#a weird man made in a lab who was raised by a former-time traveller and her robot dog

[areyouwho-ithinkyouare]

gonna rewatch the sarah jane adventures now they’re all on iplayer bcus that show was everything to me when i was a kid but also i feel like i’ve forgotten most of it

[longitudinalwaveme]

Victorian Flash

A weird AU.

Location: 1860s London 

Flash #1: Jason Garrick, age 70. Born in the 1790s, has been operating as the Flash since the 1810s. (Queen Victoria took the throne in 1837, and he also lived during the reigns of William IV, George IV, and George III.) In his civilian life, he works as a scientist and as a university professor. Married to Joan Garrick (neé Williams). 

Flash #2: Bartholomew Allen, age 40. Born in the 1820s, became the Flash in the mid-1840s. Married to Iris Allen (neé West), a (in this time period rare) female journalist. Member of the City of London Police. Iris works for The London Gazette.

Flash #3: Wallace West, age 25. Born in the mid-1830s. Became Kid Flash at 10 years of age. Nephew to Bartholomew and Iris; works a variety of odd jobs. Married to Linda West (neé Park), a young Korean woman he met while traveling the world (with super speed). The two have twins, Jason and Iris West (both age 5). 

Captain Cold: Leonard Snart, age 38. Born in the 1820s in Southwark, the son of a (frequently drunken) tinker, became Captain Cold in the mid-1840s after a freak accident led to his pistol gaining the ability to shoot out beams of intense cold. Already a thief, the Captain used this power to seek greater riches….leading him into conflict with the second Flash. Cold is also the de facto leader of the Rogues, who operate out of Seven Dials. 

Golden Glider: Elizabeth Snart, age 33. Younger sister of Leonard Snart (Captain Cold); born in the early 1830s in Southwark. Elizabeth worked for a number of years as a dressmaker, but her true passion was ice skating...and through this hobby she met the love of her life, Roscoe Dillon, Esq (better known as the Top), whom she followed into a life of crime as one of London’s most notorious female criminals at the age of 26. 

The Top: Roscoe Dillon, Esq, age 36. Born in the mid-1820s, the only son of a shrewd businessman who started up his own factory, making himself thousands of dollars. Highly intelligent (an Oxford graduate), Dillon nevertheless chose to go into a life of crime in the late 1840s (for what reason, no one was quite sure), putting his not inconsiderable talents as an inventor to use in order to do so. He subsequently fell in love with Elizabeth Snart, the younger sister of his ally Captain Cold, at the age of 28, and the two claim to be engaged.

Mirror Master I: Samuel Joseph Scudder, age 36. Born in the mid-1820s to a poor widow who worked as a laundress in the Whitechapel District. By the time he was eleven, Samuel had turned to crime in an attempt to support her, and, by the time she was killed by cholera on his sixteenth birthday, he was entrenched in London’s underworld. However, what made Samuel unusual was his remarkable scientific aptitude-something that allowed him to utilize mirrors in ways undreamed of by the educational and scientific communities, and also allowed him to help form the so-called “Rogues” of London’s Seven Dials. Samuel is also quite fond of smoking cigars. 

Weather Wizard: Mark Mardon, age 37. Son of a tutor and a former governess; younger brother of Clyde Mardon, a famous scientist who was making groundbreaking work in the field of meteorology. Unlike his sibling, Mark was something of a wastrel, prone to gambling, drinking, and hanging around with unsavory people. His life probably would have gone by without him doing anything of importance had he not stumbled into his brother’s lab while fleeing his creditors. His brother had died of heart failure, but he had left behind a most remarkable invention-a wand that could control the weather. Mark decided to use the wand as a way to pay off his debts...by becoming yet another of London’s “Rogues”. 

Trickster: James Jesse (probably an alias), age unknown (but likely in his early thirties). James Jesse arrived in London with a traveling circus in the 1840s….and promptly took up a career of pestering the city’s greatest hero, the Flash, seemingly because it amused him. Not much else is known about him; though he is an expert thief and con man. He also invented shoes that use the power of steam to let him walk on air. 

Heat Wave: Michael Rory, age 42. Born to rural farmers in the late 1810s; moved to London at age 15 after the family farm burned down under mysterious circumstances. Worked for a number of years as a baker before his bakery burned down (also under mysterious circumstances) and he disappeared. He resurfaced a few years later, working with the Rogues and armed with an incredible gun that shot flames. 

Captain Boomerang: George Harkness, age 37. Born in Australia in the 1820s; joined Her Majesty’s Navy as soon as he turned 18, where he managed to earn the rank of Captain. He arrived in London in the mid-1840s after being discharged from the Navy thanks to a leg injury that left him with a permanent limp. This limp did not, however, prevent him from making the decision to embark on a life of crime. Thanks to his use of the boomerang-a weapon whose use he had learned from the native people of the island on which he had been born-the papers gave him the moniker of “Captain Boomerang”, and he eventually joined the Rogues of Seven Dials. He has a noticeable accent. 

Mirror Master II: Evan McCulloch, age 26. A native of Glasgow, Scotland, where he was born in the mid-1830s. Abandoned as an infant, McCulloch was taken in by a Mrs. McCulloch, who raised him until her death from scarlet fever. Orphaned again at the age of 16, Evan turned to a life of crime. When his crimes in Glasgow garnered too much attention, he fled to London, where he stumbled upon some of the technology that the original Mirror Master, Samuel Scudder, had abandoned. Quickly mastering its use, he was soon dubbed the second Mirror Master by the press and the police...something which brought him into conflict with the original. However, Captain Cold thought that the newcomer had potential, and invited him to join the Seven Dials’ Rogues-much to the frustration of Samuel Scudder. Has a noticeable Scottish accent. 

The Pied Piper: Sir Hartley Rathaway, son of Osgood Rathaway, an Earl, and Rachel Rathaway, his wife. 29 years old. Born into extreme wealth, Hartley Rathaway was cut off from his fortune and thrown out of his parent’s estate at the age of 18 when he told them that, when he came of age, he planned to give away most of his money to London’s poor. While wandering through the slums of London (after being mugged twice), he stumbled upon a mysterious flute...one that enabled him to control the actions of those around him. He used the flute to steal money from his parents and then proceeded to give the money to the poor. He soon became famous as a Robin Hood figure, and his fame eventually led him to become a member of the Rogues...none of whom know he is still technically in line to become an Earl. 

Axel Walker: Age 15; a native of the Seven Dials. A street urchin with sticky fingers; Axel idolizes the Trickster and wants to follow in his footsteps. Most of the Rogues find him annoying; just useful enough to bother keeping him around. His mother is alive, but is always working and seems unable to control her son, and his father is a complete mystery.

If any British people want to correct me on my geography, I would appreciate the help.

[ariannjs]

PRISON CELL | A SasuSaku FanFic One Shot

A day late but here's my entry for #SasuSakuTwitFest 2020 Day 4: Travels. I also posted a part of this for #sssnippetaday on Twitter.

Enjoyyyy!

-A

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Being on the road for two long years has led Sasuke to resign to the fact that he would be needing help from other people. With his lack of resources, he knew it's only appropriate for him to take whatever he can get from anyone who is willing to offer him anything. Provisions of food and a space to rest gave him the comfort that he thought he didn't deserve, usually from a widow, an old couple, or a starting family, who, by some miracle, did not see him as an S-rank criminal like how almost the rest of the world did. 

He's usually still on edge around people, shinobi and civilians alike. It wasn't unknown to him that not everyone was happy with Konoha's decision to spare him from a heavier punishment. But as he continued to travel, the weight on his shoulders began to lighten for he got to realize that there are still good people in the world, increasing his motivation to keep on pursuing and fighting for the peace that his brother had always hoped for.

Now, he has a lot of stories to tell when he goes back home.

On one of his visits in Ame, he was welcomed by an old widow in her home for three productive days. She insisted that he should be well taken cared of while he looked after the village to catch the group of rogue shinobi lurking in their area since the week before. It was a huge task that the civilians couldn't repay, according to her, so it was the least that she could do.

When he was about to leave after succeeding in his task there, the old lady even packed a bento for him. And he couldn't help but remember being a child once again as he accepted the bento and muttered a thanks at her.

"No problem at all, Uchiha-san. You've done so much more! A lot of people here are even fond of you because of what you did for us. So it's you whom we should thank."

"It's nothing, really."

"Ah. Such a fine gentleman you are! You've probably had lots of girls in your life, hmm?"

Sasuke slowly shook his head. Growing up, many girls threw themselves at him with the hopes of getting his attention, but there was only one that annoyed him and tugged his heartstrings despite his years of denial about it. "Just one." 

"My, my. It's wonderful to know that a handsome man like you is faithful to his one and only!" The old woman giggled. "Ah, young love. Could you tell me something about her?"

Blinking twice, Sasuke stared at her and thought about her surprising question. Until his mind traced back to those solitary moments he had in a prison cell in Konoha.

He was well aware that she was just doing her job. But despite her silence and his sight's absence, he could feel the tenderness of her touch and the warmth of her heart as she tended to the remnant of his left arm for the third time that week.

No words were spoken since the first time. But as he heard the movements of her hands while performing the signs for the jutsu to open his cell, he forced his dry throat to release something.

"Sakura, thank you."

He received no response that night, but he was sure that his former genin teammate smiled at that as she exited and locked his cell again.

The next time she visited for his checkup, he struggled between staying silent or asking something that has been bombarding his mind for days. It might have been obvious because he was startled when he heard her finally speak. 

"You have something to say."

He gulped. Unsure of how the conversation would go once his question was already out. But regardless of her answer, he knew he'd be able to sleep – nap – better that night when he finally hears from her. And so he asked, "Do you...still love me, Sakura?"

