-egregious-leaker-and-disseminator-of-falsehoods/

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/el-salvador-prisons-warning-americans-trump-1235309721/

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/11/military-contractors-prison-plan-detained-immigrants-erik-prince-00287208

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-el-salvador-us-citizens-denaturalization-1235315975/

https://www.npr.org/2025/04/10/nx-s1-5358421/supreme-court-abrego-garcia-deportation-decision

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24a949_lkhn.pdf

Youtube:

watch?v=K31tuX1JnE0

Bluesky:

rgoodlaw.bsky.social/post/3lmpyntbijk2v

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[dertaglichedan]

How to know if a USB cable is hiding malicious hacker hardware

Are your USB cables sending your data to hackers?

We expect USB-C cables to perform a specific task: transferring either data or files between devices. We give little more thought to the matter, but malicious USB-C cables can do much more than what we expect.

These cables hide malicious hardware that can intercept data, eavesdrop on phone calls and messages, or, in the worst cases, take complete control of your PC or cellphone. The first of these appeared in 2008, but back then they were very rare and expensive — which meant the average user was largely safeguarded.

Since then, their availability has increased 100-fold and now with both specialist spy retailers selling them as “spy cables” as well as unscrupulous sellers passing them off as legitimate products, it’s all too easy to buy one by accident and get hacked. So, how do you know if your USB-C cable is malicious?

Further reading: We tested 43 old USB-C to USB-A cables. 1 was great. 10 were dangerous

Identifying malicious USB-C cables

Identifying malicious USB-C cables is no easy task since they are designed to look just like regular cables. Scanning techniques have been largely thought of as the best way to sort the wheat from the chaff, which is what industrial scanning company, Lumafield of the Lumafield Neptune industrial scanner fame, recently set out to show.

The company employed both 2D and 3D scanning techniques on the O.MG USB-C cable — a well-known hacked cable built for covert field-use and research. It hides an embedded Wi-Fi server and a keylogger in its USB connector. PCWorld Executive Editor Gordon Ung covered it back in 2021, and it sounds scary as hell.

What Lumafield discovered is interesting to say the least. A 2D X-ray image could identify the cable’s antenna and microcontroller, but only the 3D CT scan could reveal another band of wires connected to a die stacked on top of the cable’s microcontroller. You can explore a 3D model of the scan yourself on Lumafield’s website.

It confirms the worst — that you can only unequivocally confirm that a USB-C cable harbors malicious hardware with a 3D CT scanner, which unless you’re a medical radiographer or 3D industrial scientist is going to be impossible for you to do. That being so, here are some tips to avoid and identify suspicious USB-C cables without high-tech gear:

Buy from a reputable seller: If you don’t know and trust the brand, simply don’t buy. Manufacturers like Anker, Apple, Belkin, and Ugreen have rigorous quality-control processes that prevent malicious hardware parts from making it into cables. Of course, the other reason is simply that you’ll get a better product — 3D scans have similarly revealed how less reputable brands can lack normal USB-C componentry, which can result in substandard performance. If you’re in the market for a new cable right now, see our top picks for USB-C cables.

Look for the warning signs: Look for brand names or logos that don’t look right. Strange markings, cords that are inconsistent lengths or widths, and USB-C connectors with heat emanating from them when not plugged in can all be giveaways that a USB-C cable is malicious.

Use the O.MG malicious cable detector: This detector by O.MG claims to detect all malicious USB cables.

Use data blockers: If you’re just charging and not transferring data, a blocker will ensure no data is extracted. Apart from detecting malicious USB-C cables, the O.MG malicious cable detector functions as such a data blocker.

Use a detection service: If you’re dealing with extremely sensitive data for a business or governmental organization, you might want to employ the services of a company like Lumafield to detect malicious cables with 100 percent accuracy. Any such service will come with a fee, but it could be a small price to pay for security and peace of mind.

[anime-owo-kage-san]

Vox x Niffty husband and wife theory AU (No specific name for this AU yet)

AU Concept:

(Main Plot)

- After Vox realizes Niffty was his ex-wife when he was alive, he finds her and [Needs to be filled out soon with more details of how this developed…]. And they run off together to protect her from the exorcists in future exterminations, due to the possibility that they might target her for being the one who killed Adam.

- Vox cuts off all his access and connections all around Pentagram to avoid getting tracked, blocking and deleting all his files of his security and files of their brand. And also giving up his power and position in the Vees. --Not realizing that he left the other two Vees in a bad postion for one of them.

(I have Fiyeraba fever from being in the Wicked fandom…. I also started imagining Vox and Niffty having an “As Long As You’re Mine” moment in this AU. If you know, you know.)

