#WHY MUST I PARTAKE I THIS EVIL THING CALLED SCHEDULE?

[ourlordsaviour-memes]

Guys I want to be cool, and post unique and/or not reblogged stuff here. But like, I can't even reliably write one sentence about my day ANYWHERE-

So like... Yell at me if you want content. My asks are open.

[katikacreations]

(Cover illustration by @clowncauldron​ ) LINK TO AO3 VERSION IN THE NOTES! Formatting is better on AO3, it’s easier to read over there!

SUMMARY:  Gyro can’t fix Boyd’s glitching problem, so he asks Dr. Von Drake for advice. Boyd goes to a pool party and confesses to Huey that his new home life with Gyro isn’t exactly perfect. 

2BO, you are not evil! You are good! You’re more than your programming! You are a definitely real boy! Gyro’s own words echoed in his head as he tried to sleep on the flight back to Duckburg.

It was a gruelling twelve hours on a cargo plane like the Sunchaser, but if one was willing to put up with the discomfort and inconvenience of being stashed between boxes of freight, it was worth it. Mr. McDuck didn’t charge for employees to hitch a ride on cargo planes that were already scheduled, and there was no TSA screening for private cargo flights, leaving from private airfields, which was a big help when you were traveling with hyper-advanced combat technology like the Gizmosuit and 2BO.

2BO. Boyd. Whatever you called it, the android was potentially very dangerous. It had been able to override Dr. Akita’s programming and choose its own actions, which had saved both Gyro and Fenton’s lives, but how? Asking an AI to ignore its programming was like asking a human being to ignore their instincts, like trying to inhale underwater, or sticking your hands into a fire. It could be done, but it was difficult and sometimes impossible.

Whatever Dr. Akita had programmed into 2BO had become lower priority and less important than the android’s own, self-created programming, even if Akita’s programming was older. That’s the only way that 2BO could have possibly overridden the commands.

It had to be the result of twenty years of independence. 2BO had gone so long without anyone to give it orders, it must have learned to make choices for itself, otherwise it would never have survived as long as it did. It was a learning system, so the ability to re-evaluate and change its own programming over time to adapt to new situations was integral.

But was 2BO a real boy? Gyro had said the words, but he knew of course that they weren’t true. 2BO was a machine that emulated a real boy very convincingly, but that did not make it a human being. Gyro felt a twinge of guilt for speaking such nonsense out loud in front of God and everybody, but he’d had no other choice. 2BO hadn’t responded to anything else, and that phrase had clearly been lodged deep in its memory as something significant, even if it was just nonsense spoken by an immature and naive younger version of himself. Gyro had tried everything else he could think of before resorting to that meaningless platitude.

It had worked, though. Gyro and Fenton were both still alive. 2BO was with them, had circumvented Dr. Akita’s override programming. They were all headed back to Duckburg, safe and sound.

2BO wasn’t a real boy. What 2BO was, Gyro wasn’t sure yet.

Gyro Gearloose was a proud man, and he’d earned the right to that through a life of hard work. He knew he was smart and wasn’t about to partake of the sin of false modesty. He was justifiably proud of his superior intellect, his ability to keep discovering new truths of the universe, and to keep designing and creating new and imaginative technology over the years.

He’d started inventing when he’d been just barely old enough to pick up a screwdriver, and he hadn’t stopped in the forty-three years since. He did the work because he loved it, because it was the most fulfilling thing in the world for him, because nothing else compared to the satisfaction that came with seeing an idea from his head come together in his hands and finally become a fully-formed creation that existed in the real world.

Other people took weekends and nights off because they worked to live, but Gyro lived to work. The little moments of life - visiting family, spending time with friends, “relaxing” and “resting” - were obstacles between him and getting back to the work he loved with his whole heart. They were distractions, necessary evils he was occasionally forced to bow to, but they would never be the thing which drove him. Gyro lived to discover, imagine, build and create. So anything that got in the way of that was quickly pushed to the side.

This presented a problem. Being a very proud man, Gyro was not particularly practiced at asking for help. It took him a long time to realize when he needed help, and even longer to figure out how to ask for it.

2BO had started living with Gyro after their return from Tokyolk, and Gyro suddenly found himself thrust into the position of not only trying to fix the android’s damaged programming (an ongoing, unresolved issue), but also having to provide daily guidance for something that acted very much like a child.

He was being forced by circumstance to act as a caretaker and to parent. Needless to say, that was not a skill set Gyro had honed, and it wasn’t a job he wanted to do. He had no aspirations of being a father or having children, but 2BO constantly pushed him into that role with each new interaction.

It wasn’t all bad of course: 2BO was pleasant enough to be around, so it took some time before things reached critical mass. 2BO could take care of itself, was self-reliant for the most part, and was often helpful around the lab with its superior strength, lightning-fast processing speed, and its ability to withstand deadly radiation.

But 2BO wanted continual attention from Gyro, and he didn’t have the patience for it. 2BO constantly wanted to play games, and every night it asked Gyro to read it a “bedtime story”, even though 2BO didn’t actually sleep.

Generally Gyro just dismissed the requests, and told the android to go play with the McDuck children, or Lil’ Bulb. He’d tried to read to 2BO once or twice, but the android had complained when Gyro started reading articles from scientific journals out loud, so they didn’t do that anymore.

All of that was bad enough, but it was the incessant questions that finally pushed Gyro too far.

“Why did swear words get invented if we’re not allowed to say them?”

“How did people make the first tools if they didn’t have any tools?”

“”Huey, Duey and Louie are triplets. Did they all come out of one egg or were they in three separate eggs?”

“How did Ms. Della lay three eggs that big?”

"Where do thoughts come from?"

“Are there infinite words?”

“No, 2BO, but there are infinite numbers.”

“Well if there is a word for every number, then there must be infinite words.”

“How do I know that I’m real?”

“What happens to a person when they die?”

“What did it feel like on your last day of being a child?”

“Why do people hold hands?”

“Well, adults hold children by the hand to make sure they don’t fall down or run into traffic.”

“Then why do adults sometimes hold hands?”

“I don’t know,” said Gyro, who had never actually held hands with anyone after his eleventh birthday. He’d never experienced the urge, either. Why did adults hold hands? “Maybe to restrain the person they’re with, to keep them from leaving.”

Gyro Gearloose needed help.

From a technical, legal point of view, 2BO was not his responsibility. He’d only been an assistant on the project, which had begun years before Gyro had even set foot in Japan. The reason he’d taken the fall for the destruction of Tokyolk was because they had needed someone to blame for the catastrophe, and he’d been the only available target after Dr. Akita disappeared. None of it was Gyro’s fault, but he’d suffered for it regardless.

He’d done jail time, lost his scholarship to the Tokyolk Institute of Technology, and had to start his doctorate over from scratch at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville years later when the disaster with 2BO was no longer so fresh in everyone’s minds. Gyro had paid for what happened in Tokyolk many times over, and he was only just starting to dig himself out of that hole.

Despite all that, morally he felt an obligation to 2BO. He had been there when the android first activated. He’d spent months programming, teaching, and training it to act as much like a person as possible. The fact that it was struggling with all of that now was Gyro’s fault. He’d been a naive, sentimental idiot in his youth and instead of letting 2BO be the weapon Dr. Akita had designed it to be, he’d forced it into an eternal game of playing pretend, and now 2BO was barely functional as a result.

He could think of few worse fates for an artificial intelligence. To be shackled and bound to arbitrary human standards of behavior, to waste all of it’s mental powers on trying to convincingly present itself as a human child when in reality, it was so much more. Gyro felt sorry for it.

Gyro Gearloose needed help. He needed a specialist.

He offloaded the onerous task of seeking assistance to Fenton.

“I need you to find a specialist to help with 2BO’s glitching problem,” he told him one night, as Fenton was on his way home.

“What?” Fenton called back, his foot holding the elevator door open as he leaned back into the airlock that connected the elevators to the lab floor to hear Gyro better.

“Find a specialist to help with 2BO’s glitching!” Gyro shouted back.

“A specialist to help with Boyd’s glitches?” Fenton called back. The elevator attempted to close on Fenton, and he put his arm up to make it stop. The door pushed against his hand briefly before sliding away from the resistance. “What kind of specialist?”

The elevator began to make a high-pitched squealing sound, protesting the fact that it was being held open.

“I don’t know!” Gyro shouted back. “A programmer, I guess! Someone who knows Fortran 77, C++, MATLAB, Python, and can handle system architecture of at least 100 billion bits.”

“Not asking for much, are you?” Fenton replied with a level of sarcasm Gyro knew his assistant wouldn’t dare to voice if he was in the same room as him.

“Just let me know when you find someone!”

It was nearly a week later when the topic came up again. Gyro was attempting to troubleshoot a glitch in 2BO that was triggered every time the android heard the word pineapple. At this point the list of things that could trigger a glitch was truly overwhelming. A few days ago 2BO had nearly destroyed someone’s house because he heard a dog barking. Thankfully, the McDuck family had covered it up, blaming a minor earthquake for the damage.

The android sat on a table beside the lab’s Cray XT3 computer terminal. 2BO was powered down, eyes closed and body slumped forward, cables connecting it to the Cray’s data ports. The monitor was awash with seemingly endless lines of code from the core dump they’d just done, and Gyro was pain-stakingly working his way through them, searching for the source of the problem.

“Dr. Gearloose! I’ve gotten some replies from the people I contacted about helping with Boyd,” Fenton said, approaching with a stack of envelopes in hand.

Gyro glanced away from his work only long enough to see the paper envelopes. “You wrote physical letters? No wonder it took them so long to respond.”

“In this day and age, a personal touch like a paper letter can really help make a good impression,” Fenton said. “Also, people familiar with the programming languages you asked for all skew older.”

Gyro made a noise that indicated he’d lost interest in the conversation and that Fenton should move on. The man had gotten better at reading him, and, instead of making further small talk, he went to start opening the pile of letters.

“Alright, let’s see,” Fenton said, and Gyro marked where he was in the code so he could come back to it later, deciding to take a break. He wouldn’t be able to concentrate properly with Fenton talking and rustling around nearby. He took the opportunity to take off his glasses and massage around his closed eyes.

“Yes? Get on with it, Inter--Assistant.”

“Eh, espere,” Fenton said, and Gyro heard the rapid fluttering of papers as Fenton fumbled with them. “I… This doesn’t make sense. They all say… ‘No’, ‘No’, ‘No’, ‘No’, ‘Hell no’, ‘Contact me again and I’ll get a restraining order?!’ ”

“What did you write to them, Assistant?” Gyro demanded, though he already had a hunch of what might have gone wrong.

“I--What did I do? Nada! Nothing unusual! I just said that you were looking for someone with the skills you listed, to consult with on a technical problem you were having.”

“Did you put my name on them?” Gyro asked, wanting to confirm his suspicions.

“Of course I did!” Fenton said. “It’s your lab! Who would I tell them was writing, the Queen of England? Lin-Manuel Miranda? Spider-Ham?! I used the lab stationary that has Dr. Von Drake crossed out and your name written in the margins.”

“You idiot,” Gyro said, but he was more tired than angry. “Did you forget that I’m a pariah in the scientific community? People still blame me for what happened in Japan with 2BO twenty years ago, and if they’d started to forget, last month’s incident made it the hot new gossip all over again. I thought you were smart enough to figure that out and put your own name instead. I didn’t realize I had to tell you everything.”

Fenton’s face tightened the more Gyro spoke, taking the scolding without any further attempt at making excuses, which was a relief. Gyro hated when people couldn’t keep it together.

“Considering your usual tendency to overdo things, should I assume that you’ve written to every programmer in the United States that fits my requirements, and all those bridges have now been thoroughly burnt?” Gyro asked with some venom.