Astonishment was apparent with the medic for he felt her chakra fluctuate a little as she checked his left arm. He convinced himself that it didn't matter if he received a negative answer, but every second of her silence felt a lot more suffocating than being in that cell for weeks.

Yet she responded after a few moments, and it shook him to the core. "You know the answer to that."

"But Sakura, things change, don't they?"

"Not my feelings."

"Even after everything?"

The flow of her chakra in his system completely stopped and he heard the movements of her hand signs once again. But before he heard the clink of his cell's lock, she muttered, "Even after everything."

A week later, his chakra blindfold was allowed to be removed. It must've been because of Kakashi. He mentally thanked the man when he finally saw with his own eyes what he realized was his favorite shade of red.

Sakura entered his cell with her usual shinobi clothes this time, unlike the past weeks wherein she was wearing her lab coat. He knew this because he could feel its cloth whenever she was beside him, so today was quite unusual if he would think about it.

He stared at her as she approached him with a pout.

"You look weird, Sasuke-kun."

He raised an eyebrow inquisitively, making her chuckle.

"I'm here to cut your hair." Then she took out a comb and a pair of scissors from her back pocket.

He wanted to question her, but he ended up letting her do what she wanted as she gently placed a big cloth around his shoulders, thinking that it was probably a part of her job.

However, it was when she asked if he wanted her to shave the stubble on his jaw that he realized what she was doing was beyond her role as the medic looking after him.

"You don't have to do that, Sakura."

"But I want to."

"Why?" He pressed.

Then surprisingly, Sakura glared at him.

And with that, he already understood. He wasn't able to stop himself from smiling once she left him in his cell that night.

The old lady beamed when she saw how deep in thought Sasuke was, giving her the impression that this man was serious about the woman in his mind right now.

Sasuke cleared his throat. "She...never gave up in choosing to love me." He looked down at his feet as he remembered her face when he left a gentle poke on her forehead on the day of his departure. "Never. Even when I was so lost."

"You must feel very blessed, Uchiha-san."

"Aa." Despite the fact that he still felt like he didn't deserve her.

"Give me a moment," the widow suddenly said as she rummaged through a drawer in her living room. "Oh! Here it is!" She then reached out for Sasuke's hand, startling him, and placed something on his palm before closing it with her hands. "When you return to your lady, I hope you could give that little gift to her." She showed a smile that seemed to be partnered with a remembrance of someone.

Sasuke stared at his closed fist. "Thank you. But, why?" The cheery attitude of the woman mellowed as she answered, "I was supposed to give that to my daughter after she comes back from a mission. But then, the Fourth Shinobi War broke out." Pausing, she eyed Sasuke for a few seconds, causing him to recall the past war in such a vivid way. "But she died on the battlefield, fighting for the shinobi world. I believe it's her love for the people that drove her to give her all." "I'm sorry about your loss." "Oh, don't worry, I could say I've somehow recovered from it. I strongly believed that her death wasn't in vain, especially because you and your team have given that war a successful closure." Sasuke looked down once more. It was still quite weird sometimes, how a few people saw him as a hero, yet more people still viewed him as an international criminal that ended people's lives with his own hands. "The way you talked about your girl reminded me of my daughter, so please, give that gift to her. At least I know it will be in good hands." She smiled yet again, but this time, with eyes that were starting to become glassy. A small smile appeared on Sasuke's lips. There was something about the way she considered Sakura as his that calmed his entire system. And it amazed him how even though she's not here, Sakura could still draw people close to her. "She actually fought alongside me in that war, aiding me and Naruto in taking down Kaguya." The old woman gasped again, with a glint of recognition appearing on her eyes. "You mean..." Sasuke nodded. "Yes, it's Sakura Haruno." The words weirdly came out with some sort of pride from his lips. And even he was surprised to find himself verbally admitting to anyone Sakura's position in his life. The woman beamed and clasped her hands, returning to her cheerful attitude like earlier. "Uchiha-san! You two look good together! And, I guess that gift was after all truly made for her, don't you think?" She gestured to Sasuke's fist. Sasuke furrowed his brows in wonder and slowly opened his palm. His lips then twitched upwards when his gaze landed on a necklace with a cherry blossom crystal pendant.

"Now go home to her, Uchiha-san. I'm pretty sure all your exhaustion from your travels would subside once you see Haruno-san again."

He thought so too.

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May 2020 © AriannJS

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Hey guys! Hope you're all enjoying the #SasuSakuTwitFest2020 so far! Let me know your thoughts and feels about this one😄 There's a lot going on these days, but I pray that we'd all find inner peace despite this. Please stay safe!❤️

-A

[wardencommanderrodimiss]

Dying @ the Borderlands AU post to be honest. (At work. 8') ) GIVE US THE BORDERLANDS ACE ATTORNEY CONTENT WE DESERVE. (Did you ever actually post that fic with the train push-off though??) ... I should look into playing that game. (Those games? Heck if I know. I like the artstyle though.)

I posted the first chapter of the fic, though at some point as I massaged out details, I did start trying to rewrite that chapter. So plot-location-wise, that’s a bit of a mess, but the general vibe of it is the same.

I think I had some other completed excerpts I never posted, and so if I get to writing up a huge big summary of the thing, which I want to do now, I can intersperse it with a few written bits. There was a thing with Ema, and then later with Kay.

(Those games, yeah, there’s three shooters and then one….idk how to describe Tales from, I own it and haven’t played it. But yeah, there’s Borderlands, Borderlands 2, and Borderlands the Pre-Sequel for the shoot-em-up main entries of the series that I’ve played. I love all of them, but I love the Pre-Sequel a little less because low-grav combat made me want to die.)

To summarize the AU, or the start of it, for everyone who doesn’t remember/wasn’t here, the main cast, and what their class names would tentatively be in-game, include:

APOLLO, the Sharpshooter, a sniper with an eyepatch who never misses a shot

(The eye patch is significant, I’ll come back to Apollo’s powers in another post.) He lived on Elpis for most of his life – Elpis is the moon of Pandora, which is the planet that most of the games take place on – and until the start of the story, works for the corporation Hyperion with his best friend Clay, an engineer. They’ve both come to be pretty important in Hyperion’s ranks, pretty quick – Apollo for his sniping skills is the personal bodyguard/assistant to Hyperion’s CEO, Kristoph, while Clay is one of the top engineers and most valuable people except for periodically when they’re forced to pay out the ass to run some antivirus/debug software on his brain, because Clay has a USB port in his head and sometimes he tries to download every cat video ever and gets a virus. Kristoph puts up with this, barely. (It is not the worst financial crime being committed in Hyperion’s ranks. Klavier is embezzling millions into pointless endeavors and Kristoph can’t lock him out of the system no matter what he tries. But that is, again, something to come back to later.)

Apollo and Clay start to suspect that there is a lot amiss about Hyperion and the kinds of experiments they do and what they want from Pandora, and together they start investigating into what, exactly, Kristoph is doing. In the midst of this, Clay is (apparently) killed, and Apollo not allowed to investigate anything about his death. This is the final straw, so Apollo takes what he knows, destroys what he can on the way out, and flees the Hyperion moonbase and Elpis, stowing away on a freighter shipment down to Pandora, intending to disappear into the wilds of Pandora. 

CLAY, however, isn’t dead – just in a coma, with his brain wired into Hyperion’s mainframe. He hacks the ECHOnet to get into Apollo’s communicator and serves as a “voice from above” font of “advice” and “wisdom”. (He’s taking the role of, to quickly spoiler-free summarize from the games, the Guardian AI called Angel, who throughout Borderlands and 2 offers advice and points you in the direction you need to go on your quest. Clay is an infinitely shittier at his job version.) Because of some limitations hacked into his brain, he can’t tell Apollo that he’s Clay, that he’s alive, and that he’s sort of being forced into trying to manipulate Apollo and friends into doing Hyperion’s bidding, but he can be very inefficient at it and sabotage from within as best he can. Also, sometimes he accidentally sabotages, like when he’s like “I’ve made the calculations and your vehicle can definitely make this jump” and they try it and crash because he was using the gravitational constant of Elpis, which has much less gravity than Pandora. 

On landing on Pandora, Apollo is waiting for one of the Hyperion trains that still runs to take him west and get as far away from this landing site as he can. There, he meets three other travelers and apparent fugitives:

ATHENA, the Berserker, who takes on robots with her fists and a sword and maybe sometimes she’ll use a shotgun;

KLAVIER, the Doppelganger, the spitting image of Hyperion’s CEO;

and TRUCY, the Siren, one of six women throughout the galaxy marked with strong magical powers and glowing tattoos that make her a target for everyone who knows the legend.

Hyperion robots stop the train and begin a search for the fugitive Apollo – the four of them take down the robots and jump off the train, and that’s where their adventures really begin.

ATHENA and TRUCY have a mind to go to the city of Sanctuary, the only free city on Pandora that isn’t corporate-owned or a bandit shithole. Trucy’s father and all her friends live in Sanctuary; Athena, too, lived there for a few years. Before that, they both lived in the city of New Haven, which was razed by Hyperion in their search for the man who screwed Kristoph out of getting his hands on a piece of the Vault Key and a Siren.