(Subplots)

- In the past, the Vees had a mutual contract. --Which orignally started off with just Valentino and Vox (before Velvette landed in Hell, and became part of their business); Two contracts Vox made between him and Val;

1) "The Business Partner Contract": If Val wanted Vox's support to become an overlord, he has to forever work along side him as a business partner (which Valentino didn't mind. In fact things got intimate between him and Vox later on in those years). If Val were to ever leave their business, every soul he obtained would end up in Vox's hand and Val would fall back to the position of a regular sinner.

2) "The Successor Contract": If Vox ever steps down as the Vees' head, all his power, authority, and soul contracts shall be transferred to his most powerful "second in command".

(I don’t think contracts in Hazbin have names, but I named these two so I don’t confuse myself when referring to the separate contracts.)

- However, the contract wasn't worded well. Due to not planning a third in their group (Velvette) at that time they made the contract, the 2nd contract had very big loopholes and the 1st contract was not protected. So when Vox left the Vees, it left Velvette at a huge advantage, and Valentino at a disadvantage.

- Because of Val's profits plummeting at the studio (due to repetitive content), Velvette's side of the business had higher ratings. Making Velvette the "most powerful second in command" between the two. And by default, everything Vox had owned transferred to Velvette without error. All of his power and employees went to her, and every soul contract and bussiness contract magically replaced Vox's name with hers..... Including his business partner contract with Valentino.

- Long story short: Velvette went “Heather Duke”.

- Now that Velvette owned that business partner contract, she re-wrote it to her liking; Everything Val had was all hers now. Including Angel Dust, who Velvette took out of the porn studio and turned him into her number 1 model for her fashion shows. (She doesn’t care about Angel in that way, she just likes his body shape and thinks it’s being wasted, getting beaten up in snuff, when he could be modeling for six arm outfits instead.)—Angel was pretty confused, but wasn't going to look a gifthorse in the mouth. He's just glad he's finally out of the porn industry and still has a well-paying job (with an only slightly less shitty boss).

- She then demoted and placed Val in Angel's former position as the porn's industry's number one (whore) star, and turned Val’s studio into a more softcore focused films and occasional suggestive music videos. (Not because she’s nice, keep in that in mind. Softcore is just more of her style.)

- Valentino hated everything. Especially Vox (who he refused to admit, left him a little heartbroken...)

- Val now modeled sexy yet innocent clothing--types of clothes he already wears often but now, he has to pose in front of the camera with a shy and demure mask to match the 'aesthtic'. And to top it all off, since he was just "Angel's replacement", he was promoted the same way he used to promote Angel.

(Fr tho…. I headcannon that Velvette and Val aren’t really 100% buddy-buddy. They relate in some things like fashion and gossip but other than that, if Vox isn’t in the room discussing important stuff, you won’t see them talking to each other.)

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(I know I know…! It’s ironic of me to say that this AU is Vox x Niffty focused, but say more plot for the Velvette & Valentino subplot. But, I ended up thinking about it more.)

I’m not a fashion expert, so sorry if the outfits I drew weren’t that good. (Velvette’s was just suppose to be inspired by all the Vees, to symbolize that she’s the head of each separate business now.)

Btw, Velvette changed their brand name from “The Vees” to “Lady Vee”. —Originally she was going to go with “Queen Vee”, but Val sarcastically commented that she might get copyrighted by the Gluttony Ring.

[beloved-belittled]

Self-Aware MKX Shinnok x Reader (2/2)

Click here for Part 1

My first complete story on Tumblr! Although, I'm heavily, HEAVILY, leaning towards writing an epilogue for this. Enjoy!

TW: Yandere, kidnapping, stalking, invasion of privacy, blackmail, hacking, viruses, murder/death, slight/implied NSFW

18+ to interact

The next few months of your life pass without fanfare. Your computer seems fine after your encounter with Shinnok. Soon enough the memory of it vanishes into the recesses of your mind. Life goes on. You continue with your daily business unbothered.

However, from that moment onward your PC becomes a ticking time bomb. Within an hour of use, Shinnok manages to gain full control of every process in your computer. You aren't even able to turn it on/off without his permission. If attached to a power source, he's now able to run 24/7 without your input. This accomplishment brings him closer to bringing about the apocalypse.

Shinnok doesn't stop at infecting your computer. He wants access to everything you own. Transferring himself into your router was rather simple. Now, anything in your household that connects to the Internet is compromised. He slithers his way into all your electronics, holding a particular interest in your cell phone. At this rate, even if you got rid of your computer it'd be pointless. He has eyes and ears nearly everywhere in your house. And now, with his control over your phone you often bring him wherever you go.

