#and one of the emergency phones— the farthest one from any others— has been broken for longer than I've been here with no expectation of

[hedgewitchnecromancer]

My college has kicked everyone out of the main dining hall for the entire weekend so that somebody can host a banquet in there. This includes the kitchen staff, other than the ones setting up the banquet, which means all the specialized areas, including the allergy-free area, the pizza ovens, and the ice cream machine and freezers (less important but the most popular thing in the entire dining hall) are completely off-limits. This is our only functioning dining hall on campus. Technically we have two, but the second one is only called a dining hall because it has access to the main one, not because it can function on its own. It's used, fun fact, mainly as event space, like banquets, and is not designed to be the main dining hall for 1500 kids. It can't even physically fit the entirety of the crowds that come at the busy times of the day!

But nope. Why would a college halfway to the brink of failure due to, among other things, incredibly bad relations between the students and ground-level staff and the administration, consider doing something that won't anger the student body even more? That's just absurd!

[jane-the-zombie]

Beached Zombie || Morgan & Jane

TIMING: Present! PARTIES: @mor-beck-more-problems + @jane-the-zombie SUMMARY: “i just want you guys know Meri has spent at least half of this jane chatzy going ‘mOrGANN’” - Kat. OR Jane finds an undead body on the beach. Discoveries were made.

Morgan didn’t sleep. The heavy, cotton-covered oblivion she was used to falling into when she reached her lowest lows no longer came for her at night, no matter how still she lay or how long she kept her eyes shut against the dark. There was only so long she could try to make her dead chest match Deirdre’s breathing, only so many times she could lay down at the bottom of the pool and reach for that memory in Karen’s backyard of being still in a way that was okay. And the grass, sometimes, was too prickly--or at least, Morgan remembered the grass being prickly too well to rest in it. And so she would walk elsewhere, at night to pass the time, or the hours during the day that had to be marked somehow. So sometimes, Morgan went out. Sometimes just to the streets around Deirdre’s neighborhood. Today, the beach. With her body plastered to the cooling sand as evening came, and the tide barely kissing her at all as it withdrew. She remembered how she’d been held here the last time she’d visited:  their first date to see the sunrise, and the stories she’d read aloud and the sand in her hair when they rolled to the ground kissing like they had just invented it. She remembered Galveston and the pungent smell of the salty sea, the brine on her skin. She’d fallen asleep like that so often, cradled and contentedly nowhere. If she was still enough for long enough, would she find her way back to that? Could something stick to her long enough to take her there, or somewhere else.

Morgan spotted a runner out of her dead, unblinking eye and thought about sighing as they came to a stop, looming over her. She waited, drooping inside with disappointment, and waited until their hand was hovering just over her body. “Boo!” She deadpanned.

Jane almost fell flat on her face when she saw the body during her evening run. She was too hungover for this. Days where she wasn’t working or practicing some “new extreme sport” were usually spent bar hopping and having fun that way. She was too old to bar hop - god she missed it when bartenders didn’t recognize all their customers. Really, she was missing not being in a small town. Portland was the farthest thing from the largest city in the world, but there were more things to do, at least. The only thing keeping her from trying to transfer again was the fact she just signed her lease and cases here were interesting. Jane almost felt a little bad lamenting her own situation while approaching a goddamn dead body. Clearly other people had it worse. Other people actually died when something happened to them. Jane cursed as she skidded to a stop near the body, quickly doing once over. Definitely dead, or close to it. Damn. She was going to be here all day processing the scene. Who dumped a fucking body on the beach? The woman didn't look like she had washed up. She had already sank to her knees, one hand reaching for her phone, the other going to check the pulse - “Boo.” Jane let out a noise somewhere between a shriek and a loud expletive, falling backward onto her ass. Her eyes narrowed. Her first thought went to public disturbance, but she wasn’t really in the mood to work in the first place. “What the hell is wrong with you?” Jane snapped. “Get up.”