-inhales- quick more Borderlands plot context. Vaults are ancient alien caches of powerful weapons, treasure, or monsters scattered throughout the galaxy. These can only be opened by special keys, which are ancient artifacts that tend to be broken and scattered in pieces. In Borderlands, a corporation called Atlas and their military arm, the Crimson Lance, are trying to acquire all the pieces of the key scattered across Pandora to open a Vault to get the loot inside of it. You play as a Vault Hunter, who are not-quite-bandits who for whatever reason are interested in the lore of the Vault, or just kinda ended up on Pandora and fell into it accidentally. In Borderlands 2, about five years later, Hyperion is going after a different Vault, also on Pandora, also with the key in pieces, but the opening of the first Vault in the first game has done some funky stuff to the planet in the form of a mineral called Eridium. Both times, you are trying to stop the corporations from getting to the Vault, with help from some allies, such as the AI Angel and an independent resistance group, based first in New Haven, then in Sanctuary and called the Crimson Raiders, headed up by some of the player characters from the first game. In 2, the Vault Key can only be used naturally once every 100 years; otherwise, it has to be artificially charged with an Eridium-powered Siren. Thus, Hyperion needs a Siren. 

phew okay back to the AU, context thus set for Trucy.

TRUCY has spent a few years traveling Pandora on her own, trying to learn more about Eridium and its connection to her Siren-powers. At this point, however, she’s had enough being on her own, and wants to go back home to Sanctuary. She knows she’s a Hyperion target, and that’s partially why she’s been out on her own. She wanted to protect her friends and family. But she’s been reasonably undetected thus far, so she thinks she’s safe. Safe enough as anyone can be on Pandora. She wasn’t born on Pandora, actually, though her mother was from here. She spent the first years of her life living with the Troupe Gramarye, a gang of notorious con-artists who traveled the galaxy scamming people and looking for Vaults. How’d she fall in with Phoenix? Maybe that’s for next time.

ATHENA was not actually born on Pandora, either. She was born with strange, non-Siren powers, probably from her mother’s exposure to weird alien elements; Metis tried to keep this secret and devise ways to help Athena, but eventually people found out, wanted to turn Athena into a lab rat, and so Metis fled to Pandora, knowing its reputation for lawlessness because one of her former coworkers, a woman named Aura, fled there after she vaporized three people for stealing and copyrighting her own personal work. Aura’s brother followed her, after stabbing the people who showed up on his door looking for Aura. Metis knows she can rely on them, and so she takes Athena and goes.

Athena just acclimated really, really well to Pandora. In the course of fighting against Hyperion, however, some time after the attack on New Haven, Metis is murdered by an unknown infiltrator. Simon and Aura agree that they can’t raise and protect Athena the way she deserves, not when they are both dead-set on avenging Metis, and so Simon takes Athena off-world and settles her down somewhere safe. She has a normal teenager-hood in a normal part of the galaxy, goes to college, gets a degree in psychology – all the while chafing at the normalcy of it all. When she’s confronted with her massive amount of college debt, she says her final “fuck it” and abandons her responsibilities to run home to Pandora and find Simon again.

She hilariously has zero secrets that she’s keeping from the others. 

And KLAVIER was born and lived most of his life on Elpis – not that he says it, or much of anything, about himself to the others. He has obvious affiliation with Hyperion, but since Hyperion’s ‘bots are out to kill him as much as they are Athena and Trucy, they both accept that he’s on their side. Apollo isn’t quite so sure, because Apollo knew Kristoph and knows that Klavier looks just like him, thus knowing that Klavier was probably someone very important in Hyperion. 

Except Apollo can’t say that, because Kristoph (unlike Handsome Jack, Hyperion’s egomaniacal CEO in the games) doesn’t plaster his face everywhere and make himself well-known, so the fact that Apollo recognizes Klavier’s face to be shocked at him means that Apollo was also someone important in Hyperion to know Kristoph and so Apollo and Klavier are just the Spider-Man Pointing meme at each other over their Hyperion involvement. Except Hyperion has bounties on both their heads, so they’re like, okay, okay, cool, I guess I will tolerate you.

After some horrible misadventures involving Pandoran wildlife, which Klavier and Apollo are not prepared for even though Elpis also has horrible wildlife, they reach Sanctuary. Sanctuary is home to the resistance against Hyperion, called the Crimson Raiders, made up of random people and some of the remains of Atlas Corporation’s Crimson Lance who were hunting the Vault years earlier. There in Sanctuary, they catch up with former colonel EDGEWORTH formerly of the Lance, and former commandant VON KARMA also formerly of the Lance. They were once sent to Pandora to acquire the key and quash the Vault Hunters who were chasing it; however, a certain persistent Vault Hunter and his Vault-researcher friends won them over to his side, and so they turned on Atlas and the Lance. The two of them run Sanctuary and the Raiders, Von Karma handling a little more of the military matters, and Edgeworth with the mayoral matters, but mostly, they’re an apparently seamless team. 

Aaaand….I think that’s enough for one post. I could probably do, like, four more posts? One for the rest of the people of Sanctuary, one for Apollo and Klavier’s various fucked-up backstory secrets, one for Gramarye Bullshit, and one mapping out the very loose plot points moving forward.

But I’ve spent like all day writing this, so I guess I’ll do this in installments if I’m reminded. 

[breyito]

Interruptions

Summary:  When Tony suddenly finds a coffee and a note waiting for him one morning, he thinks it's cute. When it starts happening every morning, he gets curious. And JARVIS won't help him, so... What is an Omega to do, except hire a former assasin/spy to help him out?

Pairing: James ‘Bucky’ Barnes/Tony Stark

Tags: Alpha/Beta/Omega dynamics. Alpha Bucky. Omega Tony. Team as Family. First Kiss. 

Notes: Well. This is my first time writing/posting something not Stony/Stuckony. I am one step closer to becoming a Tony multishipper! Yay. Anyways, assignment for Winteriron Spring Fling (go check it out, the works are out!) for Iron Eyes over at A03, you can read it there if you want. First time writing A/B/O too, actually. This is the prompts I filled: 3. Tony has a secret admirer. He knows the person must live in the tower, because every morning there is a cute note on his favorite coffee mug. But even Jarvis doesn't want to help him out. Tony hires Bucky to catch the person sending him cute notes. Unaware that his secret admirer is Bucky. and 1. First kiss (Avengers Academy, MCU)

Without further due, the fic!

It was a depressing morning in New York. Rain was just pouring down the sky, and Tony would have seriously asked Thor if he had been dumped, had the god been in the Tower.  The engineer had wanted to sleep in, for once (he had even left the lab when JARVIS told him a rainstorm was approaching, because there’s nothing more soothing than sleeping with the sound of raindrops on your windows), but of course he couldn’t. He had a meeting with a company from Japan, which was interested in clean energy. Pepper had made sure his schedule was clear for it, and the Beta would kill him if he missed such an important meeting.

Hence the depressing morning: rain was to be enjoyed from the comfort of one’s bed, not stuck in traffic or listening to people talk about numbers for five hours straight.

Anyway, Tony was walking towards the kitchen, because he needed a double dose of caffeine, since no doubt the Alphas of the Japanese company would try his patience. It wasn’t his fault people still thought Omegas weren’t apt for business. Tony hated the archaic views some people still deferred to, when dealing with Omegas. Traditionalism was all well and good when it came to respecting one’s parents and respecting the origins of your culture and your religions and such; but when Alphas used it as an excuse to cut off a sector of the population from improving themselves? Yeah, that was a hard pass. And he just knew he would have to listen to at least one quip about his second-gender, no matter how many times he had proved his intelligence, power or ruthlessness. All Alphas were like that.

He stopped cold when he saw his favorite travel mug (aka the biggest one he owed and that was really big, because he had it custom made) filled to the brim with his favorite coffee combination, and a little sticky note on the cap besides the mug.

“Don’t let those assholes bother you. Enjoy the rain!”

Tony was puzzled, because while everyone in the team always knew when he was going to be unavailable (security protocols and all that), most of them didn’t care to learn about who he was meeting with (unless it was Stone or Bain or some mayor pest like those, because the Avengers Pack was very protective of their Omega with people that had harmed him before); because they knew he could handle almost everything by himself. He had done so for years, hell decades, before they showed up. But still, it was nice to know someone cared. He lifted the paper to his nose and inhaled. The note still had the faint traces of Alpha scent, fading as he smelled it.

Okay, maybe not all Alphas are like that, Tony thought, smiling a bit.

{---{---{---}---}---}

If it had been a one-off, Tony would have forgotten about it pretty quickly. But it kept happening. The notes were showing up every day (or at least every morning he went up to the communal kitchen and didn’t stay cooped up in the lab), each along with his favorite coffee already prepared,  just when he was going to enter the room. It was always boiling hot (like he liked it), which meant that this mystery coffee giver was aware of his movements. If the Omega didn’t feel so secure in his Tower, he would have been worried. But he knew that the access to the last ten floors of the building was restricted, which meant that the person doing this (and it was only ever one person, the scent hadn’t changed: Alpha, probably male) worked at the Tower, and JARVIS was extremely protective and made sure that the employees of SI were loyal, so it also meant that this person didn’t mean him harm.

The Alpha was probably trying to care for him, court him, perhaps? That was a bit ridiculous, to be honest. He was Tony Stark, he didn’t need to be courted or cared for. It also meant that his coffee-giver was old fashioned. But Tony was…intrigued, to say the least. It had been such a long time since he had encountered a mystery that didn’t come from science. And the fact that JARVIS kept num about this made it all the more enticing. If this Alpha had gained his AI’s approval, the Omega in him was definitely interested.

{---{---{---}---}---}

Tony had now bought a little wooden box to keep the notes in, because when he was in a bad mood and his children couldn’t cheer him up, the notes did. The first was probably still his favorite, but there were others that didn’t fail to make him laugh:

“Have fun revolutionizing the world today!”  There were several versions of this on the box.

A simple “You got this” the morning he had to present the new gear to the Armed Forces instead of the weapons they wanted.

“I’m sorry the world doesn’t remember your mother more, she must have been amazing. She raised you, after all. ” When the news started counting Howard’s greatest moments on his birthday, and marrying Maria wasn’t even mentioned.

