#also in regards to that post; my computer somehow is still alive. i have no clue how. it is STILL very clearly losing life though

[absintheancandle]

fun fact! my birthday is actually july 4th, contradictory to that one fundraiser post i made last year about my computer saying july 10th

i celebrate it on july 10th because where i live, most people have ran out of fireworks by then

[lizacstuff]

Sen Çal Kapımı / Edser Asks

After the fragman, I got a few anons this afternoon, my answer are under the cut. 

(Also my initial reactions are in this post.)

Anonymous said: In the spirit of optimism- when Eda broke up with Serkan in 25, everyone freaked out but by the end of the next episode, she proposed LOL. Maybe just maybe they won’t do the “everyone pretends Selin and Serkan are a thing for medical reasons for multiple episodes” route and someone gets her kicked to the curb in 29. I wonder how much of the 2.5 hrs will be before he comes back and how much is after.

LOL, I certainly would like Selin to be back for only one episode. I hope my speculation is right (this post,)and her narrative purpose is to make Serkan distrust Eda from the start and once she’s done that she can exit stage right. 

As for the theory you mention, which I have seen on twitter, I don’t see people pretending they’re together for medical reasons. That makes zero sense to me (not that medical diagnosis on a silly romantic dramedy dizi would be accurate, lol) why would that be necessary? Why would anyone go along with that? Especially when all he would need to do is google himself to find out about his relationship with Eda.  They were all over the tabloids and on the cover of a magazine. Plus it seems like he knows about Eda, Selin tells him "she turned you into someone you’re not and dragged you into a different world.”  He has to know they were in a relationship.

There is a lot of knee-jerk hysteria over there right now which is leading to completely neurosis-induced, nonsensical, worst-case scenario speculation. I recommend avoiding for awhile if anyone is easily upset by that type of thing. 

As for the timeline of the ep, great question. I am hoping that the walk into ArtLife is not the end of the episode. We’re going to need to see Serkan and Eda meeting face to face before this episode is up in order to survive! We know almost the full cast (including Hande and Kerem) were shooting at a cafe yesterday, and the cast looked dressed up. Most thought it was for 1x28, so that seems like there are scenes with Serkan and the full cast in this ep. 

Though, the show has a lot of questions to answer.  How in God’s name did he end up in that cabin? Did he get on the plane or not?  Was he held captive and got dropped in the woods with only Selin’s phone number? Has he been in a coma?  Was there foul play involved?   Was there a brain injury or did Babaanne arrange his kidnapping and give him some experimental drug to wipe out his memories of Eda? 

Not sure if this Deniz is a law enforcement official or some sort of private detective, but there would have been some sort of official inquiry and search when he went missing. So he can’t just be lazing around for 2 months, easily findable. And Selin can’t have been with him for anything length of time without the others knowing he’s alive, because that would pretty much be kidnapping. So what HAPPENED? 

Anonymous said: I hope we get good Eda and Aydan moments. She didn’t get married but she is still Aydan’s daughter now. He’s going to come back and find that this woman has his mother, his company, his dog, his car, his friends.....there’s no way that he doesn’t just know that Selin has been a snake.

Yes, please!  I’m sure we will get Eda and Aydan moments, it looks from the first trailer that they will lean on each other while he’s missing. Which they should, they’ll be the two that will hold out hope and give one another comfort. 

I am LOVING that Eda is driving his car and taking care of his dog. As she should, they were hours away from being married! And yes, you’re correct, he’s going to find Eda so deeply embedded in everything he remembers (except Selin) that it’s going to drive him crazy. Who is this woman and how did she ensorcell him so thoroughly? Can’t wait for him to find out. 

You know what I’m most looking forward to in regards to Aydan? Serkan’s shock that his mother has conquered her agoraphobia. Can’t wait for him to find out that Eda was instrumental in helping her do that. 

She is going to hit him like an emotional freight train. A second time. 

Anonymous said: i know most of the fandom has already accepted it as fact bc they can't wait for the actual ep to make conclusions, but i'm less inclined to believe he's been in that cabin w/ selin for 2 months.. idk HOW he gets there, or how selin ends up there.. but for some reason i think they find him first, and he takes off by himself for a bit as he's overwhelmed with the whole situation.. and then selin enters. idk, we'll have to see it, but i think, like all trailers, it's confusing on purpose.

This theory is definitely possible. That he’s found and freaks out and goes to the cabin. Perhaps the last he remembers he was still with Selin so he reaches out to her for answer about what’s going on.  That would make sense why he accepts her comfort, and she gives it, but can’t help herself from trying to do everything in her power to make him distrust Eda. Even if she doesn’t have hope of reconciliation, just to cause chaos because she doesn’t want them to find happiness together. She’s said it more than once, she didn’t want him happy, while she was not. 

Anonymous said: I am not emotionally prepared to watch the look on Eda’s face when Serkan walks in holding hands with Selin after being missing for the last two months....😭😭😭. Also even if Serkan & Selin are purely platonic watching their scenes together are going to be brutal. I am prepared to cry ( both tears of joy & sadness) & be very mad at various points in this episode. It will be an rollercoaster of emotions for sure.

Yep, pretty much all of this!  I don’t think I’m going to enjoy watching this episode at all. However, my hope is that I will really enjoy watching the storyline that it sets up where we get to watch Serkan fall in love with Eda all over again.  Think of all the delicious, UST-y, sexy, funny, fiery, passionate scenes that are in store for us! 

Off the top of my head, things I want:

Serkan opening Madonna in a Fur Coat and finding their photo

Serkan’s deep-seated memory kicking in and mindlessly tearing the crusts off bread for her without realizing it or knowing why

Finding out his computer password and what it means

Seeing photos of them from their matchmaking party. Looking so in love and surrounded by friends and family and everyone looks so happy

One of the friends, Engin or Piril snapping and telling him the big change Eda brought about in him was just that he was happy

Serkan seeing media clippings of them and their relationship

Eda handcuffing him so they have to spend time together while trying to jog his memory

After being suspicious and trying to keep her at arms length, Serkan finally breaking down and asking her questions about their relationship

Serkan being mistrustful of her, but still unable to say no to her

Anonymous said: So I get that SCK is going through a reset and now we will get to watch Eda & Serkan fall in love again but seriously they brought Selin back like that...WTF? Now she is even worse than Balca. Plus the entire world thinks Serkan is dead but somehow Selin found him and never bothered to tell anyone else...that should send up some red flags for sure. Regardless of the explanation, this situation is going to crush Eda. And it seems like a lot to go through to have him immediately get his memories back so we could be stuck with this storyline for a while.

Yes, poor Eda is going to be crushed no matter what.  However, I know that people have been theorizing that the memory loss would be short, but I never thought it would be.  What’s the point of this reset unless they’re going to follow through with it and milk it for as many episode as possible. They’re trying to find ways to keep this show going and this is their big swing. 

The entire point is to recreate the magic of Eda and Serkan falling in love, and, honestly, I'm not sure why anyone would want that to be over in 2 episodes. I don’t see it as being stuck with the amnesia story, I’m excited for all the parallels, watching Serkan get struck by lightning a second time when he first sees her.  Watching him be suspicious of her, of her motives of her abilities, but then finding out all the same things that he found out the first time, that she’s fierce, kind-hearted, loyal and talented. And just a bright shining light for him. 

My heart melts just thinking about it.  We just have to get rid of that opportunistic, malevolent, bitter hag. 

Anonymous said: one complaint that i've seen in regards to sck is that characters aren't sent off properly.. but outside of maybe fifi (which we don't know how they'll explain her leaving) am i the only one that doesn't... really care? everyone that's left has been unsubstantial or in a villain role, and personally whatever way they leave i'm fine with lol.. i know when selin left ppl were mad bc they wanted a redemption story arc for her.. but not every character NEEDS that by default, if that makes sense.

For context, this ask was sent before the fragman.  I agree with you, no side character needs redemption by default. I’ve said it many times, but on this specific show, really only two characters matter: Eda and Serkan. This is their story. Their love story. Everyone else is supporting in the truest sense of the word. They all exist to prop up the A story. So for most of them their journey doesn’t matter unless it directly affects Eda or Serkan. (Aydan’s growth and redemption has directly impacted Eda and Serkan and that’s why time has been spent on it). Selin is a tool. She’s behaved erratically at time because she only exists for the writers to use her to antagonize the protagonists. Her story in and of itself does not matter. 

I laughed hysterically when some on twitter were thinking Serkan might really be dead and Kerem was leaving the show. 

Seriously? You think they would try to keep this show going without Edser? That anyone would pay money for it, without them?  HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! If one of them were to leave, the show would be over. Dead. Cancelled. There is NO reason for this show to keep going other than for more Edser. Everything else is an after thought, filler, or characters that prop up Eda and Serkan either literally or symbolically or thematically. Nothing else stands on it’s own.

They devised this storyline in order to go back to the magic of these two people falling in love. Full stop. That’s why we’re seeing this reset.  Because no other characters or their storylines are compelling enough to carry the show.  I applaud the writers for creating a situation where we could watch Serkan fall in love with Eda one more time. (just get rid of Selin, please, so I can enjoy it... and do it quickly.)

[linareads]

Almost everyone knows that line from that book,

In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move

It has been mentioned in Tumblr posts, Instagram posts, twitter jokes, what most people might not know is that this line comes from the Douglas Adams book, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, the second book of the Hitchhiker’s Guide book series.

This series is composed of five books and a short story written by Douglas Adams, and another book written by Artemis Fowl author Eoin Colfer. The book I’ve read consists of the five mains books of the Hitchhiker’s series, plus a short story. In the end, the contents of this book are these:

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read) Seconds before the Earth is demolished for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is saved by Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised Guide. Together they stick out their thumbs to the stars and begin a wild journey through time and space.

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe The moment before annihilation at the hands of warmongers is a curious time to crave tea. It could only happen to the cosmically displaced Arthur Dent and his comrades as they hurtle across the galaxy in a desperate search for a place to eat.

Life, the Universe and Everything The unhappy inhabitants of planet Krikkit are sick of looking at the night sky- so they plan to destroy it. The universe, that is. Now only five individuals can avert Armageddon: mild-mannered Arthur Dent and his stalwart crew.

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish Back on Earth, Arthur Dent is ready to believe that the past eight years were all just a figment of his stressed-out imagination. But a gift-wrapped fishbowl with a cryptic inscription thrusts him back to reality. So to speak. Mostly Harmless Just when Arthur Dent makes the terrible mistake of starting to enjoy life, all hell breaks loose. Can he save the Earth from total obliteration? Can he save the Guide from a hostile alien takeover? Can he save his daughter from herself?

Includes the bonus story "Young Zaphod Plays It Safe"

Having read all of them I have my opinions.

SPOILER ALERT

The books are funny, just reading the first chapters can tell you that the books are very very funny. Some passages of it are enough to make you laugh out loud because they are that funny. It focuses on the story of Arthur Dent, his friends, and the shenanigans he ends up getting involved in. These friends include Ford Perfect, an alien who has lived on Earth for year and writes for said Guide, Zaphod Beeblebrox, an alien with two heads who is also the President of the Galaxy at the beginning of the book series. Tricia “Trillian” McMillian, a human astrophysicist, who meets Zaphod at a party and ends up traveling the universe with him, and Marvin, a depressed robot. These are the main characters of the series, alongside Arthur, who is the main character, and they show up on almost all the books. One of the most important things in the books is also the guide itself, that instead of a book is more of a portable computer with a Wikipedia that spans the knowledge of almost everything in the universe. Another important character is Fenchurch, but she will show up later.

The first two books are funny, lighthearted and make a good show of world building (or destroying). The story begins with the Earth being destroyed to build a special highway, and Ford Perfect escaping just before the Earth explodes with Arthur Dent. With them they take a towel, the most important item anyone can take with them when they travel the universe, and the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe, a guide, much like our earthly travel guides, that tells you the best activities and places to visit whenever your travelling, Ford happens to work for the Guide.

In the end they end up watching the end of the Universe, seeing the last message form God, discovering that the Earth was nothing but an experiment to find out the ultimate question to all things in the universe (experiment funded by rats, the smartest lifeform on earth) they also time travel, travel through different parallel universes et cetera et cetera.

In the end the books are a very fun read, with one exception, which is the chaos. The books are very chaotic, and while that is part of the attraction of the books, the chaos is funny, makes you confused, in a good way, and works to explain what is happening to the characters and how Arthur Dent feels most of the time- However, there comes a point where it’s too much, and what happens its that you end up so confused you’re not really sure what you’re reading. There is no character index, a small summary of each other books in the end, nothing of the sort. So, if you’re confused, you either google the events of the books, or you read back a few chapters to see if you can make sense of it. And sometimes you can, sometimes you can’t.

By the second to last book, it seems like the author is pulling at straws, Arthur is, for some reason stranded on prehistoric earth, travels to space again, and manages to time travel back to his own time, where the earth isn’t destroyed, sponsored by the dolphins (the second smartest species on Earth) who then vanished from Earth. Arthur meets a woman, Fenchurch who can float, falls in love, (they also have sex flying through the skies of London?) travel to visit a man who knows what happened to the Dolphins and then travel to see God’s last message to the Universe (Which funnily enough ends up being “We apologise for the inconvenience”). And then ends up travelling the universe with Fenchurch, although throughout his travels all he wanted was to go back to his own time on Earth.

And then, by the last book, Fenchurch is gone, the company that edits and publishes the Hitchhikers has been taken over, the universe is in shambles because of time-travel. Arthur and Trillian have a daughter, a new guide shows up that can turn into a bird and time/dimension travel, takes Arthur’s child into a version of Earth where Trillian never left, still goes by Tricia, and is a journalist, and then the Earth is destroyed again however this time, Arthur, Ford, Trillian, and the daughter all die. (However, Elvis is alive and either playing shows in diners throughout the universe or runs a diner somewhere in the Universe, I am not sure)

And if you were confused by that last chapter, you can see how I felt throughout the book, because it somehow manages to be more confusing than all the others combined. In a sense, the last book seemed, to me at least, to be a last-ditch effort to just finish the story and be done with it.

The ending came out of nowhere, Fenchurch came and disappeared out of nowhere, so did the daughter, no actual explanation is given to what happened to the Guide, and why is the Guide now a bird thing?

None of these questions are answered, however, this still doesn0t detract from the book, and even as confused as I felt, as well as the anger on how it ended, doesn’t detract, in my opinion, from its five-star rating, because it’s still an amazing book.

Its funny, engaging, entertaining, easy to read and worth to read. Even with all its faults this is a book I will recommend to everyone I can and will read again, even if it’s just to read the passages I found to the funniest once more.

I recommend this book, give it five stars, but I must warn that this book is very chaotic, and has little to no set structure, and if that isn’t for you, well, you have been warned.

[ayamari-no-goshi]

Verboten 16 | (T)

ff.net | AO3

Fandom: Danny Phantom (DP)

Summary: AU. When Danny was five years old, he went missing for 2 weeks. In the years that follow, his family tried to make sense of what happened, only for the truth to be discovered years later.

Warnings: rated T for violence, mentions of death, language. Be prepared for some very weird things

Parings: Danny/Sam

Notes: originally uploaded to Ff.net. Cross-posted to AO3 and tumblr. This fic is very heavily inspired by folklore surrounding mysterious wilderness disappearances

Chapter 16

As Danny waited outside with the rest of the guests, his parents and Vlad met up with him. After they handed him a bag filled with one of his favorite Nasty Burger meals, he gave them a quick rundown of what he knew, save for the appearance of the ghost. While frustrated, his parents shuffled him into the RV so he could eat and warm up a bit. It was a chilly fall day after all.

As he ate, Danny vaguely wondered how his parents managed to convince Vlad, the man with the limo, to go across town with them. His dad’s driving prowess… well, lack thereof… was famous in the area. The townsfolk and even the police steered clear of any known Fenton vehicle. In actuality, he had no idea how his dad hadn’t lost his license.

After a couple hours, the fire department cleared the building with the exception that rooms on the second floor could not be used until the police preformed an investigation to verify whether or not arson occurred. The rooms on that floor would also need cleaned. Thankfully, little damage ended up being done from the fire: a few pieces of furniture and some scorch marks. The majority of the damage ended up being from the hotel’s sprinkler system.

After collecting their items, his parents drove to a large house on the outskirts of the housing plan where Sam lived. After asking what they were doing there, Vlad matter-of-factly stated he just finalized the payment on it. Danny’s utter confusion had to be evident as his parents explained Vlad recently decided to purchase a house in Amity Park since he would be around more to help with the research.

Well, it explained why it took his parents so long to get food. While the act itself didn’t seem that strange for Vlad, he did own a castle in Wisconsin after all, something about the timing bothered him. With the rare exception of a day when there was a major experiment malfunction, Vlad tended to stay with the family upon his visits. Exactly how long would he be in town if he needed to buy a new house?

After getting a quick tour of the house, Danny retired to his temporary room and called his friends. The three way call ended up being hectic as he explained what happened. “Guys, I’m telling you, I saw a ghost, and then somehow the hotel caught fire.”

“Calm down, Danny,” Sam instructed. “I know you’re telling the truth, but geez, how in the world did you end up being the center of so much trouble in two days?”

“My mom said something about me possibly attracting paranormal things now.”

“Makes sense, in a weird sort of way,” Tucker agreed as typing could be heard on his end. “I’ll see if I can dig up any stories of ghosts like what you saw this time.”

“Don’t worry about it, Tucker. You’re already looking into those files.”

“Nah, this’ll be easy. It’ll only take a couple minutes at most to set up a search and have it run in the background while we talk. Any specific things that stood out?”

“Other than the blue flaming hair?” He sighed and collapsed on his bed. “If she hadn’t been a ghost, she would have looked right at home in one of those bands Sam likes. She said she wanted to make people remember she still exists.”

“So she looked like a goth?” Sam questioned.

“Yeah, but with some, uh… I think you’d say she’s more punk.”

“Woah! That’s weird,” Tucker stated after something on one of his tech devices beeped in the background. “So, apparently there have been a series of spontaneous fires that seem to occur about every ten years, but they started after the death of a local girl. Some people think it’s her ghost that causes them. I’ll send you the articles.”

It took only seconds for the article links to be sent. Danny nearly dropped the phone when the picture of the mentioned girl appeared on the screen. With the exception of the hair, the girl’s face matched that of the ghost. “That… that’s her! Wow, she really doesn’t look that much different as a ghost.”

“Wait, you’re serious?” Sam hummed as she reviewed the information. “Says here while she was unpopular at school, she was in a local band. She was found dead after her house burned down mysteriously. The police thought it might of been an arson, but officials were never able to verify anything. After her death and around its anniversary, there were reports of fires in the city. Sometimes, entire buildings are engulfed, but other times the words ‘you will remember’ appear burned into buildings.”

“I kinda remember hearing my dad mention something about ghost fires growing up, but with it being my dad, I never put any stock into it.”

“My mom said something about it once.”

“I have no idea why I keep forgetting your mom works for 911,” Sam interrupted. “You know, we might be able to use that to our advantage.”

“I mean, you can try, but she refuses to talk about anything other than the occasional funny call. The one about the ‘bambulance’ still brings me to tears.”

“Tuck, you’re getting distracted.”

“Right. Anyways,” some typing could be heard on Tucker’s end, “my mom thought the fires were from the girl’s bandmates. They had just recorded a song called ‘Remember’ which got some local play before she died. Since I know asking Mom for anything else is pointless, I think I’m gonna see if I can get into the files of those fires. The news articles all have explanations, but some of them seem a bit over the top.”

“How long will that take?”

Danny snorted. “Sam, it’s Tucker. Knowing him, he’s already looking at them.”

“I’m hurt, Sam. Do you really have that little faith in me?”

“I know you’ll be able to get them eventually. You’re track record hasn’t been all that great recently. You’ll still working on those files you got from Plasmius, after all.”

“Oh, I’ve finished the review on those. Some of it isn’t pretty, but I wanted to verify information directly from Vlad Master’s companies. That’s been slow going ‘cause he has some impressive firewalls, and I’m really trying not to get caught. As for this,” Tucker briefly shouted in triumph, “I’ve already gotten what I need. Hmm… that’s weird. The official investigations regarding the ‘Ember fires’, as they’re called, all state there was no known cause of the fire. There wasn’t even evidence of an accelerant… which is…?”

“It’s something used to make a fire go from a few flames to a roaring fire. Think of what happens when you add gasoline to a fire,” Sam explained as tapping could be heard on her end. Was she at the computer too? “Most arsonists use one. If they don’t, unless the flames start where there’s something like tissue paper, sawdust, or something else really flammable, the fire usually takes a lot of time to grow and become a problem. Tuck, is there anything about flammable materials?”

“Hmm… no, not really.”

Danny sighed as he got off the bed and paced his temporary room. “Great, now there’s a fire starting ghost on the prowl, on top of Plasmius, that thing… and possibly whatever is wrong with that girl. Tuck, do you have any updates on anything?”

“On the Plasmius front, no. Like I said, I’m trying to cross-reference those files against the files from VladCo and DALV, but that’s taking a while due to his security. For the creepy thing that attacked you, I have a notification set up for any potentially related attacks. I think that’s all I can do for now on that… As for Maura, I got distracted a bit when Plasmius had that chat with you, but I can tell you she stopped posting on social media right after her disappearing act. That’s pretty weird for girls in her clique. Give me a couple days to get her medical chart.” Something beeped in the background. “Oh, it looks like I might have a pattern for our fire bug ghost.”

“At least that’s something. Can you send them to me?”

Sam snorted. “What, you’re gonna try to figure out where she’ll be and talk to her?”

“I mean, it’s worth a shot. Maybe she knows something about Plasmius or that thing? And… maybe I can nicely ask her to stop lighting fires?”

“I think you’re just gonna end up with your ass kicked, but go ahead.”

“Thanks for that wonderful vote of confidence,” Danny deadpanned. The ghost was nice enough to give him a warning so she couldn’t be all bad. “I think if I open up with a ‘thank you’, she won’t outright attack me.”

“It’s your funeral.”

“Actually, Danny, can you die?” Tucker hesitantly asked. “I mean… your situation is kinda weird.”

He thought about it for a few moments. “I think so. Clockwork told me I’m alive, so that’s good enough for me. But, to be honest, I don’t really wanna think about it too much.”

“That’s fair.”

…

Danny’s conversation only lasted a few more minutes after Tucker asked the awkward question as his parents called for him over an intercom system. Uncertain if the correct response to the intercom should be to cringe or be impressed, he pushed it from his mind as he meandered down the hallways to attempt to find his parents.

Something about the décor of the mansion seemed familiar, but Danny found it difficult to place it. Vlad loved the Green Bay Packers, and he commonly used their colors of green and gold for accents. He stopped in his tracks as he glanced around. Plasmius also had green and gold splashes in his home. It had to be a coincidence.

Not wanting to think about it more, he raced down the halls and eventually came to the main foyer. His dad shot him a questioning glance as his mother stood and moved towards him.

“Hi, sweetie! How are you adjusting? It’s been a hectic couple days.”

“I’m okay. I’m just a bit tired,” he told her as he dodged a hug. “I let Sam and Tucker know we’re fine. I’m not dealing with Jazz until after you guys talk to her.”

“I trust the room is to your liking?”

Danny jumped as Vlad’s voice came from behind him. How did he miss him? “Yes. Thanks for letting us stay.”

Vlad waved his hand dismissively. “It’s no trouble at all. My house is yours.”

“Vlad, you mentioned you had a workshop we can use?” His mother asked as she abandoned her attempts at hugging her son.

After staring at her for a second, Vlad shook his head and regained composure. “Surely that can wait until tomorrow, my dear. You’ve been through quite a lot in the past twenty-four hours.”

“No can do, Vladdy!” Jack boomed as he excitedly stood. “You heard those policemen. They want a Fenton product, and I can’t sit still when that spook is still a threat to my family. Say, do you want to help?”

The billionaire grimaced before forcing a smile. “I must politely decline, but I will gladly look over any blue prints in the morning.”

“Don’t worry,” Maddie told him while giving her husband a fond grin, “I know how… enthusiastic Jack can be when he has a new project. I’ll also make sure he sleeps tonight. We don’t want any accidents.”

“That would be greatly appreciated.”

Danny glanced between Vlad and his parents. There was some sort of story he was missing. “Should I ask?” he hesitantly questioned.

“I was badly injured when we were in collage when an experiment went wrong,” Vlad explained as his expression hardened. “As a result, I’ve made it a rule to not be in a room when someone is actively making experimental items or preforming experiments. However, I’ll gladly double check procedures, blue prints, set ups, and results.”

“I… yeah… That… that makes sense. But you’re okay now?”

“Absolutely, my dear boy. You could say I gained a different outlook on life as a result.” Vlad gave a predatory grin which sent shivers down Danny’s spine. “Why, if I hadn’t gotten into that accident, I probably wouldn’t have ended up so successful.”

“Right…” His mother must have caught something off in Vlad’s tone as she furrowed her brow in confusion. “It’s gotten pretty late. Danny, will you be alright?”

“Huh? Probably. I mean, I could use a snack.”

“The kitchen and pantry are just down that hall.” Vlad pointed towards the hallway opposite of the way Danny originally came. “Will you be alright to be back to your room once you’re done? If you wait, I can escort you back once I’m done showing your parents where the lab is.”

“Thanks, but I think I’ll be alright. ‘Night everyone.” Chuckling as his father couldn’t contain his excitement anymore and bounded down the hall followed by his amused mother and wary Vlad, he just made his way to the kitchen. It thankfully was easy to find, and after making a sandwich, he meandered his way back towards his room.

….

Around midnight, Danny decided he would attempt to sneak out of the mansion. Luckily for him, Vlad put him in a room on the ground floor, saying something about how the upper floors weren’t ready yet. Luckier still, there were no bars on the windows. Sam’s parents tried doing something like before due to how many times she snuck out, but it was struck down by her Grandma Ida, who still had control of the deed at that time.

Escape ended up being a piece of cake. There didn’t seem to be any type of security system or guard which seemed strange, but that would probably change once the mansion was officially finished.

He had an idea of where the ghost might end up appearing thanks to the articles Tucker forwarded to him earlier so he booked it in the direction of an older housing plan near the city’s boarder with Elmerton. The majority of buildings in the area were row houses in disrepair. While there were still a few low income families in the area, most of the houses were considered condemned. Danny remembered hearing talk of tearing the houses down at one point, but either the project was shelved or abandoned.

As he approached, he decided to shift to his ghostly form. While it seemed unlikely he would encounter anyone, the area did have a reputation for crime. While he didn’t know what sort of protection being a ghost would give him, it seemed a better option. And, if that thing tried attacking him again, maybe he could float to safety. He really hoped that thing didn’t appear; his trust in his abilities honestly was non-existent.

The soft glow of his ghost form provided the majority of the light as he silently found his way to the road where the girl used to live. The few street lamps were either broken or burnt out, and some even seemed melted.