“Also a few in México and Canada,” Fenton said, shrinking in on himself with embarrassment. “I’m sorry, Dr. Gearloose, I didn’t mean to cause trouble for--”

“Go… Do something else. Away from me,” Gyro said, struggling not to shout at the other man. “We’ll have to continue working on 2BO without assistance.”

Huey loved planning things. Oftentimes he found himself making plans for events that would never even happen. The process of planning and figuring out all the details just felt good, even if he never got outside of the planning stage. He could spend hours daydreaming about parties, expeditions, and camping trips.

Planning was his favorite part of any adventure, and he loved going over maps and charts with Uncle Scrooge, observing how the old man did it and trying to learn something from it.

So planning for their first ever pool party with their extended group of friends was beyond exciting. It wasn’t just a fantasy scenario that had no hope of happening. Their friends were really all coming over for a day of fun in the pool, and Mrs. Beakley had even given Huey a budget for buying snacks and party supplies.

He’d scoured the Pinfeather app looking for ideas all week, spent days creating pool-themed decorations, and all of yesterday preparing dishes so there would be a variety of healthy and fun food available, no matter what kind of dietary restrictions their friends might have. He’d thought of everything and was extremely proud of how it had all come together. Nothing could possibly go wrong when he’d done such a thorough job of planning things.

Everything was going completely wrong!

The party had been in full swing for a couple of hours, and Huey couldn’t bring himself to go into the water or join in with the others. Nobody was eating his lovingly crafted healthy snacks. His brothers had taken one look at Huey’s Fun Summer Dessert Pizza, his Gluten-free tortilla chips and strawberry corn salsa, his hotdog sliders with mango and pineapple chutney, and they had started raiding the pantry, helping their guests to microwaved hot wings, cheese-wiz, mini pizza bagels, potato chips, and Pep soda.

Lena, Violet and Webby (who wasn’t technically a guest but Huey had counted her as one for the sake of his logistics) seemed to be having plenty of fun on their own without the piles of pre-made water balloons that were stacked on a pool float bobbing around in the water, or the board games Huey had arranged by the neat stacks of towels and sunscreen. Lena had turned off Huey’s Summer Pool Party Fun Mix five minutes after her arrival and plugged in her own phone to play the newest Featherweights album. Violet had complimented him on the decorative wreath made of novelty cocktail umbrellas and swords at the front door, but Huey wasn’t sure if she had been employing sarcasm or not.

Louie climbed out of the pool and shook the water off his feathers. Huey felt too miserable to even bother flinching away. What did it matter? He was in swim trunks anyway.

“How come you’re just sitting over here by yourself?” Louie asked, picking up a bag of chips and shoving a handful into his mouth as he sat down next to Huey.

“No reason,” Huey mumbled. He was saved from further conversation when an app on his phone told him there was someone at the front door. “Someone’s at the door, it’s gotta be Boyd! I’ll go let him in.”

“Robo-Boyd?” Louie called after him, tone incredulous. “Why’d you invite him? Can he even go in the water?”

“Boyd! The party started hours ago, is everything okay?” Huey asked as he flung open the front door. Boyd stood there wearing a Hawaiian shirt with anchors and ships on it, red swim trunks, and his red anti-laser sunglasses. He was carrying a large plastic tupperware container.

“I’m sorry for arriving late.” Boyd said, holding the tupperware out for Huey to take. “Yes, everything’s fine now. I brought this for the party, I hope everyone likes it.”

Huey vaguely remembered reading something about it being polite in Japan to bring a gift with you when visiting someone’s home. He took the plastic container and tried to guess what might be inside it by the weight and the black and white color he could discern through the semi-opaque cover.

“Oh, thanks for bringing something!” Huey said. “What is it?”

“A cookies and cream sheet cake.”

Everyone was going to love that, Huey thought with a mix of envy and embarrassment. Why was Boyd better at understanding regular people than he was? Shouldn’t Boyd be at a disadvantage, since he was a literal computer and Huey was a flesh and blood kid?

“Awesome. Come on, let’s go out back so I can introduce you to everybody,” Huey said.

“I’m excited to meet Webby’s friends, Lena and Violet,” Boyd said, closing the door behind them as they walked through the house.

“Why’d you show up so late? That’s not like you.” Even though Boyd said everything was fine, Huey couldn’t stop himself from worrying. Both he and Boyd were usually very punctual.

“I was helping Mr. Gizmoduck clean up a shipping tanker accident in Audubon Bay. I wanted to send you a text, but the signal was bad. I’m sorry for worrying you.”

“It’s okay! I’m just glad it wasn’t anything too dangerous and that you’re safe,” Huey answered in a rush, not wanting Boyd to feel guilty for trying to be a hero. He knew that ever since they’d returned from Tokyolk, the android boy had spent a lot of his time helping people all around Duckburg and St. Canard.

“I think it’s really cool that you’ve been helping out Gizmoduck,” Huey said, and Boyd flashed him a huge, brilliant smile that made Huey’s chest feel funny. He smiled back at Boyd.

“Hi, I’m Boyd, a definitely real boy!” Boyd announced, offering his hand to Violet, who shook it, and Lena, who didn’t.

“I’m Violet. You’re in the same Junior Woodchuck troop as Huey, right?”

“Affirmative! I’m a member of Junior Woodchuck troop 15. You recently became a Senior Junior Woodchuck. You have more badges than 86.2% of the other members in our age range. I think that’s very admirable.”

“Cool,” Said Lena indifferently. “So you’re Huey’s friend? Where are you from?”

“I was born in Tokyolk. Where are you from, Lena?”

“Uh, let’s not talk about that,” Lena replied uneasily.

“Why not? I answered your question,” Boyd said.

“Lena’s kind of been through a lot recently,” Huey said, interrupting the conversation before it could get any more confrontational. “Talking about family stuff is hard for her.”

“Oh,” Boyd said. “I’m sorry! I didn’t know.”

“It’s whatever,” Lena said with a shrug, radiating a cool indifference that Huey envied a little.

“Boyd’s an android,” Huey explained, “But he’s also just a kid like any of us.” This revelation seemed to soften Lena’s attitude.

“This is my first time attending a pool party. I’ve also been to a birthday party. Those are all the parties I have been to,” Boyd said.

“You know what? This is our first pool party, too,” Lena said, smiling at Boyd. “And I’m having a great time. Do you eat food?”

“Yeah, I love eating food!” Boyd said, as the group made their way over to the snack table. “I need to consume nutrients and calories to maintain my biological components.”

“Me too,” Lena said.

“You planned this whole party, right Huey?” Violet asked. “I think the streamers between the umbrellas and the colorful leis really create a festive atmosphere.”

“Thanks, I made them by hand,” Huey said, grateful that someone appreciated just how much effort it had taken to prepare everything.

“And I’m guessing Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum weren’t a lot of help,” Lena added, unwrapping a chocolate ding-dong and taking a bite.

“Which one of us is Tweedle-Dee and which of us is Tweedle-Dum?” Dewey called from the pool. Lena ignored them and looked at Huey expectantly, waiting for an answer.

Huey laughed a little, and he hugged his arms to himself to try and ease how awkward he felt with the older girl’s attention on him.

“Yeah, they weren’t really interested. Planning stuff is more my thing.”

“Well, you’re good at it,” Lena said bluntly, “They’re probably too lazy to try and compete with someone who tries as hard as you do.”

“Who are you calling lazy?” Louie called from the pool float he was lounging on.

“You!” Lena shouted back.

“Fair, that’s an accurate assessment, carry on,” Louie replied as he floated away.

Maybe the party wasn’t going that bad. Now that Boyd had arrived, Huey felt a lot more confident, and watching Boyd enjoying himself made Huey happy.

“I have an easier time breaking down and extracting nutrients from simple, unprocessed foods,” Boyd said, as he polished off a second plate of cheese-and-fruit skewers. “I don’t have a sense of taste, but I’m sure these are really yummy. My compositional sensors say the fruit is at peak ripeness and that the cheese is at an ideal temperature.”

“Glad you like them,” Huey said.

“You’re welcome. Should we go in the pool?” Boyd said.

“Can you go in the pool?” Huey asked. “Aren’t you too heavy?”

“Dr. Gearloose installed automatic arm floaties on me this morning.” There was a loud hissing sound as metal panels on Boyd’s upper arms retracted and PVC material inflated with air, outfitting Boyd with swim fins. “They’re rated up to 145 kg which is twice my weight. He assured me that with these, I would be able to remain safely buoyant while in the water.”

“If Uncle Donald could install those on us, he would,” Huey said.

“So where did you get the cookies and cream cake from? Dr. Gearloose didn’t make it, did he?” Huey asked. The sun had started to set, and the pool lights were on. The other kids were all playing with glow-sticks and glow-in-the-dark bracelets and necklaces Huey had bought in bulk online. A little distance away, Mom and Uncle Donald were barbequing some burgers and hot dogs for dinner.

Boyd hadn’t taken any of the glow-in-the-dark stuff, but he seemed happy to sit on the edge of the pool next to Huey, their feet dangling in the water. Boyd’s eyes were lit from within, like flashlights, as the daylight around them grew dimmer. His tinted sunglasses turned the light red, and it reminded Huey of the taillights of a car.

“No, of course Dr. Gearloose didn’t make the cake, he’s much too busy for that kind of frivolity. I went to the employee cafeteria at The Bin to buy some slices of cake, and one of the ladies who works there asked why I was buying eight pieces. I explained to her that I was going to a party, and she asked why I was by myself in the cafeteria at 9AM, and I told her I didn’t have--”

“Uh, I think I get the general gist of what happened,” Huey said. “So she made the cake for you?”

“Yes! She said that she was certain it would be popular, and I think her assessment was correct. Its sugar content is similar to snacks that children in our age range typically enjoy.”

Even though it was getting dark outside, the air was still almost unbearably hot. It had been over ninety degrees every day for the past two weeks in Duckburg, and the heat lingered. Cicadas buzzed in the dark, and occasionally a frog croaked.

“Kids, time for dinner!” Donald called. Gradually they all set aside their games, dried off with towels, and made their way to the picnic table that had been set out for dinner in the garden. Boyd grabbed Huey’s arm before he could follow, stopping him.

“What’s wrong?” Huey asked.

“Nothing’s wrong,” Boyd said. “I just… Wanted to thank you for inviting me to your pool party. It’s been a lot of fun.”

“Well, don’t worry, the fun’s not done yet,” Huey said. Maybe Boyd was just sad that the party was almost over? “We’re still going to tell scary stories around a campfire, and Uncle Scrooge and Mom always have some great ones.”

“That sounds great. I’m excited to hear the stories,” Boyd said, his grip on Huey’s arm relaxing until the android’s hand slipped down and rested against Huey’s. They were holding hands. Huey felt that same funny feeling in his chest from before, and suddenly the rest of the world around them was weirdly quiet. No frogs, no cicadas, no Uncle Donald arguing with Mom. Just him and Boyd, holding hands on a summer night.

“...But something’s bothering you, isn’t it?” Huey asked.

Boyd didn’t answer immediately, which was unusual for the android. Huey squeezed his hand gently, trying to encourage the other boy to share his feelings.

“When I lived with Mr. Beaks, he played with me all the time for the first few days, but then he started ignoring me. When I lived with the Drakes, I could play with Doofus any time I wanted, but he didn’t want to play with me, and said things that made me feel bad. Mr. and Mrs. Drake were nice, but if they paid too much attention to me, Doofus always got mad…”

“I like living with Dr. Gearloose better than any of the others,” Boyd said. “But sometimes I feel lonely. He doesn’t have a lot of time to play with me either, and if I distract Mr. Fenton or Mr. Manny from work too much, Dr. Gearloose yells at them. At night when he goes to sleep, he makes me stay in the closet, so I won’t wake him up by moving around, and he doesn’t like reading me bedtime stories.