Morgan stayed death still as the woman toppled. She was curious in some new, morbid way whether or not the woman would think she had imagined the whole thing. One of those ooo-woo coincidences/hallucinations/hypotheticals that just couldn’t be anything so stupid and sad as, woops this girl died but she’s still here and kinda broken. This bitter thought gave Morgan a new idea. She waited a few more moments, just in case doubt would set in, then she flopped up to a sit and reached out for the woman’s arm for an assist. As she staggered to her feet, pulling herself up, Morgan twisted as hard as she could until her shoulder came loose. It wasn’t hard. All she had to do was forget the shoulder was hers and forget the idea of hurt. There was a dull ache in the spot where the bones had come loose, she didn’t feel nothing, but if she were herself, if she were alive, she would have been screaming. “Oh, gee…” she deadpanned. “Ow.”

Despite herself, Jane reached to help the woman up. “Honestly, I was about four seconds away from calling in a dead - What are you doing?!” Jane’s voice raised in half panic and exasperation as she let the woman go. “Are you insane?!” There was a time when Jane dislocated her shoulder at a rock climbing gym, and even in all her adrenaline filled bullshit, that still hurt like hell and she had a half a fit about it while getting loaded into the ambulance. “Are you - Are you not in any pain?” Her face twisted in confusion, staring at the woman like she had three heads. The deadpanned ow… Was she on something? Drugs? No, she showed no signs of that. Her eyes narrowed and she had half a mind to twist her arm back herself. “We need to put your arm back.” Unless she was driving yet another person to the emergency room.

“What do you think I am?” Morgan asked. She shook her arm free of the woman’s grap and looked at it dangling from its socket. She poked it until it swung like a pendulum at her side. Her muscles strained at being pushed in this way and the ache was so close to sharp it was almost pleasant. Morgan approximated how her shoulder ought to belong and pulled it back in place, tested her work with a stretch, and waggled her fingers in front of the woman as if to prove everything was fine now. “Guess that's the problem solved,” she said, a forced hollow cheer in her voice. “Do you need something to feel good about this, or are we done here?”

There was a sort of morbid curiosity in watching the woman work her shoulder. Jane almost winced sympathetically, but the words what do you think I am were lodged directly in her brain. “What do I think you are?” Jane repeated, raising an eyebrow. Memories of Jason showing her how his bones didn’t break and how things like chopping off a wrist or two didn’t hurt. Actually, she was fairly certain Jason never felt pain - not really, anyhow. She was hesitant to bring that up though, until her shoulder was properly - oh. Jane was going to offer to set it herself. “Are we done here?” Jane repeated, pinching the bridge of her nose. “No, we’re not done here. First of all, do you think it’s funny laying there pretending to be dead? Because it isn’t. And second… Can I check your pulse, please?”

“Who says I was pretending?” Morgan replied darkly. “And who are you supposed to be, exactly? I’m pretty sure I don’t owe anything to some woman off the street. I didn’t ask for your help with anything. You interrupted my nap.” She grimaced at the thought. If only she could nap. If she could take a break from everything for even just an hour, no haze, no hunger, no death blanket. She deflated, tired, in her own way, and ready to be home. Whatever she had wanted to find here, it wasn’t going to turn up today.  “And it was kind of funny,” she added sheepishly.

“What do you mean?” Jane said, quickly. Jason had insisted that he was dead even though she couldn’t really see how. He was a functioning human, and suddenly his diet made way more sense than it had during the time they had been together. “You were the one playing a bad joke, and I could very well -” What, arrest her? Public disturbance. Get a slap on the wrist and she’d be out by dinner time. That was an abuse of power and way too much fucking work though. And more importantly, Jane tilted her head slightly. “ - anyway. Are you dead, then? A zombie? Is that what you’re saying?”

“You’re avoiding my question, and I don’t think there’s anything against laying on the sand before dark,” Morgan said with a huff. She backed away from the woman, arms folded over her chest. “I’m--I’m a what now?” She laughed, shrill and nervous in a way that she really, really hoped sounded more incredulous. Ha-ha-ha-the-very-IDEA and l-o-l-that’s not REAL! “I’m sorry, what now? You--obviously watch way too many movies. Where would you even come up with something like that, huh?” It was a good thing, at least, that the dead didn’t sweat, because as she scrutinized the jogger, she couldn’t help but feel like she had pushed too hard to seem convincing now.