His destination, Garnier Avenue, seemed worse than the surrounding streets. At first he thought the houses were just gutted, but a second look said otherwise. Most of them had some evidence of fire: melted windows, ash marks, and collapsed roofs and walls. Ash and dust could be found on the road as well as the sidewalk, and in some places, they almost looked like outlines of people.

The area seemed dead. No noise. No sound. No movement. As he continued to move forward, his hair stood on end and his breath misted in front of him. It was almost as if he walked into some sort of wall of static electricity.

“So this is what you actually look like. You’re not that bad looking after all,” a curious voice called to him, making him jump. Danny spun around to see the ghost from earlier materialize in front of him. Her appearance hadn’t changed, but she seemed more solid. Even her voice seemed closer and more natural. “Do you know how many of us would kill to be able to blend in that well?”

“Uh… I really wouldn’t know. This is really new to me,” Danny relied as he held up his hands in what he hoped was a submissive manner.

Her eyes narrowed. “So why are you here, baby pop? Do I interest you?”

He gulped at the undertones of her applications. “A little? I mean, you were nice enough to let me there would be a fire, and I wanted to thank you for that. And maybe ask a couple questions?”

“You just happened to be there at the right time,” she responded offhandedly though her satisfied smirk suggested his thanks was welcome. “It would be a waste to see someone like you get destroyed by accident. But, I would like to know how you found me.”

“I mentioned you to a friend of mine, and he was able to find out about your legend.” Danny hoped he sounded genuinely curious and not creepy. Wait, was it possible for him to not be creepy? He was a ghost after all.

She nodded. “I like to come back around the anniversary of my death. It helps strengthen me.”

“You do seem… I think stronger is the word I want.”

“Glad you noticed, and that makes you more observant than most of the guys I’ve met over the years. Call me, Ember.” Grinning again, she walked around him almost as if she was examining him.

“I’m Danny.”

She snorted. “Bet that’s your real name. Don’t met too many ghosts who remember theirs. You really must be new. Anyways, you had questions?”

“Yeah. I was hoping you might know something about this thing that’s been seen around the town. It attacked me, and it’s caused enough trouble to get the police interested.” When she didn’t immediately respond, Danny took that as a sign he could continue. So, he quickly explained his interaction with whatever the thing was. When he finished, Ember expression turned stony.

“You’re telling me something like that has been seen in my town?” she demanded. Her hair, which had been gently waving in an invisible wind, suddenly blazed in a blue flame. “Are you telling me one of those things have been seen here?”

Danny gulped and nodded. “Like I said, it attacked me! What are they? Plasmius doesn’t know what they are either.”

“Plasmius? Plasmius is here too?” The temperature around them spiked as she shrieked. “Are you working for him? You better answer me, Dipstick.”

===

Notes: ghostly fire is usually considered insubstantial and doesn't tend to cause damage. Actual paranormal fire damage is usually associated with poltergeists, and more modern theories classify poltergeists as creations of psychokinesis (PK) agents (normally living people) instead of spirits.

Ember's background is directly taken from information provided by one of the show's directors.

"Bambalance" is a reference to an old but hilarious 911 call. You can find it on YouTube under the title "the guy, the deer, the dog, and the bambulance." There is some foul language in it.

Also, there is a very subtle 'Phantom of the Opera' reference in this chapter.

[darthravage]

Cipher Nine and Darth Jadus (Rewritten)

I already wrote this text but I was under time pressure since I had to catch a train (which didn’t drive anyway...). I wrote the text because I liked the Idea behind it but I wasn’t able to express myself as I wanted it to do and therefore I decieded to write the text again hoping that it will be better than the first one. (And I also added a view points which seemed logical when I thought about it more closely.)  In the story of the Imperial Agent some things aren’t explained to the player not because it are story gaps but it is like the Agent isn’t able to get it himself and so the player is suposed to get it either when he dosn’t think about it. I already explained the thing with Watcher X in your head and now I want to explain why Darth Jadus shows that much interest in you and which meaning Darth Zhorrid has. The first part is about Darth Jadus’ interest in your mission on Hutta the meaning of Darth Zhorrid in general and the ritual Darth Jadus did with you on Dromund Kaas (even though some things in the second part will be related to it.) The second part is about the happenings on the Dominator and the meanings of Darth Zhorrid if you kill Darth Jadus or let him alive which might be different in some parts. Unfortunately this time the pictures are missing since I write on the computer of my foster parents and don’t want to take it that long (but I don’t think it isn’t a big thing since the primar post only contained two pictures)

Let’s start with Darth Jadus’ interest in your mission on Hutta. Of course it isn’t that important to the Empire due to the egoism of the Hutts and the fact that it is unlikely that they will join the Empire completely what makes them unreliable allies which actually want a war between the Republic and the Empire since it has advantages for them. In addition to that, the allies of the Empire aren’t Darth Jadus concearn who was Head of the Sphere of Imperial Intelligence but Darth Ravage’s who is Head of the Sphere of Diplomacy and Expansion but he didn’t intervene at all. For that reasons I think that Darth Jadus wasn’t really interested in success or failure of the mission that much but more in the Agent himself. Hutta was like a final test for the Agent to deal with unknown situations in which your power within the Empire didn’t give him any power and also was more a danger. That made a good opportunity for Dath Jadus to watch how the Agent react in unknown situation like his dead will be and he also learned to calculate him. The Agent did well in the training of the Imperial Intelligence and therefore was a possibile ally to Darth Jadus or a thread if he is likely to stay loyal to the Empire. Also it gives him time to prepeare to a meeting with you which could influence you in a way he wanted. The last thing relates to your meeting with Darth Jadus in the Sith Sanctum in which he also did the ritual I want to explain more closely as I’ve already sayed. In your meeting Darth Jadus sayes that he is interested in you because you are young and therefore totaly loyal to the Empire. The last thing is a lie since your loyality to the Empire is bad for his plans but he already makes you questioning what happenes that older Agents aren’t that loyal to the Empire and what they could see. Then he does the ritual which make you to his personal Agent and give you the meanings to defeat your enemies. The first thing is clear he want’s to manipulate you and in that possiton he can watch you without that much questions. More over it will be you who is responsibile to look after his murderer and you are a young Agent who won’t even have the idea that Darth Jadus just pretends his death for his own plans. Also it will be you who will look for the supporter of the Eagle and so you aren’t a real thread to that man and so you wouldn’t be able to take the second part of the codes. The second part is more complicaded. Giving you the meanings to defeat your enemies is more complicated since he saied you are totaly loyal to the Empire and it could also give you the meanings to defeat him (what it basically did since you were able to support Dath Jadus long enough that support could come). Of course that could be a lie and you don’t have additional strenght but you did things nobody else was able to do. So the ritual might really give you strenght. That could meant that Darth Jadus sees a possibile ally in you what also seems logical since you don’t use normal methodes and have a anarchist as a partner which works out well. Also he sayes that you are young and haven’t seen the bad sides of the Empire yet but of course you will see them anyway what also made you a possibile thread. And he also saied that he forms you in his ways what could mean that he can influence your mind with his ideas somehow and therefore you don’t think that bad about it and will join him. Of course it also could be that he can watch you doing your missions. That would be good for him as I’ve already explained and it wouldn’t be suprising since the story of the Agent is being watched while watching. Now we get to the meanings of Darth Zhorrid. They is related to the fact that somebody had to support the Eagle by killing Darth Jadus. Darth Zhorrid is the prefect suspect therefore. She is the daughter and only apprentice of Darth Jadus so she was it who recieved his place in the Dark Council which is enough for a Sith to kill his supperiors. More over, Darth Zhorrid has her guards fighting against you when she invites you to Korriban what didn’t really make her more belivable. In addition to that, she isn’t really humble (to express it frindly) and hates her father. So she will be watched while Darth Jadus fulfill his plans without being watched at all and is just a deflection, Also the difference between Sith is showed to the Agent. While Darth Jadus didn’t show emotions Darth Zhorrid shows a lot of it and almost seems creasy due to it.

The happenings on the Dominator can have two reasons either Darth Jadus is honest and is forced to do it because you have the codes for the destroiers or Darth Jadus wanted you to kill the Eagle for getting an ally in you (of course that also can depend on the desicions you make with your charakter). It seems unlikely that Darth Jadus was honest since he had still enough allies to just let you kill and recieve the list by it but he has seen your skills and maybe wants to kill you himself. More over, he was really opportunistic in that case since he offered you an alligance anyway what might also become dangerous for him if you abuse it like you can do. And I don’t think that he would cause some danger to his plans, that isn’t his charakter. But as I’ve already mentioned there is the opportunity that he watches you due to the ritual on Dromund Kaas and he sees that you’ve seen some negative sides of the Empire like the fate of Watcher X and so you might not be that loyal to the Empire what could cause that you will join him. I think it is more likely that he wanted you to kill the Eagle and show you the Dominator since you’ve seen the bad sides of the Empire and Kalijo may influence you in a way he wants. So he regarded it as likely that you would become his ally. Of course it could also be that he wanted to meet you some day and made it earlyer as he actually has planned since you’ve killed the Eagle.

The meaning of Darth Zhorrid when you decide to be against Darth Jadus is those of a Sith Lord who isn’t able to gain the influence of her father since he didn’t show her how to do it. This enforces the things Darth Jadus saied on the Dominator since her failure caused that Imperial Intelligence was abolished without Imperial Intelligence really knowing why. Also it proves what Darth Jadus saied to Keeper when you first meet him on Dromund Kaas. That basically was that a single Sith Lord has the ability to abolish a whole organisation of the Empire only by saying that he wants it to be abolished. If you have to kill her it can basically have two aims: Darth Jadus wants to test if his ritual was successfull and you have the meanings to defeat your enemies or he wanted you to be killed by her since he dosn’t trust you completely and you know too much. Anyway Darth Zhorrid wasn’t usefull for Darth Jadus anymore since Imperial Intelligence knows he is alive so it might just be interesting for Darth Jadus to see who wins the fight.  Another problem is that Darth Zhorrid meanwhile was a thread for Darth Jadus since she could know that he is alive and hates him so she has a very personal aim to punish him and if the Agent kills her she isn’t a thread anymore while Darth Jadus can see how the Agend is fighting now and prepare for a battle against him. This also works the other way round but according to Darth Zhorrid Darth Jadus is better informed how she fights than about the Agent.

There is also the question if Darth Jadus has relationships to the Star Cabal since they reached lots which normal terrorists aren’t able to reach and they must have had support. More over, Darth Jadus knew Hunter since he/she was part of the ghost cell which was supported and therefore also observed by Darth Jadus. If that was the case Darth Jadus tried to kill the Agent at first and when that didn’t work out he kept his promisses in a very strange way to give Cipher Nine additional power. But it also would show that he is affraid of Imperial Intelligence and abolishes it. (Mayby I will write a text about potential supporters of the Star Cabal within the Empire but it won’t come that soon).

[vagrantblvrd]

Avenues (1/1)

Summary: The way Jeremy and Matt meet – it’s kind of a disaster.

Well, okay, not a disaster, just.

Par for the course for them, which is more or less the same when you think about it.

Notes: For @cool-loser who asked for Jeremy/Matt and FAHC first meeting. :D?

(Read on AO3)

Jeremy’s new to Los Santos and low in the pecking order of his crew.

Small-time criminals just trying to get by in Los Santos and smart enough to avoid trouble with other gangs and crews by sticking to their little corner of the city.

It’s a step up for him from throwing himself into the ring night after night and hoping to make it out with no serious injuries just to make rent.

The tiniest step up, anyway.

He’s gotten better at stealing cars, faster.

Fills the quota his boss sets for them with time to spare to pick up side jobs here and there. Earn enough to so he can splurge on little luxuries like food that doesn’t come out of a box or a can.

He’s on his last car of the night, some idiot who parked their car in shady looking parking lot down on the east side of the city.

Older model missing its hubcaps and obvious that it hasn’t been washed in far too long. There’s rust creeping up in spots and overall it’s in pretty shit condition. Might get a few hundred on some used car lot, but it’s more likely it’ll just get parted out in a chop shop somewhere.

Jeremy checks the area for witnesses, but aside from a few workers on their way to a bar after work there’s no one around.

The door to the car isn’t locked, which makes Jeremy pause.

Because one, what kind of idiot leaves their car in a place like this, let alone leaves it unlocked?

And two, the inside of the car is a mess.

Cracked upholstery with padding poking up in spots, sure, but there’s trash and other shit everywhere. Empty food container from takeout placed and boxes piled up on the passenger seat toppled over to spill their contents across the driver’s side. Unused napkins (thank God) on the floorboard and when he peeks into the backseat it’s more of the same with clothes and blankets mixed in.

“Jesus Christ,” Jeremy mutters, knowing he’ll get an earful for stealing a hunk of junk like this.

It’s one thing to bring his boss a piece of shit car on its last legs, and another thing entirely to bring one as messy as this one since it means extra work on their part. Jeremy shakes his head and gets to work, wincing when the car’s engine groans to life, alarming noises coming from under its hood.

It isn’t until he’s at a red light half a mile down the road that he realizes he’s not alone in the car.

Hears faint shifting, sliding, but figured it was all the crap in the car moving around with the way it shakes when he goes anywhere near the posted speed limit. Doesn’t think much of it as he tries to map out a route to the location he’s supposed to bring the car without risking taking it on the freeway in his head when he hears someone clearing their throat.

“Uh, so,” someone says, sleep-thick voice mild confusion.  “I’m pretty sure I don’t know you?”

Jeremy would like to say he doesn’t let out a startled yelp, but that would be a boldfaced lie, wouldn’t it.

Has a fucking heart attack as he turns around to see some skinny fuck blinking owlishly at him, still half-buried in the pile of crap in the backseat.

“What the fuck?”

The guy just stares at Jeremy for the longest time, and then reaches up to push his glasses up. Eyes flicking to something behind Jeremy, and coughs.

“Light’s green, dude.”

Jeremy -

“What the fuck.”

The guy’s just watching him, not alarmed in the least at waking up to discover someone’s not only broken into the car he was sleeping in, but is actively stealing it.

With him in it.

Jeremy looks around the neighborhood they’re in, notices a few familiar landmarks that help ground him.

“I’m just,” Jeremy says, brain working overtime to process the situation, looking around the neighborhood they’re in and spotting familiar landmarks that help ground him. “I’m gonna take us. Over there.”

========

Over there is an all-night diner. Greasy spoon kind of place Jeremy’s gone to a before after a few rounds in the ring. The staff have seen just about everything there is to see in Los Santos.

Stands to reason if they didn’t give him a second glance when he was fresh from a fight they won’t bat an eye when he comes in with some scruffy looking semi-hobo trailing after him.

He gets them a booth in the back, and thanks the waitress who brings them water and coffee without being asked.

Jeremy toys with the corner of his menu while the guy studies his. Makes these little noises every so often like he’s considering each item on it as though it’s some kind of major life decision.

Who can say, given what little Jeremy knows of him so far it might be.

“So, uh,” Jeremy says when he can’t not anymore. “What’s up. You know, with you?”

The guy glances up, head tilted to the side.

“What?”

Jeremy stares at the guy.

The guy stares back.

“Do you - “ Jeremy trails off, not sure how to ask the guy if he has any idea how stupid he was sleeping  in his car like that, in a neighborhood like that without coming off as an asshole, but. “Uh.”

The guy keeps staring at him, and Jeremy goes from fidgeting with his menu to holding on to it as if it’s a lifeline. Or you know, rather than straight up throttling this guy because Los Santos is going to eat him alive.

And oh boy does the guy notice.

Eyes dropping to Jeremy hands and back up to meet his eyes.

Raises his eyebrows, and then that weirdly apathetic expression of his cracks, this slow smile spreading over his face as he laughs.

And laughs and laughs and laughs.

It’s not an unpleasant thing, makes Jeremy want to laugh too, but you know. The whole thing about this guy being a complete moron.

After a moment the guy gets himself back under control, leans his face in his hand as he regards Jeremy.

“This is by far the best carjacking I’ve experienced since I got here. Thanks for that, by the way.”

Jeremy is beyond lost, and a little concerned at the implication the guy’s been carjacked before, because Los Santos.

“What?”

========

So.

The guy’s name is Matt and Jeremy was one hundred percent right about him being an idiot.

New transplant to Los Santos like Jeremy, and somehow made the cross-country drive here in his junker of a car.

Claims he’s good with computers although Jeremy’s yet to see him in action, and also -

“Oh, dude, nice.”

He’s Jeremy’s roommate?

Something like that, since he has nowhere else to go and Jeremy’s got a couch he can sleep on and he thinks he’s still in shock about accidentally kidnapping Matt. (Kidnapping, abducting, Jeremy’s not a fucking lawyer.)

Feels a little weird about letting him fend for himself in Los Santos, and anyway, what harm could it do? Matt’s taller than Jeremy, sure, but he’s a twig.

Jeremy pokes his head out of his tiny kitchen to see Matt looking through his game collection, and shoves that twinge of guilt he gets every time he sees it.

He should trade them in along with the console since he doesn’t have a lot of time to play in between everything else. That, and it’d help take some of the strain off when it comes to bills and food and whatever else, but it’s nice to have something that’s not connected to the shit he does for a living these days.

Matt’s looking more animated than he has since Jeremy met him, that moment where he cracked the hell up in the diner aside.

“You can play if you want, just don’t delete my saves,” Jeremy says, because he’s got groceries to deal with first.

When Jeremy explained the whole bit about stealing his car, Matt had laughed and told Jeremy he could still have it since it didn’t belong to him anyway.

Which.

Not like Jeremy can judge him, and it had been a weird enough night as it was, so.

He got the lecture of a lifetime from his boss, but he also got his cut and that had been enough to cover bills and food for the week for him and Matt and that’s all he cares about for the moment.

“You don’t mind?” Matt asks, thread of uncertainty to it like he’s finally realized how bizarre this whole thing is.

“Just play the damn thing,” Jeremy says, smiling to to take the sting out of words because Matt -

There’s something kind of lost about him that Jeremy recognizes in himself, and figures it won’t hurt to stick together for now.

They can hardly do worse for themselves, and who knows where it could take them one day?

[easilydistractedbyfanfic]

Countdown to Season 6 Raven/Murphy #4 - They Listen To Each Other & Are Better For It

I’m back and we’ve got five days to go! This is a completely random countdown until the 4/30 premiere of S6 of The 100, and if you’ve missed the previous posts, here they are - #1, #2, #3 . These two characters are my favorites and I invest way too much of my mental space contemplating their character motivations, but what the hell - I’m having fun! 

Today I wanna look at instances when Raven & Murphy listen to each other and why I think it’s such a big part of their dynamic and what that means for them. They’re in a place of tentative friendship towards the end of S4 and then definite friendship/found family dynamics in S5 with the added bonus of each of them ready to die for the other (S5 has multiple examples of both of them being willing to put themselves in clear and obvious danger for each other and/or the rest of their friends), which is great, and I would expect that their caring feelings for each other WOULD mean that they were certainly open to hearing the other person’s perspective. 

But it’s also interesting to me how different they are on the surface when it comes to “smarts”. Raven is the typical version of smart - practical, studied, logical, and it’s canon that most people consider her a genius as well as somewhat naturally gifted in this area. She knows something about everything, and is definitely the go-to person you want on your team when it comes to technical problems and how not to die. Murphy doesn’t have these advantages - it’s canon that he was locked up in the Sky Box early, possibly missing out on schooling, and he’s a poor speller which lends to the lack of education theory and/or a learning disability. He’s more talented in the street smarts aspect of life, and I’d venture that he’s also better than Raven when it comes to reading people - Murphy has a knack for understanding what motivates a person and can manipulate a situation to his advantage because of it (plenty of examples of this in the show). This ties in to his survival instincts. Although neither of them are 100% one thing or the other, there’s a good argument to be had (in my opinion, anyway), that Raven is more THINKING/LOGIC and Murphy is more FEELING/INTUITION. 

So what does that have to do with anything? Well to me it says a few things. In 4x06, the two are still adversarial (omg I love these scenes) and Raven’s literally killing herself by using her ALIE brain to try to find answers about making nightblood in space & landing the rocket. She has no real reason to think that Murphy, who honestly knows nothing about the complex scenarios she’s trying to figure out, will be able to provide her with any kind of solution. However, she listens to him anyway, and it’s HIS input that ultimately leads to the plan that solves the problem (Perfect sucks - Maybe perfect is your problem - Screw the computer, Raven, fly it yourself). And Raven is absolutely aware that Murphy’s contribution is the tipping point, which is why she deliberately thanks him even though things are overly strained between them. This situation worked out because they worked together and listened to the other POV. 

In 5x03, Murphy clearly believes that killing the prisoners in cryo is the best plan (valid reasons). He isn’t budging from this position but eventually lets Bellamy & Raven convince him to “be good guys”. IMHO this stems partly from faith in Raven’s ability to block the cryo signal from the ground so that their group does have control, and from Murphy’s likely belief that both Raven and Bellamy are somehow ‘better’ than him so he gives in to their position. If we take this scene into consideration with those in 5x04, where Murphy questions Raven’s ability to kill the prisoners - not in a mean way but in a ‘this is a lot to deal with’ way and are you sure you can do it - and she therefore thinks harder about it and eventually confesses to him that she’s not sure she can do it, these are more signs of listening to each other’s POV and letting it influence them and in fact, change their own positions. In addition, he convinces her she needs some downtime (soccer) even though at first she thinks he’s being ridiculous. After her saying she may not be able to pull the lever and he says that’s why he will, we then get the actual scenario of one of them having to do it. At first, Murphy hesitates, so Raven gets frustrated and prepares to do it herself, but Murphy stops her at the last minute, and instead of pushing past him, she listens when he demands she wait and says “I’m not ready to die, are you?” and she listens to his sudden plan instead. She throws the whole agreed-on plan out the window just on his say-so, suggesting that what he says carries a lot of weight for her. The combined take away from all of these interactions to me says that when they work together & listen to the other POV, things work out. 

Not to mention, let’s talk about how HUGE it is that Raven & Murphy manage to subvert the lever scenario that Bellamy & Clarke also faced with regard to Mt. Weather. In this scene, they manage to actively “be the good guys” by refusing to kill people in their sleep. They don’t know if it’s going to be the right decision or not, but either way, their own lives are at risk. Still - they break the cycle here and it leads to Bellamy ultimately stopping Madi from killing the alive cryo-criminals and telling her that she “can be better than them, can be better than us”. Then Madi tells Clarke “first we save their lives, then we let them prove they deserve it”. This could not have happened if Raven & Murphy killed all the prisoners in cryo, and it was because they worked together and listened to each other that they were able to do better than they might have on their own. 

There’s smaller instances where one of them listens to the other, stuff in S4 and again in S5, but ultimately what I find most interesting is thinking about WHY do they listen to each other? Part of it is past behavior, of course - Raven being right in the past indicating she has a probability of being right in the future, their friendship lending them the mutual desire to take each other’s opinion into consideration, even having respect for what abilities they each bring to the table could come into play... but I also come back to how they fill in each other’s WEAKNESSES. 

When Raven is being too logical, too stuck in her head and can’t see the forest for the trees, it’s Murphy who pulls her back down and reminds her that sometimes the simple solution works best and that even geniuses need a break and she shouldn’t have to carry the burden all the time. And while Murphy often jokes or slacks off and can’t seem to be bothered to put effort into things, it’s Raven who takes him seriously by not even questioning his input or scoffing that he’d even bother giving it when obviously he isn’t as smart, instead giving it solid consideration just like she would everyone else and often letting him convince her, therefore proving that he IS valuable and that what HE says carries a lot of weight too. 

These two working together as a team makes them both BETTER, more effective. When they’re not fighting (tho lemme be honest I like it when they fight... for reasons), they click with regard to their weaknesses & strengths, they clearly trust each other both in word and action and these interactions provide them both with BALANCE in their own personalities AND in the overall themes of the show, and I am so here for it. 

I have said plenty of times before that I started shipping these two in 1x10 because of that look in the Dropship, and that is true because I disliked Finn so much and wanted something better/deeper for Raven, but essentially it was also a desire to see two complicated, fascinating characters who clearly had mega backstory and lots of baggage interact with each other so I could sit back and watch the fireworks. And I have been truly enjoying the heck out of it since I finally got it. Of course I want MORE - I’m very greedy - but guys... it’s canon that they work better when they’re a team, that they support and listen to each other and value each other’s input, and that does make me pretty happy. Not to mention... the whole idea of balance, ying/yang, strength/weakness and how all those themes apply in the 100 absolutely lends itself to an entirely different sort of analysis about soulmates, huh?

[scarlettlawyer]

Phantoms and Mirages Fic Commentary, Part 1

So. I’ve basically written up over six thousand words of reaction/commentary of @renegadewangs‘s fanfic Chasing Phantoms, the first instalment in the Phantoms and Mirages series. This post’s commentary covers the first ten chapters, but I still reference parts beyond that excluding Tracking Ghosts, which I still have yet to read (so the commentary itself is spoilery in the sense that it jumps about at times and references stuff beyond the chapter at hand). So please no spoilers regarding the final instalment! Meowzy, I hope this was okay for me to do, please let me know if it’s not! The way I’ve written this up is kind of like a review where I’m talking to you, but other fans are more than welcome to comment on and engage with this post if they wish. I plan to cover the series at least up until the end of Lifting Spirits with these commentary posts.

Sorry for Very Long Post!

Chasing Phantoms, Chapter 1

First off, already, in the first few sentences, you present us with something to contrast SO strongly with the changed Bobby we see later – specifically to contrast as much as possible, basically. The difference here between this Bobby and Randy Liberate, it’s, aaaah…! You specifically draw attention to this, in the very beginning of the very first chapter… You didn’t HAVE to make the contrast so stark, but you did, and god damn it hit me hard. XD. NOT GONNA LIE IT MADE ME KINDA “ANGRY” THAT YOU DID THIS LIKE, hahaha. You did this on purpose, didn’t have to make that the content of the first few lines of dialogue.

Man, you know what occurred to me when I was starting to read this fic? In the past there was at least one fic on the PWKM that a friend linked me to that was also a Bobby Lives AU where Bobby was also traumatised – but it was basically one where Bobby had been held captive during that whole year. And I read a little bit of it then basically shoved it aside and couldn’t read it anymore. It was just too off-putting for me, the horror and level of trauma Bobby must have suffered over such a long period of time too much to think about, making me feel ill and sick to my stomach at the time. Now that fic – based on what my friend told me and what little I read of it – focused on Bobby and his slow recovery. The phantom was not really present, they were not a character – they were merely a part of the fic’s background formation, the referred-to and merely alluded to entity whose prime influence over the fic was being the source of – having inflicted Bobby’s trauma, the trauma already having played out.