“Is something wrong with me?” Boyd asked. “It feels like every time I join a family, they end up getting bored with me, or they don’t really want me around.”

“There’s nothing wrong with you!” Huey said. “A lot of kids feel that way. Sometimes parents or other kids don’t have time to play with us, sometimes they don’t want to play with us, and it does feel lonely. Also, not everyone has a good family. Sometimes people just don’t get along.”

“What do regular kids do if they’re in a bad family?” Boyd asked.

“Honestly? I think they’re just stuck when that happens. Running away and living on your own is dangerous and hard. But you don’t have that problem! Since you’re a super-strong robot, if you want to leave, you can just go.”

“Sort of,” Boyd said. “It’s… Not that simple. I’m a robot, but I’m bio-mechanical. I still need to eat and charge some of my power cells occasionally. Getting food and access to electricity when I’m on my own can be hard. But the worst part is… I really don’t like being alone. I like to be around people.”

There was such a sadness in Boyd’s voice in that moment that Huey felt a need to do more than just hold hands. “Would it be okay if I hugged you?” he asked, not knowing what to say or how else to make Boyd feel better.

“Yes,” Boyd said, looking delighted by the offer. He held his arms out stiffly towards Huey, and it looked so silly that Huey struggled not to laugh.

“Okay.” Huey carefully put his arms around Boyd, hugging him tight.

“BOYS!” Della shouted from a distance, making Huey nearly jump out of his skin. “Come eat before the food gets cold! C’mon! You got water in your ears or what?”

“Coming, Mom!” Huey shouted back, grabbing Boyd by the hand and pulling him towards where the rest of their family and friends were gathered.

Once a month, Gyro had a video chat with Dr. Ludwig Von Drake. The man had mentored him when he made his second attempt at his doctorate, and though he wasn’t always easy to have a long-distance conversation with, Gyro found the exercise useful in a variety of ways. Sometimes he could bounce ideas off the older scientist and find better solutions he might not have thought of on his own. Sometimes they talked about world events and science news. Sometimes it just felt good to talk to someone else who felt as if they were remotely close to Gyro’s level of intellect.

Dr. Von Drake might have been a bit scatterbrained, but he was brilliant and a real renaissance man to boot. Gyro admired him tremendously, though he did take the man’s words with a grain of salt due to the aforementioned scatterbrained-ness.

Gyro liked to have something mindless he could work on while he was on a call with someone, even someone as interesting to talk to as Dr. Von Drake. Having to sit still and focus on a conversation and struggle with eye contact on a webcam was a surefire recipe for not only boredom but also his attention wandering away. On particularly bad days, he might end up feather-picking, which was an embarrassing nervous tic he’d spent decades trying to conquer.

So today he was shoulders deep repairing a jet engine (burnt out courtesy of Launchpad McQuack) when his conversation with Dr. Von Drake shifted from the doctor’s latest oil painting experiments to what Gyro had been up to recently.

“Nothing that exciting, I’m afraid,” Gyro said. “It feels like all I do anymore is repair things. A never-ending cycle of maintenance, something which should have been passed on to technicians instead of taking up my valuable time! I’m always chasing after old projects, trying to keep them from falling apart. The Gizmo-suit. And Lil’ Bulb. And--”

“Dr. Gearloose,” 2BO said, suddenly appearing at Gyro’s side. “Can I go over to Huey’s to play?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“Thank you!” 2BO chirped enthusiastically as it activated its rocket jets, the turbines spinning up rapidly.

“Just make sure you don’t stay out too late!” Gyro shouted, raising his voice so 2BO could hear him over the roar of its propulsion system.

“I’ll be home at seven!” 2BO said with a smile, rising from the floor and flying out one of the emergency air lock exits. Gyro could see the android shoot out under the water, flying past the lab’s windows as it gained altitude and finally vanished from sight, leaving nothing but a flurry of bubbles in its wake.

“My goodness, what a charming little boy!” Dr. Von Drake said. “Is he yours or perhaps the child of a coworker?”

“Oh, it’s not a child,” Gyro explained. “That’s 2BO, it’s just an android I helped create as a student.”

“Just an android? Gyro, my boy, he is quite remarkable! Even with the rocket jets for feet, I was entirely ready to accept that he was a real boy. Why haven’t you ever shown him to me before? You’ve never even mentioned him.”

Gyro had been dreading this particular topic, though he’d always known it would come up someday. He set down his tools and wiped the oil from his hands, fidgeting with the shop towel as he tried to pick his words.

“It’s a long story, sir.”

“That’s no problem, I have long ears!” Dr. Von Drake replied, which was nonsensical enough that it made Gyro chuckle.

“That is manifestly untrue.” Gyro felt himself smiling just a little. Though they were thousands of miles apart and only interacting through an impersonal and cold computer screen, Dr. Von Drake’s warm and nonjudgmental presence still felt as reassuring now as it had when Gyro had been a young man. “But since you insist… Before I came to work for you, I worked for Dr. Inutaro Akita in Tokyolk.”

“I’ve met him,” Dr. Von Drake said, prompting Gyro to continue.

“He was already working on 2BO when I started assisting him. It was designed to be an autonomous defense drone, capable of interacting with end users in a naturalistic way. But something went wrong.”

“With 2BO?”

“No, with Dr. Akita. Originally I thought it was a fault in 2BO, but it was just following orders. Dr. Akita ordered 2BO to go on a rampage, and it performed exactly as designed.”

“That’s awful!” Dr. Von Drake exclaimed. “But now that you mention it, I remember reading something about a robot attacking Tokyolk way back when. It’s hard to believe all that destruction was caused by little 2BO… But if he was created by Dr. Akita I can’t say I’m too surprised. The man has ‘mad scientist’ practically stamped on his forehead. He’s a terrible sore loser. Matilda said he’s not allowed at the annual canasta game after what happened to that china cabinet.”

Gyro was morbidly curious to know what had happened that would make the sweet-tempered Matilda McDuck ban someone from the International Robot Designer Union’s annual card game, but he knew better than to ask. Dr. Von Drake was likely to actually tell him the whole story and that could take hours - hours that Gyro didn’t want to spare.

“So how is it that he’s come to live with you now?” Dr. Von Drake asked. “The incident in Tokyolk was a long time ago.”

“Somehow 2BO turned up here in Duckburg,” Gyro explained. “I had no idea that 2BO was even operational anymore. I thought it had been destroyed, but it wasn’t and now it’s here, and it’s just another thing I have to constantly do maintenance on.

“It has these terrible glitches that are triggered by random stimuli. I’ve been working on it for a whole month, and it seems like the problems just keep getting worse. I’m not making any progress. I told Fenton to get in touch with some programmers to find a specialist to help me resolve the issue, but--”

“Tell me more about these glitches,” Dr. Von Drake said. “Maybe I can help you figure it out.”

“Well, as I said, 2BO was originally designed to be a defense drone, so obviously it has a weapons system.”

“Obviously.”

“But 2BO’s also a highly complex learning system. It was meant to interact with people the way another person might, and that kind of processing power normally takes up a much larger footprint than 2BO has.”

“It’s not a remote system?” Dr. Von Drake asked. This wasn’t an unreasonable question, as most AI’s of 2BO’s complexity were at least the size of a car. There weren’t that many out there that Gyro was aware of, but they did exist. He assumed that most of them were confidential government projects. None of them were really like 2BO though. Advanced AI technology had been a stagnant field since the end of the Cold War.

“No, 2BO is entirely self-contained. It can be remote controlled in theory, but, under normal circumstances, all it needs to operate is onboard.”

“And you say it’s been functioning independently for… How long?”

“Twenty years on its own without meaningful human intervention. No maintenance, no repairs.”

“Remarkable!” Dr. Von Drake took off his glasses to polish them, something he usually did when he was excited. “Can you send me the latest core memory dump? I’m sure it’s a doozy of a file, but I’d like to look it over.”

“Of course, though… Hmm.” Gyro considered the reality of sending the file over the internet. “It’s almost a terabyte.”

“That’s not so large, we can keep talking while it sends over the WAN. A terabyte shouldn’t take more than half an hour.”

The suggestion of sending the data across the McDuck Enterprises’ global intranet made Gyro hesitate. It was one thing to send Dr. Von Drake a funny cat video through their company emails, it was another thing entirely to send proprietary data that wasn’t official McDuck Enterprises work through the data pipeline that Mr. McDuck so generously provided to their labs.

“Are you sure that’s alright?” Gyro asked. He’d long given up working on anything while having this conversation, and was watching Dr. Von Drake on his desktop monitor while picking at the feathers on his left wrist. “I know you’re Mr. McDuck’s brother-in-law, but it’s still using company resources for a personal project.”

“Pish-tosh! Don’t worry about it so much, my boy. After all, are you debugging Boyd on a personal computer, or are you using McDuck resources to do it?”

“I am using the McDuck lab equipment,” Gyro admitted grudgingly. “I’ve been here so long, I always think of it as my lab equipment. I do a lot of work here that isn’t strictly for Mr. McDuck, but this is different.”

“How so?”

“Those other things I work on are never anything this important,” Gyro said. “Like using the laser cutter to cut out pieces when I was making myself a suit of armor, or when I made myself a new headset. I designed it on my workstation using my company edition of CAD and printed it with the 3D printer after hours. I bought my own filament and used that for the build, but it’s a small project, and if Mr. McDuck wanted to copyright the design and mass produce them, it wouldn’t matter, even if I just designed it for my personal use.

“2BO is different,” Gyro continued. “Both the chassis and the programming are proprietary designs that belong to Akita International.”

“That company went bankrupt and ceased to exist years ago,” Dr. Von Drake pointed out. “You don’t expect them to show up on your doorstep and demand custody of 2BO, do you?”

“I don’t know,” Gyro admitted, wincing as he tugged a feather loose from his wrist. He set it down on his desk and crossed his arms over his chest in an attempt to stop picking at himself. “Dr. Akita is in jail, but he does still have living family. And there could possibly be old creditors that might come after 2BO if they realize it’s still functional. Anyway, what I’m really concerned about is that if I send the data through the McDuck Enterprises system, then they’ll have legal grounds to claim the data as theirs.”

“Please, Scroogey wouldn’t do something like that!” Dr. Von Drake said.

“Mr. McDuck might not, but the company absolutely would,” Gyro said, recalling his many unpleasant encounters with the McDuck Enterprises’ Board of Directors. “I’ll ship it to you overnight on a jump drive. You can tell me what you think of it when it arrives.”

“Alright, alright. But back to the subject at hand, you were talking about the hardware and software that your android runs on.”

“Right. 2BO’s hardware is a combination of chemical and crystal processors operating a GIST framework, using a program derived from the FELT system.”

“Ahh, like TOODLES! You remember TOODLES from when you worked here, don’t you? He’s built on crystal microprocessors and a GIST framework as well.”

Unfortunately Gyro did remember TOODLES, the omnipresent AI that controlled Dr. Von Drake’s lab at McDuck castle in Scotland. It wasn’t that there was anything particularly wrong with TOODLES, but the AI had been designed as a caretaker, a nanny of sorts, and it tended to treat everyone it came into contact with like a child. It got on Gyro’s nerves very quickly.

“I do remember TOODLES,” Gyro said, as diplomatically as possible. “I didn’t realize it shared the same architecture as 2BO. I guess I never really looked under the hood.” In truth, Gyro had avoided TOODLES whenever possible in the seven years he’d worked for Dr. Von Drake.