“You are unique; don’t let anyone make you doubt that” After an article that made it look like his spot on the Avengers was due to his money and his ‘services as an Omega’ aka his ass.

“You can do everything they do, only ten times better” When the Japanese company decided to go on their own for the clean energy project.

“You looked lovely at the gala yesterday.” The morning after a fundraiser.

“Tony Stark is my favorite superhero.” When the profile Natasha had made in behalf of SHIELD became a topic of interest in many magazines, talk shows and social media. That day Tony had left the lab only for the note, not for the coffee.

“I admire that you don’t hide your scars. You shouldn’t, they show how strong you are.”

“I could listen to you talk about science all day, even if I don’t understand a lot about it.”

“I love the energy you pour into everything you do, but you are adorable when you are asleep.”

“I hope Dum-E doesn’t spray you with foam today.”

It was those last four that made him think. They were a lot more… personal, than the others.  The Alpha that was leaving these notes and preparing him coffee was obviously close to him, or at least to one of the Pack, or maybe even a part of his staff’s families. But just how close?

He wasn’t one to talk about his children so freely. Tony loved them, no matter what, but the adventures of Dum-E and the fire extinguisher was one he only ever shared with friends. It is possible they might have heard that story second handed, of course, but he didn’t think so.  

And JARVIS had protocols in place for when he fell asleep in Common areas (which was a semi-regular occurrence, because the scent of his Pack were familiar and made him feel safe and he could sleep easier); so not anyone could just walk in and see him in such a vulnerable moment (this protocol was also for the other residents, because you didn’t want to walk in and surprise a sleepy spy or a sleep-deprived Dr. Banner).

The Alpha attending the fundraiser meant that they were important, enough to warrant an invitation to the event. So it couldn’t be any of the cleaning staff, but the security, science and financial staff was still in. But the bit about ‘don’t understand a lot about it’ took the science staff off the table.  And that still didn’t account for any of the Avengers and their close ones. And JARVIS still wasn’t helping!

It was time to call in the big guns.

{---{---{---}---}---}

“You want me to what?” asked James, with a weird expression on his face.

“I want you to find the person that is making me coffee and leaving me notes.” Tony said again, crossing his arms. Being in the presence of the Alpha always made him nervous, because the other brunette was a fine specimen and Tony was only an Omega, damn it. He was sure that Natasha and Bruce (Rhodey did not count, because his honey-bear had know him for forever and that would be unfair) already knew about his crush on the other man. That’s why they always ended up together in galas and such, and why Steve mysteriously lost bets that meant he had to massage Sam or Natasha’s feet on movie nights (therefore forcing him to seat with them and only leaving the couch for Bucky and Tony’s to sit on).

“Why?” he asks “did this person send you rude notes?”

“What? No! This Alpha is really nice, actually. Their notes always made me smile.”

“Did he try to poison your coffee?”

“Of course not!! JARVIS would have had them arrested the first time if that was the case.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“There’s no problem!”

“So why do you want him-them, found?”

“Because I want to know who they are, that’s why!”

“But why ruin a good thing, if this is a good thing?”

“It is, it is a good thing. But I want to know who is doing all of this for me. If they are trying to woo me or if they are just nice or what do they want.” The brunette said, fuming.

“But-”

“Oh my god, Barnes. Will you help me out or not!?” Tony exploded. He felt embarrassed enough; he didn’t need this gorgeous Alpha to make him feel silly too, thank you very much. “I could ask Nat-”

“No! I mean, yes; yes, I will help you. Don’t get your panties in a twist, jeez.” The Alpha said, rolling his eyes. Still he seemed sketchy, somehow.

---{}---

In reality, James was sweating. Only his training prevented him from falling to his knees and begging for forgiveness right there in front of the Omega. He hadn’t thought his behavior was so…stalker-y.

Oh, god. Fucking hell. You are so busted, he thought. Tony is going to kick you out of the Tower when he finds out. Because when he didn’t bring him results, the genius was going to go to Natasha; and she wasn’t going to take long to find out it was him. If she didn’t know already.

James was aware that he was fidgeting, for God’s sake, and the Omega was giving him an speculative look. But then he shrugged and left the room.

The Alpha crumbled onto the floor, shaking.

What was he going to do now?

{---{---{---}---}---}

It seems that Tony’s plan had backfired on him, badly. It had been days and there hadn’t been any more coffe or notes or anything waiting for him in the kitchen. If it wasn’t for the notes on his wooden box, the Omega would have thought he had imagined the whole thing in a coffe-induced dream.

Still, he needed proof, so he went and searched for the footage. And while there wasn’t video evidence of who was leaving the coffe (JARVIS had obviously granted the person a few minutes every morning), he could see himself grab the mug and read the note over and over. That only made his resolve stronger. If this Alpha had managed to convince J of erasing the footage or disconecting the cameras, he needed to know who it was.

It was time for a visit to certain sniper. He wanted results. That’s what he was paying the man for (well, he hadn’t actually payed him, but whatever).

---{}---

“Red October! Where are you!?” the engineer yelled as soon as he got to the Alpha’s floor. He wasn’t on the living room or in the kitchen, so Tony started walking towards the hallway that led to the bedrooms. He found the soldier’s with the door open and walked right in.

“James Buchanan Barnes, you owe me some results-” he started, before stopping mid-sentence. The bedroom was empty. Tony turned and looked around to see if the man was maybe hiding behind something, but nop, nothing. So he sat on the bed and pulled out his StarkPhone and started checking his emails.

---{}---

Thirty minutes later, the Omega heard steps on the hallway, so he set aside his phone. When James entered the room he was surprised as hell, and that left Tony the opening he needed.

“Could you tell me what the what the fuck is happening? My coffee-gifter suddenly stops out of nowhere, right after I ask you to find out who they are and-” the brunette’s rant was cut short when James lowered his shoulders and looked down at the floor.

“It was me.” The Alpha interrumpted, voice low.

“What!?” Tony yelled, furious. James flinched. “What did you do to make them stop!? Threathen them? Beat them up? What-” the soldier suddenly looked up and interrupted again.

“No, nothing like that. I didn’t beat up anybody.”

“Then what-?”

“I was the one leaving the coffee. I was the one writing those notes. I was the one that asked JARVIS to tell me whenever you were going to the kitchen in the mornings. I-” James’ voice was filled with bitterness. The Omega’s eyes grew larger and larger with every sentence, until Tony could no longer keep himself from talking.

“Then why did you stop? Did you not…mean it?” he asked, confused. The Alpha looked so mad and laughed scornfully, looking down again.

“Because I didn’t realise I was being such a creep that you’d hire someone to find out who I was. I wanted to court you, to give you something that you needed and wanted, but apart from coffee I didn’t know what that was, so I tried to find a way. Look how that turned out.” he spat bitterly. “I swear I was just trying to provide for you, not making you feel insecure or stalked or-”

“I kinda liked the attention, to be honest.” Tony said, suddenly right in front of James. The Alpha startled and looked up, but then the Omega grabbed his jacket and pulled him down, smashing their mouths together. James had his eyes wide open for a few seconds, shocked. But then he let the tension drain out of his body and returned the kiss, grabbing Tony’s waist and pulling himcloser.

When the kiss ended and James opened his eyelids again, he found big brown eyes staring right into his own.  He cleared his troath, and smiled at the engineer.

“Does this mean…?” he asked, leaving the question open.

“This means I expect my coffee and my notes every morning.” Answered the Omega, then added “After I wake up with you by my side.” The Alpha laughed and winked, kissing the genius again.

[oakmd]

professor oak’s rp plotting cheat-sheet!

Want new-and-exciting plots for your character? Long to reach out to more of your followers, but don’t know where to start? Fear not! Fill out this form and give your RP partners both present and future all the of juicy jumping off points they need to help you get your characters acquainted.

Be sure to tag the players whose characters YOU want more cues to interact with, and repost, don’t reblog! Feel free to add or remove sections as you see fit. Template here.

Mod name: :v OOC Contact: Tumblr IM; but if we’re mutuals I’ll give you my discord! I have Skype too, but I don’t really use it much. 

WHO IS HE:

 Professor Oak is a renowned Pokémon Professor most notably known for his invention of the Pokédex, his Welcome To The World of Pokémon! lecture / documentary and his extensive research surrounding the relationships between pokémon and people. He’s a very recognizable icon in the pokéworld; it would be impossible not to know who he is. 

Alternatively, while he’s mostly known for being a scientist, he has wide recognition for his Pokémon poetry. He also does regular recordings with DJ Mary at Goldenrod Radio Tower. 

The Professor resides in Pallet Town, Kanto, in one of the world’s most impressive laboratory reserve - stretching across acres upon acres of land, built entirely to replicate all types of pokémon’s natural habitats and terrains. 

As a former pokémon trainer ( as well as Kanto Champion ), he has one grandson, Gary Oak, who is also former pokémon trainer, but is now currently on the path to becoming a Scientist himself, specializing in fossil revival.

Points of interest:

My portrayal of Professor Oak is mostly anime-based. This means I do not consider game function as canon or as character trait (ex. Professor Oak forgetting his grandson’s name. I have heard this joke enough to last me a lifetime, please Don’t™.) However, I include some elements of the manga/game, I guess, but usually only to fill in the many gaps untouched in the anime. With that being said, Green / Blue / Red and even Daisy do not exist. I have exceptions of interactions with some people, but it does not fall under my Main Canon and is more of some weird, blended AU, lol. 

Professor Oak is a 50+ year old man. On top of that, a parent and a grandparent. Because of this, most of the time ( not always ) he will naturally be more intuitive and perceptive to situations than a younger muse might be. He has had many, many life experiences to draw from that he applies to current context; empathizing and offering advice comes easy. With that being said, please communicate with me if I’ve crossed a line with this; I won’t take offense!