Now there’s more than one reason I didn’t continue reading that fic, and what they have in common is that they stem from the fact that I like the phantom a lot as a character. Therefore, I want to read fic with a focus on the phantom and with the phantom as an actual character who does stuff in the fic, and that fic did not meet those requirements. SECONDLY… I was not, and until reading Phantoms and Mirages, was never really in the habit of giving Bobby Fulbright as a character much focus. Reading about Bobby shell-shocked and traumatised was a fundamentally uncomfortable experience (as it should be) because naturally it made me feel very very bad for the guy, but also because the fic wanted to (rightfully) position the phantom as an abhorrent and detestable being. Now usually I got no problem with that but the way that fic went about it felt somehow different – it made my insides twist, perhaps because it was shining a spotlight on the phantom’s victim(s) as opposed to the phantom themself. It did not encourage my love for this awful fictional character, it did not give me anything to “fangirl” over, it just made me dislike the phantom in the context of that fic, and I wasn’t about that life.

So back when I’m starting out this fic written by you, where Bobby is actually a player on the chessboard getting a bunch of focus, and I’m like oh, boy. Is it going to be like that again? Is this fic(s) going to make me feel super, duper bad about Bobby Fulbright and by extension, just make me feel sick when thinking about the phantom? Is this series going to encourage me to hate the phantom and have a certain degree of success? I was a little worried.

…Phwwhwhh…. Bahahaha. Oh, past me. If this fic series has a thesis, I can tell you it’s NOT “this person known as the phantom is bad forever and you should hate them.” Can you believe this was ever one of my concerns? : D Hehehehe.

--

Oh my god… Oh my god… Reading over this again, it just hit me – the IRONY of that corpse being labelled a “John Doe” and referred to as such… goshdangit Meowzy!!! I know you love your irony an awful lot. Is there no end to your amusing twists and reversals?! XD. I’M TRYING TO THINK, DID THEY ACTUALLY CALL THE CORPSE A JOHN DOE IN TURNABOUT FOR TOMORROW? THAT MIGHT’VE BEEN WHAT GAVE YOU THE BEGINNINGS OF THE SHELLY IDEA… HMMMM.

--

Now as much as I poked fun above about the possibility that this series would make me dislike the phantom, man did this chapter make me feel bad for Bobby Fulbright. It really manages to put you in his shoes. Struck me REALLY heavily just how absolutely mind-breaking it must be for your captive to step into the room and they’re, well, you. To have the spitting image of yourself calmly and coldly hold you at gunpoint… goddamn. That’s some shattering stuff. Honestly even if none of the Shelly death happened, poor Bobby, the guy would already have a lot of baggage that would take a lot of time to work through based on that alone.

The “highly respected nobody” and “devoted your life to justice, but in doing so forgot to pursue close bonds with loved ones” comments and Bobby’s reaction was flippin’ heartbreaking for me. I’ve seen plenty of meta written before supposing about Bobby not having any real close loved ones and how that would have made impersonation easier, and for the people doing that analysis there is always an air of “huh that’s kind of sad/depressing, actually” – a level of acknowledgement there that I would register when reading such analysis, but here in this chapter I’m hit with the absolute full force of it and just how depressing it is when Mr Bobby Fulbright himself is confronted with that analysis (or at least, that’s what it really felt like the first time I read it!). It really hurt to think about! This is what I mean when I say I’m impressed that you gave Bobby Fulbright agency as a character – in fics where he is dead, or in meta passively analysing him, this analysis is basically applied to him post-mortem. He’s an idea, a thing to be dissected, with no concrete shape or form (because we can never know how accurate the phantom’s impersonation was). And in later chapters the text itself lampshades this. Bobby’s later comments about being treated as a martyr of justice by the public struck me as basically how the fandom as a whole tends to treat him, and that may have been intentional on your part. We, the fandom and the players, just like Simon Blackquill, never actually got to meet the real Bobby Fulbright. But here, here? As a character in your fic, Bobby gets to take shape as a concrete entity as opposed to the multitude of possibilities that he is in much of fandom. But importantly, he gets to react. He gets to react to things, and he is the one reacting to this very analysis of himself. As shattering as it is for him, in this chapter he gets to basically hear a solemn takeaway that parts of the fandom have made about his person. And in subsequent chapters, he is given the chance both to respond and overcome it.

It’s kinda funny, you know what these scenes made me think and wish? “Man, it really sucks that Bobby Fulbright died, actually. It really, really sucks. I wish he hadn’t died.” Keep in mind that I was kind of, err… too distracted by the phantom to be truly sad over Bobby when playing the ending of Dual Destinies for the first time. Hmm. Well, this chapter certainly helped me out with feeling the anguish that the average player did over Bobby!

“Wish Bobby didn’t die. It’s not fair! Wish that Bobby was, you know… still alive. Somehow.” Hah! Meowzy, you were just standing there like “don’t worry bro I got you covered.”

When I read this chapter for the first time, I didn’t actually know for certain that it was a Bobby Lives AU. I mean, it was telling me that Bobby Fulbright was gonna be a character, but all signs so far seemed to point to “yeah, he’s a character… in flashbacks.” The fic tags were saying Blackbright, and yet the entire setup seemed to be saying otherwise. It left me kinda confused and wondering how, in what capacity would our man Bobby Fulbright be playing a role. This chapter had made me so certain he was dead, that I actually thought supernatural elements would be involved. Ghost Bobby! : D

And I honestly don’t know why, but for some reason I’d always assumed Phantoms and Mirages as a series was some Fun Wacky AU With Actual Supernatural Elements for the longest time back when I didn’t know anything about it. It’s part of why it took me so long to finally get around to reading it. I blame both the chosen titles involved (why I failed to realise back then that they were not actually meant to be taken literally, seeing as the canon “phantom” character has no supernatural elements, I really don’t know) and the fact that “Bobby Fulbright” and “the phantom” were both listed as characters co-existing in the same fic. My mind just went “does not compute” to the point where it straight-up assumed it mustn’t be canon compliant and/or have fantastical elements. Heh. Joke’s on me.

So yeah, you made me really sad and wish Bobby hadn’t died and he was still alive… in an AU where he lives! Excellent work ;D

Just also want to randomly say again(?) that I can’t believe you managed to write canon compliant Bobby Lives “AU” fic. You took two of the main issues/problems I’ve seen raised by fans; “why did it take a year for Bobby’s body to be found” and “why did the phantom allow that evidence to be discoverable”, and managed to actually solve them in a manner that supports a Bobby Lives “AU”. Brilliant!

Chasing Phantoms, Chapter 3

The guard by the man’s side exchanged a meaningful look with his fellows on the other side of the glass as the tirade was still ongoing, though the next few words were in a foreign language. French? Then Cohdopian? He switched back to English soon enough, which didn’t diminish the oddity one bit.

The Phantom was losing it.

Gosh, I can’t emphasise enough how much I loved the language switching here. That’s another thing this series does REALLY well: acknowledging other languages and having characters change between them. An international spy is naturally going to know more than one language, that’s just kind of a given, and I don’t see much meta or fics acknowledge that, so I really do adore how strongly it’s a given in your fics. The way language switching is done and discussed, and just discussion of listening to other languages etc is usually really well done in this series and I always enjoy it.

But I just especially love this particular scene – the phantom inadvertently changing languages because he’s just that far gone is… iconic. I’d almost say it’s kind of a miracle that they were able to stick to the one language throughout their entire breakdown at the end of Dual Destinies, but then again, they only used the faces of “English” speaking characters I guess, flitting between their voices, so it does make sense!

Interesting that, when I read through this chapter for the first time, when the phantom started actually making threats and being like “I’M GOING TO BREAK OUT OF HERE AND YOU WILL PAY, SEE YOU SOON!!” I was, well, sceptical. I was like, hmmm, huuh…? “That doesn’t really, um, make sense, does it? Isn’t that a little out of character for the phantom?” and yet, the narrative itself acknowledges this, through Blackquill, later on when things come to a head. I was awfully foolish to ever doubt the Great Meowzy. :P

Now this time around, of course I know exactly what’s going on here and register precisely how this seemingly odd behaviour slots into the phantom now.

Chasing Phantoms, Chapter 4

”Bobby Fulbright.”

Fulbright stiffened at the mention of his own name, just for a few seconds.

OH, HERE WE GO. YEAH. HERE WE GO, HUH???

Yeah, you might have seen/noticed from my posting in the discord chat, but this? This inspired quite the reaction in me. This made me livid, frothing at the mouth. Not in any way towards you, the author or the writing, but towards the character. Mission accomplished via good writing!

Well, I wasn’t angry at first, I don’t think. Initially it was just a kind of, delighted bewilderment when he showed up – I am pretty sure I found it pretty, well, amusing. Funny but in a sense you’re laughing out of shock and bewilderment more than anything. LIKE… IT /IS/ PRETTY FUNNY IN A SUPER WACKY KIND OF WAY… the narrative has kind of said in no uncertain terms over and over again, that this character is dead. And here he is, in the flesh, alive, just like that.

The phantom: lol Bobby Fulbright is dead and I killed him

(Except he’s lying through his teeth.)

Like, YES, we have the narrative undercurrent of Simon’s creeping suspicions leading up to this point – it’s most certainly not something that happens out of nowhere, textually speaking. The groundwork HAS been laid, and alternative explanations have been hinted and implied. (An AU of this AU would be some grimdark angsty thing where Simon follows the “maybe he’s not actually dead though” trail and gets his hopes up only for it to end in despair because nah, he’s really gone dude, and it was all your imagination and yearning for something that will never be, but anyway).

It’s awkwardly funny and funny in an awkward way. This guy presumed dead, another guy claiming to have killed him, the funeral has taken place, THE BODY SUPPOSEDLY IDENTIFIED AND /BURIED/, THE LOCATION OF THE MURDER SUPPOSEDLY IDENTIFIED- People are in mourning.

Bobby: Oh. Hey. Hello, um, yes. I’m alive haha

Part of it is that it’s so sudden too. I kind of love it. He’s just there at the cemetery, Simon chases this random man down and it’s Bobby flippin’ Fulbright.

So at first it’s like

:O [laughing confusedly] what the heck? Bobby, you’re aliiive! : D

Then it’s like

Bobby, how the hell are you alive?

…And what the hell are you doing here?!

Then finally reaches a crescendo in a sort of WAIT, HOW DARE YOU BE ALIVE?!

My standard expectation for a fic scenario like this – “Bobby is alive post-DD” is him being found, hidden away somewhere – him having been forcibly hidden away from the outside world with no way to make contact with it if he wanted to. He needs to be uncovered. He’s certainly not casually hanging out in the background at cemeteries, walking around outside freely, that’s for sure, hahaha.

But no, he was not discovered in some dark cellar, chained to the wall. He was discovered walking around out in the open, nothing really preventing him from making contact with people.

My amused surprise quickly and rapidly gave way to rage.

Rage at this man!!! Rage, as the story progressed and unfolded in the immediate aftermath of this initial scene.

All thoughts of the phantom – the god damn phantom, the entire reason I started reading this fic in the first place – vanished from my mind. Stuff the phantom. Who cares about the phantom?! All of my thoughts and feelings and reactions were all focused on Bobby. For the next small chunk of the fic, the phantom is not relevant, and I couldn’t care less, because he was completely irrelevant to me at that point too, and for me that’s kind of a big accomplishment writing-wise in and of itself.

“You’re a real doll”

“Y o u ‘ r e a r e a l d o l l”

HMMMMMMMMMMM

Me: BOBBY FULBRIGHT ARE YOU OKA

“shooting her a playful. WINK”

UHHHHGNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

I FORGOT HE ACTUALLY SAYS THAT BEFORE THE SMOKING REVEAL but I was already blind rage at that point anyway sdklsdklsd like… Bobby Fulbright just… Existing “freely” and not having contacted the authories or anything… was more than enough to tip me off that something was horribly wrong, that this Fulbright had fundamentally betrayed himself and what he stands for in some capacity. That much was already clear to me – I was essentially infuriated over certain reveals before they even happened. I already Knew, really. Looking back, the “doll” line MIGHT not have been intentional? But basically: I am Very Certain it really doesn’t suit Bobby’s character back before the phantom happened and kinda ruined his life for a while there. When he said that to Olga… It was really Randy Liberate speaking imo. Post-phantom Bobby though, I guess would possibly say that line too. But it was a line that just made me uncomfortable and be like [holds out cross in self-defence] “I Don’t Trust Like That.” (And my friend agreed when I told her about the line hahaha). The main point is it’s a small but stark contrast to Original!Bobby and I was like bro. oh no.

Wait no what am I saying – as far as Phantoms and Mirages has established, Bobby is Very Gay (unless he’s also attracted to women but I don’t recall it being mentioned. Huh!) and also had never acted on his sexuality originally. He just wouldn’t be the type to Wink And Act Like That. Post-Randy-Liberate-Bobby would but probably only in a purely playful and innocent sense, obviously with no actual interest there. I could be wrong but Yeah! Anyway

”What’s this?” He snatched the last item up with one hand to inspect it. “You don’t smoke.”

”Bobby Fulbright didn’t smoke. Randy Liberate took it up last year,” the other man corrected him. “It relieves stress.”

OH MY GOOOOOOD HERE IT IS……………..THE H

YEAH. YEAH YOU PROBABLY SAW ME TALK ABOUT THIS IN DISCORD I GUESS FOR SURE.

CONGRATULATIONS, this just……. The narrative absolutely achieved its goal here. This, I was so… The IMAGE. The image just gave me such a visceral reaction it was just like yeah, yeah, okay. Bobby would Never, but here we are I guess, I was ready to throw hands. Man I was so mad, this man I swear… Once again… The good writing absolutely resulted in Mission Accomplished for what it was going for.

Worth noting that there was a kinda misconception I had here initially – from the information the fics give us later on, it seems that Bobby actually had pretty free reign when it came to shaping who Randy Liberate was? Even if he had some rough guidelines he needed to follow maybe, guy was pretty free to do and be what he wanted. At this point I actually thought that Randy Liberate was already a set personality that Bobby had to fake, and that he Could Not Stray from the mould that was given to him. I figured that Randy Liberate smoked, and when Bobby became him, he’d no real choice in the matter (but also genuinely wanted to just Become this new person so ultimately, he didn’t care, he just did it cause Whatever, if he’s Randy Liberate then smoking is cool now, who cares! Not Bobby Randy!) Guess the “took it up last year” should have tipped me off? But oh well.

…Oh! I also just want to say it’s worth noting that the “Bobby found, was kept prisoner in a cellar for a year”-type scenarios don’t work for me, and they’re part of why previously I was never really able to accept Bobby Lives AUs – I just found it too unrealistic for the phantom to hold Bobby captive for so long, cause it was like, why? For what reason? The scenario you give is so much better imo and I can, yeah, I can buy it! I love Blackquill kind of actively lampshading it though hahaha. “Literally what reason would the phantom keep you alive for? You’re a liability, it would be Too Dangerous for them, makes no sense to me” – Simon Blackquill, anticipating my objections ahead of time and voicing them. God, I love that.

Simon watched as Fulbright slipped a cigarette into his mouth and lit it.

Skjnsdndskjnsd thanks, I hate it! SDKJDKJDKJB OK SORRY I JUST. I just have to put this here for the extra “Oh my God… this is really happening huh… the level of discord shoved into a single sentence.” Simon comments on Fulbright acting nonchalant. You know what else is nonchalant? This sentence. And it’s all the more effective as a result.

I should pull up some of Ye Olde Liveblogging messages I sent to my friend over this, consisting hugely of “[cocks gun] you’re not Bobby. Who are you.” Exactly the point, of course.

(”the two of us” here refers to my friend and I).

Heh, don’t worry, I won’t kill Bobby. Bobby is fantastic. At this point of the fic it was really something though

”[…] it was the only life I could still have. A second chance for a dead man. I was lucky to be given even that much.”

Just like the phantom gets in Lifting Spirits.

WAIT I FORGOT ABOUT THE CASUAL SWEARING TOO OH YM GOOOOD. The “I stopped trusting in justice” I just CAN’T.

Me, screaming: GET OUT!!!! HOW DARE YOU STAND WHERE HE STOOD

Sdlnsdlknsdkl

I always just think about this one AskAceAttorney post where they go “Bobby would never swear. It’s not just.”

The casual marriage reveal too just slays it, hits it out of the park… “Crashing parties” Bobby,,, is gone. He’s not here anymore. I can tell you that. That was Randy.

”Pathetic!” he slammed his fist against the wall behind him, causing both Fulbright and Taka to give a start. “Absolutely pathetic! I’ve yet to decide who is more detestable, you or the Phantom!”

I AM BLACKQUILL, BLACKQUILL IS MEEEEE, at least the first time I read through this, that is. Love when the POV character is on the exact same wavelength reaction-wise.

The newcomer seemed confused for a few seconds, if only because despite their viably different situations, there were two men in the room who looked virtually identical.

IN SPITE OF EVERYTHING THIS IS LITERALLY SO FUNNY… LIKE LITERALLY NOTHING ELSE ABOUT THE SITUATION IS FUNNY BUT THIS ONE SPLIT SECOND? HILARIOUS. I LOVE IT. The image of Shelly just pausing and looking at what he’d just abruptly burst in on is GOLD. Ahahaha. “oh GEEZ which one is the target?!” (that quickly becomes kinda obvious, but the brief confusion is everything to me). Well I suppose it would have been bad news for Bobby if he’d been able to subdue phantom by some miracle and the situation WAS reversed, that’s for sure!

God. Literally everyone in the room at this point is in an awkward situation tho im

Shelly, having come across this weird scene with Two Identical Men: what

The phantom, his almost-murder he was about to commit having been interrupted and his Secret Hideout having been intruded on without warning by an annoyingly persistent assassin that just won’t go away: what

Bobby, being held at gunpoint and About To Be Murdered: what

It’s so great.

Still, fast as he was, the stitched man was faster.

I concur. I always figured that, if at point-blank range or whatever, Shelly would win. Killing is his trade, after all. It’s his specialty. It’s not the phantom’s specialty in the way that it’s Shelly’s specialty – the phantom has his Cool Spy Moves and is good at being a spy but like, that’s just not equal to Shelly and his craft, man. The phantom’s only hopes with Shelly are just to avoid being caught amidst his many identities. Or an unlikely person saving his life.

Oh and it’s super interesting because there’s actually fanart of Shelly and the phantom (fully decked out as Bobby Fulbright) running at each other for a throwdown match, the text of the post just saying “killer vs killer”. I wonder, have you stumbled across this fanart before? Could it have at all served as a kind of inspiration, perhaps? Or maybe your fic actually predates it, and the inspiration was the other way around. Or maybe it’s just an amusing coincidence, and neither influenced the other – there just happens to be fic of a certain piece of fanart and fanart of a certain scene from a fic, this unintentional on everyone’s behalf. I actually think that’s pretty damn cool. Well, no matter what the truth is: neat!

Anyway, there is honestly so much that happens in this series – it is so completely filled to the brim and action-packed that I essentially forgot that Shelly de Killer got killed way back at the start until it became relevant again. In the grand scheme of things, it just feels so… understated, almost. When I read it, I was like “whoa, dude, you just killed off Shelly de Killer. Whoa. What!” And then it promptly got swept away amidst everything else, you know? My mind just had SO MANY other things to focus on.

Well no, it’s not understated – Bobby suffers severe trauma, and he can never truly purge that horrific scene from his mind. BUT what I mean is, from the way the narrative handles it, it becomes more “that thing Bobby was traumatised by and needs counselling for” and “that event that led to a body being confused for Bobby’s own corpse” (I swear I literally kept forgetting that was Shelly, that’s actually Shelly’s corpse). The powerful impact of “SHELLY DE KILLER IS DEAD!!!” got lost somewhere along the way, and then fast forward to Lifting Spirits and Benny shows up and OHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

And by the way, the fact that it even becomes relevant again, in the first place? Storytelling and writing at its finest. Like… You didn’t have to make everything come full circle like you did. I had long-dismissed the Shelly incident as, well, a wacky incident where an iconic canon ace attorney character gets killed off and practically FORGOTTEN about it, never actually expecting it to really get expanded upon beyond that, but by hell it sure did. You are awesome. I would never have guessed this one scene would send out shockwaves that would come back full force to haunt the phantom fics later. At that point, he’s no longer the phantom of course, but well, we’ll get there… : ) But it really goes to show that Nothing is really wasted in this series, honest-to-goodness, and that’s such good writing, it’s so cool.

I also forgot that, even back here, way back then, Bobby saved the phantom’s life. He really Did that huh.

ALSO I FEEL LIKE THERE’S LOWKEY IMPLICATIONS THAT THIS IS JUST, an average day in the life of the phantom, and that’s really funny to me too. ‘Cause it kinda IS standard to an extent, I guess.

Chasing Phantoms, Chapter 5

”Aura, I have a question. Do you believe it’s right to start a second life when your first one has gone to hell?”

Oh? You mean kinda like… Lex does in the end? :P

Well I suppose this fic series raises that debate early on. XP

”Of course I don’t think it’s right. Who would even get a second life? Cheats like the Phantom, that’s who!”

OH,..

Now obviously the first time reading this I read it in the context of “yeah, bc shedding identities and all” BUT THIS TIME AROUND, IT TAKES ON A SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT MEANING… HEH. Actually you know what, the first time reading this I don’t think I even dwelled on it or how it connects to the phantom having so many identities he sheds and takes up, it just seemed like an easily-overlooked “the phantom is awful and a cheat” comment and I’m kinda. Yelling at the resonance of this line now.

Oh, and her bringing the word “cheat” into it, and I think I recall a line in Lifting Spirits at the end where it says they “felt like they were cheating”… heh. Heh.

”Genuine humans only get one life and we have to make the best of it.”

Her exact sentiments in Lifting Spirits… I didn’t even think about how this aspect also comes full circle. A similar kind of question is posed, first about Bobby Fulbright (or rather, “Randy Liberate”) in the beginning, and then about The Man Currently Known As The Phantom in the end. The answers and the outcomes that the fic provides to these rather similar kind of questions are quite different. Aura’s stance never wavers, not even once.

…This fic series’s meta writes itself tbh.

OKAY. ANYWAY I LEGIT TEARED UP A LITTLE READING THE MESSAGES THAT WERE WRITTEN TO BOBBY IN THAT BOOK, NOT GONNA LIE. The feels.

Chasing Phantoms, Chapter 6

Anyway yeah this is just so good and well-written, the whole play on Bobby actually needing to fake his old persona for the sake of other people…

Chasing Phantoms, Chapter 7

…You know, I just realised, I’d actually been very sceptical of Bobby’s level of proficiency in Borginian, given his job and lack of opportunity to use it previously when he was a detective, the fact that he learned it years ago and thus a lot of the knowledge had probably faded over time (although obviously I know it had the chance to be brought up to speed again over the past year, I just had strong doubts over that being enough). But then I realised that my only experience with knowing another language is Mandarin Chinese, so uhh…. It’s OBVIOUSLY going to be far easier if the other language Bobby knows is, in fact, much closer to English. Huh.

Me, with a smarmy voice: actually Bobby being fluent in Borginian is unrealistic, there’s no way given that he would have had so little opportunity to use Borginian over the years

Me, realising that Borginian would probably be way easier to learn for an English-speaker than Chinese is and therefore my perception is skewered: …OH.

I actually felt so bad for Fulbright’s “wife”, because tsk tsk, just like Simon I too had made an assumption there. But imagine marrying this guy and DURING the divorce proceedings you find out the identity was fake and the circumstances that led to it… that’s so screwed up.

Me now @ past me, thinking about how Domestique already knew: HAHAHA

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[narrows eyes] oh. Here we are. Our first phantomquill. …………..hmph. I’ve still not the full capacity to confront this – I’m still trying to figure it out for myself.  Nnh. Well, more on… this later, I suppose. It will come up again. ;P

I uh, wonder how long it was until you changed gears on your original plans. Kinda feels like you were still gunning for full-blown one-sided phantomquill at this point, ahaha.

When was the last time anyone had touched him with such kind intentions?

>kind intentions.

Yes, I am sure the intentions are wholly kind, I’m sure there is nothing awful or twisted or empty about them. God damn it, Meowzy. :P

Chasing Phantoms, Chapter 8

”Don’t worry, detective. I’ll put you out of your misery now.”

“Ok you helped save my life but I’m still gonna kill you lol.”

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Whew… So we have the phantom outlining the full extent of Randy Liberate’s exploits. By this point though, I’d basically already dealt with and come to terms with, well, just how much Bobby had changed. I’d already presumed most of the phantom’s bombshells regarding that, but the extent of it still came as a surprise. I also hadn’t expected the text to make it this explicitly clear, and truly highlight it all, underscoring just how much it positions Bobby at the opposite end of a scale compared to how he was before.

Although, it didn’t really affect me too much, since I’d already done my fierce reactions to changed!Bobby towards the start – even if it was even worse than I’d assumed, I’d already mourned TotallyInnocent!Bobby, to the extent that hearing all this resulted in a kind of deadpan “well this may as well be the case, huh” within me – the most impactful fact was that Innocent!Bobby was gone, back towards the start. To what extent he had vanished, how far gone Bobby was, therefore didn’t change that fact, if that makes sense.

Chasing Phantoms, Chapter 10

Athena’s “phantom menace” comment really cracked me up. It’s little things like that which are not only funny, but they’re authentic, and I love that.

I really like how the narrative of this series handles names and identities, how in the flashback scene they’re called Randy Liberate and Bobby Fulbright – that’s just how it is. Because those ARE effectively their identities at that point.

…Okay this is random but I’ve needed to go through airports recently and digital fingerprinting was part of the process to get through at one point; it’s a relatively new addition though. Though I still took flights that didn’t involve it, but I just thought, man, Randy Liberate would be screwed, what with having no fingerprints. Although maybe Mr Liberate has a valid reason and there’s an alternative security check he could use – I’m sure the phantom would have thought it through and had everything covered for him. What a great guy! Very helpful, very considerate, amirite? And generous for allowing Randy to use his funds, too! Okay I’m done XD

No actually I’m not – one more joke:

”Don’t lose track of your phone, alright? You never know when I might call to check up on you.”

Awww he really cares uwu uwu uwu how sweet!

”Now Randy, remember to behave yourself. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”

THAT was unnecessary, phantom, stuff you. This and the “stress could be the death of you” comment… HMPH.

So this chapter really drills home just how formidable and terrifying the phantom on the loose can really be. A horror movie thriller really could just pick up this whole concept and run with it freely – needing to keep your loved ones in sight at all times, lest they be replaced by an emotionless killer. The constant fears and paranoia and always second-guessing yourself whether such and such loved one is REALLY them or not or someone who would kill you without a second thought. Hmm! I was kinda excited/thrilled at reading of the phantom’s escape, only for it to all come crashing down on me how genuinely scary and awful that is for all of our protagonists and the characters that I actually, you know, care about!

THE SUSPENSE IS REALLY GOOD, WITH TIME PASSING AND NOTHING HAPPENING AND THE QUESTION BEING BEGGED “where is the phantom? What are they up to? What do they plan? They could be lying in wait anywhere. They could be just outside or in another country.” It’s SO GOOD.

At this point, I actually didn’t really… care about the phantom? I felt a kind of disconnect, wherein I had this absolutely hilarious and unfounded in retrospect assumption that the author didn’t really care too much for the phantom as a character, and would rather just focus on Bobby and Simon while the phantom terrorizes them somewhere far off in the background.