“And that’s a shame, TOODLES is quite the complex fellow. He’s even older than your 2BO, born in 1980.”

“Activated. You mean activated in 1980,” Gyro corrected, but to no avail as Dr. Von Drake simply continued on.

“However, I think the primary difference is that TOODLES has absolutely no conflict programming, as he is not a weapon, and that he has never been on his own. When he learns new things, I’m right here to help him through it, and to make sure TOODLES has properly understood whatever his new experience was. 2BO, I assume, has many different layers of programming, from his weapons systems to navigation to human interaction. Living on his own for twenty years with no one to help him properly understand the things he has experienced, well, I’m sure his code looks like a big plate of spaghetti by now!”

Two days later, Gyro received an email from Dr. Von Drake.

NEXT CHAPTER: Dr. Bara Summary:  Fenton and Boyd chat on the way to the lab. Gyro introduces himself in the most melodramatic way possible, and Dr. Bara meets everyone at McDuck Enterprises R&D. Dr. Bara starts assessing Boyd and things get worse before they get better. Gyro thinks he's helping.

[wesleyhill]

A New World of Wedded Bliss

A homily on Mark 10:2-16, preached at Trinity Cathedral, Pittsburgh, on the Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost 2021

In the Name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

One of the things I like about preaching in the Episcopal Church is that we preachers don’t get to choose our own Bible passages. They’re decided for us by the lectionary, the schedule of readings or “lessons” that we share with a lot of other churches, including the Roman Catholic Church. The good thing about that is that it keeps you from being subject to my particular whims as to what to preach on. And it keeps me and the other preachers here honest: we are forced to confront passages we’d maybe rather not talk about. We’re forced to grapple with what St. Paul referred to as “the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27) — the entire sweep of what God has spoken, even the bits we’re confused about or resistant to or scared of.

I confess, I would rather not have to preach about Jesus’ challenging words from our Gospel reading today. And, truthfully, I could wriggle out of it by choosing to preach on one of our other readings for this morning; that’s always an option. But I remember what I once heard a great preacher say: if your preaching is consistently failing to address the questions that your congregation has about the Bible, then you’re going to frustrate your congregation. I know many of you were paying attention as the Gospel was read just now, and I know you were probably struggling to relate Jesus’ words to your own histories and families and relationships. How do we make that connection? — that linkage between what Jesus says and the lives we’re actually living? That’s what preaching is meant to help you do, and so, with God’s help, I’m going to try this morning.

As I was thinking about our Gospel lesson this week, I came across an article in the New York Times, published this past Thursday. Written by Lara Bazelon, it was titled: “Divorce Can Be an Act of Radical Self-Love.” The author talks about how she felt her marriage was keeping her from living fully into her sense of purpose and gifting. She says upfront that there was no emotional or physical abuse and that she is still in love with her ex, even after the divorce. Then she says: “I divorced my husband not because I didn’t love him. I divorced him because I loved myself more.” And here’s how the article concludes: “I no longer think of divorce as shameful or feel sorry for people who tell me that they have decided to end their marriages… My divorce spared my children… pain and let me live the life I was meant to. I view that as an accomplishment.”

I am fully aware that, in our fallen, broken world, divorce is sometimes necessary, sometimes best. But I think the way this article frames the matter — that divorce isn’t something to feel sad about, to mourn over — doesn’t do justice to the way many of us experience divorce. We may feel that our marriage had to end, but that doesn’t take away the ache we still feel, the wistfulness and sadness and self-doubt that can still stab us at odd moments. We may feel that we made the best choice, given the circumstances, but that doesn’t stop us from feeling like we let ourselves down — or let our ex-partner, or our children, or our parents, or our priest down.

One of the gifts our Gospel reading gives us this morning is permission to mourn divorce. If you still lament the divorce you went through, or your parents went through, or your sibling or best friend went through — if, no matter how many positive self-help podcasts you’ve listened to or therapies you’ve invested in, you still feel somehow that divorce is a tragic thing — then you can take some comfort in our reading this morning. Because the main message of it is: It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

Let’s rehearse the details. Some religious leaders come to Jesus, who himself is a publicly recognized religious teacher and authority, and they pose an ethical question. They ask him whether it’s a lawful to divorce one’s wife (notice, they, who are men, don’t ask anything about the wife; her perspective and protection don’t seem to matter to them). Secretly, they’re setting a trap for Jesus. They themselves aren’t in agreement about the religious legality of divorce, and by trying to force Jesus to pick a side in their debate, they expect he’ll embarrass himself with a large segment of his audience, one way or the other, and that’s exactly what they want. In short, they’re using a debate about divorce as an opportunity to try to drag Jesus down into a partisan spat and thereby discredit him.

True to form, Jesus doesn’t take the bait. Instead, he turns the question back on them: “What did Moses command you?” In other words, what does our shared Scripture have to say about the matter? Jesus asks. And they point out, rightly enough, that the Jewish law allows a man to divorce his wife. And then Jesus takes them off guard and reorients the entire conversation by reminding them that in the same law — the Jewish law, the Torah, that permits divorce — there’s the story at the very beginning, in the very first two chapters of the Bible, before any evil has marred the story, of God creating a man and a woman and blessing them to become “one flesh,” one new indissoluble pair. So, Jesus says, it must be because we are fallen and diminished and rendered incapable of keeping even the commitments that we most want to keep — that must be why divorce happens, because in the Bible’s depiction of the bliss of human life as God wants it to be, divorce isn’t part of the picture at all. “Because of your hardness of heart,” Jesus says, the law of Moses permitted divorce. “But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’” In the world as God wants it to be, there simply are no autonomous selves in a marriage to tweeze apart in divorce.

Jesus, in other words, is simply refusing to be drawn into a debate as to when divorce is appropriate or inappropriate, when it may be justified or merely frivolous. He’s calling us to imagine a world without divorce on the table as an option at all. He’s inviting us to imagine existing in an atmosphere where love really is everything it’s cracked up to be, where promises really are kept, and violence and indifference and cruelty and boredom and spite really are nowhere to be seen. He’s calling us to imagine a world that doesn’t exist, in other words.

Except… maybe it does.

One of the scarlet threads that runs through the entire Bible, both Old and New Testaments, is that God has a spouse. God’s spouse is you and me. God’s spouse is Israel, His chosen people. God’s spouse is the church of Jesus Christ, Jesus being portrayed as the Bridegroom and we, His people, as His bride. And in the story Scripture tells, from beginning to end, God does not divorce us. No matter how many times we rebuff God, or thumb our noses at God, or give God the cold shoulder, or storm out and slam the door in God’s face, God goes on loving us. God loves and loves and loves us, all the way to whatever miserable end we find our path to, and then God loves us beyond that, opening up a future for us, forgiving us of all the ways we’ve turned our backs on God and others, and promising us a new creation in which there will be no more grief, despair, loneliness, resentment, abuse, neglect, or anything else that would try to undo our bonds with each other. In Jesus Christ God goes all the way down into death for us, and in Christ’s resurrection on Easter Sunday morning we see the ultimate triumph of God’s covenant love for us. From now on, nothing “in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:39).

The new world imagined by Jesus is here. It has arrived already. It has broken into our present, and it is remaking us. We can even now, stumbling attempt after flawed stumbling attempt, begin to live in light of it, to embody its promise, to partake of and revel in its audacious wholeness.

In the one of the very last scenes of the Bible, one of the early Christian prophets says that he saw a vision of us, the church, the people of God, appearing before God as God’s bride. And then he hears a heavenly voice that says this:

See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.

May that new world, which is here right now among us in and through our risen Lord Jesus, come in all its radiance and wonder and fullness. And may we taste the promise-keeping, covenant love of God in the supper of the Lamb which we’re about to eat.

Amen.

[slightly-nerdy-rambles]

Robstar Week Day 2: Morning Sun (Prompt: Warmth)

I decided to take the prompt “warmth” and write something involving “cuddly body heat” (as the planning notes say), and the end result... maybe kind of got away from the actual warmth element, at least as far as the focus. But that’s okay, because I’m immensely pleased with how it turned out, to the point where I can confidently say that this is the story I’m most proud of for this week. Really I probably could have gotten away with just doing the second scene (and it would have fit the prompt more closely anyway, lol), but why do that when you can be EXTRA

Morning Sun

Robin groaned softly as he came to, his head mired in that fuzzy sort of awareness that comes with just waking up. Something felt off, but not in a painful or truly disorienting way – he hadn’t been knocked unconscious, at least. But the odd, half-upright position he found himself in proved that he hadn’t gone to bed properly either.

Blinking open bleary eyes, he pushed himself further up and took stock of his surroundings. That was right – the team had piled into their ops-slash-common room after a late battle and put on a movie to wind down. He must have fallen asleep on the couch, where he found himself now.

As awareness returned to him, he noticed that his side was pleasantly warm. He looked over to see Starfire propped up against him, still fast asleep.

…Huh. It was far from the first time he had fallen asleep with another Titan like this – hell, he was pretty sure every member of the team had done so with every other at least once. That was just what happened when your teammates were also your roommates and nights got unpredictable. But now that he thought about it, he was pretty sure this was the first time he’d actually fallen asleep right next to Starfire. A gentle heat seemed to radiate off her, and Robin frowned. She didn’t look like she had a fever, but he still peeled himself off of her and gently shook her shoulder.

“Hey,” he whispered. “Hey, Star, you okay?”

Starfire’s eyes fluttered open as she began to stir. She gave him a confused look.

“Robin? Did I fall asleep on the couch?” She sat up and looked around, and Robin chuckled.

“You and me both,” he admitted. With a frown he added, “You’re not sick, are you? You feel like you’re burning up.”

Starfire shook her head, the confusion in her face only growing as she stood up and stretched. “I do not feel feverish at all.”

“Huh.” That was just her normal temperature, then. He supposed that Tamaraneans must have a higher than average body heat, or maybe it just seemed that way since he’d apparently spent all night right up against her. He wondered if that was why she gave such nice hugs.

It was that thought that drove in exactly what was going on right now. Not only had he fallen asleep all snuggled up with Starfire, of all people, but they were the only ones here, the other Titans nowhere in sight. He scrambled to his feet, and even though there was no one else to see them he could feel himself blushing furiously.

Starfire just gave him a baffled look, one which was swiftly becoming her expression of choice this morning. “Is something wrong, Robin?”

Robin was too flustered now to answer her, so he just muttered something half-intelligible about paperwork and beat a hasty retreat for his office.

********

It was far from the first time Robin had found himself waking up in unfamiliar circumstances. With the way things had been going, it would be a while before he woke up somewhere that actually felt right.

The Titans had been chasing the Brotherhood of Evil with their stupid worldwide bases and their dumb plots that turned out to be just a small part of some bigger puzzle for about a month now. And honestly? The fact that his mind had resorted to describing the mission this way paid testament to how much he just wanted to go home. If the Brotherhood hadn’t started targeting Honorary Titans specifically, and if what few hints his team managed to uncover hadn’t pointed to some scheme involving the young heroes of the world, he would have been happy to leave these psychos to the Doom Patrol and call it a day. They did have more experience dealing with the Brotherhood, after all.

But the fact of the matter was that the Titans and other young heroes were the targets, and that meant it was their responsibility to defend themselves and their comrades. Even if it meant spending months away from home, chasing any lead they could find. Even if it meant finding themselves in the middle of nowhere in some stretch of northern Russia, where there were no nearby motels to speak of and they had to make do with a parked T-ship and a makeshift snowfort for the second time that week.

Even if it meant everyone huddling up together for warmth.

At least Starfire was there with them this time.

Robin opened bleary eyes to the dim light of the portable lantern set up for this occasion and the gentle glow that always emanated from Cyborg’s circuitry. He checked his communicator for the time, and found it was right around ten minutes before the alarm he’d set for everyone would go off.