Professor Oak has interacted with legendary Pokémon. See: Celebi, ft. Suicune. Professor Oak is not immune to... strange occurrences. He’s interacted with the legendary pokémon Celebi ( and Suicune ) when he was a young boy. However, I portray this muse as someone that has seen much more ( of the unexplainable, not necessarily legendaries ), yet appreciates them within the comfort of his own privacy. 

Professor Oak has very high public status! While the man certainly lives his life as a regular person, his life is anything but. Hailing from Kanto and living peacefully in Pallet Town, Samuel’s demeanor is very humble, but his Net Worth is one of the highest, given his important influence, multi-faceted popularity and on-going relevancy among the citizens of the poké-universe. It goes without saying that he has made some of the most important contributions to the field of science and world of pokémon, but he is also sort of a pop culture “idol”. His name is attached to hundreds of awards, recognitions, lifetime achievements, entertainment achievements. Whatever there is to do, Professor Oak does it all: Scientist, Writer, Artist, Humanitarian, Pokémon Professor, TV Host, Radio Host, University Lecturer, Motivational Speaker, Activist, League Advisor, Parent. There is nothing he won’t dive into if it’s for the greater good.  List of Awards: here. 

What they’ve been up to recently:

*POST-CANON. Same ol’, same ol’. Professor Oak has many years left in him yet! You can still find him on his happy little hill in Pallet Town doing what he does best: giving trainers their starters, and babysitting those same 9482536 kids under his care. Including, but not limited to all the 3948357927682294 pokémon he and - everyone’s favorite personal assistant son - Tracey Sketchit share responsibility for. His life will pretty much be the same, as it has been; the perks of being old and well-adjusted.  *I use ‘post canon’ loosely. My default timeline is ongoing with the show itself, but since time never seems to progress, I’ve taken it upon myself to lazily assume some years have passed since S1E1 ( hence why I say Oak is 50+ rather than actually 50 ). 

MULTI-VERSE. If you are a non-pokémon muse, Professor Oak will happily accept that you’re simply not someone from his universe. As mentioned above, stranger things have happened to him. Because of his own experiences, he’s very open-minded about the possibilities the universe has up it’s sleeve. I like to think of his corral and his lab are portal spots for the unknown to materialize. Maybe a point deep in the mountain and forest terrain. Or perhaps from the forest ( between Kanto and Johto ) where Celebi dwells. This concept isn’t necessary to follow for the multi-verse, just a suggestion! TL;DR Let Professor Oak be your away-from-home grandpa, he has lots of Experience™.

Where to find them:

DEFAULT VERSE. There are a lot of places to find the ever-active Professor Oak. However, the top three most common places are: his research lab ( corral included ) in Pallet Town, Kanto, Goldenrod Radio Tower, and Celadon University. Because he is so famous, he can be anywhere, though. Whether it’s doing charity work, raising awareness, doing lectures, being a guest at internships, working with media across regions, visiting other pokémon professors, being on a much needed vacation, traveling for work. Pretty much, wherever your muse is, I can find a reason for Professor Oak to be there. 

POST-COLLEGE. I don’t actually have a ‘verse’ for this but it takes place shortly after Samuel finishes grad school and takes position as Kanto’s Pokémon Professor. He’s the first one to reside in Pallet Town. The lab itself is still under renovation; he’s moved back home after being away for years at school, and still trying to mourn the loss of his fiancé. He’s a single father, struggling to balance work and parenthood, but he gets by. ( Further down this timeline, about thirteen years later, he suffers the loss of his children, and becomes the guardian of his grandson, Gary Oak. )

To find Professor Oak is the other ‘verses’ from the Offered / Desired sections, just ask. 

Current plans:

Keeping busy. Professor Oak is a very goal-oriented person and although he finds relaxation necessary, he also prefers to be active. His hands are always full running the biggest pokémon lab, but he’s always throwing himself into new projects of all kinds of varieties.

Travel and meet new people. Ever the social butterfly, the Professor is always welcoming new faces to his growing list of companions. Although his reasons for traveling are no longer for becoming a Pokémon Champion, he finds that there are plenty of things he hadn’t quite noticed or appreciated before. It’s interesting to see how some things have changed, and for others, how they’ve stayed the same. It’s all for business purposes of course ( mostly ), but coming full circle provides closure for memories he’d only reminisced about for years after he graduated from college. 

Supporting Gary. As his grandson begins his journey in the field of science, Professor Oak prioritizes helping him adjust and giving him the support he needs.

Otherwise, the plans depend on what your muse brings. :O

Desired interactions:

Retired Oak! Literally everything is the same except he’s wearing tropical shirts and jorts. B^) Alola cruise, anyone?

Alzheimer’s Oak! LISTEN, I KNOW.. ... .. Game-mechanic jokes aside, lmao - I have no real excuse. It just hurts so good. ;^(

Grandpa Oak. I’m sure raising Gary and Ash was nothing but and Experience™.

TRACEY. MY PURE ASSISTANT SON -

College. What goes on in college, stays in college. College timeline: here.

Celebi, Again! Starring... Professor Oak! B^) Swapped into the body of his younger self. How does he fix this? Calamity ensues.

Dr. Fuji, Who? No, Professor Oak isn’t part of Team Rocket but he did get roped into helping them create MewTwo with the desperate attempt to also bring his family back to life. Did I rip that from Dr. Fuji? Yes I did, and I don’t care, let me live -

Team Rocket? Or, alternatively, he does work for Team Rocket with this ridiculous concept that he was blackmailed into working for them post-grad because of his unremarkable intelligence and promise. While his public face is the friendly Professor Oak everyone knows and loves, his lab holds darker secrets, the darkest being that he could no loner resist their persistence in making him comply, after they staged his children’s death as an innocent car accident. : ) ... Anyway, 

Persistent Press. Be annoying and invasive. Start scandals. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Unrequited. Get rejected by the notorious man himself. He will be gentle.

Agatha. How dare you,

CROSSOVERS!!!

Offered interactions:

Are you a Pokémon Trainer™ or some other kind of pokémon-specializing person ( pokémon watcher, photographer, breeder, ranger, etc. )? Ring up your Professor when Officer Jenny arrests you for something he told you not to do in the first place so he can judge you with a proper scolding. For the others, show him your talents and skills! If you’re not a Kanto Trainer, I’m sure one of the other Professors can send you his way, either to drop something off / pick something up / for general help, etc. and he’s always excited to meet his colleagues’ kiddos. Also excited to see others contribute to the world of pokémon in some way! He loves pokémon and humans interacting! 

Are you a Pokémon Professor? Doctor, Nurse? Let’s gather ‘round and be stressed about Ash our reckless trainers. But also drinking and karaoke! Pokémon Discourse™. Camping retreats. Boring, obligatory conferences. Peer Review. Or maybe you just need a little advice from one of the pokéworlds more experienced Professors! Unless you’re Professor Rowan - in that case you’re BFFs that get into shenanigans nobody would ever believe. 

Are you a Science Major? Limited internships available for college students.

Do you live in Pallet Town? Hi, neighbor! B^) Professor Oak ( and Tracey ) most likely talk to you in passing, should it occur. ( Please message me about pre-established relationships first. ) Common places include, the mart, post office, movie theaters, etc.

Summer Camp? Boom, Professor Oak has summer camp for the kiddos at his corral. 

Are you a big idolizer of Professor Oak? Lucky for you, there’s more than one way to be a fan! You can reach him via fanmail, @’ing him on social media, finding his personal phone number from some sketchy fan forum, hogging up the radio show hotline, stalking his schedule to make each appearance panel, hovering outside around his lab, stealing candid photos, bombarding him in public with intrusive questions, shoving your notepad out for an autograph... You can even be one of those weird people who try to proclaim your love to ‘celebrities’ too old for you that you know little about. Who knows what this poor man will do?

Are you into Traditional Kanto / Johto? You may share the same passions if you’re into calligraphy, ikebana, haiku, tea ceremonies, etc. 

Are you a Celadon University Student? Feel free to talk to your Intro To Pokémon ( or Pokémon Sociology 101, etc. ) Professor about anything unclear about assignments, to offer questions or concerns... or try to make excuses for not turning in homework and being late, you lazy student. :T Doubles as an Unofficial Guidance Counselor to said students even though that’s not his job - but he can’t help it, he’s a parent before he’s a Professor.

Are you a child associated with Make-A-Wish Foundation? Professor Oak offers terminally-ill children the opportunity to choose their starters, and spend time with their favorite idol. : (

Are you affiliated with the media? All press can inquire about guest speakings, giveaways, promotions, advertisement deals, interviews, volunteer work, hosting/co-hosting, etc. and Professor Oak will get back to you at his earliest convenience. This INCLUDES those working at Goldenrod Radio Tower!

Are you a business person? Politician? High-Profile Celebrity / Figure? Meet Professor Oak at a Gala! Or any other formal event. Feel free to offer business negotiations, inquire about his residence, or other sketchy things. :v 

Are you affiliated with Kanto’s Pokémon League? Albeit not as recently involved as per usual, he’s an advisor, so he and your muse are at least associates, if not more.

Are you one of the developers that helped with the Pokédex? Nerds will be nerds.

Do you know Samuel from his days prior to being Professor Oak? Whether it be from childhood, training days, or college, they all matter. ( I’m aware this is highly unlikely because nobody RP’s old pokémon muses, but with that being said, I’m open to interacting with kids / grandkids of the aforementioned. )

Are you Team Rocket a villain? Have you reached your Kidnap-A-Scientist quota today? 

Current open post/s:

I had very few, but I’m too lazy to look for them. Plotting is probably better. /gestures to this post

Anything else?:

Threading is not limited to this list. I’m always open to more ideas!  