Me at the time: don’t get me wrong this fic is pretty fantastic and well-written, it’s just a shame that the phantom’s role is kinda minor I guess

(PFFFFFFF)

Yeah because the phantom will totally never have a prominent or pinnacle role in this series with “phantom” namechecked in the title – suuuure.

Well, to be clearer… The fic was/is still 100% my thing. The narrative was calling him a monster because he kinda is. This is the exact thing I’m usually looking for to read. So why was I feeling weirdly… hurt over that at the time of reading this initially? Well, it just so happens that around that time I’d just reread over the bulk of another phantom fic which in no way excuses the phantom’s crimes, but does portray them rather sympathetically. And it has them faux-getting along with Blackquill except some blurred lines where it becomes genuine getting along. Blackquill uncovers some tragic truths about the phantom’s past and you know, that kind of thing, where Blackquill finds themself caring and they hate that they do but they can’t help it (I’m not talking about Pengy’s fic if that’s what you’re wondering, pff).

So I was still stuck in “sympathetic phantom” mode from that fic where they’d been, well, kinda humanised. Even though I usually love the standard (accurate) “they’re a killer, they’re a monster” take, at that time I was sitting there kinda like “…aww. Right now, I kinda want just a slightly lighter take? Kinda bittersweet, like that fic… I kinda want. MORE.”

I bring this up because it amuses me to no end that I was, on some level feeling complain-y over the phantom a) not getting enough focus and b) not being… humanised enough??? IN THE SAME SERIES WHERE LIFTING SPIRITS LIKE… EXISTS. CAN YOU BELIEVE. I really had No Idea huh, was just completely and utterly clueless. But I never would have thought, never would have guessed in a million years what the endgame was actually going to be. Like, @ past me please have a tiny bit of patience and sit the hell down. You’re reading Chasing Phantoms and feeling lowkey sad because the phantom’s got such a bad rep (that they totally earned btw)? You’re actually assuming the author wants us to only ever see them as a monster? Pff, please. Honey, you’ve got a big storm comin’.

Little did I know that this series ultimately makes the phantom even MORE “friendly” and MORE likable than the other fic that made me crave that...

But yeah ‘cause of that at the time I was kinda like “ok I’m just gonna, tune out the phantom and how they’re an empty monster for a while cause it makes me kinda sad to think about.” LOL. Well Meowzy will leave no stone unturned, rest assured!

It’s the equivalent of having a nice pizza and the pizza’s absolutely great, there’s nothing wrong with it, but you just happen to not be feeling it at that very moment and are kinda craving icecream instead. (But on a normal day, you’re usually 100% down for pizza!)

[Meowzy voice] “not to worry, I brought pizza AND ice cream. The best damn ice cream you’ve ever had. But you have to finish your pizza first!”

[sesquipunzel]

Act 2 (Backtrack through 251-264)

(I am better understanding the appeal of reading Homestuck liveblogs because now I really wanna go read how other people dealt with this lil reveal.)

So...one thing that didn't occur to me in my many previous Thoughts was that the Vagabond might not be here accidentally — I may have been unduly influenced by knowing them by the name "Wayward Vagabond." They might have been searching for the SBURB bunker precisely so they could interact with the kids/the past; they might even have arrived or been summoned here on this specific day so they can do so. Or they might be the Skaia-survivor I hypothesized, who was out of the bunker running errands, and we joined them as they were coming 'home'. Though the impression that the Vagabond was curious and wary and exploratory and Not At Home was pretty strong, so I dunno. (Also, I would think if they were in on the plot, they'd understand more about John/the game/the lingo.)

But the Vagabond DOES recognize that they can communicate with the boy on the screen, DOES know how to operate the console (simple as it appears to be), DOES know how to read and write and type (although not to turn off the Caps Lock). Which perhaps adds weight to the notion that they were alive/educated in the Before Times?

Also, this console is clearly designed to let someone communicate with those on screen — but Skaianet also clearly had the technology to allow even more extensive interaction, à la John's magic chest on the roof of his house. So why is the connection only via the command line, why not a full suite of SBURB-style fixit tools? It could be an inherent limitation related to: a) the time disjunct, if "years in the future" is true; or b) a place disjunct cos we have no idea where either John or the Vagabond are; or c) an internet disjunct cos we have no friggin clue how their computers are communicating with each other at all (especially since John's house shouldn't even have power). Obvi, the command-line could simply be the default function, and the console is capable of other things that we and the Vagabond don't know about yet, but we shall see.

Because the arrival of the "BOY" Voice coincided with the division of the Kernelsprite and creation of the the Harmesperm, I made an assumption that the Voice was the Sperm's voice (and I imagine I ain't the first). I do speculate that the coinciding wasn't completely coincidental, though.

The first image the Vagabond sees is just after John took the bite of the apple and got his house ozzed to wherever he is now. So I wonder if that's where this mysterious connection between their computers starts — maybe the Vagabond couldn't have watched any of the pre-Meteor stuff in John's house, or interacted with him before then? 

As to HOW the connection started, or whether the ability for them to interact has anything to do with the KERNEL or the SPRITE? On that I have no guesses yet.

One curious thing is why the Vagabond's commands are reaching John as a "voice in his head." John is reporting this to Rose as new and troubling, so he didn't experience the previous reader commands in the same way, even if his "free will" occasionally argued with those commands. I've been told Hussie doesn't use dialogue in his comics, that all information is conveyed through Pesterlogs, command lines, narration, etc. So why did he choose to have the Vagabond's words manifest differently than the other reader commands, and differently from any other form of communication we’ve seen?  I think the most important part is probably John saying “i feel compelled to do these weird things i don't really want to do,” that commands coming from that particular console/place are ones he can’t disobey? 

If those commands had been communicated in a different way (like appearing on John’s devices) it wouldn’t have allowed for confusing the Vagabond's Voice with the SPRITE's, I suppose, and would invite more questioning from John as to who was 'on the other end' of the computer, but still interesting distinctions. 

So — going to re-read from that first "BOY" on page 251, and capture any deeper/revised thoughts along the way.  

Firstly, "the two halves go their separate ways, leaving behind the SPRITE portion" — I see that I misread that the KERNEL was the dual clown-silhouette things and the SPRITE was the mandala-thing left hovering in midair. But I see now the KERNEL was the circular "container" for the clown, i.e, the portion that existed before it was prototyped, and the SPRITE was the now-spermy clown-bit left after the seed-potential-power parts split off to go fulfill whatever that potential is.  (dum dum DOOM!)

On to the weird interactions within the Flash…

Calling John "BOY" reinforced the impression that the Voice didn't know who he was, or much of anything else yet, which made sense if it was a newborn SPRITE. But now it means the Vagabond also doesn't know who John is — just a boy on a screen. So why are they so imperious in the way they talk to John, so sure that John needs to listen and obey?  (How much does Vagga know about why this boy is on this screen at this moment? What do they know about what happened before, or what could/should happen next, for Earth's survivors? And are they friendly or foely to our heroes? Or to Skaianet?)

And who exactly is talking back (in the Green Boxes in the Flash version, or in plain text between black+orange Command Boxes in the non-Flash), calling the Voice a "nincompoop" and "sophomoric?" It seems to be our narrator, the one who used second person to start the story with "Your name is JOHN. As was previously mentioned it is your BIRTHDAY", addressing the character of John for the most part, but also the reader/player in some ways. But to have that narrative voice talking directly to another character is quite strange. (Although much of the response to the rest of the Voice's "EXAMINE"-type commands is back to our familiar narration style.)

"TIER PROTO TYPE THE SPRITE, OR THE THING YOU SAID. DO IT." Again, Vagga seems pretty sure about this being important to do, when they don’t even know the right words to describe it, or know that John can't do it himself.

Weird inconsistencies like not having enough Earth-context to call it a "towel", but enough to call it a "small Persian rug"?  Familiar with "sewing machine" and how big it should be, but not with "totem lathe."

It's not the SPRITE that loathes clowns and harlequins, but the Vagabond.

(Housetrapped is still funny.)

"On the other hand, you would probably benefit from [NANNA's] elderly wisdom now…"

“UGH, NO.”

“So coy. So mysterious."

Twas an odd enough interchange when poking around the Flash the first time, thinking it was the SPRITE talking. But is there an implication here that Vagga knows (and dislikes) NANNA somehow, or the idea of John talking to her?

"A YOUNG STUPID BOY." On what grounds is Vagga judging John stupid?

Regarding the clowns in dad's study, the Voice says "IT HAS A KNIFE. BE ALARMED BY THIS." and "I SEE TREACHERY IN HIS EYES." — rather paranoid, aren't they? Worrisome in a newborn SPRITE, leaning towards interpreting it as inherently suspicious and violent, if not evil. Not really surprising, though, in a post-apocalyptic/post-traumatic wanderer (although it certainly doesn't rule out violent or evil).

Back to the main stream of the story, at 256:  “NOW JOHN. RESPOND TO YOUR FRIEND UNIT.”  Again, Vagga knows the word ‘friend', but not how to use it in a sentence.  (is it because they've never had a friend?? are they a poor lonely, suspicious, violent cinnamon roll…???)

My curiosity about the Voice knowing the contents of the Pesterlog remain — is Vagga actually reading Homestuck, as it were, viewing John's screen/Pesterlog "over his shoulder" the same way we are? Or does the Skaia-built interface allow for more ‘camera angles’ than we have, or other direct access to the content this screen is meant (but by whom?) to show?

The narration on 257 that says "Oh well, you're the boss." has so many implications, doesn't it? But still notes that the commands are "awkwardly worded."

The Vagabond doesn't understand the difference between what John can do and what Rose can do. 

(I just caught up to the fact that when John was fucking around with the Alchemiter, he could only create Perfectly Generic Objects because the dowel he had was Perfectly un-Lathed, with no distinguishing data points. You know how it is, it was all so new and confusing then… cause yeah, I'm WAY less confused now, right?)

But they get a platform built, and again the Narrator and the Voice tussle over commanding John and considering his feelings — the Narrator now seems protective of John, rather than objective. (That is, it has generally seemed objective before now, except in matters of taste and humor.)

The double "==>==>" commands that the Narrator was getting salty about make a lot more sense, imagining the Vagabond flailing at their keyboard.

John sensibly wants to go back inside, away from the aching and windy void, but Vagga says, "NO DON'T DO THAT. HOP OFF THIS LEDGE ON TO THAT CAR."  This is the first time they've really suggested an action they came up with themselves, rather than responding to John mentioning prototyping, or encouraging him to follow Rose's instructions. (I'm not counting all the EXAMINE THIS and DESTROY THAT that helped us explore the Flash-House — those were still essentially passive responses to John's environment.) So I’m thinking that the mail in the car is really important in some way (I mean, I didn’t think it had been placed there as a time-wasting whim — it was the only real plot point of John’s excursion outside the house), which probably means the SBURB host software John can presumably use to rescue others the way Rose-as-host rescued him. (GG’s green gift might be important too but harder to guess how.) But that brings us back to the question of how the Vagabond knows about the software and its significance if they don’t seem to understand the game itself, or even how they know the software’s location in the car.

"==>==>==>==>==>" — and I thought two was impatient!

[hee, the Vagabond's keyboard does have the CAPS LOCK key lit!]

Right-Eo… long post, but more because I had a lot more musings to capture than because there was significant re-interpretation to do over whose Voice it was. Still worth the trip in my book. My blog, I mean.

The Kernelsprite has only actually attempted to communicate twice, right? Once with strange square textury symbols, and then after Harmequin-typing, with assorted Mardi-Grahdy fleurs-de-lis? (Floor Da Lease? Flurry d'Elise? Lorida Fleas? Flour Day Lilies? Stopping now.)

Gonna bet someone in HS fandom tried some pre-empty-ve code-breaking on the comparison between the two, but Ima keep on keepin on, trust that we'll discover what the Sprite is tryin' to say sooner or later in the story.)

Left-Eo then, backtrack completed and Yawnward Ho!

[imjustthemechanic]

Our Own Demons

Part 1/? - A Bolt from the Blue Part 2/? - A Different World Part 3/? - Stark At Home Part 4/? - Pot Roast Night Part 5/? - Space-Pie Continuum Part 6/? - Energy Signature Part 7/? - Miss Potts Part 8/? - Bot from Beyond Part 9/? - Even the Odds Part 10/? - Miss Potts Arrives Part 11/? - Truth Hurts Part 12/? - The Third Reality Part 13/? - Thor and Odinson Part 14/? - The Tesseract Platform

What if Tony Stark really were the villain of the Marvel universe?  How would that work?  Tony himself is about to find out, as he battles his inner demons (and some outer ones, too) across a multiverse of infinite possibilities.

The Thor Tony knew had an annoying habit of summoning Bifrosts willy-nilly, with no regard for things like whether the lawn had just been mowed – so he was pleased to see this Thor do it from the top level of a parking garage, where the only thing the touchdown would scorch was the asphalt.  With the Odinson thus on his way, the rest of them boarded a chartered jet to Washington, where Hill said SHIELD had something that could help them. Tony just hoped that wouldn’t be when this reality’s HYDRA infestation decided to make itself known because that would just be ridiculously inconvenient.

Dr. Ross stayed in New York, apparently having some kind of prior commitment there, but Miss Potts came with them, and so did Jane Foster. She sat across from Tony and his double, chattering happily with the hammer resting on the seat beside her.

“The prevailing theory,” she said, “is that a new reality is created every time a decision is made.  Not a human decision, of course, we’re not that important on a quantum level.  But every time a particle has to choose a spin state, for example, one universe branches off where it goes left and one where it goes right.  The vast majority are nearly identical to their neighbours, because they’re separated by only one particle.”

“I think we’re a few particles apart,” said Tony.

“He comes from a world where Stark Industries is still a thing,” his double said.

“That’s gotta take several particles at least,” Tony agreed.  “There’s other differences, too.  Dr. Ross’ old boyfriend is still alive, and she doesn’t do the Hulk thing.”  He paused. “And Thor and Odinson are the same person.  How did that happen, by the way?”  Tony nodded at Mjolnir.

Foster glanced at it.  “I… I don’t know.  I just picked it up,” she said.  “When the hammer fell in New Mexico, Odinson went into the SHIELD compound to get it, and I went with him because they’d impounded my research and I wanted it back. He tried to lift it and couldn’t, and I really don’t know what made me think it would be a good idea to try, but I did, and I just picked it up.”  She lifted it in one hand.  “It feels feather-light to me, but it actually weighs nineteen point one-eight kilograms.  I weighed it.”

“I see.”  Tony smiled.  He wondered how Thor back home would have taken it.  Probably very well, really – he adored Dr. Foster.  “Any theories how that works?”

“None,” she sighed, setting it down again.  “I mean, I understand that on some level the hammer itself is intelligent and able to judge who is worthy, but I don’t know how you qualify worthiness.  Odinson says it’s because I’m completely unselfish – all I want is to gain knowledge and share it with others.  But does that affect my brain waves or something?  What does that psychological quality confer on me as a physical quantity that Mjolnir can read?  What’s so funny?” she asked, as she noticed Tony doing his best not to giggle.

“Sorry,” he said.  “I just… for all you’re totally different, you’re also exactly the same as the Jane Foster in my reality.  It’s great.”  Tony looked at his counterpart, but found the other man staring out the window, drumming his fingers impatiently on the arm of his seat.

“Well, maybe we are just a few particles different, then,” Foster said.

A bit later, she got up to use the washroom and left Mjolnir lying in the aisle seat.  Tony reached over and grabbed the leather strap on the handle, but when he gave it an experimental tug, it wouldn’t move.  It was as if it were part of the structure of the plane.

“The airplane seems to lift it okay,” Tony observed, settling back in his seat.  “You think the plane’s worthy?”

His double did not answer.

“I’m leaving,” Tony reminded him.  “Soon I’ll be gone and will never darken the door of your reality again.”  Was the other still annoyed about what he’d said that morning, or the simple fact that Tony had slept in closer proximity to Miss Potts than he had?

“Beth texted me,” said the other.  “She wanted to know if I was okay, and then she asked if you were going to be okay and how long you’d be in town for.”

“She and I had a couple of dates in my universe,” said Tony.  “Didn’t work out for us, but maybe you’ll have better…”

“Just stop,” the other told him.  “You’ve done enough!  If you say one more word I’m gonna get up and slug you.”

When it came to social interactions, Tony could be just a bit denser than a self-proclaimed genius really ought to, but that got through.  He shut up.

They landed at Dulles, and from there drove to a warehouse in Alexandria, where SHIELD kept what Hill described as ‘odds and ends’. She let them in with a keypad, and consulted a directory before escorting them into an elevator to go down.

“What are we looking for?” Tony asked.

Hill hesitated.  “So Loki came to Earth in your reality, too?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Tony.  “So he must have had a gateway to enter.  I got that when I had JARVIS take a look at SHIELD’s computers – they’d built this platform to try opening a wormhole, but could never get it to work until Loki can through, because there was nobody at the other end.”

His counterpart brightened.  “But we’ve got a platform here, and they’ll have one in his reality, so as long as we can find a third one we can transfer him home!”

“Every so often I remember why Ginny keeps you,” said Hill with a nod.  “Do you know what they did with it?” she asked Tony.

“No, but SHIELD never gets rid of anything,” Tony said.

“Even when we should,” Hill sighed.  “Once we got rid of Loki we cleaned it up, put it in storage, and never touched it again.  It’s still here, just waiting for something useful to do with it.”

“Then I hope the one in my world is, too,” said Tony. He wondered if that were what had given his double in the unknown third universe the idea for all of this… had he been allowed to do more playing with SHIELD’s toys, and stumbled across the secret to interdimensional travel?  And having done that… what had he decided to do with it?

What would Tony do if he discovered an alternate reality on his own?  Besides the scientific equivalent of poking it with a stick to see if it twitched, he couldn’t imagine.  He certainly couldn’t think of anything he would go looking for there – he might go investigate his alternate self, just to see what the guy was u p to, but why would he kick that other Tony out of his reality?  Had that really been an accident?

The only idea he could come back to was that the third guy’s universe had somehow gone all wrong and he’d hoped to make a new start somewhere else.  Even then, it didn’t seem like a Ton thing to do.  When Tony found himself having to rebuild his life after Afghanistan, he’d done so on a foundation of fixing his mistakes.  Surely any hypothetical other would feel he owed it to his own reality to do the same, rather than just jumping ship.  Unless there were so little left that it didn’t matter… but what could possibly cause something like that?

He knew he wouldn’t like finding out.

They found the wormhole platform in a back corner of the warehouse with boxes piled on top of it.  It didn’t look particularly secure to Tony, but Hill went and checked a panel in the wall, then nodded and turned to talk to the group.

“This is normally guarded by an infra-red laser grid,” she explained, and pointed at a bank of windows overhead.  “It’ll fire stun wires at you and then summon a dozen or so agents from the guard houses upstairs and on both sides.  Are you absolutely confident they’ll know who you are?”

“Yes,” said Tony.  “And based on what was happening in my reality when I left, I don’t even know if they’ll still be at their posts.”

His double pulled one of the boxes off the pile and peeked into it – it was, for whatever reason, full of blue and white 80’s kitchenware – then set it aside on the floor and looked the platform over.  “That’s it?” he asked.

He had a point.  It wasn’t a terribly impressive-looking thing.  The device was quite literally a platform, with steps up to it and conduits around the edge. The only high-tech bit was the set of connectors designed to draw on the tesseract.  Rather than a physical Faraday cage like the mesh in the suits, the activated platform would surround itself in an electromagnetic field that behaved the same way, distributing the energy to create a contained wormhole. It didn’t help that the equipment was scorched and slightly melted from the sheer quantity of power that had been forced through it by Loki.  The demigod’s shadow was literally burned into the platform, and Tony wasn’t sure he liked the idea of standing in those footsteps.

“We’ll have to apply the tesseract in two bursts with different resonant frequencies,” Foster said.  “That’ll put you in Reality D, then send you on to A, without disturbing the robot-builders in C.  Theoretically.”

“Theoretically.”  Miss Potts folded her arms over her chest and frowned, clearly not liking the word much. “What happens practically if it doesn’t work?  Does Arno end up in Reality C with his enemies?  Are more of those robots going to come through?”

“I don’t know,” Tony admitted, then had to add, “I already told you, my name’s not Arno.”

“Yeah, but we already have a Tony,” she pointed out.

Foster hefted Mjolnir, and her clothes transformed back into Asgardian armor, lightning briefly crackling over her.  “I’ll get the robot,” she promised, voice echoing.

“What about you?” Miss Potts asked Tony.

“I’ll improvise,” he said.  “I’m good at it.”

She was still unhappy.  “I don’t want you to have come all this way just to get hurt on your own doorstep,” she said.  “After all, somewhere out there is another one of me who’s depending on you.”  She smiled fondly, and Tony returned the expression without even thinking about it.  He’d heard that note in Pepper’s voice before.  That was the way she sometimes talked about him when she didn’t know he was listening.

“She’ll be glad to have me back safe and sound,” Tony assured her.  “And if I’m not, I’m sure she can come to my rescue.”  She’d done it before, after all – Pepper had saved him from Stane, she’d gotten Hammer locked up, she’d kicked Killian’s ass… no wonder Rescue was the name of her superhero alter-ego.  It was perfect for her.

“Good to know she’s on top of things,” said Miss Potts with a nod.

Tony’s instincts told him to kiss her, but he didn’t – she wasn’t his Pepper, and her Tony was standing just a few yards away, moving boxes with a sullen expression on his face.  Tony had to shake his head a little when he saw the guy.  Hopefully someday he’d grow a spine and just kiss her on a rooftop as was meant to be.

They cleared the platform, and then Foster, still in her guise as Thor, stood on top of it and summoned the Bifrost.  It touched down in a roar of psychedelic colours, overlaying Loki’s scorched footprints with its own intricate patterns.  There was the Odinson, holding an object that looked like a smaller version of the crystal tube Thor and Loki had taken the tesseract home in.  This had a small crystal in the middle, pulsing with blue light.

“Oh, good,” said Foster.  “I’ll have to thank him next time I drop in.”

“I’ve already done so myself,” Odinson replied, “but you know he likes to see you.”

Tony and his counterpart took the container and carefully connected it to the wormhole platform, with a bare minimum of speaking to each other.  It was obvious that the other was still jealous, and Tony found himself very troubled by that idea.  He was used to people telling him they were jealous of his lifestyle, of his money, his brains, and his superhero hobby – but they didn’t know any better.  They didn’t know what each of those things had cost him.  The idea that another one of him would feel the same way seemed all wrong.

So as they finished up, Tony brushed off his hands on his pants and told his double, “you’re a lucky guy, you know.”

The other glared at him.  “Now you’re patronizing me.”

“No, I’m not,” Tony said.  “You might not have some of the stuff I do, but you also don’t have to live with some of the things I’ve done.”

“And you don’t know a damned thing about what I’ve done,” the other said.

[ho-ods-blog]

MEANINGLESS DISORDER IS TO BE CHALLENGED NOT FEARED. WE CAN BE OVERWHELMED OR WE CAN BE EMBOLDENED.

If we reduce everything to information do we lose the aesthetics, empathy and much more in life? What do you think?

To understand my current perspective and create the desire within you to pursue your personalized & positively balanced, productive quest for understending is to imagine what what isn’t possible by being easily done yet not in fact impossible - the sentence explaining all conspiracies as well as  what I’ll be explaining through the example of a chip - which isn’t one of the conspiracies at all.

Imagine if we all got chipped, for the sake of mutual understanding imagine it like a tiny memory card inserted, let’s say behind your ear which works because it connects, duplicates then mimmics each neuron and then replaces it by removing the original   with the technological components also within it.

Imagine that the heart keeps our body and mind alive and the chip our brain.

Now imagine that chip contains the whole of information from the main central computer which had collected all of searches and statistics along with the feedback itself in a matter of seconds upon laying your eyes on the person, home etc as well is still providing the same procedures and updating everyone each decided period of time.

Would you want to live in a world which now defines you insane/and/or questionable because you googled dick cheese around your friends for a joke and tried to understand sexual preferences as a kid? Nobody would. But that would be inside the mind of the person who would lay their eyes upon you a.k.a. it would get the information from the chip on another and that person would get your information just the same.

Do we then lose the aesthetics, empathy and much more in life? 

Okay, I am definitely writing this particular chunk of sentences to also signify I no longer give a shit about privacy because the groups of supertechs could come at me at any given moment, disrupt my algorithms to make my content visible to less users and there really isn’t much I can do as an average citizen with some interesting hobbies so therefore a couple of people from my hometown judging me for actively pursuing my interests in a way I choose really doesn’t even come to me as a negative thing anymore because there’s far more going on which I want to focus on and direct my maximum positive potential and impact on.

Now that that is out of the way,

That transhumanistic viewpoint(the chip example) is what I chose because I’ve read too much about it, seen too many films which lead to more research and read too many insights but today that example of the chip is just a prolonged and complicated version where the chip is the computer, the phone, the laptop and the human can find out information just not fast and easily or without extensive technical literacy and trial and error.

That is why this cybernetic connection was implemented with the assistance and constructive creativity of the groups of supertechs for the agendas long as the existance itself. I can write about this in another post extensively.

What matters to me more than my own privacy and social justice within my own experience is a positive change I can contribute by sharing not the information I am learning but the way I work my mind and actions around it because throughout the past year I have come to terms with the exceptional components I was once scared to share.

Today, I am conscious of my voice and more so confident in it’s validity because I see no negatively directed energy consciously or unconsciously motioned my way as anything which could ever be stronger than God, no weapons forged against me prosperous and no truth which I speak less legitimate than somebody’s illusion of theirs despite them percieving it as truth.

I now resonate with the ideals which bring in no obligations for accusations to prove what is already truth as well as no pointed fingers but rather everyday courses of action from healed individuals of own controlled mindsets because keeping a positive vibration is in fact what should matter right when you wake up, while you are brushing your teeth, making lunch, going to school, work etc. what matters is to use the internet, web and social media consciously as well as choosing what you want to think about and what gets to hurt you and keep you stagnant.

This simple piece of text is made with the intent to serve it’s purpose on it’s own.

It isn’t done so that at a certain point in the future when there’s plenty of them as well as other endeavors it’s author gets money, status, recognition, fame, etc, nor is it the goal of any of my visionary creative endeavors.

I had made enough of regretful decisions in my life to innerstand, understand and overstand as well as define the emotion of it without words necessarily that I must use the remaining time of mine on Earth for the greater good.

It is fortunate for us to be alive at a time where doing something as simple as writing a micro-blog post can offer some people a chance to start controlling their thoughts in hopes of maintaining a safe space.