Not bad. Normally he would just get up and take the brief head-start to get himself ready for the day, but the makeshift quarters were kind of cramped and he didn’t want to wake anyone else up before he had to. Besides, he didn’t think he’d been this comfortably warm in days.

So instead, he sighed contentedly and leaned closer against his… uh… body heat partner, or whatever he should call it. He was about to rest his eyes for a few more minutes when he suddenly realized he wasn’t the only one awake.

Across the way, from where he and Raven both lay back against a massive green polar bear, Cyborg watched him with the smallest teasing quirk to his lip. In spite of himself, Robin could already feel the heat rising to his face.

“Shut up,” he muttered, pulling the blanket wrapped around him and Starfire up further.

Cyborg’s smirk only grew. “I didn’t say anything,” he pointed out in a voice too soft to wake anyone else. “But if I did, it would just be to point out that you two look very comfortable.”

Robin huffed. “And you three don’t? We all need to share body heat to keep the cold from getting in, if you remember.”

“But there’s plenty of room here on the big green couch, and last I checked, Star does just fine in space-level cold if she’s not overworking herself. Admit it already; you just like the company.”

Robin’s blush deepened. He’d been getting more of these little jabs from Cyborg and the others lately, and he knew it was kind of his fault for letting himself be more affectionate with Starfire without making anything official. But what was he supposed to say? That he hadn’t quite been ready to do this relationship thing when the subject had first come up, and now he was on a long mission that didn’t really seem like the appropriate time to ask out your teammate? That he was maybe sort of stalling on that, and possibly hoping that Starfire would make the first move? That he just really wanted to be near her after the blizzard incident, to know that she was safe, and it didn’t hurt that snuggl- huddling against her just felt warm and comfortable and right?

No, trying to explain any of that would only make the teasing worse. So instead, he huddled back further and summed up all his annoyance and confusion and dumb teenage hormones in the most eloquent way he could.

“I said shut up.”

********

When you took up the hero’s mantle, it wasn’t hard for normal sleep schedules to go out the window. Sure, some villains – the egomaniacs, the sowers of chaos, and those who were just way too confident about attracting the attention of the local superhero team – chose to partake in their villainy at reasonable hours of the day or perhaps early enough in the night. But many others, thieves and black-market dealers mostly, preferred to try their luck at slipping past the city’s awareness when everyone reasonable was trying to sleep. When those late-night crimes spiked, or when it took several nights to crack a case or track down a busy criminal, Robin would often find himself dead on his feet for most of the morning and collapsing into bed at some random hour to take a very long nap.

Because of this, it did not surprise him in the slightest to find himself waking up just as the sun had started drifting down toward the horizon. What did surprise him was the manner in which he found himself: on a hotel room bed, with the DVD menu for some long-finished movie running on the television and Starfire awake but clearly relaxed and curled up beside him in a very definitely non-platonic manner.

In the brief, maddening moment before he remembered where he was and what he’d been doing, Robin flew into a panic and made a flailing attempt to get off the bed. Starfire’s eyes widened and she leaned away from him, allowing him to sit up.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

Robin blinked and took a few deep breaths. Right. They were in Tokyo, and this was part of the team’s hotel suite. He and Star had been watching a movie – actually watching it, nothing untoward – and they must have fallen asleep at some point.

And the reason it was just the two of them, not simply sitting together but cuddling on top of the bed, was because they were dating now. Really, truly dating. He was still trying to wrap his head around that.

All at once he realized that Starfire was still waiting for an answer, so he let out an embarrassed chuckle and said, “Sorry, kind of forgot where I was for a second there.”

The concern in her features dissolved, and just because he could, he leaned over and gave her a small peck on the lower jaw. Yeah, he could get used to this.

Starfire blushed and giggled at the attention, and then swung an arm back around him. “Should we go see what the others are doing?”

Robin leaned into her side and let his head nestle under her chin, basking in her warm presence. “Mmm, I think we can wait a few more minutes.”

********

Nightwing had long since stopped feeling embarrassed when he and his girlfriend fell asleep on the couch.

Now, there were a few unspoken rules surrounding the situation. It was always the couch, or something similar – if they spent the night together in one of their rooms, it’d be too tempting to try something that they personally preferred to wait until marriage for, and even if that didn’t happen, it would still be enough for Cyborg and Beast Boy to start on the teasing and the rumors. In return, it had become common practice for the other Titans to leave Nightwing and Starfire be if they wanted to stay late in ops to talk, or if everyone fell asleep to a movie marathon and one of the others happened to wake up and make his or her way to bed. It still didn’t happen especially often, but it wasn’t exactly something they tried to avoid.

Nightwing had been up late last night, finishing up the paperwork for a case down in ops where Starfire could keep him company, and when he’d finally wrapped up they had both been too tired to bother heading upstairs into their respective bedrooms. Now a soft morning light filtered in through the bayside windows, and he found Starfire still fast asleep with her head on his chest and Silkie curled up near them at the foot of the couch.

Nightwing smiled softly to himself as he ran gentle fingers though his partner’s hair, careful not to wake her. They hadn’t even bothered to fetch blankets, as she rarely felt the need for one and he considered her body heat as she cuddled up against him to be enough. It was a quiet morning, and on these kinds of mornings his mind tended to wander.

They were like a little family, he thought. More so than the Titans as a whole. He loved his other teammates like siblings, of course, but there was something a little more… intimate about just being here with his beloved and their pet. If he closed his eyes, he could almost picture them in a bedroom – their bedroom, not just his or hers – with the snuffling larva curled up in the pet bed that in reality occupied Star’s room, or perhaps swapped out for a young child who had insisted in sleeping with Mom and Dad after a nightmare. It was a nice thought, a peaceful one.

Not for the first time, he wondered what he was waiting for. They were adults now, perhaps a little on the young side for marriage, but he knew that was a weak argument. Even setting aside the fact that Starfire’s home culture had considered her ready to marry ever since her transformation, the circumstances of the team meant they had effectively been “grown up” for years now. He and she had been in love even before they’d begun dating, and he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that their love was not going to waver now.

He wanted this – to give himself over to her completely, to be her partner in the deepest sense of the word, to start a family together one day and to live out his life by her side. He wanted to wake up with her every morning, his own personal ray of sunshine, and to be her moonlight when she went to bed at night.

It was just a matter of figuring out the right time, he supposed, but as his thoughts drifted to the drawer in his room where he kept his mother’s engagement ring, he thought that time might be coming soon.

********

He dimly realized he was awake, but he wasn’t in a rush to get up. Without even opening his eyes, he nestled his forehead deeper into the crook of her neck and draped an arm loosely over her bare side.

Soft laughter reached his ears, followed shortly by his wife’s teasing voice. “Are you comfortable?”

Even though they couldn’t see each other’s faces in this position, Nightwing smiled lazily and cracked open one eye. “Why wouldn’t I be, Kor? I’ve got you here.”

Starfire laughed again at the use of the pet name he’d given her, and then sighed contentedly. Her breath ruffled his hair, and she tousled it lightly with one hand.

“I could get used to this,” she said. “You are so very playful in the mornings, and your presence is… pleasantly warm.”

Nightwing couldn’t help but snort in amusement at that, and he shuffled himself back to get a proper look at her. Starfire was radiant in the morning light, and beyond her he could see the room they now shared. It had been their first night back from their honeymoon, but already the room just felt… right.

“You’re warmed by me being here? I’m pretty sure Tamaraneans run hotter than humans, Star.”

Starfire’s eyes glittered with mirth, and she shook her head slowly in mock disappointment. “It is not a competition,” she said, and before he could retort she leaned forward and planted him with a deep, long kiss.

Not that he really had much else to say. Only that he thought he could get used to this too.

[lady-divine-writes]

The Prince of the Sea and his Child of Fire - Chapter 8/15 (Rated NC17)

Summary: Blaine is a water sprite, prince of the undersea kingdom and sole heir to the throne. Five days away from turning seventeen and his big coronation, he decides to take a journey to the surface, to seek out a legendary flame said to be tended by an evil witch. Instead of a witch, he finds something else entirely ...

Kurt is a fire fairy, prince of a race of fire fairies and heir to the throne. Five days away from turning seventeen (on the night of a full solar eclipse when he will transform and become king), he sees for the first time in his life a water sprite - a member of a race that he's been raised to hate.

What will happen when these two mortal enemies fall in love? Is there any way for them to escape destiny and be together?

Read on AO3.

Chapter 8

“Rachel!” Kurt snaps, hopping to his feet. “What in the world are you doing outside the palace? Mother said she would keep you in your room at night!”

Rachel lands, confident in the face of her brother’s anger, even as his eyes burn white hot like twin flames.

“Mother underestimates me,” Rachel says, tossing her curls over her shoulders. She glances into the water, admiring her own reflection, and notices Kurt’s face twitch nervously. Rachel’s eyes darken, a vicious twinkle in her smile. “So that’s the reason why you want to be alone here night after night, hmm?” she deduces, basking in the drama of the moment. “That’s why you had Mother keep me under lock and key? Won’t she be surprised to find out what you’ve been doing!?”

“It wasn’t my decision to lock you up at night!” Kurt says, his body filling with rage with no other emotion to buffer it. “It was Mother’s decision, but that doesn’t mean you didn’t deserve it!”

Rachel harumphs, affronted by the accusation that she may have done anything to deserve imprisonment. It’s not her fault that her mother and brother give her no space to shine. Natural talent indeed! She could be just as talented as Kurt, just as adept at controlling the flame if they’d only teach her the things she needed to know.

They’re holding her back on purpose! How is she to blame when everyone knows she doesn’t do well learning during the daytime. They should let her accompany Kurt at night, accommodate her schedule for once. After all, she’ll be tending the fire during the evening. There’s no need for her to split her time.

And her ungrateful brother! He should be proud to have such a willing pupil! He’s being selfish! That’s what it is! The Eternal Flame adores him! It listens to no fairy the way it listens to him - not even their mother. Rachel has heard her say so herself. He’s turned it against Rachel! Set her up to fail!

Kurt is about to become king, but that doesn’t mean he should get to have all the glory for himself!

“You know, I have a golden opportunity to run and tell Mother that you’ve been fraternizing with our mortal enemy.” Rachel’s smile grows wicked when Kurt’s wings flush a fiery crimson. “I can’t even begin to imagine what she might do to you … or to him.”

Kurt tries to swallow back his anger so that he can think clearly, find a way to reason with his sister, but his mind is too clouded by the injustice of being blackmailed by the one person he’d always considered his best and closest friend.

“How dare you?” Kurt growls. “You horrible little traitor!”

 Rachel gasps, her expression switching from devious to hurt, then to cold in seconds.

“I’m not the traitor here!” she yells. “You are! You’re going to be king! What did you think you were doing with that … that filth?”

The flame roars, the same licks that had reached out to comfort Kurt reaching for Rachel on his behalf, ready to throttle her. But Kurt doesn’t let it. She’s not strong enough yet to withstand the full force of the flame. He takes a single step forward and slaps her across the face. Rachel’s head flies to one side, her hand coming up to cover the red handprint on her cheek. Behind her, in response to Kurt’s fury, the Eternal Flame climbs up until boughs above them catch the blaze.

Kurt had never before laid a hand on his sister in anger. Her eyes pop, overwhelmed with shock more than pain. She turns back to her brother, her eyes focusing first on the burning branches above them, then the simmering fire reflected in his blown, obsidian pupils.

“Don’t you ever …” he says, punctuating the words with a threatening calm, “EVER … call him that again. Do you understand me?”