I’m not sure what the huge difference is between the Desired / Offered interactions -

You don’t need a pokémon verse to interact with me! 

Your muse does not need to idolize Professor Oak to interact with him.

CROSSOVERS.

Tagged by: i stole this from @undinaes

Tagging: Whoever sees this!

[aastralfox]

and the world has somehow shifted

Allenbert week 2017: Day 7 - soulmates

Part 1 of 2

Every kid has grown up reading stories about soulmates coming together or seeing movies based on the idea of bondmates, or listening to songs about love at first sight.

I...didn’t really have to.

See, my parents were soulmates. It’s rare, and special and magical and I grew up seeing the real deal. So, yeah. I guess you could say I ended up being something of a romantic.

There have been as many scholarly reports written about the science of soulmates as there have been romantic novels, but people still don’t quite know how it works. It’s universally agreed that when a person gets near their destined mate, there’s a release of hormones into the blood and neurotransmitters to the brain. How or why it happens? Yeah, science is still working on that one.

Eye contact seals the deal. You just lock eyes with your mate and...that's it. You’ve found your other half. Some call that moment a ‘click’. Others, a ‘shift’. Others still a sort of…‘clarity’.

At any rate, the ensuing eye contact, in conjunction with the hormones coursing through both of your bodies, establishes an empathic link. Over time, the link grows stronger, and, in some couples - like my parents - it develops into true telepathy.

But, as comforting as it is knowing that there's someone out there who’s meant just for you...well, statistics aren’t really in your favour here. I mean, there are seven billion people in the world. Your soulmate could be somewhere on the opposite end of the planet, separated from you by borders and oceans. People can go their whole lives, catching the eyes of everyone who passes by them, and feel nothing, find nothing.

So, most people try not to get too hung up on it. You either find them, or you don’t. It doesn’t stop you from finding someone who loves you, even without the happy hormones helping things along.

The running joke is that fifty percent of marriages end in divorce, but only because the other half couldn't get a divorce from a soul bond even if they wanted to.

Now, let me just clarify: even when you do find that person, it doesn't always mean romance. I mean, look at Caitlin and Cisco. Soulmates, but definitely the platonic kind. Cait’s happily married to Ronnie and Cisco? Well, he’s still pining after Lisa Snart, so we’ll see how that works out for him.

So, you see, the whole ‘soulmates’ thing doesn’t really prevent you from doing what you want anyway. A lot of people have sort of thrown up the middle finger at the entire idea and just decided to just... live their lives.

And in some ways, it’s safer.

I’ve seen what it’s like, when one half of your soul dies. I saw it every time I looked my dad after mom’s death. It’s a...hollowness in his eyes. It's an emptiness. A vacancy that can't be filled.

So, yeah, it’s beautiful and amazing and also really scary. I mean, being The Flash isn’t exactly a safe line of work. Either I’m going to die and leave someone behind, and leave that hollow-empty feeling there...or someone’s going to be taken away from me and I’m going to be the one who’s hollow-empty.

But then, I’ll see a couple like Iris and Eddie and I almost want to thank the person who stole Iris’ purse because that’s how they met. And boy did Iris fight against it. Iris West is definitely not the kind of person who’s happy to have life choices made for her. She fought, tooth and nail, and made Eddie earn every glance, every cautious smile, every moment.

She made Eddie earn her love.

And look at them now. It’s like looking at my parents: two people who are totally, completely perfect for one another.

This soulmates thing is weird and twisted and complicated and it doesn’t always work out the way that you think it should but...some part of me can’t help but wait and secretly hope that it’ll happen to me too.

My name is Barry Allen. And this is the story of how I changed the timeline and met my mate.

 ***

 As far as timelines go, this one wasn't too bad. It wasn't ideal by any means but at least no one was evil and his team was more or less how they were before Barry had changed things.

Barry followed dutifully behind Joe, baffled and trying to keep up. He needed things to get back to normal, or at least, as normal as things could ever be while being a speedster.

Returning to ostensible normalcy meant returning to his job. His actual, mask-less, superpower-free one, that is. Well. Partially powers-free. Barry always did use his abilities in and around the lab. It just felt like such a waste of time if he didn't.

Barry Allen, of course, was all about maintaining time.

"We found another husk this morning," Joe said.

"Husk?" Okay, so maybe he should have read up on a few case files prior to this return.

"Singh wants this processed ASAP." Barry was about to reach out and take the sample in question,  opening his mouth to say something along the lines of ‘I'll get right on it’. However, the bagged evidence was, evidently, not being given to him, placed as it was on someone else's desk.

And since when was there more than one desk in here? Never mind more than one CSI.

"Yes, the skin husks that we've been finding around the city. The ones we think are attached to the metahumans. This is now the fourth one." The stranger’s voice was brusque, likely pitched to be businesslike, professional. To Barry he just sounded exhausted.

In the midst of the swirling confusion in his mind, Barry felt a stab of sympathy and a touch of warmth. It pickled along his skin like the now-familiar sensation of electricity. At least, that was the immediate emotion, at any rate. More distantly, he could feel a bone-deep tiredness, layered over with a veneer of indifference, along with a few other things that were too tangled for him to immediately identify.

All of this, of course, made perfect sense until Barry paused to wonder how it was that he somehow gained a second set of emotions. He could feel that one set, the former set, was distinctly his, while the the other was definitely not-his. Barry looked around, wondering if there was a meta at work here. It wouldn’t be the first time that someone had toyed with him through his feelings.

Joe’s voice cut through his thoughts, bringing Barry back to the present. "Deep. Breaths," he instructed. That was Joe West’s ‘parent’ voice, down to the finger raised in his direction that was silently telling him to behave. Message delivered, Joe headed for the door.

Barry turned to try and catch his attention. There was definitely something going on here and if it was the work of a meta then they needed to come up with a plan (and Joe needed to cover for him while he did his his Flash thing).

Instead, Barry was left behind in the lab with two sets of emotions and a few dozen unanswered questions. Slowly, Barry looked back and directed glance in the newcomer’s direction.

Well, at least one of these questions could be answered.

"Uhh...hello...?"

"Yes. Hello. Mr. Allen. I can still see you're there. And no, I don't want your help, thank you," the man drawled.

Alright. Not a friendly stranger. Got it.

Barry peered at the nameplate, neatly angled to allow anyone walking in to see who was who. Barry's own nameplate - since when did he even have one of those? Right. Probably when he got himself a lab mate and he wasn't the only CSI in the building - was nearly indistinguishable from the rest of the clutter on his desk.

"What are you doing here Julian Albert...Meta-Human CSI specialist?" Barry spared a quick moment to wonder when Meta-Human Specialists even began to exist as an actual profession.

Right. Timelines.

Julian didn't look up as he answered, "I did tell you that the Meta-Human conference was only for two days." He sounded bored and Barry felt a wave of annoyance from him, as though he regularly fended such ‘stupid questions’.

"Okay…” Barry tried to be patient. This guy didn't know, after all, that he had travelled through time, changed the past and affected the present and had a three-month gap in his memory from living in another timeline. No one but Felicity did, so far. “But this is--"

"Still our lab." Julian looked up and their eyes met.

‘Shift.’

‘Click.’

‘Clarity.’

‘His-entire-world-turning-on-its-axis-and-leaving-him-breathless…’

Whatever the terminology was, Barry felt it. All of it. At once, and it was a minor miracle that he managed to stay on his feet as his blood sang in his veins and a single word rung out, like the sharp chime of an unexpected bell.

‘Soulmate.’

A flurry of thoughts flew through his mind, all in under a second. His mate. Barry had found his mate. He was here and in front of him and wow his eyes were really blue and he was so handsome and he was a CSI too so they already had things in common.

He had a mate. A mate!

Barry hadn't banked on ever finding him - or her. Not between being The Flash and fighting evil metas and everything else that happened in this crazy life of his.

Suddenly it made sense - the extra set of emotions, the sudden pull he felt towards the other man, the need to comfort someone who was rightly still a stranger for all intents and purposes.

He wanted to introduce himself, but, no he couldn’t do that, could he? If they were lab mates then they’d have known one another for months, easily, and that realization tipped his brain into hyperdrive.

Barry had known his mate for months in this timeline.

So then…

Was he…?

Was he...married?

Barry felt as nauseated as he did excited. How much of this life had he missed? How much did he need to know and how on earth was he supposed to explain to his soulmate that he wasn’t the same person that Julian had come to know (and possibly bonded with?)

Months. Months of catching up to do. Months of memories he didn’t have. Though, it did explain the sudden strength of the bond. They’d known one another for a while, and Barry had stepped into the shoes of his other self, picking up all the proverbial baggage that came with it.

No, it’d be okay. Barry needed to trust that things would be fine. If Julian was his soulmate - and there were enough hormones in his blood to prove that correct - then he’d understand. He would have to...wouldn’t he?

Unhindered, Julian kept talking. "Unfortunately," he finished.

Barry frowned and a feeling of wrongness settled over him. Something was off here, and that feeling of nausea curdled and ramped up as Barry stared back at Julian, searching for something, some kind of acknowledgement of their bond, anything close to the elation currently coursing through him. He searched, both through the bond and in Julian’s eyes for some sort of recognition or acceptance or...anything. “W-what?” Barry asked, shakily. He hadn’t entirely been paying attention to what exactly it was that Julian had been saying.

In his defence, Barry was a bit distracted.

There was nothing but a faint flicker of confusion in Julian’s eyes, one that was quickly replaced with irritation. "Yes, County forgot to mention that significant detail before assigning me but, here we are.” Julian stood, jaw tight, radiating enough hostility to make the empathic bond redundant. “Looks like you and I get to be roomies for a little longer than we'd hoped."