What I had gathered from merely a couple of videos on youtube in which Jaron Lanier ( computer philosophy writer, considered the funding father of virtual reality, visual artist, was in the first company which sold VR goggles, was in Atari, worked on apps for internet 2, visiting scholar at Silicon graphics, works at Microsoft research since 2009 as thhe interdisciplinary scientist etc) is speaking about the contents of his book “you are not a gadget” as well as information since the digital age took place was more than enough for me to try and find the appropriate place to channel it constructively.

I decided to use the notes I make along the way as I watch the videos and read the material as a tool I can shape into something for those who aren’t necessarily willing to sit and watch youtube videos all day long, clean their house and listen to them, drive and audio it or perhaps even read the books ( which I want to highlight still ARE much-MUCH greater sources for everything I will ever be speaking on because through the information I share I am still secluding a paragraph to explain how I choose to deal with the information instead of turning it as a weapon for my own stagnancy and misguided lack of faith.)

It is still the biggest tragedy to me to see this cybernetic connection we share done in the utmost negative way and the knowing it hadn’t even started to take place at it’s maximum potential is truly what could be terrifying to a point of episodic daily nausea if only us and in this case myself were to base our mental states upon people and actions which are outside of our control.

The computer can send information to another bundle of information in a set of bits and it is analyzing them mathematically and, yes - it does not matter to a computer what the information says.

”Meaningless disorder is to be challenged and not fear because we can choose to be overwhelmed or emboldened.”

The strength from within is omnipresent and the fear of failure, lack of constructive impact or whatever the individual might use to shape their own low vibrational perspective for not making an active shift in their own life -are all illusions because the purpose of the negativity is to achieve sustainability of itself as it is. That is why it is important to understand you either sink towards the end of your life or swim towards it because as you can see the finish line is the same yet the pathaways different.

It may be easier to keep the sinking mindset yet it isn’t even remotely as joyful, courageous, rewarding, fruitful, positive, needed and surprisingly positively influential to those around you (as well as much, more I can write about) than the swimming.

In this life you can choose to think finishing highschool and  pursuing a degree, finding and maintaining a job with or without a carreer, finding, accepting, returning as well as nurturing and maintaining love, travelling and friendships are the peak you need and want yet the sinking mindset still bears the low vibrational tendency to show up uninvited and subtle as it hides within outcomes you learned how to disregard positively and label it swimming.

Whatever you choose, the information presented remains existant and true.

Anytime two people connect to the internet is universally financed by a third party who believes they can use behavioralist techniques to manipulate the first two people without them undestanding whats up.

In regards to the talks by Jaron Lanier -

the WE is the global cyber net in which those who built it, are making the most money off it as well as keeping it existant are somehow above the circumstances and the average citizen are still modern day workers to keep it going and developing into whatever the purpose of the behavioralist techniques really is while it is disquised as solely statistics to better consumerism and the user experience.

“We’ve created a society based on universal trickery and deception and therefore developed an already flawed society into a universal community of individuals who do not believe election votes, routinely expect to be bullied one way or another and made to feel terrible. That is the society which does not believe in truth anymore.” we're all connected, from seemingly all perspectives.

A manmade connection would be computers which had done another interconnection and way back in 1938, a man by the name of Burrhus Frederic Skinner decided to present an idea of treating computers as a tool to remove individuality and by experiments alter the human nature by getting them to change by the reward/punishment stimuli a.k.a. positive/negative feedback loop(social experience) and the negative ones are more common actually because of that feedback loop between the dopamine hits. The person contributes their motion, eye movements and facial expressions to the statistics.

The experiment is a human version of keeping a rat in a box and providing it some food when it pulls down the tiny lever inside that box .

The cybernetics are naturally a negativity machine. The likes, comments, the interaction people get on social media is what provides them the small dopamine hits which keep them using it in the ways which highlight education last.

Skinner was about using digital networks to transcent idiosincracy(a mode of behaviour or way of thought peculiar to an individual!) He was the first there to have something to say about peoples “weird and felatious ideas about freedom) the first time it crossed paths with computing was through Norbert Weiner who was the first generation contribute when the ideas for altering started.

He was the first who started changing others’ perceptions on how the computers are being percieved. The idea is to use a computer to make it into much more than it is,as well asmuch more complicate and Weiner coined the term for it from the Greeks which is the now famous “cybernetics”)

(BOOK RECOMMENDATION: WEINER : NETWORKING COMPS)

DEFINITION OF CYBERNETICS BY CAMBRIDGE DICTIONARY:

the scientific study of how information is communicated in machines and electronic devices, comparing this with how information is communicated in the brain and nervous system / Too often a simplistic cybernetic control model underpins performance measurement systems. -cybernetics was trumpeted as a universal science of government that would help to guide the social organization necessary for modernization.

DEFINITION OF CYBERNETICS BY DICTIONARY.COM: the study of human control functions and of mechanical and electronic systems designed to replace them, involving the application of statistical mechanics to communication engineering.

What if you have a computer watching a human being, his moves, looks etc and then what if that computer provided stimulus. Couldn’t this computer gradually become an automated behavioralist who controls the person?

This is a human use of human being and if everybody has these computers with themselves always then these little computers can measure everything about those people, who they talk to, what they search, their locations, and in return give them some sort of reward/feedback - texts, sounds, art etc.  but what we neglected is the radios connecting all of those small computers to a big computer which is modifying a computer like a behavioralist who could pull statistics and change society without you knowing it is happening to you, too.  

This all goes into depth just like anything and the particular planted seed had developed itself stranded into one probability for salvation in a clusterfuck of mass destruction of probabilities because despite the good and the bad within for example Artificial Intelligence, those of us who consider it’s positive aspects are on the same page as we speak of it the like we speak of  humans who, naturally, aren’t all good with good intentions and the technological advancements are not yet well balanced with anything else in our world which is behind it.

Instead of rescuing people, natural resources, animals, finances, jobs, security etc. we had massively shifted to a world of subtle, reliable shades of different types of horror in which ignorance serves as a peace of mind, heard, body and soul which still is mostly low vibrational and contributing to the madness in any way the technology pleases.

The culture of digital technology and it’s strong movements back in the 80′s and 90′s served to commerce the idea of making everything free and open. The culture, the software, the music, the encyclopedia, the anything.

The idea was to use a certain special group of people considered the supertechs to change the coutse of history with the advertising model as the meeting point.

The surface experience for people is about business of advertisements where the biggest are the wealthiest and at this point Mr.Lanier had already confirmed that he is actively supporting Google and had sold his company once to them.

What interests me about Mr.Lanier is why he thinks that nobody truly hears what he is saying because most people do and the only reason nobody is doing anything to actively pursue the most productive courses of action towards the biggest change is the fact we think we will be met with death or disappointment because one broken down middle class individual is nothing to a group of elite supertech at the Silicon valley type of hubs around the globe.

Mr. Lanier says the right way to proceed is to change yet he bears such friction when he is saying that what we would be doing is unimaginable yet achievable if the act of trying actually takes place. So, is he saying that the dominant power considers the change unimaginable because they had created this agenda which does not deem it fitting but speaks on what could be done if we were to actually do something which nobody within that elite community actually wants if the advertisement model is still not in their infrastructural ownership?

The experience of our lives is much more deep and valuable than certain wordings deem it out to be.

“Social experience” sounds like two words you read and go on yet what we rarely consider is what it all means.

It is your entire living experience and it matters because we’ve created such an easy way to unconsciously shift our energy to motion due to feelings and where we direct it and using words as energy signatures which help and to further explain just understand that we even think with words and the manifestation is a path of directed energy. (Emotion, E=energy, energy in motion)

The bizarre solutions of the supertechs as I had already stated were to make everything open and sharable without much knowledge of behind the scenes.

The differences between advertising , adjusting and finetuning(a.k.a manipulation a.k.a behavior modification without the consumers knoweledge) because:

advertisers=manipulators,

companies=behavior manipulation modifiers,

engagement =addiction

The changes this creates are small, broad and statistical which is how you achieve a goal without mass disturbances.

The companies sales pitch example is: We’re targeting this group of two million consumers. We can get 3% of this part of our consumer whole to change by 5%.”

You could say: Who cares? We get free shit for these tiny shades of difference.” but what I must state once more is the importance of what Jaron is saying is that the reliable shades of difference carefully applied consistantly have a compounding effect/like compound interest over time and the results are a significant change which CAN make shit really ugly like overturn elections, disrupt the society.

One important thing to mention is that Mr. Lanier defines the process of placing the whole world through a central computer would be mass insanity yet he states that it is not feasible which he used to say it isn’t impossible yet not as easy.

All of those fast samplings capture what drives you fastest - the responses. The negativity which makes the most money is between the dopamine hits. These include startle responses, becoming scared, arising fast and decaying slowly.

BEHAVIORALISM BY WIKIPEDIA: Behaviouralism seeks to examine the behaviour, actions, and acts of individuals – rather than the characteristics of institutions such as legislatures, executives, and judiciaries – and groups in different social settings and explain this behavior as it relates to the political system. BEHAVIORALISM BY GOOGLE: the methods and principles of the scientific study of animal (and human) behaviour.

BEHAVIORISM BY GOOGLE: the theory that human and animal behaviour can be explained in terms of conditioning, without appeal to thoughts or feelings, and that psychological disorders are best treated by altering behaviour patterns.

DEFINITION OF CYBERNETICS BY CAMBRIDGE DICTIONARY: the scientific study of how information is communicated in machines and electronic devices, comparing this with how information is communicated in the brain and nervous system / Too often a simplistic cybernetic control model underpins performance measurement systems. -cybernetics was trumpeted as a universal science of government that would help to guide the social organization necessary for modernization. DEFINITION OF CYBERNETICS BY DICTIONARY.COM: the study of human control functions and of mechanical and electronic systems designed to replace them, involving the application of statistical mechanics to communication engineering.

So we have to find a way to be sane throughout the paranoia one could encounter. To be optimistic despite the realism pushing itself with logic by default.

We have to face up to climate change.

We have to define our fear of A.I and transhumanism,

We have to stop genetically modifying food and people,

We have to start filtering our tap water,

We have to stop painting another false image over mass murders, dissapearences and the already painted picture of peace,

We have to find a way to stop deforestation, habitat loss, poaching,

We have to implement a steady course of action to limit the amount of technical illiteracy,

We have to find a way to create money which isn’t from trees, fix minimal pay where it exists only on paper, remove the governments maximum involvement and keep it a normal percentage,

We have to be aware of the extinction of animals which are actively happening each year,

We have to find a way of dealing with trash outside of the ocean because it is killing the beings meant to live in it not be murdered in it,

We have to find a way to deal with our natural resources again which are sunlight, atmosphere, water, land along with vegetation, animal life that naturally subsits upon or within the identified substances, coal, oil, natural gas, phosphorous, other minerals, iron, soil, timber which are all exposed to destruction.

We have to start purging out egotistical issues from our hearts and choose education and a multiversal mindset through local actions and sharing this post would actually be a gigantic first step.

We have to find a way to remain sane despite the world.

Never stop believing in our own purpose because of low vibrational people who mask out the words of yours in a humoristic set back which always work around the same groups of people who value popularity amongst their friends and social media than actually working on becoming a better person with an active role in shifting the world as a small, reliable shade of difference simply because they found a way of pushing out their own content without making a fuss about their own awareness.

What is the measure to which we measure empathy these days, asked the deceased Alan Turing, who will be the next topic on ho-ods.

Would we be in a position to proclaim equal rights to a machine if the machine could pretend to be a person undistinguishable from me and you.Do you agree with what the C.E.O of Google is actively sharing when you realize that it comes about the internet coming alive as a big living thing in which we are neurons/thoughts and the personalizations we make don’t allow personell forgetting.

Ask yourself why shouldn’t you trust the promise of artificial intelligence?

Who is the civilization for?

How to be a humanist and pro technology at the same time?

What is a person in todays age?

Are we really cyber liberaterians because we haven’t gotten passed anything new due to the fact we have chosen to give everything of ours for free as we are portrayed as liberaterians?

Who owns the future?

What about misdirect angry people who grew up in a less functional world than it ought to be given due to our technological capabilities?

The next essay will be posted sometime on march 16th. Be sure to check out You Are Not a Gadget by Jaron Lanier either on youtube or pdf.

[blacklister214]

Second Son New Chapter: White Hat

I may have bit of a break from this story, but I’m now pumped to return to it! Here’s my newest chapter:

Jacob had to admit, he was feeling pretty pleased with himself. He'd successfully nudged Elizabeth Scott toward her quarry, easing the burden of her guilt and potentially helping to remove a serial killer from the streets. Though he'd played many roles in service to Reddington, it wasn't often he got to wear the white hat. Not really his style, but he'd try anything once.

He'd already decided his personal reward for his do-gooding would be been spending the next half-hour in the company of Elizabeth Scott, sharing noodles and banter. Seeing her smile at him. Jacob doubted Reddington would have approved, but what harm would it possibly do? It wasn't like he'd ever see her again after tonight.

Jacob's phone buzzed at him and for a moment he wondered if Reddington had somehow sensed Jacob testing the boundaries of his orders. He relaxed when the ID revealed his caller to be Hartwell. Jacob tapped the screen and put the phone to his ear.

"Yes?"

"The boyfriend was rundown by a car. EMTs are on their way. Do you want me to follow him to the hospital?" Jacob mood plummeted faster than a bungee jumper. With his free hand, he reached for his wallet, and extracted a hundred dollar bill.

"Yes. I'll call you back in two minutes." He disconnected the call before she had a chance to respond. Jacob glanced in the direction of the restroom. Liz had yet to reemerge. Time to make a swift exit. He signaled the waitress and the woman immediately rushed over, a large smile stretching across her face.

"I can get you anything else?" Another time he might be tempted to flirt with the girl, but at the moment he was barely managing polite.

"I have a business emergency and need to leave immediately." He passed the waitress the c-note. "This should cover my bill as well as the lady's. Any change is yours." The woman's eyes widened slightly at his generous tip, but she accepted the money without protest.

"Are you absolutely sure there's nothing else I can do for you?" Jacob glanced once more towards the back of the restaurant. Rushing out on Elizabeth without a word was not how he'd wanted to end this evening, especially knowing the news she was about to receive. As if her day hadn't already been traumatic enough with a serial killer's victim dying in her arms. Maybe he should stay. It wouldn't be long until someone called Liz about the accident.

He could offer to drive her to the hospital. He could stay with her while she waited for news about her boyfriend. Hadn't he argued just the other day that Elizabeth needed a protection detail in her immediate social circle? Why not use this an an opportunity to establish himself in her world as a friend? What objection could Reddington have? He was loyal. He was trustworthy. He would never betray Reddington. He would never betray Liz.

Jacob blinked. Where had the hell had that last thought come from? He had no allegiance to Scott. None. He owed her nothing. She was a federal employee who would see him in prison if she knew who he really was. Reddington was his boss and his adopted father. He owed everything to the man and Raymond had made his wishes abundantly clear when it came to Elizabeth Scott: Protection at a distance.

If Jacob was honest with himself, he knew his stated reasons for his behavior were simply rationalizations. The simple truth was that he'd wanted to see Elizabeth tonight. He'd wanted to see her again ever since he'd left her on that farm all those years ago. And that was exactly why he needed to leave. He would not violate Reddington's trust more than he already had.

"Sir?" The waitress' voice recalled Jacob to the moment.

"Yes. Please tell the woman I was with that it was a pleasure to see her again and to give my regards to her father."

After Jacob left the restaurant he returned to his car, which was parked near enough to Liz's so that when she emerged, he could easily follow her. He punched in Hartwell's number, his eyes never leaving the entrance to Wing Yees. She picked up on the third ring.

"What the hell happened?!" Jacob was aware taking an accusatory tone with a professional operative was not the wisest course of action. The trouble was that he couldn't find it within himself to give a damn.

"As I said, the boyfriend was rundown by a car." There was a long pause on the other end of the line. Was this going to be the punishment for his attitude? Was she planning to make him drag the whole story out of her?

"Deliberately or was it a hit and run?" There, he'd removed the edge from his voice. Hopefully that would appease the woman into being more forthcoming.

"Hard to say for sure. He came around the corner at full speed. There was no one else in the crosswalk and I didn't see any evidence of him trying to swerve, but that doesn't prove anything. I have the plate number, if you want to forward it to your friend at the DMV. I also have a picture of the good doctor's date, if you're still interested." It took Jacob a second to remember what she was talking about. The italian bistro. The lie to Liz.

"Send me both." A minute later his phone's screen was filled with an image of an attractive blond. Jacob felt a wave of contempt toward Nik Korpal. He recognized the woman from the Nik's dossier. High school girlfriend. Amicable, but infrequent current contact. Jacob supposed he'd need to update the file, given the night's revelations. On the positive side, that was one less thing he'd need to run through Glen.

"What would you like me to do?" What he'd like Hartwell to do was ensure Nik Korpal never left that hospital alive. Reddington had a saying, "Value loyalty above all else," that Jacob agreed with wholeheartedly. Unfortunately punishing Elizabeth's philandering boyfriend wasn't in his purview. Besides, in some ways it would be better that he lived, and had to explain to the volatile Ms. Scott what exactly he'd been doing in front of a sit down restaurant, rather than at the hospital, where he'd claimed he'd be. Better a dismissed cheating lover than a beloved and belated boyfriend. At least Jacob would assume so, never having been in any kind of long term romantic relationship himself.

"Stay with Korpal. Stay alert to any potential threats and intervene if necessary."

"I've been contracted to protect Scott, not her boyfriend." The woman really did not want to test his patience with her nitpicking. He was Reddington representative and her job was to do what he asked. Period.

"That's fortunate, because if you had been, you would now be answering to Reddington." Jacob paused a moment to center himself. "Look, just watch over him for now. I'm sure they'll contact Scott within the hour. We can switch off then."

"Fine. But after tonight I'd like a clarification of my duties. If I have twice of number of people to protect, I'll expect twice the fee." He reluctantly consented before hanging up.

Jacob stared at his phone a moment, wishing his next call wasn't necessary. He'd come in to tidy up a problem, and the issue was not only still unresolved, it had compounded on his watch. The next time he communicated with Reddington he had wanted to report success, not abject failure. Still there was nothing to be done.

His directive was to protect Elizabeth Scott and though he had no direct proof linking Nik Korpal's accident to the break-in at Elizabeth's apartment, that didn't mean they weren't connected.

If Jacob believed the events were linked, then he also had to believe the accident was no accident and that someone, by all indications a professional operative, was trying to kill Nik Korpal.

It was possible neither occurrence had anything to do with Reddington. The man had attacked Korpal, not Scott after all. Still, nothing in the doctor's dossier had pointed to him having the kind of enemies that engaged the services of professional killers. The blonde Nik took to dinner could have a rich and jealous lover, but if that was the case, why would the agent snoop on Liz's computer?

Either way until the mess was sorted, Jacob had to assume that if Nik Korpal survived his initial injuries, his assailant would try again. The only way to guarantee the man's protection was to get some extremely competent round the clock surveillance. Gina needed to stay with Liz, and for obvious reasons he couldn't post himself outside the boyfriend's door.

An idea suddenly struck Jacob, a way to handle his dilemma without immediately reporting to Reddington. He would naturally have to check-in with his adopted father, and soon, but the extra time might allow him to make some sense of the situation first. The number was halfway dialed before Jacob finished his final thought.

"Hello my brother. I need a favor."

[lizardfina-blog]