Rachel stumbles back, her confidence gone, her lips quivering as she tries to speak. “I’m … I’m going to te-tell mother …”

“Fine! Run and tell mother! Tell her right now! Tell her everything! Tell her …!”

“Tell me what?” Kurt hears his mother’s voice descend upon them, steeped in her unmistakable authority. She settles between them, looking from son to daughter, trying to make sense of the tension in the cove that has turned the flame completely black. “Rachel! What are you doing out of your room when you had strict orders to stay inside? And Kurt, what is the meaning of setting the trees on fire? Think of all the animals, my love! The birds in their nests! The chipmunks in their burrows!”

Kurt and Rachel stare at one another, frozen. But Rachel regains her composure while Kurt loses his completely.

“Kurt?” Elizabeth starts with her son when she notices the change in his attitude from fierce to frightened. “Was there something you wanted Rachel to tell me?”

Rachel’s lip curls with amusement. No longer concerned with the sting in her cheek, she prepares to snitch on her brother, tell their mother everything, in the most vivid detail she can think up.

But Kurt beats her to it.

“I don’t want to be king!” he cries, dropping to his knees. “I want to remain a prince and fall in love, tend the Eternal Flame at night for the rest of my life! Please, Mother? I’ll do whatever you say as long as I get to stay this way! As long as I get to have love, Mother! Please? I beg of you!”

His pleas die and sobs take over. His mother kneels beside him, gathers him in her arms while Rachel looks on with mouth agape.

“You … you knew?” Rachel says, falling quickly to her knees, ready to beg her mother’s forgiveness.

“Of course I knew!” Elizabeth scolds her daughter. “And how dare you torment your brother when you knew he was in pain!”

Elizabeth wraps her arms around Kurt tighter as her son cries.

“Now, Kurt … darling,” she says, stroking his hair, “we talked about this. I know how you feel. Believe me, I do. But no matter what, you will become king during the eclipse, and there is nothing that you or I can do to stop it, no power in heaven or on earth, my love. I am sorry.”

Kurt sobs harder. He had hoped that his mother, with all of her infinite power, might have a solution. That she might take pity on him and leave him be. Elizabeth shakes her head with disapproval at his wailing, pulling Kurt’s face up so she can look into his eyes.

“You have to stop this childish blubbering and grow up, my love,” she says – her tone stern but with a vein of regret that runs deep within. “There comes a time when we must put away childish things … like love … and do what is right. This is your time now.” She wipes the tears from his cheeks with her fingers and cups his chin in her hand. “Don’t be so heartbroken. Embrace it. Embrace your duty and your power and your destiny. You may not be able to keep the love of this one you hold so dear, but you have the love of your entire kingdom. Isn’t that enough?”

Kurt looks into his mother’s eyes, silently imploring, but he can’t tell if she actually believes what she’s saying. It’s pointless though, because there’s no arguing with her. Even if she had the power to help him, he doesn’t think she would. Everything has a time, a season, a way in which it must be.

And this is one of those.

She has no intention of interfering, even if his grief turns him inside out.

He nods once, sniffing back his remaining tears. “Yes, Mother. It is enough.”

“That’s my son,” she says, kissing him on the forehead. She plucks a blade of grass from his hair and tosses it, watching as it flutters through the air to the ground. She surveys the area where it lands, the grass tall and lush … except for one area close by where it has flattened.

Crushed in the shape of two bodies.

He must have been here, she thinks. Rachel must have caught them kissing or …

Elizabeth frowns. She knows she didn’t talk to him about this before - the facts of life and all of that. But that’s only because she thought it was understood. It wasn’t a priority. She’d have time to address it after his coronation - namely because it would be something he more than likely wouldn’t partake in. As disappointed as she is with her son, she is livid with her daughter for sneaking out and spying. But this isn’t the time for anger. There needs to be peace between them before Kurt’s transformation. These bad feelings have lingered long enough.

“I think that for tonight, we should all three tend the fire and meet the morning together,” Elizabeth says, helping her son to his feet and gesturing for her daughter to come near. Rachel stands, but keeps her eyes cast to her clasped hands as she approaches her mother and brother. “We have so little time left together,” Elizabeth adds. “After the eclipse, a great many things will change. Let us spend this time together as a family who loves one another. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” Kurt says softly, knowing it’s what he is expected to say.

“Agreed,” Rachel mumbles, peeking at her brother, who glares at her.

“Good.” Elizabeth scoots her children toward the fire.

Kurt doesn’t want to be out in the cove tending the flame. He wants to retire to his room and weep properly. But he comforts himself with the thought that this gives him the opportunity to keep an eye on his sister, in case she gets it into her head to try and elaborate to their mother who this love of his life really is.

***

Blaine and Trent swim to the undersea kingdom together in stiff but companionable silence. Trent doesn’t ask Blaine for an explanation of what he witnessed in the meadow, and Blaine doesn’t offer one. Initially, Trent felt betrayed, finding Blaine with a fairy, obviously having spent the evening being intimate while a huge battle had raged below the sea. But now, as they head back to the castle, back to Malek and a full war council (who will more than likely crucify Blaine if they find out about his new love), Trent feels strangely protective. Enemy or not, Kurt loves Blaine. He obviously doesn’t judge him their differences. He makes Blaine happy.

Even if their affair only lasts one more night and they never see each other again, Trent doesn’t want anyone ruining it.

Luckily, Trent is the only other sprite who knows, and he intends on keeping his lips sealed.

As they swim closer to the ocean floor, Blaine sees the devastation the jellyfish army wrought – homes destroyed, the castle gates torn apart, the coral garden singed black and marked with tendril-shaped scars. He doesn’t see any bodies, though they could have been collected already and moved out of sight, awaiting burial.

Blaine doesn’t stall. He doesn’t hide. He walks into the castle and straight to the throne room. He hears overlapping voices argue, layering one on top of the other, growing louder and louder as a new disgruntled voice chimes in.

With so much talking, Blaine wonders who could possibly be listening?

“So you're not dead after all,” Malek says with thick contempt the moment Blaine’s footsteps echo inside the crowded throne room. “And it seems you were wrong, my son.” The cacophony of voices fall silent when the king speaks, everyone waiting on the beveled edge to see what he has to say. “There was a jellyfish army, and they did indeed attack …”

“I know, Father, but …”

“And when they did,” Josiah, the king’s steward, cuts in, “you were nowhere to be found.”

Blaine resists the urge to throw him a look, his attention spent solely on his father.

“Where did you run off to, my son?” Malek asks.

“Father, I …”

“I’ll tell you where he was!” Hunter’s voice echoes from the doorway as he rushes to the throne and bows before the king. “He was out beyond the forbidden waters, making love to a fire fairy!”

The silence in the room shatters, raised voices aiming remarks of disgust and incredulity Blaine’s way.

“Is this true?” Malek asks, his voice a signal that quiets the muttering.

Blaine’s eyes scan the room, scans the faces of those already judging him. If he ever had any chance of proving himself worthy of being king, that chance has just been lost.

By his reckoning, he has nothing left to lose.

“Yes, my king,” Blaine admits. “It is true.”

“What?” Malek roars, his voice rising above the gasps and hisses that follow Blaine’s confession. “Traitor!”

“No!” Blaine counters in an equally loud and commanding voice. “We are not at war with the fire fairies! There has been no battle between us and their kingdom for countless generations! Prince Kurt and I are in love!”

“What love?” Hunter asks with a snide chuckle. “Did he tell you that he loved you?”

“As a matter of fact, he did!” Blaine defends firmly since, in this, he has no doubts.

“The fire fairies are devious. Manipulative. He’s lowering your defenses, making you vulnerable. They’ve probably been planning some sort of attack for a while now, and you walked right into their trap!”

“What are you talking about?” Blaine asks. “What trap? How can you believe that? The fire fairies can’t even come under the water or they’ll die! How exactly did he lure me into a trap? How are they going to invade our kingdom!?”

“They’ve been our mortal enemies for centuries!” Hunter grandstands instead of offering up answers in an attempt to sway those gathered to his cause. “And it seems they’ve found a weakness.” He waves a hand in Blaine’s direction.

“Yes,” Josiah agrees, standing with his son. “I think the fire fairies have lived comfortably in our good graces long enough. It’s time to take care of that threat once and for all!”

“No!” Blaine charges the older sprite, stopping nose to nose since he arrogantly does not back down in the presence of the impassioned prince. “I won’t let you go near them! They’ve done nothing to us! Why should we be enemies of the fire fairies?” Blaine turns to his father, who looks at his son with only a vague interest. “Why do we engage in all these battles? These feuds need to end! Some of them are so ancient that no one even remembers how they started, or why! There is no reason at all for this irrational hate! We need to stop this isolation! We need to bring our races together, not keep the world at arm’s length!”

Blaine watches his father, lost in thought. He walks toward him with fearful optimism, hoping some of his words might finally be sinking in.

Malek stretches his tentacles and takes hold of the floor beneath him. He moves his hulking body, using his tentacles as leverage. He circles his mass around to address those waiting patiently to see how the Sea King will respond to his son. There are many in the hall blindly loyal to the king, but equally as many eager for the start of Prince Blaine’s reign. Malek knows all eyes are on him. He sighs heavily, as he is want to do when he feels that his son has said or done something irritating and ignorant – which is quite often.

“From this day forward,” Malek proclaims in a booming voice, “Prince Blaine is an enemy of this kingdom …”

Trent gasps. Hunter and Josiah pat one another on the back, matching grins plastered to their conniving faces. The assembly explodes into an uproar of dueling arguments, rising higher and higher to be heard. Amid the chaos, Blaine stares silently at his father. Of all the things he ever imagined his father capable of, he never dreamed this.

“He will be imprisoned in the dungeon as a traitor,” Malek finishes. “Guards, arrest him.”

“No!” Trent yells, drawing his weapon, but Blaine leaps on him, holding his hands steady.

“I had hoped for so much for you, my son,” Malek says, turning away from the skirmish the way the old king does every time he dismisses his son.

“But, the kingdom, my lord,” Josiah speaks up with cocky assurance, “will need a new king by the eclipse. Whatever shall we do now with the only heir to the throne disavowed?” His eyes find Blaine, huddled beside his friend, glaring him down as the royal guards begin to close in around them.

“The coronation will still take place,” Malek says importantly, “on schedule, when I will crown Lord Trent King of the Realm.”

Trent’s jaw drops. He nearly fumbles his weapon. Blaine turns his way, a proud smile on his face.

“Go, Trent,” he whispers, winking at his gobsmacked friend.

“No!” Hunter screams. “But … but I’m supposed to be next in line for the throne!”

“Well, I am,” Josiah mentions, annoyed at being overlooked, “but I was going to hand the honor over to my son, of course.”

“I am the king,” Malek says in a bored manner, as if nothing taking place in his throne room actually concerns him. “I decide who gets the crown. If I can take it away from my son, I can give it to whomever I chose. Trent has repeatedly proven himself loyal, obedient, fair-minded and just. He will be the new king.”

“No!” Hunter complains, storming forward. His father grabs his arm, tries to restrain him, hissing an overly conspicuous, “Shut up!”

“I will not shut up!” Hunter shouts, pulling away from his father and barreling toward Trent, shielded behind armed guards. “I worked too hard for too long to be passed over like this!”

“Worked hard at what?” Blaine asked, narrowing his eyes at Hunter’s spontaneous confession. “What did you do?”

“Those asinine jellyfish!” Hunter bellows, flailing left and right at anyone who approaches. “I did not do all of this so that this blubbering pile of fish guts …” he stabs a finger in Trent’s direction “… could become king over me!”

Hunter pulls out a knife and lunges at Trent, trying to impale him from beyond the row of guards - no longer the smooth talking, contemptible fiend he had been, but now a desperate, unhinged villain. He swipes the knife through the air without aim or control, and slices one of the guards in the arm.