“Jane Wu. New in town. Police detective.” Jane said, folding her arms over her chest as she stared at Morgan as she started laughing that unconvincing laugh. The kind of laugh that screamed hahahaha I’m definitely not guilty!!! Don’t look at me!!! That kind of laugh. She was now more certain that she was right. That she just found someone else that wasn’t her shitty ex that was like this. Jane held up her hands, defensively. “Whoa, it’s alright, you can save the song and dance.” She reached up moving her hair to show the bite scar on her neck. “See? I’ve uh, met others like you. Clearly. That can do that thing with your arm. And I bet you have no pulse too. Am I correct?”

Oh, stars. A cop. Morgan grimaced and stepped further away again. This was the last person she needed looking into her life. Between the dead magic and living with Deirdre, and toppling into undeath thanks to her best friend, Morgan had plenty to hide. But that, as it turned out, was not her main concern. Jane moved back her hair and revealed a wide scar in the blurry shape of a mouth on her neck. Morgan’s facade fell and she slowly lifted the cuff on her wrist. Their scars weren’t the same, exactly, but there were mottled impressions of human-like teeth, the same hungry shape. “But you’re…” Acting pretty normal. Breathing. She grabbed Jane’s wrist and pressed down hard, searching for a pulse of her own. “A-are you breathing just for the fun of it or what? Are you--not dead yet? How do you know all this then?”

Jane curiously peered at Morgan’s wris. Sure enough, there was the bite mark scarred onto her skin. Jason’s had been on his leg. He never did tell her how he was turned or how he died. HE didn’t tell her a lot of things. Morgan snatched her wrist, pressing down hard on her wrist to find a pulse. “Ouch!” Jane hissed, trying to yank her hand back. “Hey, easy! Use my neck if you want to feel my pulse it’s easier. No, I’m not dead yet. The person that bit me didn’t mean too.” She said, backing up slightly. “He freaked out and told me about it. And showed me.” And then she dumped his ass for good, but that seemed a little too personal. “What’s your name? How long have you been… like this?”

Morgan let go and folded her arms again, guilty for real now. She hadn’t thought she was pressing hard enough to hurt, but there was a red mark on Jane’s skin where her thumb had been, and for all she knew it would be bruising up by the end of the day. “Didn’t--didn’t mean to? What do you mean he didn’t mean to? How do you ‘accidentally’ do this?” Even Remmy who ‘hadn’t meant to’ had still very much meant to. Teeth breaking skin was no joke on the effort-meter. “I’m...Morgan,” she said quietly. “Were you called onto the scene of that crash on Main Street? Some of the debris…” She touched her stomach, remembering the pain. “Someone was with me and they...did this.” She went stiff. Remmy wasn’t something she wanted to think about right now. “I’m sorry about your wrist. I don’t...feel right. I didn’t mean for it to hurt. I...couldn’t tell.”

Jane ran a hand down her face, shaking her head. “It’s - we were - he lost control, for a second, I guess. We were in a relationship.” Jane tried not to think about it, really, it was easier not too. Focusing on living forever and knowing that she could enjoy every ounce of the adrenaline without the fear of death was easier. She wanted that far more than she wanted to be bitter over some spilt relationship. She shook the thoughts off, listening to Morgan, and her heart sank. “No, I wasn’t called to that crash.” That awful crash on Main Street had turned Morgan into this at the last moment. Morgan wasn’t taking it well at all. Jane pressed her lips together in a thin line before waving it off her wrist. “Don’t worry about my wrist, I’ve certainly had worse. You… don’t sound happy. I’m sorry that… this happened to you. If it wasn’t what you wanted.”

“You mean during sex,” Morgan said, her face falling. She hadn’t even thought about that. She’d been too depressed and afraid of Deirdre realizing how different she was to worry about sex. But if Deirdre did somehow want her still or if she did dig up the rest of herself and come back, there was going to be sex. Sex where she might somehow bite her, hurt her with something worse than a bruise that healed in a matter of hours. “Oh-my-god, he bit you during sex, didn’t he. Had he not eaten? Were you doing--I don’t know, other biting type things? Or--” Morgan stopped herself before she got carried away and covered her face, mortified. This was probably not something Jane wanted to talk about. She could only imagine how frightening it must have been. But-- “No,” she said, lowering her hands to look at Jane with disgust. “No I am not happy. And what do you mean ‘if’? Did your boyfriend not explain everything to you? Who would want this? No one should want this!”