V Bad Story End 3

Days 1-5: https://lizardfina.tumblr.com/post/175732161387/badendcommon

Day 5 last chatroom

23:48 Finishing up on a Stormy… I happen to be going through one in my heart so v was not uninterested in Rika you’re caring for me, aren’t you? Thank you same here… I think this situation is really complicated I can’t give you details since the hacker might see this. It bothers me the hacker hates v friend shield on! for example? aw, come on … but if she’s alive, why won’t she come back? so jumin, you also with rika were alive do you think that was who she truly was? didn’t you say rika was adopted? I’d like to see him in brown hair I think you’re not getting enough sleep jumin a model? …jumin that’s enough please I feel sorry for jaehee, but I’d like to invite him I like jumin’s personality. Especially regarding care for his friend I’m sure we have to wait and see if that’ll make everyone happy I’m a bit ignored right now, so I’ll be fine Day 6 – 100% 01:17 707 Cyber News hello yes you’re getting your meals on time, aren’t you? I know you’ll win seven you need a right too wow no kidding! You made them for fun but they’re impressive daffodils should I start greeting you with binary numbers? why don’t we ask her about the coordinates password? the sun don’t you think it’s be related to rika? mint color? v has mint colored eyes hmm… that sounds worth a try so how long does it take what will happen if you get the coordinates faster than expected? I’ll see you again who is it? ok… could you ask him to send an e-mail? you two are in a carefully contracted relationship….. it will! Cheer up, jaehee 02:43 V’s Concern I can’t sleep. I feel uneasy I think he’s trying to decrypt as fast as he can do the mint colored eyes mean something? what is it? Can’t you tell me? so there’s something in this place luciel must not find out hmm? I’m a little bored since they’re ignoring me you turned a little brighter thanks to me, didn’t you? do you think I’m attractive, v? yes, I should 07:55 Changes Jumin Sees it’s an energetic and strong morning so simply put, your cat stretched? v is still looking for rika’s traces. It breaks my heart when do you go to bed, jaehee? she’s right. You should go to work and don’t forget v! you can also protect him in a good way? I think v is slowly approaching me because my heart is wide open I hope v will take courage and break his wall himself what? Why? jaehee, please make sure v doesn’t see those pictures aren’t you going to work…? you should copy yourself and let the clone do the job let’s take care of them one by one why don’t you have a cup of coffee? long is the way of the head of the intelligence unit 10:24 Don’t Want to be Hated ray are you still attacking the RFA? why do you keep doing this? it looks like nothing but a malicious delivery right now I am a hostage they’ll come to save me if I lose contact by force I’ll trust v don’t touch the RFA anymore. And please let me go please don’t torment seven too much are you going to send something worse than images? I like someone else are you going to make me take that drug? I don’t believe you who is this savior? what does she have to do with v? when will you let me out of here? 12:33 Need Some Fresh Air about time to gave at the sun, worrying about v your body rhythms turn irregular, which could cause….. is something wrong? I wanna get some air on your car, seven you should. Be brave yoosung, why would you go there? …good for you, jaehee stop suspecting v, yoosung what about zen? whoa….nostalgia he should keep it well until he donates to a museum I wish I could help zen somehow I’d like to protect zen’s vintage and original aspects we are going to have the party! RFA party will be held as planned walkingman was made in the same era as zen’s computer zen must be so patient I think this is a good time for a donation what kind of nagging does he give? I wish LOLOL would work on phones please be careful of kidnappers 14:42 Passion Red jaehee, is the intelligence unit all set? but I think v will be distressed when he sees those pictures hmm…he seems to be up to something what is his car like? I wonder what kind of car v owns I’d like to go on a drive with v here comes devastatingly handsome man zen do you know how to drive? I thought of v it’s the graceful stability that dances between speeding and slowing I wanna try seven’s car—it’s packed with speed no no you should first get a new computer I think you should throw it into a junk shop what can you possibly do with that computer? oh no… not the blue screen! sniffle… I should’ve given you my old laptop do you have a walkingman? zen you didn’t get one, did you? I wonder what v’s home is like I’m sure he does more than jumin rough is the life of an agent don’t be stressed out! Have fun do you think v is good with computers? have a safe trip! Please watch seven so he doesn’t break into v’s house Ray VN: who is it? …what brings you here? I don’t want to see her ray? ***there’s a walking section, and I don’t remember if you actually have to give responses, but it all says “…” until you meet the savior**** a mask…? you won’t stop me from using the messenger, will you? … who are you? 16:19 Yoosung’s Heaven yoosung did you have dinner yet? not yet! cup noodle is bad for your health you’ve found peace jumin have you ever had a cup noodle? is it because jaehee isn’t with you now? you talked about work even in chat rooms? jaehee… I wonder when she can return home yoosung, you suspicion is just endless. Can’t you trust v? I don’t think there’s anything I’ve done here yes… v will come to save me I hope you’d take action instead of blaming v good idea! That’s something only you can do good luck! I think this all sounds very strange to you, jumin a vending machine robot for cup noodle? let’s invite him! And place computers at the party good luck! how’s the intelligence unit going? what’s the menu? 18:23 Heading Towards 2020 zen how was your exercise? yes there’s nothing like a shower after exercise if I see your silhouette in the mirror in the middle of our exercise session… we’ll get to hear lots of helpful tips on a diet! yeah yeah! she said that in the previous chat room so you get to go outside more often than stay at your desk? no! you’re going to take that computer away from zen looks awesome… the latest model runs hindows 7? don’t you think we should get him the latest model? you’re not giving him a laptop you’ve been using, are you? …..Its lifespan is almost over sniff sniff… I smell trouble may god7 watch over you nothing is for free in this world by the way seven, how did your trip to v’s house go? he said he needs your computer to work on something back up! Back them up! oh, two in a row? Who is it now? same here! I hate relationships with secrets though I’d like to know the acquaintance of your acquaintance… let’s invite him so long… 386 20:00 Doubtful Family I moved to somewhere else, but I’m fine I wouldn’t mind was there something in v’s mailbox? did you call your aunt? why would the sender send such things to v? do you think he missed rika? did you talk to your aunt? why would she tell you to take rika’s stuff? and why would your aunt say that? it's so sad, but looks like something is definitely wrong do you think what we know about rika is what she really is? but I think it’s strange rika never talked about her parents but they’re still her parents. Maybe it’s true this isn’t your fault perhaps that’s why she made such a dire choice you shouldn’t look for someone to blame. Start offering condolence to rika from now on, let’s trust v together if you’re stressed out, take a break. Don’t think about anything else I met someone new so I have to stay alert for a while I hope you take a break! Everything will be ok yes if there’s anyone who needs my help, I’m willing to offer it I think things would’ve been different if rika was willing to show what she felt alright. I was actually thinking about having some time to myself Savior VN: I’ve come to test a game, but now it feel like I’m caught in something big you look like a scary person why do you keep asking me questions? what do you mean? v will come save me I’d like to, but not with you 22:02 His Idea Of Family welcome, jumin that’s the proof jaehee’s doing a good job rika might have hidden their relationship you can’t change your familial environment what’s the matter? Are you anxious? umm, let’s not talk too much in this chat room since when did you live with your cat, jumin? did rika avoid talking about her parents? but marriage happens between two people, not two families what matters in looking at a person’s true essence is to figure out…… perhaps you two got engaged too fast maybe it would’ve been better for v to see them soon? have a good time with Elizabeth the 3rd so seven knows where I am, right? yes, I will. don’t worry VN: how old is this building? does ray have lots of wounds too? do you also alternate between fear and happiness within? what’s your relation to the RFA? you’re not using me as bait, are you? … v this place isn’t safe. Run! I knew it. You are rika v! 23:11 What Happened to V? v! are you alright? **there is only one selection for this chat** Savior VN: this place is weird. Everything seems against the laws what will happen to v now? a little couldn’t you be the light? what are you going to do with v? what is it? Day 7 – 100% 01:20  Shocking Truth V has been kidnapped! What should I do? seven, please explain to him a few hours ago I’m alright but v is in danger. We must save him rika and v are apparently not friends let’s just calm down. We need to discuss how to save v it's no wonder v kept it secret. She’s no longer the rika you used to know yes… rika isn’t a hostage. She tricked and trapped v I’m alright! Please take care of v I think he’s imprisoned yes…perhaps he’s watching us no, she’s not yoosung, just wait. You’ll find out everything after some time you mean what v said? To not listen to rika? maybe v was protecting the RFA. He destroyed all data from 6 months ago this is much more serious than a simple fight I think we need to save the hacker…I think he’s being manipulated let’s not hide anything until we save v I’m fine so please save v. good luck, seven zen, I think yoosung needs you I think everyone’s having a hard time that’s alright. Please take care of the other members 02:32 Jumin Helplessness and…. jumin, you’re logged in at this hour rika now hates v I think she’s doing something illegal it seemed to me that rika finds her current location more precious than the RFA I felt v always did his best to protect RFA. He always meant the things he did v was just trying not to harm anyone what is it? rika did it!? then why won’t he get his eyes treated? you’ll help us save v, won’t you? I don’t think I can sleep. I’m so worried about v 06:55 C&R Intelligence Unit I’m fine…though I can’t say v is safe v could be in greater danger than he was back there I hope their friendship won’t break apart they are working together…I can guarantee both of them suffered deep wounds in their hearts I don’t think comparison matters now ^^; I hope so too ok…see you soon 08:46 Staying Calm I’m well. What are you doing zen? I’m fine, though I just can’t sit still because I’m worried about v welcome, yoosung maybe zen did some cleaning before he left whoa, morning packed with vitamins and fibre I think I’ve seen a walkie-talkie… she’s not well in heart we should be worrying about v! he’s in danger right now I think as of now rika wouldn’t hesitate that was before I actually met her zen, how’s your practice going? please, just be safe ……… that’s because of the router yes, let’s do that you can recommend guests too, yoosung good luck with that but it’s good at least zen is on the bright side ummm…i’m not sure rika would want to hear that, but ok cheer up! Savior VN: is he safe right now? why did you leave v? are you afraid of stepping outside the darkness? did you show your tears to v? rika… 11:51 Provoke you didn’t know? when will we go save v? what is it? a cult? Yes, it feels like a cult here if this place is involved in illegal activities, shouldn’t we rescue the victims? do we really have to fight each other? I want to get out of here before things get worse does something change when I log in? what is it? you mean…v’s in danger? can’t we find a peaceful solution to this? let’s do as he says jumin yes, please hurry I’ll be waiting I hope everything works out well…though I can’t help worrying okay! I’ll be right here waiting yes, I’ll be waiting 13:16 One’s Own Reasons I’m so worried about v. it’s hard to keep waiting how are preparations for the party going? okay…though I’m not sure if the party’s happenings, let’s invite him of what? do you think it’s okay to send him alone? I see you’re having a difficult time, yoosung it's dangerous here yoosung, I think you shouldn’t disregard other scenarios I think I know what you feel like looks like yoosung is having a hard time whatever rika would say, what matter is for yoosung to realize what kind of people rika and v…… don’t worry. Right now what we need to do is work together to defeat this crisis 15:38 Miss You, I Feel Lonely ray! It’s been so long since I last saw you I’m worried she’ll hurt v ray… you should stop being obsessed with me yes he’ll be here to rescue me what are you trying to do with the RFA? is v safe? he’s safe right? welcome yoosung did you try calling him? why not leave a message on the chat room ok…though I’m not sure if that’ll happen 17:45  His Heart yes, I’m waiting for you! Did you get a call from yoosung? how much time do you think will take? you’re not driving the one that fits 2 people are you? how’s yoosung doing? are you a playboy? now I’m surprised that you even have a smartphone be careful on the road I really wish he would it does look simple and honest lol I hope you’d always stay bright too a lotus flower? I’ll try talking to him. For a curry party! massage? I wanna give it a try, too got it! ^^ I hope you stay safe as well, zen. Until I see you ^^ 19:24 How to Cope with Risks I think he’s coming from somewhere really far away I think it’d take more time to make a landing spot umm…I think a car and helicopter are on complete different levels give me a tip on what to do when I feel uneasy! jumin, do you have any memory you want to run away from? you’ve been friends with v for so long…so I understand welcome yoosung yoosung are you in the middle of an escape? zen mind if I replace yoosung? have a good time, yoosung but zen was trying to look out for you ^^; hahahahahahaha wow…let’s try inviting if we’re actually having one you’re actually counting seconds? Savior VN: I’m thinking about v I’m worried about v 21:39  Coming This Way! what’s racing? so ray, are you going to see seven? treatment? Are you ill? what is rika going to do to v? mine? i…will make a choice on my own bye… 23:11 Before Charging In! how far did seven go? I’m sure that was ray…and yes, he’s that hacker there’s a signal interruption for you? the hacker hacked the messenger to talk to me oh…you’re professional what does blue mean? I’ll look forward to it I’m nervous too… you are already more than helpful. I wish luck for C&R’s intelligence unit oh, it’s alright! Please go ahead I’ll see you VN: no, nothing lasts forever choice? … v! are you alright? is this what you did to ray, too? v! it’s me! ----- rika please! Stop torturing v I understand your pain, but you must control your devil rika… Day 8 – 100% 00:44 Seven’s Status Report But no one’s here I feel so bad for v yoosung, v is sick I think v was forced to take a dangerous drug I don’t think she’s the same rika you used to know yoosung… rika was the one who put v in danger yes, seven saved v. good work, seven seven, are you going to investigate mint eye soon? you can talk to me, yoosung no more repetitions you can count on me perhaps v made secrets because he didn’t want us to see what rika became I don’t think she’ll come with us even if we all go there together good luck on that, yoosung VN: oh, thank god… seven, he’s starting to awake you should worry about yourself seven I know you’re confused but v is not well right now I’m fine. Please take care of yourself 01:59 Emergency in RFA he's  resting… but he’s sweating a lot… he seems to be in pain no there was a situation, so now we’re going to seven’s hideout I don’t think we can afford to invite him over here, but please tell him to contact me you’re so busy late through the night, zen what? No! I don’t think v has any intention of making rika have her punishment v is trying to solve this…but he’s too self-sacrificing she is the rika you know. I can guarantee I think you make an interesting team with yoosung you’re working so hard, jaehee it's ray I think we’d better tell seven I don’t want to see anymore of this heartbreaking war I think they need you jumin I’ll do my best in whatever I can good luck, jaehee could you distract our enemies with your beauty? seven we have a situation when will we get the messenger back? how long will this war last? ok. I hope I can see you again here, though I’m not sure when VN: v, I’m here v, your hands are shaking okay please don’t push yourself. Just rest, v I’ll hold your hand. No need to shiver 07:13 Suspicious Chat Room tell me about it… I thought the RFA messenger is closed now no, let me do that. You should rest ray! This is your work, isn’t it? ray…? what’s wrong with the messenger? so can we get back to our original messenger? I’m looking after v aggressive you? isn’t there a way all of us can get along? I don’t think this is the right time is that why you wanted a party to happen? So this was all.. for now, could you tell him to send an email? no, I like ice cream too ok… could you please ask rika to settle this peacefully? 09:27  Conciliation Towards Seven pardon? wow! It’s back it’s… back, right? seven…it’s dizzy umm…I think ray blocked it no, it’s fine. It almost worked did ray stop seven? rika please stop hurting us anymore rika, ive seen them too… I think you need treatment but seven rescued v seven, is it okay to keep talking to rika? who’s saeran? seven, I don’t know what you two are talking about. But don’t let yourself falter saeran must be important to you, seven don’t you want to make up with us? rika… are you alright? I think we can make up if we treat your trauma VN: this time I’ll protect v 11:00 How Did We End Up Like v what are you doing? You should be resting what are you trying to tell rika? what was your first encounter like? yes why is that? so you wanted to be a painter so it was rika who helped you wake up? so you wanted to prove yourself so denying love was the same as denying yourself I understand how rika would’ve felt it was a process of discovering who you really are. You got to know love better but you didn’t know that until now. Ignorance is no sin I understand how you feel v, but I wish you wouldn’t lose hope in love I will be with you in your path to the conclusion. I’ll hold you tight I think you can find an answer more mature than that why is that? that is not going to happen… I want to protect you 13:07 The Demon You Created v is looking back at himself… he must be in lots of pain I don’t think talking about your past will be of any use what did it feel like to you back then? perhaps he realized it’s selfish to blindly pour his feelings no matter how good it is I think v was just being honest with his feelings rika are you having difficulty accepting the truth? rika if you still love v please let him go. Just like v is trying to rika v wants to become different now. And I want to help him right now all v wants to do is protect me please stop trying to put us against each other, rika v doesn’t mask himself that is not going to happen rika you sound very far from normal trying to control us with fear won’t work now rika 15:21 I’m Worried of You ray what brings you here? it's not v’s fault. But I’m not sure if you’d understand you shouldn’t have drugged him. It’s wrong I hope your trauma can be cured. Mint eye will not provide treatment for your wound ray. I’m not going back now you asked me not to abandon you I think you must find your own happiness instead of relying on someone else I don’t think that’s the right way. All the things that are forced in that place are wrong I trust in v. and that won’t change no matter what you say you did too? What do you mean? I wish there were somebody who could sincerely care for your wounds my heart can’t be divided into a devil and angel. My heart is what it is why is that? I’m sorry but I don’t think that will happen leave the RFA alone and leave the party alone stop it ray. We’re not getting anywhere huh? seven! could it be what?? 17:32 It’s All My Fault where are you right now? it's alright. There’s really nothing we can do about this. Rika’s side….. that’s not true. I believe you can love no, you can do it v. you can be stronger. I’ll help you I understand you’re afraid. Think about all the things you’ve gone through seven are you looking for v? don’t you think you’re being over protective? what’s wrong? Is it bad for v? so when v suddenly cries it’s because of the drug? he seemed to know you well seven why did you think you might know him? is this person you’re thinking of the person you asked rika if he’s doing fine? seven you know we can’t trust rika now, right? cheer up! I’m wit you! I wish you’d get better soon I don’t think it’s bad to put down your burden and take refuge thanks for the info seven you didn’t lie to luciel, did you? I think there was nothing you could do about it. You were met with agony… yes, I’m sure your depression will soon go away. Have faith and wait a bit more how are you going to do that? instead of reunion, why not a new start? it's okay! Of course you’d be scared I’m sure you can find love again. From now on try to accept your fear as well I’m heading over 19:02 Failure rika are you painful to see v changing? I know how difficult your environment was, but you chose to make things like this please take a look around. There are people having a hard time because of you that’s not happiness. That’s nothing but pleasure don’t you think you’re taking away their ability to stand alone? he’s accepted loss of love. So of course he’d feel afraid he's not running away. He’ll learn to acknowledge his fear and love in reality perhaps v is afraid because no one ever held his hand by his side v has had more than enough violent /self-destructive love. That’s enough rika 20:21 Don’t Want to be no well, because of mint eye you mean why she founded mint eye? v is deeply related to the source of trouble rika caused you are very talented ray. I’m sure you could do something else ray I hope you’d use your talent for yourself I don’t think any single party is at fault you’ve done nothing wrong. I thought it was dangerous to be with rika…. ray, don’t you want to join RFA? ray isn’t there any way I can save you? v's effect was huge in the process rika founded mint eye you mean the elixir of salvation. Won’t ray grow dependant? ray is sick. Why do you force him to take the drug? ray… I feel bad for ray. Please don’t make nay more victims 22:00  Opposition and Debacle that’s why I came after you I think rika tried to achieve her goal by hook or by crook can we just get through with this? This is so frustrating you’re the one who feels pleasure from fear. V is nothing like you there you have it. Now stay away from v I can handle v’s love like the sun. I don’t think that’s strange v don’t let her words get you we don’t see someone like you every day rika. V stumbled upon a wrong person ok there goes acknowledgement. Happy now? he said not anymore if that is true love then why did you leave v? v are you trying to leave me? I think you’re better off without her you’re not trying to take v away are you? You can’t do that v i won’t be like rika let’s stop talking I really hope you’ll get over rika soon please don’t tell me that you’ll leave me I’m here for you. Let’s run away from rika then what are you waiting for? Hurry up 23:16 Pass the Baton ray what’s wrong? I’m looking for a way to destroy your friends you’re the one torturing us yes I’ll interfere. I’ll destroy it nice and neat you’re being punished because you hung out with bad people are you alright? huh? What is going on right now? is there something I can do for you? this is the username I saw back then seven hurry! You should track him down what do you mean maybe not? We need to stop that no matter what maybe this person is easier to deal with seven what am I supposed to do? are you..? what are you going to do now? you can’t take me. The RFA will protect me Day 9 – 100% 00:56 Seduction of the Moon I don’t want to think about that something disastrous will happen if you can’t control the darkness of course. V will be with me from now on whichever it is…I don’t care as long as v comes to me I am a little afraid, but it’s something I want I want to grow by agonizing and feeling those kinds of things idyllic… I understand what you mean mint eye may be right for me rika you should let the sun be 02:43 I Can Make You Have More you’re new aren’t you? sleeping? What do you mean? why did you wake up now? get rid of him!? you seem dangerous give me back ray I’m curious about you will we be together if we start from the beginning? …… 06:21 Stop It why did you come in here? I know, right? You don’t think you can do anything without me the harder it is the better outcomes it should come to it must have been tough for you too v. you can rely on me I think you’re the only one getting hurt because of rika are you planning to leave me? Don’t say such a thing don’t betray me why don’t you just say it straight that you like rika more than me? v if you go I’ll be disappointed v is there no way for you and me to be happy? aren’t you sick and tired of living your life for someone else? The two of us can be happy VN: v? what were you doing? once this passes, only happiness will await you. Happiness with me I’m so jealous of rika. You love her this much it's not your fault v. who would have thought rika was such an evil person? I don’t care if you hurt me. I want to be yours if it’s complicated, embrace the way it is. I’m here for you I’ll come with you. I don’t want to let you go alone 09:04 Third Person Perspective a hacker! There’s a hacker here! are you fiddling with seven’s phone? what’s wrong with the design of our app? it is a test lol let’s talk nonsense say something! Anything! in truth…I think you’re good looking why isn’t he answering them? he probably thinks of his life dearly now I have no idea where this part is heading he was always like that he codes with his toes? why? You like it? you’re very good at cleaning I thought you were avoiding us yes we will soon start our relationship is there something wrong with seven? how is that job from seven going? I think it’ll be a good idea to give up for the sake of your eyes what other jobs do you do other than keep watch on him? he wouldn’t be angry would he? 12:07 Rika’s Feelings he's trying to do everything he can to stop you rika that’s not completely wrong the idea that someone will save me is just fantasy rika you have a lot of people around you. Why do you feel lonely? you two are people with completely different ideas then take your hands off the RFA and v that’s even scarier rika how much do you know about RFA? rika that’s really dangerous. I can see why v is trying to stop you by himself are you saying you’re different? rika you’re also using others to prove yourself VN: you’re not even doing well. Stop being so stubborn v you’re so stubborn are you sure you’re okay with that v? so what is your real answer? enough with your obsession with rika! Treasure yourself some more you don’t have to sacrifice yourself for rika. You’re already priceless to me choose what you think is right 14:11 Reason Trying to Stop Her he just fell asleep. Rika and v’s relationship is complicated yes. Rika is now like a bomb who in the world would believe rika’s words? I think lying that she committed suicide was too much the reason rika could act so violently was because v’s love was too ideal I think he’ll eventually follow rika v seems to want to go to rika you weren’t interested, were you? you can see that seven? is there no way to change her mind back? alright… 16:39 You Change Me I’ll hate you for the rest of your life if you disappear. I’ll hate you more than rika we should be happy soon. Throw away your lingering feelings for rika she might stop if you leave rika dead on stop saying that…how about trying to forget rika? then there’s one more reason you shouldn’t go I’m different from rika. You don’t have to be scared what are you going to do after meeting her? if you go to rika, I won’t be able to see you again v in whatever shape it is, we will be happy soon as long as rika is taken care of so now I’m more influential to you than rika, right? 18:35 Seven’s Persuasion return jumin cat did you come to interfere us? seven, is ray baffled because we’ve won? he's right ray. You should rather go with seven why are you so afraid of losing? you have a brother? did you eat something wrong? seven you seem to be very interested in that hacker good luck till the end 20:12 Winner Seven!! can we not get rid of mint eye? wow!!! why aren’t the others coming in? would v want to go to the hospital? will ray not attack again? wouldn’t it be more transparent by receiving the law’s orders? I want to share this emotional moment with v can the RFA members come into the messenger now? what is it? then make them exit the room and add the RFA members if the members login, can the read the messages rika and the hacker wrote? this will be the last, won’t it? 21:49 I Missed You All the messenger’s security system has been recovered rika mistake? what do you want? we did but seven would have blocked it quit it if you’re trying to seduce them to join mint eye that’s a lie. What trip? for making v like that? you don’t even plan to do that are you planning to say hello to every member like this? rika your attitude is very double sided yes the three of us should get together. I’ll reveal what kind of person you are rika keep away from v and the RFA. It’s really sick and tiring it's now getting pitiful one last thing? VN: okay. Here, lean on me what is it? no, thank you for finding me in my life regardless, thank you for wading through such a trail of thorns I hope you’d get your chance soon are you sure you’ll be fine? then please excuse me 22:34 V Has Been Stabbed! I have nothing to say to you now, ray ………… wouldn’t rika and the hacker participate in our chats? can the others come in now? yes i’m innocent! zen, call the others! should I try pinching him? I’m okay. So is seven. V’s the only one hurt badly it’s a long story. You should go read it yourself did you read the messages rika left? it was between the two of them. Some of it might be true everything’s been done but he couldn’t kick out rika and the hacker do you want me to find proof or something? it's frustrating that you’re in denial when the situation says it all yoosung you’re trying to look after RFA in your own way don’t worry. V will be okay. He’s strong I’m relieved as well to see the members doing fine Day 10 – 91% 00:46 I Want to Talk to You seems like you couldn’t sleep I’m not sure I think it’s rika why don’t you think about how you’ll take revenge on mint eye I hope jumin thinks of a way to destroy mint eye then you must know how bad mint eye is yoosung, you think differently? v was stabbed and you’re talking nonsense no never! You shouldn’t trust her even the slightest bit still I think it’s ironic since I was able to join the RFA with her help rika keeps hurting everyone. Yoosung you should let go of her you should stop thinking of rika! You will try to stop won’t you? VN: seven it’s not your fault what do you plan to do to mint eye? 02:32 See You Soon jumin when are you going to take care of mint eye? this is all because of rika and mint eye yes that’s why I’m going to take revenge on mint eye rika couldn’t accept v’s change. Maybe that’s why she despised him? about this hospital you led us to. We can trust it? if something happens to v I won’t let them get away with this what are you planning to do with rika? She must be judged soon when are you coming? I’m so worried really? Are you sure? there’d be no problem as long as mint eye is destroyed see you! VN: Hello Jumin it must be difficult for you because of rika and mint eye must I go to the party? he did? that doesn’t sound like v you know v very well I’d say their relationship as lovers is now over 06:21 Triangle? he's having surgery. I’m waiting for him in the waiting room but we don’t have to worry about him yet, do we? yoosung you’re coming to the party, aren’t you? feels like it’s been so long since you two chatted together it's all because of v –whining on and on and on-- yes in truth, we were kind of in a love triangle we were getting along fine, but rika kept interfering. Rika seems to be meddling……. I feel like I’ve been pushed away because of Rika. It’s a bit sad wouldn’t she have gone to v’s house? this association has so many secrets it's dangerous to go there. There’s a bomb yoosung, rika is the villain. Snap out of it! but the party’s tomorrow if mint eye is take care of today…we can still have the party, right? this is unacceptable. They intend to interrupt until last moment? seven, you have to get back to work, don’t you? it wasn’t that bad at the hideout…but I prefer being next to v here I’d like to go too. I want to speak to rika yoosung do what you want to do. I don’t want to care about her anymore 08:38 Her Thoughts you’re not welcome here. Leave! of course. Judgment is the only thing left for you what are you hiding in there? no of course not. I’m not going to invite you, rika. Never, ever it feels like you keep trying to seduce yoosung don’t try to prey on jumin. He’s already having a hard time….. jaehee, can’t you make her leave? shouldn’t we send someone to the apartment? you make your words sound so smooth…as always don’t try to weave your way out! Whatever it was,ou were doing something illegal don’t try to smooth your way out of this! You criminal rika…you should stop now I think talking to her anymore will only hurt us more jaehee, let’s leave the room if you have nothing more to say to rika not anymore rika. You should try to grasp what’s going on rika it was you, wasn’t it?! VN: What are you going to do with mint eye? 11:51 Zen Worrying Over Yoosung zen how are you managing? why did you come into the messenger? did he disappear without a word? yoosung! Where are you? yoosung, why did you go out? you should head to zen’s place right now zen can’t you tie down yoosung to your place? everything’s going to be okay I the end, yoosung yes I think you need to take good care of yoosung look what kind of mess we’re having because of rika he went to university because of rika. I see why he wouldn’t want to go to school got it. Take good care of yoosung 14:05 Yoosung’s True Feelings yoosung, stop obsessing over rika there’s nothing you can gain by talking to her she doesn’t have the guts to face you. Since she’s sinned so much weren’t you going to tell her to come back? rika if you’re here to hurt yoosung, you should leave this is all your fault. What are you going to do about yoosung’s wounds? don’t trust a word she says don’t trust her. Never trust her rika your dual side is really sickening someone like her will eventually betray you again. It’s better not to expect anything I don’t think I can believe you even if rika changes, she has no right to stay in RFA rika’s right yoosung…rika has already left v was also hurt because rika acted however she wants rika won’t be able to come tomorrow. You should stop hoping for it that’s enough! if you keep acting like that in the messenger, I will call zen 16:12 Tattered I feel sorry for Rika you should tell rika what you think of her, zen you made me feel so much better. I never want to see her on the messenger again how’s it going with mint eye? I’m also about to blow up…gahhh do you know when rika and the hacker will be taken care of? seven! You are working, aren’t you? isn’t there another way to solve the problem? then let’s get on with it seven…it is because you don’t have the guts to win later? how long do you think we’ll have to wait until v wakes up? I’m angry that it’s v who gets hurt every time I hate mint eye for making v like this can you use it as an ID? they just won’t surrender to the end I agree! It’ll be a disaster if he meets rika try to cheer up with yoosung we’re going to win this, right? good luck, seven! 18:00 I Want You to be Happy why do you keep coming to this chatroom? you don’t even think about the scars you’ve given? it’s evident the RFA has grown out of your grasp, isn’t it? I’m sick of you justifying yourself it's time for the bad rika to disappear your past is not important. You’ve changed so much so you admit yourself you need to be isolated stop meddling with v anymore I don’t want to hear what you think of our relationship 19:49 Save Me you did a good job at the hospital today thank you for worrying about me. I’ll take care of myself how’s mint eye? rika did you hear? Mint eye is over why say that at this point? Rika you’re really strange you know there is no one out there who will understand you, rika now that’s enough rika you’re just being arrogant rika did you want to play messiah or something? that’s not an endless chain of happiness! It’s an endless chain of pain but you wounded v! you demon! how could you do that to v? rika, your words are nothing but a criminal’s excuses …bye rika what should we do with you? aren’t you ashamed of using ray even now? 21:53 My Defeat status please, o head of the unit are you still trying to catch the hacker alive? it looks like they’re willing to die, as this is their last battle then will all of this be taken care of within today? luciel the judicator seven, but you have been fighting off the hacker. Aren’t you tired? is ray reading the chat logs? so ray is really good as his game so it’s all going to end soon so you have been watching us ray, it’s all over now

[asleepinawell]

Upwards Spiral

(AN: the ‘what would change if carter had lived’ question is one i’ve shied away from writing a fic about because carter is such a pivotal character that having her live would require a full rewrite and…i’ve already done one of those. so that’s not exactly what this is. @winged-mammal left it up to me if i wrote it in the canon universe or in the universe of my fic sliding towards chaos, and in the end i chose the latter. and i cheated. because i didn’t change everything, i just placed carter into the existing events. that was the only way to keep this from being another 300k words which noooOOoooOo.

like most prompts i write for chaos au i tried to keep things easy to pick up on for anyone who hasn’t read it, but this one might be a little tougher in that regard. because it’s a bit long for tumblr (7k words), i’ll be posting it to ao3 in the next day or two for easier reading. anyway, enjoy).

Shaw couldn’t remember ever having been in a social situation where she’d wished Reese was present, but, sitting in her chair at the all-night diner halfway between Root and Carter, she spared a moment to send some uncharitable thoughts in Reese’s direction for his absence.

Root was smiling, at least, but on her a smile was just as likely to mean that she was enthusiastically contemplating multiple homicides than that she was being friendly.

Carter, for her part, was coolly assessing Root over the top of her coffee mug.

No one had said anything for the full fifteen minutes they’d been there and Shaw was starting to wonder if she could slip away unnoticed and swing by later to mop up the remains.

“So, here we are,” Carter finally said, pulling Shaw’s attention away from her inspection of her water glass.

When Carter didn’t immediately add anything to her initial thought, Root widened her smile in what was an unmistakably patronizing manner.

Shaw kicked her in the shin hard enough that Root let out a strangled whimper through clenched teeth.

Carter’s eyes flicked back and forth between them and, for a split second, Shaw wondered if she could somehow figure out everything from just watching them. The taser incidents, the almost-torture, the time in the CIA safe-house, the multiple times in Finch’s safe-house, the time in the backseat of a very expensive car they’d borrowed, the time on the desk in the library…the list went on. There wasn’t any way that Carter could know about that stuff no matter how good a detective she was, but still.

“Pretty sure this is the same woman I helped John track down a while back after she kidnapped Finch. Called herself Root, if I remember correctly.”

Root straightened up from rubbing at her bruised shin. “I can see why you’re a detective.”

She actually yelped this time when Shaw kicked her.

Carter didn’t look impressed with either of them. She turned to stare down Shaw.

“How about you tell me what’s going on here before I arrest her, or you accidentally break her leg? I thought you were going to let me in on how you lot always know about crimes before they happen. You’re not going to try and convince me that’s her doing, I hope.”

“That’s…complicated.” Shaw wasn’t completely sure where to begin. Root did work for the Machine now, so Carter’s skeptical theory wasn’t completely off base.

“Uh-huh, well what’s not complicated is that she murdered a woman named Alicia Corwin. So how about you give me a good reason not to arrest her right here?”

“Oh, right. I forgot about her.” Root gave a dreamy little smile. “Fun times back in the bad old days.”

Shaw made a mental note to wear steel-toed boots next time.

“She saved your life,” she quickly interjected. “From Simmons that night.”

Carter frowned. “No, you did. Showed up out of nowhere and shot the bastard.”

“Only reason I knew to be there was because of her.”