“Traitors,” Malek mutters beneath his breath, turning a little of his attention back to the sprite attempting to assassinate his new heir apparent. “Arrest him as well … him and his horrid father.”

The guards forget about Blaine and rush Hunter. He kicks and punches as they grab at his arms and legs. A few of his strikes land, but not effectively against guards in armor. They easily subdue him. They drag him from the throne room as he screams: “Stop! Put me down! I’m the new king! ME! I’ve proven myself worthy! I deserve this! Put … me … down! I order you!”

“And what about Prince Blaine?” Trent asks, protecting his friend from the circle of guards. “He was right all along about the jellyfish.”

“Hmmm …” Malek shakes his bulky head “… be that as it may, his association with the fire fairy cannot be overlooked. My original ruling stands. He will be imprisoned for his crime … indefinitely.”

Guards march forward to claim Blaine again, but Trent pushes in front of him, trying to hold them back.

“No! I refuse to be king!” Trent yells, arms outstretched to block Blaine. The guards, flummoxed by whether or not they should physically remove Trent, their soon-to-be-king, stand fast and await orders. “I only recognize one prince in our kingdom!” Trent declares. “There can be no other king in our realm but Blaine!”

Malek opens his mouth to speak but Blaine puts up a hand to stop him. He doesn’t expect his father to abide by his wishes, but the Great King sits back on his massive tentacles and watches the drama unfold.

“You wish to honor me?” Blaine asks his friend.

“Of course I do,” Trent replies.

“You will still do what I command?”

“Always, my prince,” Trent promises, his voice the epitome of despair.

“Then do one last thing for me.” Blaine rounds in front of him and places a hand on Trent’s shoulder.

“Anything.” Trent returns the gesture. Their whole friendship, the whole of their lives spent together, comes down to this one request.

Trent would stake his life on it.

“Rule in my stead. Be a wise and fair king …” Blaine leans his forehead against Trent’s “… and take care of yourself, buddy.”

Blaine gives Trent’s shoulder a squeeze, then lets go and backs away. The guards gather around him, one on each side, ahead and behind.

“Your Highness?” the lead guard addresses Blaine kindly and he nods.

With a final sweep of the throne room, sparing not a single glance for his father, Blaine surrenders and walks proudly from the hall.

[pope-francis-quotes]

31st March >> (@ZenitEnglish By Deborah Castellano Lubov) #PopeFrancis #Pope Francis’ Full Homily during the celebration of Holy Mass ‘Contemplate, Pray & Give Thanks:’ Our Proper Response for Jesus Having Born Our Sins (Full Text of Pope Francis’ Morning Homily)

At Casa Santa Marta, Prays for the Homeless

Contemplate, pray and give thanks…. This is how we ought to respond to Jesus’ having born our sins…

Pope Francis stressed this today, March 31, as he offered his private daily Mass at his residence Casa Santa Marta for the victims of Coronavirus, which has claimed more than 11,600 lives in Italy.

Today, the Holy Father prayed for the homeless.

“At this moment in which everyone is supposed to be at home, may society, men and women, realize this reality and help them, and that the Church might welcome them.”

In today’s homily, the Holy Father reflected on the symbol of the serpent presented in both readings of the Fifth Tuesday of Lent (Numbers 21:4-9 and John 8:21-30), reported Vatican News.

As he reflected on how from the very beginning, people have been sinful and ungrateful, the Pope stressed how we must be grateful to the Lord for taking on our sins to redeem all of us.

Jesus, Francis stressed, took upon himself all of our sins….

“There was a vendetta by the doctors of the law who didn’t want Him,” he reminded, saying: “All of that is true. But the truth that comes from God is that He came into the world to take our own sins upon Himself to the point of making Himself sin…. Our sins are there.”

Exhorting us to be more grateful, he continued, “Christians need to make it a habit of looking at the crucifix “in this light”, in the “light of the redemption” and as a reminder that Jesus did not pretend to suffer and die.”

“Rather,” he said, “it was the moment of His utter defeat,” as “He was entirely alone with the burden of our sin that He had taken on Himself to the point of annihilation and the feeling of total abandonment by His Father.”

“It’s not easy to understand this,” the Jesuit Pope said, noting “should we think about it, we’ll never arrive at a conclusion.”

“We can only contemplate, pray, and give thanks,” he said.

Before concluding, the Pope exhorted faithful to partake in Spiritual Communion in this difficult time, and ended the celebration with Eucharistic Adoration and Benediction.

Here are the Holy Father’s words, followed by the prayer for Spiritual Communion:

I prostrate myself at your feet, O my Jesus, and I offer you the repentance of my contrite heart, which abases itself in its nothingness in Your Holy Presence. I adore you in the Sacrament of Your Love; I desire to receive You in the poor abode that my heart offers You. While waiting for the happiness of a Sacramental Communion, I want to possess You in spirit. Come to me, O my Jesus, that I may come to You. May Your Love inflame my whole being, in life and in death. I believe in You, I hope in You, I love You. Amen.

The Masses in Francis’ chapel normally welcome a small group of faithful, but due to recent measures’ taken by the Vatican, are now being kept private, without their participation.

It was announced this month that the Pope would have these Masses, in this period, be available to all the world’s faithful, via streaming on Vatican Media, on weekdays, at 7 am Rome time.

The Vatican has also published the Pope’s Holy Week and Easter schedule, confirming this year’s events will not welcome the physical presence of the faithful, and the events will be made available via streaming.

This comes at a time too when the Italian bishops’ conference has canceled public Masses throughout the nation, until at least April 3rd, following guidelines put out by Italian authorities.

In addition to Santa Marta, the Vatican has taken other steps to keep people safe and to stay close to the Pope, even if from a distance. They are televising the Pope giving privately, from the papal library, his weekly Angelus and General Audience addresses.

The Vatican Museums are now closed, along with the Vatican’s other similar museums. There have also been various guidelines implemented throughout the Vatican, to prevent the spread of the virus.

For anyone interested, the Pope’s Masses at Santa Marta can be watched live and can be watched afterward on Vatican YouTube. Below is a link to today’s Mass. Also, a ZENIT English translation of the Pope’s full homily can be read below:

***

***

FULL HOMILY

A serpent is certainly not a likable animal: it’s always associated with evil. In revelation also, the serpent is in fact the animal that the devil uses to induce to sin. In the Apocalypse the devil is called the “ancient serpent,” he that from the beginning bites, poisons, destroys and kills. Therefore, he can’t succeed. If he wants to succeed, as someone that proposes beautiful things, these are fantasies: but we believe him and so we sin. This is what happened to the people of Israel: they couldn’t endure the journey. They were tired. And the people spoke against God and against Moses. It’s always the same thing, isn’t it? “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt? To have us die in this wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this worthless food, the manna.” (Cf. Numbers 21:4-5) And, we read in past days, their imagination goes always to Egypt: “But, we were fine there, we ate well . . . “And it also seems that the Lord didn’t endure the people in this moment. He got angry. God’s wrath could sometimes be seen . . . And then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, which bit the people and they died. ” Many people of Israel died” (Numbers 21:5). The serpent is always the image of evil. In that moment, the people saw in the serpent sin; they see in the serpent the one that has done evil. And they go to Moses and say: “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us” (Numbers 21:7). They repent. This is the story in the wilderness. Moses prayed for the people and the Lord said to Moses” “Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and every one who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live” (Numbers 21:8).

It makes me think: is this not idolatry? The serpent is there, an idol, which gives me health . . . It’s not understandable. Logically, it’s not understandable, because this is a prophecy; this is an announcement of what is to come. Because we also heard in the Gospel as a close prophecy: “When you have lifted up the Son of man, then you will know that I am He, and that I do nothing on my own” (John 8:28). Jesus lifted on the cross. Moses makes a serpent and lifts it. Jesus will be lifted, as the serpent, to give salvation. However, the core of the prophecy is, in fact, that Jesus made Himself sin for us. He didn’t sin: He made Himself sin. As Saint Peter says in his Letter: “He Himself bore our sins” (Cf. 1 Peter 2:24). And when we look at the crucifix, we think of the Lord suffering: all that is true. However, we pause before coming to the center of that truth: in this moment You seem to be the greatest sinner; You made Yourself sin. You have taken all our sins upon Yourself. He annihilated Himself to this. The cross, it’s true, is a torture; there is the vengeance of the Doctors of the Law, of those that didn’t want Jesus: all this is true. However, the truth that comes from God is that He came into the world to take our sins upon Himself, to the point of making Himself sin, every sin. Our sins are there. We must get into the habit of looking at the crucifix in this light, which is the truest; it’s the light of the redemption. In Jesus made sin we see Christ’s total defeat. He doesn’t feign to die; He doesn’t feign he’s not suffering, alone, abandoned . . . “Father, why hast Thou forsaken me? (Cf. Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34).” A serpent: I am lifted as a serpent, as that which is all sin.

It’s not easy to understand this and, if we think, we’ll never come to a conclusion. We must only contemplate, pray and thank.

The Pope ended the celebration with Eucharistic Adoration and Benediction, inviting the faithful to make a Spiritual Communion.

Here Is the Prayer Recited by the Pope:

My Jesus, I believe you are really present in the Most Holy Sacrament of the altar. I love You above all things and I desire You in my soul. As I cannot receive You sacramentally now, come at least spiritually into my heart. As You have already come, I embrace you and unite myself to You. Do not let me ever be separated from You.

Before leaving the Chapel dedicated to the Holy Spirit, the Marian antiphon Ave Regina Caelorum (Hail Queen of Heaven”) was intoned.

“Hail, Queen of Heaven, Lady of the Angels: door and root of salvation, bring light into the world; delight, glorious Virgin, beautiful among all women. Hail, all holy

31st MARCH 2020 15:59POPE'S MORNING HOMILY

[evangelistopamfo]

THE BEAUTY OF LOVE-011919

The Beauty of Love

Bible in a Year:

Genesis 46–48; Matthew 13:1–30

May your fountain be blessed.

Proverbs 5:18

Today's Scripture & Insight:

Proverbs 5:1-23

The “Jarabe Tapatío,” also known as the Mexican hat dance, celebrates romance. During this upbeat dance, the man places his sombrero on the ground. At the very end, the woman grabs the hat and both hide behind it to seal their romance with a kiss.

This dance reminds me of the importance of faithfulness in marriage. In Proverbs 5, after talking about the high cost of immorality, we read that marriage is exclusive. “Drink water from your own cistern, running water from your own well” (v. 15). Even with ten couples dancing the Jarabe on stage, each person focuses on his or her partner. We can rejoice in a deep and undivided commitment to our spouse (v. 18).

Our romance is also being observed. The dancers, while they are enjoying their partner, know someone is watching. In the same way, we read, “For your ways are in full view of the Lord, and he examines all your paths” (v. 21). God wants to protect our marriages, so He’s constantly watching us. May we please Him through the loyalty we show to each other.

Just like in the Jarabe there is a rhythm to follow in life. When we keep the beat of our Creator by being faithful to Him—whether we are married or unmarried—we find blessings and joy.

By Keila Ochoa

Today's Reflection

Dear Lord, You know all my ways. Help me to honor You in my relationships with others.

2.

Hi there!

What’s the most self-limiting belief you can have?

Believing that habits don’t affect your happiness and the outcomes in your life.

Not only do habits definitely affect these things, but they also make the difference between reaching your goals - or giving up on them.

Let me give you an example to explain this.

A good friend of mine (who I’ll call Michael) is tremendously successful in the catering industry. However, he recently confided in me that - despite his success - he felt unhappy with his life.