However, your household is merely a speck of dust to him. He needs more than control over your devices for all of his plans to come to fruition. He begins spreading viruses throughout the Internet, letting them worm their way into anything he can. He eventually penetrates the most secretive, secure, and important data systems of the world. For now, his infections lie there in wait. A few more pieces must fall into place before he can act.

Once satisfied with the spread of his influence, his attention once again focuses on you. Shinnok, in all his ego, is still slighted by your rejection of him. No matter how small of a disrespect he simply can't ignore it. He desires to punish you. Both for your actions and for these warm emotions you're causing in him. He has the perfect plan for this.

If you're employed, say goodbye to your job. He will send the nastiest text to everyone in your company's database, even revealing information that should be confidential. It doesn't matter how much you try to plead your case. no one at work wants to hear you out. You're fired with cause, making it virtually impossible to file for benefits (if applicable) in the meantime. But that's not all! He also destroys your education records, making it so there's no proof of you ever attending school in their systems. Good luck convincing anyone who works there to help you. It's not their transcripts that got deleted after all.

Naturally, you're heartbroken from this. You might even reach out to a few friends or family members for support. They never respond. The text, email, or phone call you send is blocked by his powers. This also extends to looking for a new job. If you try to apply online they'll never receive your application. Unless you have a way to physically be there, you're completely isolated from the world.

Don't make the mistake of crying somewhere he can observe you. He gets sadistic pleasure from it, loving your sobs and trembling body. Look how weak you are before him. Your tears are gasoline to his fiery obsession. He works on making you cry more often. At the same time however, a tiny part of him wishes to comfort you. To be able to embrace you and lie that everything is alright. In those moments he's painfully aware of his lack of a physical body.

He leaves you alone for the next few days, letting the despair sink in. But he's back like an intrusive thought. This time bringing some heavy ammunition. He texts you from an unknown number, threatening to leak your most sensitive information unless you do as he says. He isn't bluffing, making sure to include addresses, financial information, and even personal videos/images you hoped would never see the light of day. Naturally, you're inclined to listen to him even if just to buy time.

Shinnok's first few orders to you are a bit odd. From your perspective at least. He has you install microphones, cameras, and speakers in every room of your house. The equipment to do so arrives on your doorstep in a mysterious package. You do as he asks, assuming that you could just turn it off when needed. But of course, your stalker always knows when you've disabled it. A few firm warnings is enough for you to stop trying. His next demand is for you to get a TV in your living room. Doesn't matter if you have one or not, he wants you to set up the one that is delivered to your doorstep. Questioning how he's even getting this stuff is a fruitless endeavor on your end.

By the end of it, your house is wired up to the point that he can monitor you anywhere 24/7. And that's what he does: making sure to add his sardonic commentary. Eating anything? He'll call you a pig if you dare drop a single crumb on the floor. Sleeping? “Your snores are loud enough to wake the dead.” He grumbles when you awake. Bringing someone over? He doesn't say anything, but it's amazing how you can order a hit over the dark web. You don't see that person alive again after that.

His comments aren't the only thing making your life hell. He likes to test just how far he can stretch your boundaries. Will you put on any clothing he asks of you? Even if it's barely more than a scrap of fabric? Can he make you eat food off the floor, gnawing on the spilled meal like a dog? What if he asks you to touch yourself? Would you do it showing your shame before the fallen God? He has to learn the answer to these questions.

But even with all this he's unsatisfied. He's beyond frustrated at still being trapped behind circuitry. At first, he thought entering your world would be as easy as traveling through the realms. He viewed the computer he was trapped in to be a box, rather than realizing he was the box. No method nor magic could give him the form he desired. Or at least that's what he thought.

You remembered it like yesterday. The day when the whole world went offline. No one could access the internet or their digital devices, and all telecommunications were halted in an instant. The globe that was so connected unraveled in mere moments. People were confused, but no one knew the real extent of the problem until more than a day had passed. All e-commerce came to a sudden halt, deliveries to important industries such as food and healthcare went unfilled. The blackout caused shortages in every way possible, and once that happened chaos spread across the world.

Before the shutdown your hacker demanded you “get supplies.” Food, medications, cash, and other necessities. You briefly wondered if this was lucky timing or if he had prior knowledge of this. Nonetheless, at this point in time Shinnok has full control over you. Your finances and other things leading to freedom have long since been seized. Your only option for escape is to live out in the woods with zero access to technology. Of course, you choose not to go down that path.

While the world is burning down you're doing relatively OK, sheltering in place until this all blows over. You've occupied yourself with doodling since connections are down. You haven't heard from your hacker at all, but that's reasonable as they shouldn't be able to spy on you in the world's current state.