Root tilted her head to one side and shrugged minutely, and yeah, okay, that wasn’t quite the whole story, but this had to be explained in parts and Shaw needed both of them to ease up a bit.

“She’s another computer genius like Finch.” Carter tapped a finger on the side of her mug. “Always figured he’d made some kind of illegal surveillance program to tap into the city’s camera feeds or something. Only thing that made sense. She take it over after he went missing?”

Shaw was impressed, though not too surprised. Carter had always been really damned sharp. She was wasted on the NYPD.

And Root was looking over Carter like she was readjusting her evaluation of her.

“It’s not exactly a program.” Shaw wasn’t sure how she of all people had ended up in the position of explaining this to Carter, but Finch had vanished at the bank that day and Reese was too busy chasing after dead-end leads to be useful for anything right now. “It’s-” She glanced at Root. “-an Artificial Intelligence.”

Carter put her mug down on the table with a thud. “An Artific…you mean whatever this surveillance thing is, it’s alive?”

Shaw raised her eyebrows meaningfully at Root. This was her territory.

“She’s very much alive.” Root looked more serious now and Shaw suspected that this was the part of the conversation where Root would actually make up her mind about Carter. And possibly vis versa.

“She, huh.” Carter thought that over. “And this Artificial Intelligence, what exactly can it, or she, do?”

“Not very much on Her own. Mostly She watches and listens. She still relies almost completely on Her human agents to get things done.”

“And John and Finch and you two are these human agents?”

“Yes, though my relationship with Her is a bit…different.”

Shaw wondered if Root would ever get tired of saying that with a little smirk and suggestive eyebrow raise.

“Root works directly for the Machine, and not with the rest of us so much.” Though that was starting to change.

“The Machine? Is that its name?” Carter shook her head. “Let me guess, Finch chose the name.”

“I think it would be more accurate to say Finch chose not to name Her.”

“Anyway,” Shaw interrupted before Root had a chance to go off on a tangent, “the Machine told Root you were in trouble, and Root told me.”

There was a good bit more to it than that of course. She’d stopped by the library to drop Bear off that night and, on a whim, had decided to check in on Root. She’d been avoiding her since Finch had locked her up, but it had gotten beyond the point of being ridiculous to keep her in there and she’d decided to assess the situation on her own.

“Well, this is a nice surprise.” Root looked up from the book she had spread open in her lap. “Conjugal visit?”

Shaw thought about turning back around and leaving, but that would have felt a lot like letting Root win a point in whatever game it was they were playing.

Root shut her book with a snap. “Or are you here because the boys are still in trouble?”

“And how would you know about that?” Shaw asked, stepping up to the gate of the cage. “Thought this thing Finch had us rig up was supposed to put you in a no-service zone.”

Root only smiled.

“Trouble seems to have died down for now, though there’s still a couple loose ends that need tying up.” Shaw kept feeling like they’d missed something, though she couldn’t put her finger on what.

“Well, I’m really good at tying things up, if you need a hand.”

Shaw rolled her eyes. This had definitely been a mistake. She started to turn away from the cage.

“Shaw, wait.”

Root sounded serious enough that she paused and looked back.

Root got up and drifted across the floor to the cage door. “Did you find Simmons yet? She was concerned about him in particular.”

“Not yet, but not much he can do with HR completely gutted. We got Quinn.”

“I think She was more worried about Simmons personally than about his influence within HR. He’s a real piece of work apparently.” Root hooked her fingers through the cage fence. “If you let me out and give me a phone for five minutes, I can find out if there’s anything to worry about still.”

“Let you out? Yeah, not happening.”

“You’re armed and much better at, ah, hand to hand, as we found out. How much of a threat can I possibly pose?”

She wasn’t technically wrong, but Shaw also knew that a lot of the danger Root presented didn’t come from physical violence. But….

“My phone do?”

Root’s eyes widened like she couldn’t believe Shaw was actually agreeing and she nodded.

Shaw took her gun out before she picked the lock on the door. She kept her gun pointed at Root as she handed the phone over and took a step or two back just to play it safe. Root couldn’t actually leave the cage with the ankle monitor Finch had put on her, so she stood in the doorway, Shaw’s phone clutched in her hands like it was some priceless treasure.

The phone rang almost at once and Root’s entire face lit up as she quickly answered it.

“I can hear you.”

There was something so desperately grateful in Root’s voice that Shaw felt like she was intruding.

The smile fell off of Root’s face. “I understand. I’ll tell her.” She lowered the phone and then handed it back to Shaw. “There’s an address in your phone. You have to go there. Now.”

“Why do I…”

“No time, Shaw. Lives are at stake.” Root took a step back and pulled the cage door shut herself. “Lock me back in and go.”

“Why not insist on coming with me?” Shaw asked as she clicked the lock back into place.

“Because you don’t trust me yet and that’ll slow you down. There’s no time for that. Now go.”

And Shaw went.

She still wondered if she should have left the cage unlocked, let Root escape. Even after she’d explained Root’s part in saving Reese and Carter, Finch hadn’t been willing to let her out.

Maybe that was part of why she hadn’t thought twice about going back to rescue Root from Hersh and Control.

Part of it, anyway.

Carter was trying to put all the pieces together. “Why didn’t this…machine…warn you the way…” She paused. “Okay, is this AI a she or an it?” She directed the last part towards Shaw.

“Hell if I know. Only talks to her.”

Carter’s exasperated look made her realize she’d probably only confused the question more. She shrugged helplessly. Fancy computer gender was above her pay-grade. Or had been. With Finch missing, all sorts of things that hadn’t been her problem before were now giving her a headache.

Carter gave up. “Why didn’t the Machine warn you the way she usually does?”

“She tried.” Root was more relaxed now, and almost looked like she was enjoying herself. “But nobody was picking up the call.”

“Call? What call?”

Shaw raised her hand to flag down the waiter. She had a feeling they were going to be here a while.

“Your turn to babysit me, is it?” Root flopped down on the couch in the safe-house still wrapped in her towel from the shower.

“If I had my way, you’d be in protective custody. Or better yet, regular police custody.” Carter didn’t look up from whatever she was doing on her phone. “Shaw didn’t want the police officially involved, which, considering your record, I guess isn’t surprising. But I’m not a babysitter. You want to run out there, I’m not going to be the one to stop you.”

“Unfortunately, I’m not going anywhere at the moment.”

Carter nodded and didn’t say anything else until Root had mostly tuned out the physical room, drifting away into Her whispers. She still wasn’t overly concerned with the supposed threat against her, but the Machine had asked her to stay in the safe-house for now and she’d stay for Her even if she didn’t think it was necessary.

“Why aren’t you going anywhere?”

Carter’s voice pulled her back to reality.

“Hour ago you were ready to take off without a care in the world.”

“The Machine didn’t want me to.”

“You always listen to her?”

“Yes.”

“And why’s that?”

Root cocked her head to one side. “Why all the questions? Thought you didn’t much like me.”

“I don’t. You’re a killer and a threat, but Shaw thinks you’re valuable for some reason and this AI you answer to seems to be using you to help people. Even if she is the only thing holding you in check.”

“And you want to know why I listen to Her because you’re worried one day I’ll stop and go back to my wicked ways?”

Carter shrugged. “Sounds about right. I don’t have any reason to trust you other than Shaw’s word, and I’m not quite sure why she trusts you.”

That was a topic Root definitely wanted to steer clear of, though the amount of weight Carter put on Shaw’s word pleased her.

“The Machine offered me a job.”

“A job that has you getting tortured and shot. Because you don’t strike me as the type to walk into gunfire for some stranger all on your own. Which means she must have told you to.”

The wound from the bullet Root had taken saving Cyrus Wells’s life the day before ached. Carter hadn’t been there, but John or Shaw must have filled her in on how she’d gotten hurt.

As for why she’d done it…that was still a bit baffling to her. Maybe she’d hoped it would give her some understanding of why the Machine thought people were worth saving, or maybe she just hadn’t wanted to disappoint Her.

Or maybe she hadn’t much liked feeling responsible for how Cyrus Wells had been unable to do anything but watch as someone close to him was taken away, a scenario that was not at all unfamiliar to her.

She glanced up to find Carter watching her a little too closely for comfort and quickly continued.

“I don’t mind a little risk. I work for Her because She chose me and She cares about me.” She fidgeted with the edge of her towel with one hand. “The truth is I played a very small role in saving your life, and only because She asked me to. She’s the real reason you’re alive. She cares about all of us, including you.”

Carter looked surprised; clearly not the answer she’d expected. “Well, tell her thank you from me then.” She sounded sincere. “And thank you as well, whatever your reasons.”

Root looked down at her feet. She hadn’t figured out yet how to handle Carter’s straightforwardness. She decided to counter it in kind. “You found Hanna, made sure she got a proper burial. I thanked John for that, but I never got a chance to thank you.”

“Just doing my job. That little girl and her family deserved to be at peace.”

Root’s fingers tightened their clutch on the edge of her towel. She’d brought it up, but she didn’t actually want to discuss it.

She stood up. “I left something in the other room.”

The door swung open then, and Root breathed out a sigh of relief as Shaw came in.

“I hate winter in this city.” Her nose was red from the cold.

Root smiled at her and felt herself relax fractionally. “Did you get me something nice?”

“They’re just normal clothes.” Shaw thrust the bags at her. “Go get dressed.”

“Might need a hand with that.” Root motioned at her injured arm.

Shaw froze for half a second. “Uh, right. Guess it might be difficult for you right now.”

Root saw Carter watching them, cataloguing everything they said and did. It was a bit annoying having a competent detective around all the time.

“I don’t have all day.” Shaw stalked past her towards the bedroom. “You coming?”

Root turned away from Carter’s scrutiny to follow Shaw to the privacy of the bedroom.

“We’re clear for this hall.” Shaw kicked the gun away from the unconscious Vigilance agent. If she got shot rescuing Root after she’d gotten her dumb ass kidnapped she was never speaking to her.

“Good thing we made John leave his grenade launcher in the car,” Carter said. “He’d have had this whole place on high alert shooting that thing all over.”

“He brings it everywhere now. Think he’s still upset about that time I borrowed it for you.” The look on his face had been so incredibly satisfying. Shaw wondered if the Machine had that on tape. And speaking of the Machine…. “She says it’s this way.”

“So what’s it like having the Machine talking directly to you?” Carter asked. She was covering the hallway behind them, just in case.

“Dunno. Bit weird. Useful.” It had been great for allowing her to speed out on the highway.

“Didn’t think she’d ever talk to anyone but Root.”

They set off down the hall together, falling into a natural pattern of covering each other as they moved around corners. Shaw hadn’t gotten out in the field with Carter that much recently and it was damn good to work with her again.

“Special circumstances. She’s worried about Root.”

“You’re worried about her, too.” Carter sounded amused.

“She’s part of the team. Sort of. She would be if she weren’t so bad at team work.”

“Case in point,” Carter agreed. “And how long have you two been…?”

“What?” Shaw asked, hoping that someone would show up for her to shoot right then. “How long have we been what?”

“By my guess there was something already going on before we took down HR, but I’ve got no way of checking that.”

“There’s nothing going on.”

The look on Carter’s face spoke volumes.

Shaw scowled. “We’re just…it’s not a thing, okay?” She thought guiltily about her new couch. “Definitely not.”

“Uh-huh. That why you broke the sound barrier getting here to rescue her?”

“I’d have done that for anyone on my team.” Which was completely true even though it didn’t explain why this had felt slightly different than if it had been John in trouble. “Why did you show up? You don’t even like her.”

“I don’t like everyone whose life I save. Goes with the job. I wouldn’t say I hate her either. We just don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things.”

“Hope this means no speech about watching my back then.”

They had to pause the conversation to knee-cap two more Vigilance agents.

“You’re an adult. Don’t need me butting into your personal life.”

“You brought it up.”

“I’m a detective. Can’t turn that off.”

The Machine let Shaw know that there was a good chance Root was behind the door up ahead.

“Root’s…important. Uh, to our work, I mean. Analogue Interface and all.”

Thankfully, Carter let it drop, though she did look amused when Root smacked Shaw in the head with the door a few seconds later. And she definitely looked smug when Root basically hung all over Shaw on the way out and Shaw let her.

At least she didn’t know about the couch.

“Shaw?”

There was no mistaking her even with most of her hair hidden under a beanie, but she was about that last person Carter had expected to wander by right now.

Shaw looked equally confused as she came over to the parked car Carter was sitting in.

“So I know why I’m freezing my ass off out here, but why are you?” Shaw asked.

Carter motioned for her to get in and turned the heat up a little. Shaw climbed into the passenger’s seat and held her hands in front of one of the vents.

“I should steal a badge someday,” she said. “Would make it easier to park closer to stakeouts.”

“Why don’t you just borrow one of Root’s? She seems to have quite a collection.” She couldn’t keep the note of disapproval from her voice. Root had no respect for what any of those badges were meant to represent. They were another game of dress up for her.

“I don’t borrow things from Root.”

Carter raised an eyebrow at the immediate defensiveness in Shaw’s voice. Did she really think she and Root were fooling anyone?

“What’s this stakeout you’re on then?” It was more than a little suspicious that they were both keeping watch outside the same building.

“The Machine had some mission for Root. Thought she might need backup.”

“Root’s in that building?”

“Yeah, why?” Shaw narrowed her eyes. “What’s going on?”

“John went in there ten minutes ago. Off to help some number. Told me he could handle it. I figured I’d give him another five minutes before I went in and bailed him out of whatever mess he got himself into.” She couldn’t remember a single occasion where John had correctly claimed he didn’t need backup.

“I didn’t know we had a number.” Shaw frowned. “What the hell is he playing at? What the hell are both of them playing at?”

Carter unbuckled her seatbelt. “Only one way to find out.”

The building appeared empty, but the elevator dinged and the doors opened as they entered the lobby. They exchanged a look and went to investigate. A floor number lit up as they got in and Shaw huffed a little and shook her head.

“If the Machine wanted us to keep them out of trouble, she shouldn’t have sent them off on their own in the first place.”

“I don’t think even an AI can keep those two out of trouble.” It seemed unfair to compare John to Root, but, in some matters at least, the comparison worked too well to ignore.

Carter wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting to see when the elevator doors opened on the fifth floor, but it definitely wasn’t the scene unfolding before her.

The first thing she noticed was that the ceiling sprinkler system was on, water spraying everywhere. One of the ceiling lights in the big room was flickering and spitting sparks out while a very unconscious man dangled from it by a wire tied around his foot.

There were several other bodies in the room, and one or two men clutching their knee and groaning in pain. Sitting on a desk in the middle of the chaos was Root, kicking her feet back and forth, and tapping a taser against her leg. There was a man tied up and twitching in a chair in front of her who appeared to be wearing the remains of a clown costume.

Right before Carter recovered enough to say something, John Reese splashed into the back of the room holding what was almost definitely a small, angry pekingese dog under his arm.

“Root! I caught it!” He sounded so proud of himself.

“I knew you were useful for something. Now let’s see if this will make him talk.”

The elevator door started to close on its own as Reese triumphantly carried the struggling bundle of fur over towards the desk. Neither Carter nor Shaw moved.

As the doors closed (cutting off some angry yipping noises), Shaw reached out to stab the lobby button several times with one finger.

They stayed silent as the elevator descended and both headed out of the lobby and towards Carter’s car.

“You know, there’s a new restaurant around the corner,” Carter said. “Hear it’s supposed to be pretty decent.”

“I could eat.”

They veered away from the car and started down the street.

Carter was pretty certain they were on the same page here, but some things were worth confirming. “Just to be absolutely clear, we’re never mentioning any of that. Ever.”

“No arguments here.” Shaw made a pained noise. “I’m trying to forget it ever happened.”

“I wouldn’t even know where to start on the arrest report.”

Shaw muttered something angrily under her breath that was undoubtedly about Root. “This place we’re going to, does it have drinks?”

“It better.”

“You drew the short straw for babysitting duty again, I see,” Root said as she led Carter towards the safe-house where her team was staying. She had both hands wrapped tightly around a takeout cup of coffee that Shaw had brought her earlier for no particular reason. It wasn’t great coffee, but there was no way she was going to throw it out.

“I’m here to meet this little team of yours I’ve heard almost nothing about. Nothing else.”

“I’m not going to hand myself over to Decima in the next hour. So if you have somewhere you’d rather be…” She still got edgy with Carter hanging over her shoulder. Fusco was easy to befuddle and deflect, but Carter was trickier.

“You were ready to before. Shaw must have been pretty convincing to talk you down.”

“Convincing…” Root thought about Shaw showing up in the library the previous day, and how she’d woken up in her bed this morning. “Yes, she can be very convincing when she puts her mind to it.”

Carter snorted somewhat inelegantly and Root wondered again how much Carter knew about her and Shaw. Even the worst detective would have been able to guess they were sleeping together. But the other stuff….

“Why were you so eager to turn yourself over in the first place? Didn’t think you even knew Finch that well and he locked you up twice.”

Root could still remember the conversation where Carter had found out about that. She might not agree with Carter on most things, but Carter’s complete disgust with how her double incarceration had fallen out had been gratifying.

“We have jails for a reason,” Carter had snapped when Reese had made a weak effort to explain (it hadn’t sounded like his heart was really in it). “There’s a word for people who keep other people locked up in cages in their house. Or secret base or whatever. A couple words, actually, and none of them are good. Criminals go to jail.”

Root hadn’t enjoyed all the insistence about going to jail, but still. A bit gratifying.

“She wants Harold back. And even if we had our differences, I don’t want Decima to have him.”

“Anything you wouldn’t do for the Machine if she asked?”

The Machine hadn’t asked her to turn herself over (had in fact been very firmly against the idea), but she didn’t want to get into that right now.

“Doing what She asks is my entire life.”

“Your entire life. Right.” Carter sounded like she didn’t buy it.

Yeah, she definitely knew about her and Shaw.

“Hanging out with vigilantes isn’t exactly what I pictured you doing,” Root said to change the subject. “Detective law and order. Why not arrest all of us?”

“John and Shaw help save lives, even if I don’t always like the way they do it. They’re not the criminals who I joined the force to protect people from.”

“No, that would be me, right?” Root smiled sweetly.

Carter looked sideways at her for a minute. “You keep pointing out how bad you used to be every time you get a chance. Rubbing it in my face. Almost like it’d bother you if I thought you’d changed even a little.”

Root choked on her coffee. That was completely untrue and unfair. She opened her mouth to tell Carter how ridiculous it was and then paused when the Machine played a single note in her ear.

She had a running bet with Her that she could get through an entire day without lying to another person. It was past noon today (which made this her new record), and she really didn’t want to blow it. She sulked quietly instead.

Carter rolled her eyes. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

Shaw wondered if she ignored the pounding on her door if whomever was out there would go away. She turned the volume up on the tv and settled back on the couch in her new apartment.

There were a lot of things to get used to in the new life hiding from Samaritan had forced her into, but the plush new apartment wasn’t that bad comparatively.

The pounding on her door got louder.

“Shaw, I know you’re in there!”

Shaw sighed but got up. If it had been anyone but Carter she’d probably have kept ignoring them.

She opened the door a crack and looked back and forth between the two people standing in her hallway.

“Yeah, no.” She tried to shut the door again, but Carter had stuck her foot in the way. Shaw sighed. “Okay, what did she do this time?”

Next to Carter, Root grinned. “Hey, Sameen.” She looked way too cheerful for someone who had a bandage around their arm that was soaked through with blood in a few places.

“You got shot again?”

“Stabbed this time. But only a tiny bit.”

“And arrested,” Carter added as if that were worse.

Root raised her cuffed hands and wiggled her fingers at Shaw. Carter shoved her hands back down. “Shaw, can’t you keep her on a leash or something?”

“How is she my responsibility?” Shaw asked as quickly as she could to preempt whatever horrifying innuendo Root was undoubtedly concocting about the leash thing.

Carter just looked at her.

“Could say the same to you about Reese then,” Shaw grumbled.

Carter glared and gave Root a shove towards her. “Maybe you can ground her for a week.”

Shaw opened the door a little more to let Root in because they all knew she was going to so might as well go with it.

“You want a beer or something?” she asked Carter.

“I’m on my way home. Raincheck?”

“You know where to find me.”

“What about these?” Root held up her cuffed hands again.

“Since you spent the entire ride telling me how you had all sorts of handcuffs and keys stashed here, I figure those won’t be a problem.”

Shaw shut her eyes for a moment, hoping that when she opened them again she’d find that she’d imagined this whole thing. No such luck.

“Well, I’ll leave you to deal with her.” Carter waved goodnight and left down the hall.

“Do I even wanna know what happened?” Shaw asked as she headed for where she kept her medical supplies.

Root considered the question. “Probably not.”

“Sit.” Shaw motioned her towards the couch and went to work cutting off the useless bandage. “And if you promise me you’ll go at least a month without getting shot or stabbed I’ll think about taking the cuffs off.”

“Think I’m going to take a nap.” Reese looked beyond exhausted. Understandably so. Carter had missed out on all the post-stock exchange excitement, but she didn’t think he’d gotten to sleep at all since they’d escaped the basement with Shaw half-dead in Root’s arms.

Shaw was stable now, but from the little Reese had told her, Root had caused some…problems. When she’d picked them up out in Brooklyn, Reese had looked asleep on his feet and Root was out cold. He’d had to drug her apparently.

Carter wasn’t sure what Root had been trying to do, but knowing Root probably some extreme reaction to Shaw getting hurt that would have ended up with her (and a lot of other people) dead.

“You sticking around?” Reese asked.

“For a bit maybe.” She didn’t feel right leaving after everything that had gone down.

“Thanks.” Reese nodded tiredly and staggered off down the hall towards the free bedroom.

Carter waited until his door shut and then went back to the door of the bedroom Shaw and Root were in. She listened at the door for a second and then opened it just a crack.

Shaw was still unconscious in the hospital bed they’d stolen for her, and while she was obviously badly injured and drugged, she looked a lot better than she had a few hours ago. Seeing her breathing steadily made the knot of tension inside Carter loosen a little.

Root was similarly passed out on the real bed, one wrist cuffed to the headboard. Her clothes were covered in dried blood (Shaw’s most likely), and Carter wondered if she should try and at least cut her shirt off so she didn’t wake up like that. In the end she decided against it, not wanting to risk disturbing either of them.

She shut the door again and turned around to contemplate the door to the last bedroom. It was probably a bad idea, but…. She made up her mind and went in, immediately cold in the temperature-controlled server room Root had built there.

She faced the monitor setup on the desk.

“Not quite sure how this works, but I figure you’ll answer if you want to.”

The screen stayed dark for a few long, cold seconds, but then a cursor started blinking in the top left corner.

“Hello?” Shaw’s vague description of talking to the Machine hadn’t given Carter much insight into what to expect.

Hello.

It was only a single word, but Carter felt a small thrill run through her. She’d been hearing about the Machine for so long now, basically working side by side with her without ever meeting her. That had just changed.

She wasn’t quite sure what to say next, or even why she’d come in here.

Thank you for helping the others.

“Not sure I helped enough. Seems like I’m the only one still on my feet.”

I am not sure I helped enough either.

Definitely not what Carter had expected from her.

“They’re all alive. That’s what matters.”

Sameen Shaw was hurt very badly. As was Root. I could not protect either of them.

“Root was hurt?” She’d assumed the blood all over her had been Shaw’s, but surely John wouldn’t have let her injuries go untreated.

In a different way.

Carter thought back to what John had said while they were driving out of Brooklyn with Root unconscious in the back seat.

“It’s easy to get lost when someone important is taken from you. This was a pretty close call.”

She’d thought about that picture she still had of Reese and Jessica. Someday she hoped he’d tell her about that on his own.

She snapped back to the present when more words crawled across the screen.

I am not certain how best to help them. Perhaps it would be better if I let them be.

“Can’t imagine Root would be okay with that.”

She did not want to talk to me earlier.

Nothing in her life had given Carter any kind of reference for how to deal with a worried AI, but she knew how to reassure a human.

“We all had a long day, and no one has been thinking too clearly. Let’s see where things stand after we’ve all gotten some sleep.” She thought about Root’s face on their way out of the stock exchange, and later at the doctor’s. “Like you said, she got hurt, but she’s going to need you to help her get better.”

She was a bit surprised at how worried she was herself about Root. Shaw had been her friend since the start, but Root was a different matter. But something about how fiercely and openly Root cared about Shaw and the Machine (and lately John as well) made it hard to uniformly dislike her now.

How? I want to help both of them, but I am uncertain I have the means.

“Well, Shaw you’ve already helped a lot. Getting us to that doctor saved her life. And Root.… I think you know her better than I do. Maybe you and Shaw can talk about it.”

That is a very good strategy. Thank you.

The screen blanked out and new text appeared.

You came in to ask me something?

“I think I came in to ask if there was anything I could do to help.” She chuckled. “Turns out neither of us has all the answers.” But since she was here, she had another question. “This thing you do, helping us save people, is it something you do because you have to, or because you want to?”

I think perhaps it is both.

“Both?”

Your job is also to save people’s lives. Is it not both for you as well?

“Yeah, but I’m not…forced to do it. I could walk away if I wanted to.”

Could you? What are morals if not code?

“Shaw did say you get all philosophical sometimes.” Carter nodded. “I think I get what you’re saying, though. Now I’m going to leave before I freeze to death.”

Goodbye.

Carter paused on her way out. “Oh, and I know I told you through Root way back, but I meant it. Thank you for protecting me and John that night.”

You are welcome.

She left, feeling better than when she’d entered even though she hadn’t gotten an answer to the question she’d gone in with.

When she checked in on Root and Shaw again later, Shaw was still asleep, but Root had somehow gotten out of the handcuffs and curled up next to Shaw on the hospital bed. When the door opened, Root raised her head slightly, eyes furious and full of violence. As soon as she registered that it was Carter in the doorway, she relaxed and put her head back down.

The whole thing was strangely reassuring.

Carter shut the door quietly and left them to rest.

“Don’t touch anything.”

Root resisted the sudden, almost-overwhelming urge to put her hands all over everything in Carter’s car.

“Is this the part where you finally arrest me?” She’d been surprised by Carter’s request that she come along with her today, but Shaw was out of town on a mission with John, and Root had been worrying about her enough that she’d have taken any distraction.

“I seem to recall arresting you several times already, and letting you go every time.”

“True. So why am I here?”

Root couldn’t tell where they were headed, and the Machine hadn’t told her. But She hadn’t told her not to go, either.

“Got a case I’m working on. Thought you could lend me a hand. Make my life easier for once.”

Root turned to look at her, but her face gave away nothing. “Something you need some computer skills for?”

“Not particularly. Just a second set of eyes.”

Why her then? Admittedly the other two were out of town for a few days, but Fusco was still around.

“Guess I thought you might want something to do today with Shaw being away for the first time since…” Carter shrugged. “I can take you back if you want.”

Had the Machine put her up to this? Or had something Root had done finally tipped Carter’s opinion of her?