With a terse, faked smile, Julian turned his back and Barry's heart sank into his stomach.

This wasn't like the stories. This wasn't like anything that Barry had ever seen or read about. Meeting your soulmate was supposed to be this magical, amazing thing. Your soulmate wasn't supposed to reject you...and once you found that special person, you weren't supposed to feel alone.

Barry felt alone.

 ***

 Felicity squeaked and slammed her hand down on a stack of papers, feeling that familiar rush of wind that signalled a speedster’s arrival. “No...” she said, allowing herself a moment to mourn the loss of her organization. “Barry.” The call of his name was both a question and a comment as she spun her chair around to look at her frazzled friend.

Silently, she watched him pace, letting him gather his words. “Am I married?” he asked, suddenly. “Or was I? Or about to be? Or…?”

Felicity blinked. “Uh. No…? At least...I don’t think so? I mean, you would’ve told me if you were…” she paused. “You would tell me if you ever got married, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes. Yeah, of course I would.” Barry stalked back and forth a few more times before leaning his weight against the back of a chair, covering his face with his hands. “I messed up.”

Felicity frowned. “Did you...marry someone? Is this some kind of Vegas situation? Because I thought speedsters couldn’t get drunk.”

“It. Well, no. We can’t. And this is way worse than any ‘Vegas’ situation. If I could choose a Vegas situation I’d chose it. Happily.”

“Okay so it’s not. Then…?”

Barry took a breath, and began to explain.

By the time Barry had finished detailing all that had happened, Felicity was up on her feet, pacing, and Barry was the one slunk down in a chair. “So…” she shook her head. “Wow. Okay.”

“And that’s not all of it.”

“There’s more?”

“I found my soulmate.”

A heartbeat, and then, “...Barry that sounds like the exact opposite of a problem. Your soulmate! Wow! That’s--”

“And he hates me.”

“I don’t...Is that even possible?”

Barry ran his hands through his hair for the fifteenth time that minute. “I don’t know. It’s like it’s...one sided. Like, I felt it Felicity. All of it. I felt it happen but...Nothing. Nothing from him.”

“Maybe he’s just not good at expressing himself?” Felicity asked, perching on the edge of the desk closest to Barry.

“No, I don’t think that’s it. It’s like...he’s blocked off. Okay so, my parents always said that the bond…’works outward’. Once it’s in place, you can always sense the other person, and they can sense you. I can get a read on Julian but…” Barry shook his head. “There’s nothing proving that he’s sensing anything from me. Like this bond is one way only. Can you even have an unrequited soulmate? Has that...ever been a thing?”

Felicity shrugged and set a hand on Barry’s shoulder, feeling nothing but tensed muscle under her hand. “I don’t know. I can look into it, if you want...but I’ve never heard anything like it.” She squeezed gently.

"I don't know how to fix this."

"Well, you're gonna figure it out because of there's one thing I've learned from you is that, with you, anything is possible," Felicity said, reassuringly.

"Why because I'm The Flash?"

"No. Because you are Barry Allen. And sweet, loving, kind Barry Allen who everybody likes; The Barry Allen who is just like pudding, can fix this. So go, and fix this."

"Yeah. Okay. You're right. Yeah.."

Felicity stared. "Now!"

Barry's eyes snapped to hers. "Right now?"

"Yes!"

 ***

 As it turned out, time travel was not the solution for fixing it. It had been such a good plan too: try another reset, make sure everyone was okay this time, that Joe and Iris were talking and Dante was still alive…And then find Julian Albert and do this whole bondmates thing properly.

Jay yanked him out of the speedforce and literally sat him down to explain that, no, this wasn’t going to work and, yes, Barry just needed to live with his changes.

So it was time to live with the changes.

It got easier over time and, eventually, Barry was forgiven - thanks, impromptu aliens for helping fix his life - and things returned to that ostensible normalcy that Barry had come to expect.

There was still the matter of the one-sided soul bond. With his immediate loved ones taken care of, Barry could return his attention to Julian. There would be no more of those half-tried attempts to befriend him.

No, this time, Barry was going to do it properly.

[thisdaynews]

Why Is Andrew Yang Still in This Race?

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/why-is-andrew-yang-still-in-this-race/

Why Is Andrew Yang Still in This Race?

BEAUFORT, S.C.—Andrew Yang was sitting here in a rented silver Suburban outside a black chamber of commerce surrounded by five members of his rapidly growing campaign staff when he saw a new Fox News poll in which he was tied for fifth in the sprawling Democratic presidential primary.

He stared at the screen of his phone and scrolled.

Story Continued Below

“Three percent!” Yang said, in his characteristically dry, droll way. “This team. Is the team. That’s going to go … all. The. Way. To the White House!”

Yang breezily walked into the chamber building and got onto a packed elevator. To the county party chair squeezed into a corner, Yang excitedly passed along the results of the poll, listing in order the only people who were ahead of him—a former vice president (Joe Biden) and three high-profile senators (Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris).

“And thenme!” he exclaimed, flashing a goofy, exaggerated smile.

Perhaps you haven’t noticed, but Andrew Yang is … surging? It sounds crazy, and who knows how long it lasts? But for now he is one of 10 candidates who have qualified through sufficiently robust polling and fundraising for this fall’s third and fourth debates. The exhausting cluster of Oval Office aspirants, at least for these purposes, has been whittled to this: the aforementioned top four, two more senators, a mayor, a former member of Congress and … this guy. Yang is a 44-year-old entrepreneur from New York and a father of two young sons who’s never run for any office of any kind before this, and whose campaign is fueled by a deeply dystopian view of the near future (trucker riots, anybody?), a pillar of a platform that can come off as a gimmick (a thousand bucks a month for every American adult!), and a zeitgeisty swirl of podcasts, GIFs, tweets and memes. Last week, as a successful governor from a major state dropped out and the bottom half of the bloated field continued to flounder, Yang passed the 200,000 mark for unique donors—outpacing an array of name-known pols. He’s gotten contributions, on average $24 a pop, from 88 percent of the ZIP codes in the country, and he’s on track, he says, to raise twice as much money this quarter as he did last quarter. Just the other day, he made his Sunday news show debut.

It’s a phenomenon hard to figure—until you get up close and take in some strange political alchemy. At the heart of Yang’s appeal is a paradox. In delivering his alarming, existentially unsettling message of automation and artificial intelligence wreaking havoc on America’s economic, emotional and social well-being, he … cracks jokes. He laughs easily, and those around him, and who come to see him, end up laughing a lot, too. It’s not that Yang’s doing stump-speech stand-up. It’s more a certain nonchalant whimsy that leavens what he says and does. Sometimes his jokes fall flat. He can be awkward, but he also pointedly doesn’t appear to care. It’s weird, and it’s hard to describe, but I suspect that if Yang ever said something cringeworthy, as Jeb Bush did that time in 2016—“Please clap”—the audience probably would respond with mirth, not pity. Critics ding his ambit of proposals as fanciful or zany (getting rid of the penny, empowering MMA fighters, lowering the voting age to 16) and question the viability of his “Freedom Dividend,” considering its sky-high price tag (“exciting but not realistic,” Hillary Clinton decided when she considered the general notion in the 2016 cycle). And his campaign coffers are chock-full of small-number contributors and even $1 donors. Still, at this angry, fractious time, and in this primary that’s already an edgy, anxious slog, Yang and his campaign somehow radiate an ambient joviality. Of his party’s presidential contestants, he’s the cheerful doomsayer.

His most foolproof laugh line—“the opposite of Donald Trump is an Asian man who likes math”—suggests that his candidacy is premised on distinguishing himself from the president the same way as his fellow challengers. But it’s not quite that simple. He’s attracting support from an unorthodox jumble of citizens, from a host of top technologists, but from penitent Trump voters, too. He’s one of only two Democrats (along with Sanders) who ticks 10 percent or higher when Trump voters are asked which of the Democrats they might go for—a factoid Yang uses as evidence that he’ll win “easy” if he’s the nominee come November of next year. Trump, of course, is the president, and Yang (let’s not get carried away) remains a very long long shot to succeed him.

But to spend any time with Yang is to grapple with this unexpected Trump-Yang Venn diagram. While Yang talks in different, far less overtly divisive ways, identifies different scapegoats (robots, not immigrants) and offers different solutions (cash, not walls), he’s zeroed in on the same elemental problem Trump did en route to his shock of a win in ’16: A large portion of the populace is being left behind, and it’s not remotely OK. Similarly, Yang’s campaign packs an anti-Washington, convention-bucking, on-the-fly, filter-free vibe. There are four-letter hats—not MAGA, but MATH (Make America Think Harder). And his Trump train? It’s the Yang Gang. Yang is not thenot Trumpof the 2020 trail. “Yang is thenewTrump,” a traveling Trump-voter-turned-Yang-Gang-YouTuber told me.

There are plenty of differences, too, of course. To wit: In the chamber building, after the elevator disgorged a floor up, a lobby was filled with the bouncy beats of line dancing emanating from a different room. One of his staffers joked that Yang should join in. And then … he did. Apparently unafraid of looking silly, or potentially creating an embarrassing, indelible, campaign-altering moment with the presence not just of me but also a state-based reporter from The Associated Press, Yang proceeded to team up with a handful of senior citizens for what most onlookers ultimately agreed was a quite credible, rhythm-keeping rendition of the catchy “Cupid Shuffle.”

“Down, down, do your dance, do your dance,” went the lyrics—and Yang did.

“Get it, Andrew!” the group leader called into her microphone. “Lookin’ good!”

When it was over, Yang jogged around the room to hearty cheers, grinning and giving everybody high fives.

“Thanks for letting me crash your class,” he said to the head of Family Slide Dancers.

“Thank you all!” he said to the members of her class.