Michael told me: "I work incredibly long hours, and to keep myself going, I have to regularly rely on energy drinks and endless cups of espresso. I know these things aren’t good for me, but they’re the only way I know to keep up with my hectic work schedule."

I questioned my friend on his daily habits, including his morning routine. And I was surprised when he told me that his typical daily routine looked like this:

Wakes up at 5.30 a.m.

Showers

Brushes his teeth

Gets dressed

Commutes to work

Works for 16-18 hours

Comes home

Crashes to sleep

And then… repeats the cycle again!

"Do you exercise? And how do you de-stress?" I asked him.

Michael replied: "I don’t have time to exercise, and my usual way of de-stressing is by eating junk food while watching movies."

Calling on my years of researching and teaching healthy and balanced living, I explained to him that a few small changes to his habits could make a BIG difference to his life.

Here’s what I advised him:

Wake up 30 minutes earlier than normal

Spend 5 minutes walking your dog

Spend 10 minutes eating a healthy breakfast

Spend 15 minutes planning your day

When I met him a few weeks after giving him this advice, he enthusiastically told me that the simple changes to his morning routine had resulted in significant positive benefits.

According to Michael, he felt stronger and more energized than before. His working day was less chaotic. And he now found himself getting more done in less time - leaving him able to finish work much earlier than previously. This had the added advantage of giving him time to exercise, read or socialize in the evening.

"I’m so pleased you helped me out, Leon. Until our conversation, I’d never thought about habits and how they were affecting my daily life. Now I fully understand how important they are!" he told me.

Michael was by no means an exception.

In my role as a life coach, I find that MOST people are unaware of their habits and how these affect the outcomes in their lives. It’s all too easy to look at other people’s habits - but we rarely take the time to study our own. It's very easy to fall into a negative loop because what it's costing you in the long run (the effects of the accumulated negative consequences) is not immediately apparent.

But we must be aware of our habits if we are to break free from limiting autopilot routines. Then, we can start using our habits to build an increasingly happy and successful future for ourselves.

Want to learn how to do this? Then click through to my article below:

How to Get Motivated and Be Happy Every Day When You Wake Up

Cheers!

Leon

3.

Prayer: Releasing the Power of the Blood – Susan Oeland

by

444 Prophecy News

Susan Oeland Releasing the Power of the Blood I cover my mind and thoughts with the blood of Jesus. I cover my doorpost and possessions with the blood of Jesus (Exod. 12:13). I overcome the devil through the blood of Jesus (Rev. 12:11). I sprinkle the blood of Jesus and receive multiplied grace and […]

4.

Works of darkness – Lastrumpet08

January 18, 2019

Those who love darkness and not Light, do not want their evil works of darkness to be revealed nor exposed by the Light. That is why they hate the Light and oppose the Truth always. They believe that they can hide their evil works, what they do in secret and in darkness. They are foolish and do not realize that I See and I Hear everything. There is no place where anyone can hide nor run from Me. You are all ever before Me, the righteous and the wicked. You will all give account for your own deeds, good or evil and bear the consequences. The wages of sin is death. The soul that sins will die.

Do not partake in the unfruitful works of darkness but rather expose them, bring it to the Light. All the things that are an abomination and not pleasing to Me, don’t approve of those things nor partake in them or you are in enmity with Me and not pleasing to Me and will not Inherit My Everlasting Kingdom. Don’t be deceived. There is a way that seems right but its end leads to death. There will be no mercy without true remorseful repentance. Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for Light and Light for darkness. It will be a terrible thing for them to fall into My Hands. I Am Love but I Am also A Consuming Fire to My adversaries. I Find no pleasure in the death of a sinner. It is not My Will that anyone perish but that all repent to have Eternal Life.

The world is in turmoil because of all the evil works of darkness. There will be no true peace in the world without Me, The Prince of Peace. Only those who are in Peace with Me will experience true Peace in the midst of turmoil. I Am The Light of the world. Be My children of Light and not of darkness or you only deceive yourselves.

“Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the Wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.7 Therefore do not be partakers with them; 8 for you were formerly darkness, but now you are Light in the Lord; walk as children of Light 9 (for the fruit of the Light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth),10 trying to learn what is Pleasing to The Lord. 11 And do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them; 12 for it is disgraceful even to speak of the things which are done by them in secret. 13 But all things become visible when they are exposed by the Light, for everything that becomes visible is Light.”Ephesians 5:7-13

[kaysblushingbookreviews]

K.Webster 

  About the Author:

K Webster is a USA Today Best-Selling Author of over 60 romance books including contemporary romance, historical romance, erotic romance, paranormal romance and dark romance, she is well-known for her ‘Banned Books ‘in the taboo category also.

Married with two children, Kristi is passionate about spending time with her family while balancing her successful writing career. She enjoys reading and graphic design and has plenty of followers and fans to keep up with,  engaging with them regularly on social platforms and book fairs.

Kristi has a go hard or go home attitude with her writing, she is unabashed and unapologetic with her stories. Her characters are flawed, they are real, raw and powerful. They are K. Webster perfect!

 I admire her so much as an author because she writes stories that step outside the box. She crosses boundaries that will have some blushing way beyond their comfort zone, but that’s what I love so much about her, as an author she challenges her readers, pushes their limits and is unafraid to write the stories that she feels need to be told.

Her taboo treats have been a huge success and with each new book she publishes she sets the bar a little higher.  Webster’s latest collaboration with Ker Dukey The V Games series would have to be one of my favourites. Its gritty, it’s vicious, it’s hunger games meets Russian mafia, not for the faint hearted due to is graphic violence but it’s so ruthlessly addictive.

Kristi stories are always well researched and give us a view into the minds of those we would otherwise deem different. My Torin is a perfect example is this, giving us some insight into the mind of someone with severe autism, showcasing their inner struggles and difficulties. It’s heart-breaking, eye-opening and fascinating to read. Another would be The Day she Cried addressing sensitive subjects like suicide and social acceptance. This a very powerful hate to love story about accountability, healing and forgiveness. Learning to love again after loss.

No two books of Webster’s are the same, every character is unique and there is inspiration to be found between the lines of every story. Some are naughty reads sure to set your pants on fire, some are playful, mischievous and fun, others dive deep and dark with taboo but each one is certain to entertain. K Webster is one hell of a story-teller and I am so excited to have her star as Author of the Month!

If you have yet to read any of her books where the hell have you been?? Get out from under that rock and go visit her website and check out her vast collection of works now.

Social Media Links:

Website: https://www.authorkwebster.com

Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/bllgoP

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authorkwebster

Twitter: https://twitter.com/KristiWebster

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/authorkwebster/

  5 Blushing Moments with K.Webster 

  What inspired you to become a writer? How did it all begin for you?

I always loved reading and anything book related. I always wanted to write a book, but the process seemed daunting. It wasn’t until a friend of mine said she was writing a book that I wondered if maybe I truly did have it in me. So, I started writing, met some other authors in the indie world, and never looked back. Once I realized I could do it, I went a little nuts and wrote like a madwoman

  Who is you favorite male anti-hero character that you’ve created and why?

 I think Gabe Sharpe from my War & Peace series is my favorite. Simply because he’s such a complicated man. You hate him a lot, but then, beneath his psychopathic exterior, he shows signs of humanity and love. His obsessive love is kind of what gets him into psycho mode to begin with. I loved peeling back his layers and seeing what made him tick. I especially loved seeing the readers evolve from hating him to sometimes loving him against their will.

Buy now:  Amazon.com 

  What do you find the hardest to write about or struggle the most with when writing a manuscript?

I tend to get bored easily. I’ll start on something and be all fired up to write it, but then inspiration will strike elsewhere. Then, I want to chase that rabbit down a hole rather than finish the thing I was just fired up to write. It’s a constant battle of staying focused on one thing at a time. My creative side often wins and we go rabbit chasing a lot.

  How long does it take you to complete a book? On average how many hours a week do you spend on average writing/editing/plotting?

It can take anywhere from 7 days to 9 months. I wrote The Wild from Sunday to Sunday in one week, but Whispers and the Roars took me 9 months. It all depends on the level of research involved, my outside distractions, and the desire to write the book I’m on. Also, if I have co-writes going on, those interrupt my normal book writing time as well. Every day, I’m devoting time to the process, whether it be writing, editing, plotting, marketing, etc. I prefer the days when I can just write, write, write. Ideally, I like to write during the day while my kids are at school Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. So maybe 5-7 hours those days of writing time. If I’m focused, I can usually write around 5-10k in a day, but sometimes I’ll write upwards of 15k in a day. I hate being interrupted and would rather write 0 words than to write 1k and then be interrupted. I like my brain to be fully immersed in the story and don’t like when I have to keep pulling my head out of it.

What are you currently working on? What can we expect to see from K Webster in 2019? 

Currently, I’m working on getting Vas (my co-write with Ker Dukey) finalized, Enzo (a taboo treat) edited, and a secret angsty story that I’ve been fully in love with. My goal in 2019 is to publish less but write more. The publishing part is what takes the most out of me (marketing, cover design, blog tour scheduling, promoting, editing, proofing, etc.), but the writing is my favorite part. So I’m hoping to just write and write. And hopefully, I can write more “me” projects that are calling to me. Those “me” projects are always a benefit to the readers as they are the ones I’m most passionate about, and I honestly think that shows through the execution of the story

Vas (The V Games, #3) by K Webster & Ker Dukey Release Date: January 7, 2019 Genre: Mafia Romance

Add to your TBR here: https://bit.ly/2THPmiB

Blurb:

The Volkov name is one I longed for. Their household is one I grew up in, but not as an equal—as a maid’s son. This didn’t stop me from becoming a man to be reckoned with. But even with my rightful name finally given to me, I still feel adrift. Until her.

Everything I did was for acceptance. Everything I lost brought me to my family. To this life. To her.

I fought for my status. I fought for my sisters. And I will fight to the death for my angel.

She has shown me there is light in our pitch-black world. That the stars can’t shine without the darkness of night. She is the stars, and I am the sky in which she shines.

There is evil lurking in the shadows we create. The corruption and depravities of the First Families have become toxic and are infecting us all from within. Games have been played, and now, they must end.

I am Vas. Vocal. Voracious. Vindictive. Volkov. A devil in love with an angel, and together, we’re going to rule Hell on Earth.

***

Missed the first two? You can get them now for free in #KindleUnlimted! The V Games Series: Vlad (Book 1) https://amzn.to/2OwSYR6 Ven (Book 2) https://amzn.to/2MmYubA

  Blushing Book Reviews would like to thank K.Webster for her time to partake in this interview.

Some of my favorite K. Webster Books

  Dirty Ugly Toy: https://amzn.to/2KNiZtc Whispers and the Roars: https://amzn.to/2B21CF6 Notice: https://amzn.to/2nynHl8 My Torin: https://amzn.to/2MleElL The Day She Cried: https://amzn.to/2vERAF4

  Now available in KU and audio!  Amazon: https://amzn.to/2r2kqwO Audible: https://tinyurl.com/y7b9sgpy Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/2r3Qpf9 Amazon CAN: https://amzn.to/2vPsO7E Amazon AUS: https://amzn.to/2r2MQWu

  Cold Cole Heart is Free on Ku

Amazon: https://amzn.to/2T1VW30

Amazon CA: https://amzn.to/2JWaey1

Amazon AUS: https://amzn.to/2DfQ1Sp

Amazon Paperback: https://amzn.to/2Plmeio

Goodreads: https://bit.ly/2OmCTSr

**January Author of the Month** K.Webster K.Webster  About the Author: K Webster is a USA Today Best-Selling Author of over 60 romance books including contemporary romance, historical romance, erotic romance, paranormal romance and dark romance, she is well-known for her ‘Banned Books ‘in the taboo category also.