“No, it’s…I could use something to do.” Spending a day with Carter was much more appealing than it once had been. She chewed her lip and then added, “Thanks.”

“You can thank me by not making me regret this. No traumatizing my witnesses.”

“I’ll be on my best behavior.” Whatever that was. “So what’s this case about?”

“You sure you don’t need any more help tomorrow?” Carter asked.

Shaw sighed. She really wished they could bring Carter with them. “Not sure of that at all, but I do think the chances of us getting spotted early increase if more people go.” They only had one shot at taking down Samaritan.

“Doesn’t feel right letting you two go off into danger with no backup.”

“The Machine will be our backup, which is why you and John have to keep her safe.”

“Well, if you change your mind…”

“Noted. And thanks.” There was one thing, though, a problem she’d been turning over in her mind since Root had told her the code to take down Samaritan was done. “If something happens to me or the Machine, or both of us…” This was awkward.

Carter looked over towards the subway car that Root had retreated into after dinner.

“I’ll keep an eye on her for both of you, but only if you promise you’ll do your damn best to make sure I don’t have to.”

“Not a problem. I don’t have a death wish like those two.” Sometimes it felt like Root and Reese were having a competition to see who could almost die the most.

“On that note, in our situations are flipped, you make sure to keep an eye on John.”

“I’ll lock him in the subway car until he stops being an idiot.” She knew Carter had made arrangements for Taylor already.

Carter chuckled and they lapsed into companionable silence, both worried but maybe a little less worried than they’d been before.

“Feels like we’ve come full circle,” Carter said, looking around the all-night diner.

It was the same one where she’d first met Root and found out about the Machine, but this outing definitely was different. John was there, for starters, and Root had her chair shoved as close to Shaw’s as it would go and kept whispering things to her that made Shaw roll her eyes.

“Guess we have,” Shaw agreed. Next to her Root winced in a way that suggested Shaw had just kicked her under the table (Carter wasn’t sure why she would have, but she was sure she didn’t want to know). Some things hadn’t changed apparently.

“She says it’s actually more like a spiral,” Root said, once she’d recovered. “Back around to the same spot, but at a higher point. An upwards spiral.”

“I thought things usually spiraled downwards.” Reese sipped his coffee and froze in horror. Carter wondered if she should have warned him about all the sugar packets she’d seen Root dump in it (ten by her count).

“Matter of perspective, maybe,” she said. “From Samaritan’s perspective things definitely spiraled downwards.” Not that it had a perspective anymore.

Shaw flicked one of the few remaining sugar packets at Reese, who was still making horrible faces. “Way I see it, we won. It lost. We’re all alive. It’s not. Doesn’t matter if it’s a circle, or a spiral, or a different perspective. Facts are facts, and the facts are on our side.”

“That was surprisingly sentimental of you, Sameen,” Root teased.

Shaw flicked a sugar packet at her this time and Carter held back a smile.

Reese got up to go hunt down some fresh coffee, and Shaw and Root started a friendly bickering match about Shaw’s supposed sentimentality. Carter sat back in her chair with her (hopefully uncontaminated) coffee, glad to be a part of this small, strange group she’d adopted. Or maybe they’d adopted her. Either way, there was no one she’d rather be stuck with.

(AN: no animals were harmed during this fic. the dog got a bit soggy and chewed a hole in reese’s arm as revenge. later he found it a good home.

thank you to @ancillaryjurisprudence for the beta read).

[ukdamo]

The Quality of Silence is not Strain’d

One of mine...

This is a My-Space post from January, 2007. I post it today as a remembrance. Today is Holocaust Memorial Day.

I was at Meeting today, and then went for a swim.

Somehow, when I emerged from Meeting for Worship, and the Preparative Meeting  which followed it, I was Treasurer of PM. Ah well. I will have some distance to go before I emulate the dedication of our retiring Treasurer, Anne: 22 years! Mind you, with a well attended MfW consisting of 7 Friends, it's hard to hide in the corner when appointments come round!!

Preparative Meeting, is, as you might expect, the Meeting that prepares for the Monthly Meeting. In effect, PM is like a parish and MM like a diocese. Quakers belong to their MM but actually have their point of insertion in their local PM - which is where they go to sit in gathered silence each Sunday.

On the first Sunday of the month, after Meeting for Worship, we stay for a second meeting at which we discuss and order the mundane necessities of the PM and look to the Monthly Meeting, which follows on the Saturday after. Monthly Meeting is hosted by each PM in turn, so we each have a go at providing hospitality. MMs from all over the UK, send representatives to Meeting for Sufferings - a sort of 'Quaker National Committee' that orders and organises all Quaker Meetings and the charitable and educational work that Friends undertake.

Yesterday evening I was thinking about what I might do in Berlin. I will probably revisit some ground and see some new stuff. I am not likely to return to Sachsenhausen, where I spent a day ten years ago on my visit to Berlin. The camp has a special resonance for me, for it is, as far as I am aware, the only camp that has a specific memorial to the gay men whom the Nazis murdered in the many concentration camps. I wrote an extended reflective piece after that visit - too long to post as a blog, really - but I can e-mail to anyone who cares to read it. I will go to the recently completed Holocaust Museum and memorial and I'd like to go out to the villa at Wannsee, where the Final Solution received its most chilling impetus and organisation in a wintry January, 1942.

Some of the experiences from the Sachsenhausen visit found their way into a shorter reflective piece I wrote for publication in a Quaker magazine. I have posted that below.

The Quality of Silence is not Strain'd

The Siege of Leningrad (present day St. Petersburg) in the Great Patriotic War, as the Russians refer to W.W.II, lasted approximately nine hundred days. One of its most remarkable characteristics was the use made of the city's public-address system. On every major thoroughfare there were loudspeakers. To sustain the population - when food, warm clothing, shelter, fuel, and other necessaries of life were lacking - the speakers played music. When performers were too weak to play or sing recordings were used. When they were unavailable, a ticking metronome was placed in front of a microphone. Anything was better than silence. On the one occasion that the metronome stopped, so did hearts, but after some hours it recommenced its tick-tock and existence continued. A meagre existence, life in the midst of death, but life nonetheless. Life measured by the absence of silence, "I hear, therefore I am". Silence became a synonym for extinction, defeat, the end of future possibilities: silence was equated with death.

Silence = Death: that was the proclamation on the striking posters produced by ACT-UP, a gay group formed in America in the early 1980's to protest against the cavalier attitude of the US government of the thousands of young men who were dying of AIDS. In part due to their campaigning, the government began to take the disease seriously and funded research into its causes and its treatment. There can be no doubt that ACT-UP intended its posters to be read as the literal truth. Like the citizens of Leningrad forty years earlier, these activists recognised that there was little between them and the abyss. Making a noise was an assertion of vitality, staking a claim on life, an insistence on being respected and valued; "I speak, therefore I am".

Present day trends in our society suggest that noise is becoming the background radiation to life. We have piped music in shops, in toilets; it pours out of TVs and radios, hi-fi systems, car stereos. We have noisy machinery woven into the web of our existence. Even the computer I am composing on beeps and whirrs, clicks and sighs. There are increasingly few quiet places in our lives. Sometimes I feel as if they have been banished, taking sanity and solitude with them. It is difficult for Friends to make a response to a society that scarcely tolerates or comprehends silence but, instead, avoids it, minimizes it, and fears it as a harbinger of death.

In Britain Yearly Meeting, silence is revered as something creative, spiritual, fecund. We regard it as vital to our flourishing as persons. Quaker Faith and Practice offers -

• 2.13 True silence....is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment. (William Penn, 1699) • 2.16 Silence...may be an intensified pause, a vitalised hush, a creative quiet, an actual moment of mutual and reciprocal correspondence with God. (Rufus Jones, 1937)

This Quaker perspective appears diametrically opposed to the examples offered above. What does the one have to do with the other? The recent protest by OutRage! during the Easter sermon of the Archbishop of Canterbury is surely antithetical to the gathered stillness of a Meeting for Worship?

Like ACT-UP before it, OutRage! intends to focus attention by being noisy and visible. I am reminded of the advice offered by Dylan Thomas, "Do not go gentle into that good night...." There's no serenity and peace, it asserts, in the graveyard, especially when arrival there may be said to be premature. Faced with this din, I avow that I think OutRage! does valuable service when it jolts us out of smugness and comfort. Yet, paradoxically perhaps, I find silence to be restitutive. More than that, I find it creative. Sometimes I experience it as deep dark soil where precious things germinate and grow. Whilst remaining convinced that a silent OutRage! would be worse than useless I am equally convinced that outrage which does not arise spontaneously from the rich, fertile earth of reflective silence is merely a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal, the shrieking of a demagogue. I don't believe Peter Tatchell to be a demagogue.

I further sense that if, as is commonly held, silence does indeed mark the end of possibilities, then it may also mark the beginning of possibilities. If we make a foray into the world of physics, silence may be compared with a Möbius strip. This marvel has curious properties: it is a loop which has only one side and, when divided, produces two interlocking rings. My imagination and experience suggest to me that silence manifests equally odd characteristics. It seems to present but one face yet, when tested to destruction, it yields two linked, though paradoxical, conclusions. It is a Janus, facing in two directions at once, a quantum effect, which makes parallel lines meet. If silence = death, it also = life.

Leaving physics behind us, let's turn to look at sex. (Always a winner with the reader). Here we can find an example that suggests that the apparently contradictory qualities that we experience as silence are not really opposed. Many centuries ago, Augustine of Hippo (it is reported) noted that after intercourse every creature is sad. Post coitum omne animal triste, as the dictionaries of quotation have it. Augustine, if indeed it was he, was commenting upon observed and experienced behaviour. What he wished to convey by his epigram was that at the moment of most complete union the individual nonetheless apprehended that something was missing. It was precisely the inability to seize and hold this something which Augustine (and many others since) lamented. Augustine would have named this something "God", contending that humans are restless until they find their home in God. To be as humanly fulfilled as possible, in that peak experience, still left a gap, a yearning for something more. "There's gotta be something better than this!" as the song has it. The experience allowed a glimpse of something transcendent.

Let's stick with the topic but listen to a different version. The French are, by reputation, ardent lovers. They have also provided western philosophy with some of its keenest thinkers. It is no surprise, therefore, that the French language yields another example of the connection between sex/death and that something extra. The French term for orgasm is "le petit mort" - the little death. The association of this moment with something that takes you out of self and with finitude and limitation is even more explicit here than in Augustine's thought. The paradox brings two opposites together: the moment of climax - when, arguably, we are most fully alive and ecstatically alive - and death. I feel that this helps illuminate the dark corners where silence can be equated with both the end of possibilities and their beginning. The experience of Friends is not necessarily opposed to that of the wider society. Silence may be experienced as either the end of possibilities or their beginning, or both simultaneously, depending on the circumstances in which it presents itself to us. Our experience may be one of desolation and loss, or it may be filled with the exuberance of ecstatic hopes for fulfilment. But what of the silence of the grave? It is there that I now turn.

A visit to a Nazi concentration camp, KZ Sachsenhausen, proved a seminal experience for me. I travelled to Berlin, and from there to Oranienburg (where the camp is situated), to place a remembrance at the memorial to the gay men who were worked to death, beaten to death, tortured or shot by the Nazis. The memorial plaque puts things very starkly: it says that gays were "silenced to death". On a cold and snow-raked February day in 1996, I found the experience of that reality almost overwhelming. My journal entry notes, "I am possessed by the unshakable conviction that no-one should visit at a pretty time of year - it would be sacrilegious". The wintry desolation seemed appropriate. It continues, "A party of British teenagers came in through the gatehouse. They were chatty, boisterous, as kids are. But their voices grated on my ears - even more than the shrill rooks. Some places in the world must only ever be silent places. Not because noise is a bad thing! No, ACT-UP is right when it says Silence = Death. But in Sachsenhausen the silence is needful: it is what makes it permissible to be noisy elsewhere. If the potent and clamorous silence of that place is ever trodden underfoot, then the laughter, songs, protests, whistles and dancing that enliven and affirm us wherever we are will be themselves in danger of being silenced forever". In that horrendous place, I experienced an extended "moment of mutual and reciprocal correspondence with God": we howled in anguish. We were united, too, in a resolute defiance. For the spirit-in-me perceived, however dimly, that there is a hope which is not annihilated by death. Silence offers possibilities as well as the end of possibilities, life as well as death, creativity as well as extinction.

I recognised that February day that silence was a living thing, like remembrance itself, and that it carried with it both pain and possibilities. To insist on it being either one thing or the other was to debase it, to render it insipid monochrome rather than glorious Technicolor. In that charnel-house, more than in any other place I have yet visited, I was brought to the realisation that I must labour hard to sustain the complexity of silence. It presents awkward problems, allowing a creative tension between the different characteristics of silence to co-exist, because the natural tendency (as astro-physicists know) is for complex states to collapse into simpler, more stable forms. Readers can demonstrate this at home by spinning a coin. What saves me from adopting a seductively simple yet despairing attitude to silence is the intimation of something beyond the point where noise, and possibilities, stop. For I am convinced that they stop short. This is the crucial difference between those who fear silence and those who reverence it. For the latter, something glints in the dark beyond the margins and gives assurance that silence is not a void. The transcendent quality of silence, which the visit to Sachsenhausen made real for me, encourages me to embrace that something and encourages me to welcome the quiet, rather than feel threatened by it. Even death, with its great maw, cannot swallow everything up; I looked those monstrosities full in the face and I still dance, more exuberantly than ever! The silence of the grave does not have the last word. If ever I feel overwhelmed by the effort required to see beyond the surface, tempted to opt for an unidimensional and impoverished silence - which betokens only death and not life - I find reading the following poem, by Brian Wren, of some help. I simply substitute the word silence for the word 'peace' whenever the latter occurs in the text. May it work for you.

Say No to PEACE if what they mean by 'peace' is the quiet misery of hunger the frozen stillness of fear, the silence of broken spirits, the unborn hopes of the oppressed.

Tell them that PEACE is the shouting of children at play, the babble of tongues set free, the thunder of dancing feet, and a father's voice singing.

d xx

[writesandramblings]

The Captain’s Secret - p.85

“I Could Never Be Your Woman”

A/N: Takes place during episode 13, "What's Past Is Prologue."

Also, small update on the read more issue, seems it’s some relation to tumblr disagreeing with some new encoding update Google did? I’m posting using Edge, maybe this will help somehow.

Full Chapter List Part 1 - Objects in Motion << 84 - Blue Moon 86 - I’ll Dream a Nation of You >>

Standing in the back of the hangar, the blueish lights casting them both in an icy pall, Lorca stared at Petrellovitz with an expression that was part grimace, part regret. Too long had he imagined this moment and in none of his imaginings had it looked like this. Now that he was standing in the moment, he wondered why he had bothered to imagine it at all.

The way Petrellovitz stared back at him felt like death. Dead eyes, dead expression, dead skin, and the death in her went far deeper than that. There was a feeling of festering rot that seemed to emanate from some pit where her heart should have been. She was not as dead as their Michael Burnham, but her trademark unearthliness came close.

"I found Michael," said Lorca, his head nodding slightly and mostly automatically. He took a small breath. "She's dead." It was barely more than a whisper. For a moment, his face registered grief and he was relieved they were in the far back of the hangar and he was standing with his back to the rest of the world.

"Ah," said Petrellovitz. She ceased scratching at her arm and pulled the sleeve of her jumpsuit down to cover the bloodied mess of wounds there, then began digging at the blood under her fingernails with her teeth.

Lorca searched her for some indication she had registered this information in any meaningful sense and found none. The lack of response left him feeling momentarily at a loss.

Seeing his vague confusion, Petrellovitz shrugged faintly. "Did you want me to cry?"

Lorca had not expected that, but he had expected something, damn it. "I was thinking I might kill you. You killed her." It should have been angry, and there was an intensity in his words, but of desperation more than rage. The words were also, taken at face value, untrue, yet they held a truth within them. Had Michael Burnham never met Emellia Petrellovitz, things would not have ended up as they had.

"And yet, here we are." She was taunting him.

"Only one thing's keeping you alive right now."

"You need me for something."

Lorca shook his head. "That's not it."

"Michael wouldn't want you to?"

"She liked you," admitted Lorca, "but no." It was satisfying seeing some measure of confusion spread to Petrellovitz. Her ignorance gave him power over her and a renewed sense of confidence.

"She loved me," Petrellovitz replied. "I gave her things you never could."

The sigh that hissed through Lorca's teeth was on some level amused. That was what he had been to Michael relative Georgiou. Petrellovitz thought she could adapt the sentiment for herself. She was wrong. "You were a useful toy. Playtime's over now. That universe you sent us to, Petra? I found us in it. Different versions of us. Which means I've got another you waiting in the wings. You are entirely expendable."

Petrellovitz only stared, enduringly dead-eyed. "Another me? There is no other me. It doesn't matter how many universes there are. There's only one me." It was the defining difference between her and Mischkelovitz: while Mischkelovitz yearned to be part of a group or partnership, Petrellovitz tolerated only singularity. She had gone so far as to kill every other person involved in the QORYA project to ensure it.

"That other you is the only reason you're still standing here. You have a lot in common. Thanks to her, I finally understand what it is made you. I know your secret, Petra. So believe me when I say I don't need you, but if you play nice, I might have a project for you."

Lorca reached into his pocket and pulled out Allan's tooth.

"They've got time travelers in that universe, and this? Is some sort of failsafe for when they get caught. If you're good, I might just give it to you."

He could see she wanted it. The glimmer in her dead eyes was the closest she came to looking alive. Her greed for new advancements and technology was unmatched and she would do anything to obtain such research initiatives for herself.

"So, I have your attention?"

Her insolence vanished in an instant. "Yes, captain."

"Good." He slipped the tooth back into his pocket and smiled. Incentivization worked wonders with her, just as it did Mischkelovitz. The incentives required were orders of magnitude different for each of them; Petrellovitz would no doubt be infuriated to learn the other her could be convinced to work on something for the price of a cookie.

Her eyes followed the tooth as it disappeared into his pocket, entirely fixated on it. Her mind, however, was working several angles at once. "How did you get back?"

"Ship outfitted with a spore displacement drive."

"Ship class?"

"Crossfield."

She looked down, thinking through the implications. "Adapted to accommodate a spore dispersal system, creating a mycelial field large enough to encompass an entire ship. It's what I would have done if they hadn't captured me."

"I know," said Lorca, feeling a sort of pride. "Where do you think I got the idea?"

Petrellovitz looked genuinely annoyed at that. The idea that her intended advancements had been taken from her galled her, even though they were not her advancements in the first place. They were applications of technology she had stolen from Stamets.

"Where is it now?"

"All in good time, Petra. We have more pressing matters. I need you to disable the emperor's control of the Charon's systems."

"Copy," said Petrellovitz, immediately striding past him to the nearest computer console. In the other universe, she was a biomedical engineer with a working knowledge of theoretical physics, her specializations designed to complement the rest of the QORYA project's subjects and support Milosz.

In this universe, there were no other QORYA subjects. She was them all. She was Milosz's theoretical engineering, she was Groves' computer systems knowledge, and also Danica Stewart's robotics and several other specialties possessed by children whose fates in this world had been equally grim. In fact, about the only thing she wasn't was a medical doctor or biomedical specialist, because either thing would have entailed on some level caring about the welfare of others.

The breadth of her skills and knowledge were frightening, but that was not the reason Lorca suppressed a nervous shudder as he watched her go to work. Looking at her, at the scars on her face and neck and hands, he was reminded of the scars on the rest of her.

He could have gone his whole life without knowing those scars were there.

2250.

She came to him in his ready room and said, "I hate women who use sex as an excuse to stab people in the back. Anyone who cannot earn their position through skill and competency does not deserve that position. However, as a result of this ethos, I have not myself done it, and as you have a reputation in this regard, I am proposing it to you if you are amenable."

He agreed, once the shock of the circumstance wore off, because if she were going to kill him, she would have done so already and in one of a dozen ways that highlighted her scientific prowess.

His requirement was that it be one and done, no expectation of anything further or implication that this meant anything more than what it was. She entirely agreed to this. "I'd prefer it that way," were her exact words.

"Any special requests?" he asked, because whatever she lacked in experience she more than made up for in candor and he half-hoped she'd stumbled across some shamelessly inventive or niche practice that had formed the impetus of this request. He did not expect the response she gave.

"Make it hurt so much I never want to do it again." At his shocked silence to that, she clarified, "It's the best way to ensure my ongoing purity of focus."

He hesitated, not liking the turn this was taking, and she attacked this perceived weakness by taunting him: "The great Captain Lorca can't muster the courage."

"You're insane," he told her.

"Surely you've figured that out by now," she replied and stared at him with her crazily mismatched, unblinking eyes.

He took a fortune cookie from the bowl and held it up. "This'll hurt."

She smiled at that. "I should hope it does."

It did, but not the way either of them intended. That evening, at the agreed-upon time, she arrived and promptly began to undress without fanfare or any interest in the drink he offered.

She had so many scars. They covered almost every inch of her. As Lorca looked at them he wondered where they had all come from, who they had come from. Were they accidents? Were they intentional? Perhaps some were her own work. It was hard to get that many scars without adding some yourself. He tried to focus on the scars to the exclusion of all else and give her what she wanted.

It was too much. Not for Petrellovitz, for Lorca. He withdrew from her and went to the wall, leaning against it with one hand and breathing heavily, his back turned towards her so she could not see his face.

"What is wrong with you," said Petrellovitz, trying to incite his wrath. "Any other man would be glad for the chance to disavow a woman of the instinct to stab him in a shared bed."

Lorca did not answer. He bent his arm and pressed his forehead against it, eyes squeezing shut and fingers tightening into a fist. He was not enjoying this at all. It reminded him too much of being somewhere else, of being with someone else, and the rising terror and panic of that person made his heart flutter with palpitations at memories he had long thought buried.

"Maybe it would help if I had a weapon so you perceived me as a threat."

"Petra, shut up!" He tried but could not rouse anything from within himself that would merit returning to the bed.

"Well, this is disappointing," said Petrellovitz after a few minutes, sitting up and resting her hands on her knees. "I should have asked Michael."

Lorca whirled on her. "Don't you dare." He would not have Petrellovitz spoil this for Michael, even if he knew on some level that Michael would have a much easier time providing Petra with what she was asking for and would probably do so without hesitation or heart palpitations or any of the unsettling things Lorca was currently experiencing.

Petrellovitz smiled and perked up, glad for the anger, mistaking it for common jealousy. "That's right, you want to keep Michael all for yourself, don't you? I bet she's better with a broomstick than you are with—"

Lorca lunged for the bed and backhanded Petrellovitz across the cheek with the full force of his arm. She toppled over onto the mattress, blood spitting out the corner of her mouth as her lower lip sliced across her teeth. He grabbed her by the shoulder, pulled his hand back in a fist, and held it ready to strike.

The second strike did not come. He released her. "Get out," he said coldly. She reached for her clothes. He wanted her gone sooner than that, so he snatched her clothes up with one hand, grabbed her arm with the other, and dragged her to the door, throwing both her and the garments into the hall. She stood in the hallway, naked and attracting stares from his guards. She seemed utterly unbothered by this state of affairs. She licked the blood on her lips, picked up her clothes, and walked away without putting them on.

The door slid shut. Lorca sank to the ground beside it. He covered his face with his hands and shook. He did want Michael all to himself, but not for the reasons Petrellovitz thought. He wanted Michael because the way Michael looked at him made him feel like anything was possible, like the person he pretended to be was real.

No, it was more than that. She made him feel like he wasn't pretending at all.

After a moment, the shaking subsided. He dropped his hands from his face and stood and went to the window.

Michael was out there somewhere. There was an ocean of stars between them, but the stars were not between them. The stars were something they shared. As he looked out at the myriad points of light, it felt like she was standing next to him.

Larsson was still at the door, as ordered. Lorca took him aside. "We might have use for that... pineapple." He hated saying the word. "Where is it?"

"Depends," said Larsson. "Where's Lalana?"

"Nearby and safe," promised Lorca. "Hidden, and we're gonna keep it that way. Understand?"

"Yah. I left the pineapple in O'Malley's workshop. Don't know it's still there, that's where they got me, but that's where I last had it." It was not a part of Lorca's intended plan, so its loss was not a critical blow, but it would have been a handy addition. "O'Malley's dead, by the way."

"Is he now," said a voice behind Lorca. Petrellovitz, inserting herself into the conversation. Larsson gawked at the sight of her.

Petrellovitz was equally appraising of Larsson because she knew for a fact Einar Larsson died aboard the Buran, which could only mean she was looking at a Larsson from another universe.

"I'm sorry for your loss," offered Larsson.

"What loss? This is excellent news. All those times he had me on his table, promising he'd break me, and now he never will." She smiled with delight. "I win!"

Larsson looked at Petrellovitz like she was crazy, which she was, and was disturbed by the fact in this universe O'Malley was his sister's tormentor, not her protector.

"Just hold tight," Lorca instructed, sending Larsson to wait over by the door again and turning his attention to Petrellovitz. "Report?"

She outlined for a moment the computer status. She had disabled universal systems access, restricting both sides to more limited control, which significantly balanced the playing field between the sides and prevented one side from, say, venting the atmosphere on the other.

The next two steps would entail leveling that playing field further. First, Petrellovitz had a few more things to say.

"She was my favorite person, you know. My best friend. My only friend. Did you cry for her?" It was utterly bizarre hearing any part of Colonel O'Malley's words coming out of Petrellovitz's mouth. The two were universes apart and somehow shared an intrinsic commonality. Petrellovitz searched Lorca's eyes for an answer to her question, but rather than complete the survey, she declared what she wanted the answer to be. "Good. At least one of us can."

It was almost verbatim what she had said following their unfortunate encounter, minus the references to Michael. Back then, his response had been a jeering negation of her suggestion because, as awful as he had felt in that moment, he had not cried.

This time, his response was to smile in quiet confidence. He had cried and did not care if she knew it. Besides, he had found his own use for those words while unmaking the incident with Petrellovitz and remaking it with the other version of her. Now when he looked at Petrellovitz, he saw Mischkelovitz with tears in her eyes. Enough to fill an ocean.

"Keep on that computer," he told her, then summoned Landry and Larsson to go over their tactical objectives. "When I give the signal, Larsson, you take the package here."

"There's at least one battalion between here and there." Larsson traced his finger across the intended route.

"We'll take care of it," Lorca assured him.

Larsson frowned, knowing that could only mean a few things, and said, "Too bad Allan's not here. He'd call this 'living history.' Probably get a real kick out of it."

"Hm," was all Lorca said, smiling unreservedly at the fact Allan was never going to get a kick out of anything again. "You have your orders, let's move out. Petra—"

Lorca turned to the console where Petrellovitz was supposed to be and found it deserted. He scanned the crowd. "Where's Petra?"

Landry joined Lorca in this endeavor. "Has anyone seen Lieutenant Commander Petrellovitz!" she shouted.

Shrugs, confusion. No one had. Petrellovitz was gone.

Part 86