By the time we got back to the Suburban, my phone was buzzing nonstop in my pocket. A tweet of the video I shot was starting to zoom around the internet.

***

“We are basically fucked,”Yang said, sitting in the Suburban, earlier in the day, not too long after we met, “unless we un-fuck ourselves, systematically and collectively.”

This blunt declaration didn’t surprise me. That’s because I’d read his most recent book. It’s one heck of a downer.

InThe War on Normal People, which came out last year, Yang sketched a stark picture of “broken people” and “jobless zones” and “derelict buildings” and “widespread despair” and “hundreds of thousands of families and communities being pushed into oblivion” and “a society torn apart by ever-rising deprivation and disability” and a “best-case scenario” of “a hyper-stratified society like something out ofThe Hunger Games.”

“It’s possible that we may already be too defeated and opiated by the market to mount a revolution. We might just settle for making hateful comments online and watching endless YouTube videos with only the occasional flare-up of violence amid many quiet suicides,” he wrote.

“The group I worry about most is poor whites,” he added. “There will be more random mass shootings in the months ahead as middle-aged white men self-destruct and feel that life has no meaning.”

My copy of his book is littered with my disconsolate scribbles.

“Yikes.”

“… bleak …”

“… hellscape.”

Know what else, though, I penned into the margins?

“Ha!”

“When I was 13,” Yang wrote, for instance, “I had to have four teeth pulled in preparation for wearing braces. I was actually kind of excited about it because I saw my dad’s teeth and was like, ‘whatever it takes, let’s not have those.’” He said the answer for out-of-place workers was not a career as a home health care aide because “former truck drivers will not be excited to bathe grandma.”

And as we traveled around, a busy, six-stop day in this sweaty, marshy terrain—from Bluffton to Okatie to Beaufort, from town halls to meet-and-greets with local Democratic clubs to a quiet, private stop at a shelter for abused women and children—the laughter never stopped for long.

Nibbling on a belVita vanilla oat biscuit, he praised the company for marketing the product as a healthy option. “It’s, like, you’re clearly good for me,” he said, “and then it’s a fucking cookie for breakfast!”

He referred repeatedly to his $24 average donation. “My fans are cheaper than Bernie’s!”

Entering a Mexican restaurant for a town hall, he said, “The best thing about running for president is I walk into a room and people clap!” The crowd roared.

He wasn’t always this way. His parents came to America from Taiwan. His mother was a computer services administrator before becoming a pastel artist. His father grew up poor on a peanut farm and got a Ph.D. in physics at the University of California at Berkeley and worked for General Electric and IBM in New York. Yang described him as a “workaholic” and “a brusque lab geek.” Growing up in the suburbs of Westchester County, Yang as a kid was “angsty,” “brooding” and “sad,” he said. He read science fiction and fantasy and Herman Hesse and listened to Pearl Jam and Soundgarden and Sarah McLachlan and played piano and decent tennis and lots of Dungeons and Dragons. He was, for a time, a tad goth. He suffered racist slurs. At prep school at Phillips Exeter in New Hampshire, and then at college at Brown, where he majored in economics and political science, he began to come out of his shell. He started to lift weights, mostly to try to get dates, and was proud to be able to bench press 225 pounds eight to 10 times in a row.

Now, here in the Suburban, as we crossed the Broad River, I brought up “Rex and Lex.” That’s what Yang named his pecs, “Rex” for the right, “Lex” for the left, when he was lifting all those weights. I knew about this because he wrote about in his other, earlier book,Smart People Should Build Things. He “could jostle them on command,” he had written, “to make them ‘talk.’” Obviously, I wanted to hear more.

Yang obliged. Having shed his blue sport coat, he looked down at his chest, and he … channeled “Rex.”

“He’s, like, almost mute,” he said, “but he’s still like”—and here the candidate for president made his dad-bod-dormantpectoralisundulate under his checked, collared shirt and assumed a diminutive, sing-song cadence—“‘Andrew, I still have a little bit of voice left. You haven’t fed me in a long time. You used to looooove meeeeeee.’”

Zach Graumann, Yang’s 31-year-old campaign manager, looked some combination of mesmerized and mortified. “You’re such a tool,” he said.

Yang was undeterred. He was on a roll. He turned his attention to “Lex.”

“Oh man,” he lamented, “Lex is wimpier than Rex!”

Everybody inside the Suburban laughed and laughed.

***

At the town hall in Hilton Head—a standing-room-only crowd of mainly older folks wearing boat shoes and flip-flops—it was hard to miss the young guys in the pink hats.

They listened intently as Yang introduced himself. “Hello, everyone! I’m Andrew Yang, and I’m running for president! … I’m going to be honest. I’m the last person anyone thought was going to run for president, in terms of my high school, my upbringing. My parents were not like, ‘You’re gonna be president someday.’” This assertion drew laughs. After Brown and law school at Columbia and five unhappy months as a corporate attorney, he started a company (Stargiving.com) that failed, he said. He was the CEO of a company that succeeded. He launched a non-profit that did a little bit of both. Then Yang gave his political pitch, about truckers, and soon-to-be self-driving trucks, and so many other kinds of workers, and automation, and artificial intelligence, and the real reason he thinks Trump won—millions of jobs automated away in the most important Midwest swing states—and the coming “buzz saw” and “the race to the bottom” and “suicides, drug overdoses, anxiety, depression,” and how the average American life expectancy has declined for three straight years for the first time in a century, and how “D.C. is not up to it at all,” and about $1,000 a month for every adult.

“How am I doing so well?” he said. “It’s because Americans recognize the truth when they hear it.”

The guys in the pink hats were impressed.

“He nailed it,” Mike Gallagher, 29, told me after Yang finished.

“Awesome,” said Wayne Boyce, 28.

They had driven the hour or so up from Savannah, Georgia, and both of them said they had voted for Trump but would not be doing it again.

Ditto for their other friend. “He’s an asshole,” Jordan Snipes said of the president. “And he hasn’t done anything he said he was going to do.”

They were members, they all said, of the Yang Gang now.

I asked if there were others like them where they’re from.

“Most of our friends,” Snipes reported.

A few hours later, at the Mexican restaurant, I met the Yang Gang YouTuber. Russell Peterson, 43,from Union County, North Carolina, was with his wife, Elasa, who was wearing a MATH shirt, and their toddler son, Zephaniah—“country folks,” Peterson said, and “former Trump supporters.” He had a lot to say.

“We all saw a problem, and that’s why we elected Donald Trump,” he told me. “Because he was saying he was going to go in and he was going to drain the swamp. He was a larger-than-life figure, you know? We all knew that there was a problem. We just didn’t know what that problem was. But then, when you listen to Andrew Yang, you realize: Oh, yeah, it is automation—it’s not immigrants. It’s automation. We’re all losing our jobs. We’re all being phased out. I’m an ex-landscaper. I just saw yesterday they’ve got a mower that just goes and mows your yard, just like a Roomba, you know, does your house.”

And what’s he do for work now?

“This is what we do,” he said. “We follow Andrew Yang full-time.”

He doesn’t work for the campaign, but …

“This has become my passion. There is nothing more important than getting this man elected,” he said, breaking down his video equipment.

“I’m tired of politicians. I don’t want a politician. I want somebody who’s going to tell me the fuckin’ truth, tell me what’s going on, and thenprovidesomething that’s actually going to impact my life! Since I’ve been an adult, there’s not beenonepolitician that has directly impacted my life, but I promise you that freedom dividend and putting $2,000 a month into my household would directly impact my life. I mean,game over.”

He wasn’t finished.

“People are so disillusioned,” he said. “Donald Trump? He was the WWE superstar guy. You know, he was going to take his metal chair into Washington, and he was just going to use it on everybody. We were finally going to be working like we were supposed to be working—and I’ve only seen the country get more and more divided. And then when you have Trump acting like he’s acting, I can’t support that, bro’. And then there’s a lot of people in the center who are like me who are moving over to Andrew Yang because we don’t like what we see. Wedon’tlike what Trump has done to the country. He’s only divided us more and more. So now we actually have some solutions and a guy who’stalkingabout solutions—so, like, let’s get this guy in, because he makes too much damn sense!”

All day long, everywhere we went, Yang was asked about Trump. How was he going to handle him? How was he going to debate him? How was he going to beat him?

He said he “would make him seem ridiculous.” He said he “would just diminish him by dismissing his arguments and making him seem like the buffoon and joke that he is.” He said Trump was “fire”—and he said he was “ice.” He told people he was on the debate team in high school that went to the world championships in London. He said he would “use humor.”

And at the last stop of the day, here at the Grand Army of the Republic Hall, outside of which I spotted parked a red Ford F250 pickup truck with a bumper sticker that read TRUMP, the throng of a couple hundred that had gathered couldn’t fit inside. They spilled out onto the lawn off to the side. “Let’s do it!” Yang hollered. He had no microphone. “Let’s project!”

And at this last event the last question was about Trump.

“When you become the nominee,” a woman asked, “how will you stand up to that nastiness in the White House?”

“Voters around the country have said to me they cannot wait to see me debate Donald Trump,” Yang said. He was all about “logic and reason and problem-solving” while Trump was “all bluster, and Americans can tell the difference very quickly,” he said, snapping his fingers. “There’s a reason he hasn’t touched me,” Yang continued. “Because he knows I’m the wrong person to touch. His supporters are all coming my way. … I’m peeling off Trump supporters right and left.” And one more thing: “I’m better at the internet than he is!”

More laughter.

“On that note …”

A snaking line of people waited for pictures. The sun set. Through the buggy, muggy haze, a single orange orb of a streetlight glowed past clumps of spectral Spanish moss. Yang autographed MATH hats. Flashes from phones pulsed in the dark.

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