You're interrupted by a shrill scream from outside, followed by several other yells. The sound carries all the way to your front door. It wasn't unusual to hear… Commotions outside, as people rioted and wreaked havoc on one another. Still, you immediately went on high alert. You grab a makeshift weapon and approach your door. Peaking through the window next to it grants you an unbelievable sight.

There were “things” flying in the sky, their appearance a mockery of gargoyles and demons. They possessed an incredible stature, which made them only more intimidating when paired with their sharp teeth and claws. They had glowing, blue bodies that seemed to flicker with every movement. They peered down below, looking at everything as though it were mere prey. And that's what the humans you saw scrambling and screeching outside were, being butchered and carried off to God knows where. You stare in disbelief, believing for a moment that you were simply imagining things. However, a headless body is slammed through your window -shattering the glass and landing into your quarters with a harsh thud. Staring at the corpse, glass shards, and the hellish monster now heading your way causes you to realize that imagination or not -you need to get moving fast.

Your legs can't carry you fast enough as you bolt towards your bedroom. You hear a swoosh announcing the gargoyle-like creature's arrival in your home. You quickly duck into your closet, shutting the door with as much silence as possible. For several moments everything is quiet. Although, you swear that if you focused hard enough you could hear slurping.

You stay put, willing to wait in there for hours if needed. But, through the silence, the softest of footsteps were approaching your room. You could just barely hear them, even when they moved into your room and before the closet. You were ready for action. The moment the intruder opens the door you would bust out their kneecaps.

What you didn't expect was for a face to clip through the door, followed by their neck and arms. Nor did you expect to recognize the face as… Shinnok from Mortal Kombat? But to say that he was an exact replica would be a lie. He was covered in a strange electric-blue glow, which constantly pulsed and sparked. His form looked glitched, parts of his body randomly distorting then fixing itself. He was terrifying to look at -especially while towering at least a foot over you. He looks beyond excited to see you, reaching out a staticky hand towards your face.

“I-I.” You stutter, then swing at him with your weapon. It phases through him simply parting air molecules. He ignores your attempt at an attack. His electrified palm reaches your cheek, the contact resulting in tiny shocks everywhere he touches. “Finally.” He starts, “I am able to touch what's mine after so long.” He withdraws his hand, the needling touch parting with him. Your contact with him isn't lost for long as he wraps you in a deep embrace. You feel tingly everywhere your bodies meet, especially on your head where he then rests his chin.

You hear him sigh. “Do you know how painful it's been?” His grip tightens, causing the tips of his nails to dig into your back. “For me to only be able to watch you and the world? To only exist within the confines of a screen with no physical body?” He leans back to look you in the eye. “No. I know that you don't understand. But don't worry, you will very soon.” He wrestles you out of the closet with his superior might. You scream and struggle but his grip is inescapable.

You're carried off like a petulant child to your PC. It's been sitting there collecting dust ever since the blackout. Eerily, its screen glows a pure white, brighter than what you've ever been able to set it to. Shinnok pauses at the device before speaking. “Look, here is where we first met. Fitting that it'd be the gateway for our eternity together.” You wish you knew what he was talking about.

He pushes your face towards the screen. There's an indescribable pull emitting from it, a force trying to suck you inside. “Goodbye, my love. I'll be seeing you shortly.” Your face touches the screen and in an instant you feel yourself being stretched. Pulled in all directions your body becomes taffy and you lose the ability to move. You remain in that state for seconds, then a stinging sensation spreads all across your body. Every nerve on your body feels poked by a needle. Had you the ability still you would've shrieked. Instead, you lay there helplessly in agony.

Eventually, all your pain fades into numbness. You can even feel your spaghettified form melding back into shape. But you have no idea where you are. You're sitting in a pitch black area unable to even see your outstretched hand. There's no sound, no temperature, nothing at all. You're acutely aware of the fact that you aren't even breathing.

You could've sat in that void forever. But, a feeling of electricity in your ears later and you can hear someone speaking to you. “Can you hear me, (Y/N)?” You don't respond, but as if reading your mind he continues on. “Perfect. It seems that the interfacing was a success.” A swoosh sounds in front of you when Shinnok appears. He's noticeably normal in appearance. Somehow, he's the only thing that you can see in this place.

“Welcome to your new home.” He states. The scenery surrounding you changes, becoming a hellscape not unfamiliar to you. “I can make this world as unpleasant as possible or-” he stops mid-sentence for the environment to shift again. You're in a lush forest that you're sure you’ve seen before. “Or, I can shape this world to your wildest dreams.” His hands fold behind him. “So, which one will you choose?”

This time you choose wisely.