“He didn’t exactly explain that bit, it’s a bit of a story,” Jane said, rubbing the spot on her neck. She didn’t get a chance to tell Morgan that everything had been fine until there was blood everywhere, but that was a whole long story. Jane hadn’t even been that bothered, other than trying to stop the bleeding. She’d been laughing at him because he was freaking out. But Morgan’s face turned to disgust, and she realized that she had said the wrong thing to Morgan. Crap. She held her hands up slightly, taking a step back to give her enough space. “He explained everything. I made him. Explain it to me, I mean,” Jane said. She needed to be careful not to upset Morgan - after all, she just died. And she clearly hadn’t wanted to become a zombie to begin with, nor did she have the time to process it like she did. “I’ve accepted what’s going to happen to me when I inevitably die. I -” Jane lowered her hands, cutting herself off with a slight shrug. “I’m going to live forever.”

Morgan stepped away from Jane. She didn’t know if she was insulted or outraged or afraid for her. It was the most feeling she’d had since she died and she didn’t know what to do with it. “I hope you dumped his ass because that is not what this is,” she said. “What, you think this is Twilight for the Walking Dead? This isn’t about forever, Jane. This is death! Have you seen a dead body? That is what we are! I hurt you, Jane, because I can’t feel anything! My death is so thick around me, it’s like I’m being smothered by a goddamn comforter. I can’t even find half the person I used to be right now and I haven’t slept since a fucking rod went through my abdomen and impaled me on the ground. Can you seriously tell me you’ve thought about what it might take to miss something that awful? You don’t know anything. I hope you’re a lot older than me when you do.” She turned away and started up the shore.

Jane wasn’t sure if she should follow Morgan, she seemed fairly angry about the whole thing. Understandable, because this wasn’t what she wanted. She didn’t have the time to decide if that’s what she wanted. After a moment's hesitation, Jane followed up the shore. “I’m sorry,” she said. “That it happened to you.” That’s all there really was to say, though she was certain Morgan didn’t want to hear it. Most didn’t after something bad happened to them. “And you’re right to be angry. You should be. It’s just that I’ve - I’ve done my grieving over what’s to come. It’s been a while since this happened to me.” Hell, if living forever - being around to see how everything changed? That took sacrifice. And it was a sacrifice she was willing to make - well, it was a sacrifice she had no choice in making anymore. Why bother denying the inevitable? Jane patted her pockets for a second. “Hey, wait a second.” Jane asked, catching up. She found one of her cards, and held it out. “It’s my card. If you want to talk more about this... not on a beach after you’ve played a prank on me. Or anything else.”

Morgan stopped at Jane’s call and turned over her shoulder. She took the card and squeezed it between her fingers. She didn’t know if she wanted anything from her or if talking to someone who thought this was all somehow going to be okay would help her feel any better. But she could bring herself to turn the offer away. And-- “Okay, I know I just yelled, but what about the sex thing?” She mumbled, embarrassed at how callous the fixation sounded out loud. “Can we talk about that later too?”

She gave her card to a lot of people - particularly those she knew were going to need more help later. Victims of assault, robberies, etc… This was a little different, but Jane could at least recognize that someone was struggling. “It’s alright that you yelled,” Jane said, shrugging slightly as she stuffed her hands into her pockets. Her eyebrow furrowed slightly. Sex? She wanted to talk about sex? Like in general or to her specific incident. Dear lord. “I - Yes. Of course we can talk about the sex thing,” Jane said carefully. “Contact me any time, I always have my phone on me and I’ll always make time.” She paused for a moment, before adding.” And for the record, I did. Break up with him.”

[lovetvshowsposts]

A Variro Story CH 2

Better late than never here you go @sinningcookie and friends:

Hiro stomps down the hall with determination on his face.  He heads toward the community labs where the freshman work on projects.  They work there until they show that they have earned a lab of their own.  May that be with their achievements, talents or sometimes just not dropping out from stress. He turns the corner leaving him a straight shot to the lab.  He could hear squishy vinyl rubbing together informing him that Baymax was shuffling behind him.  Once Hiro reaches the double glass doors opening both of them on his quest to find his target.  He looked around the different cubical style labs that were on either side the room. As soon as he knew Baymax had caught up both went through the doors.

As Hiro walks around looking to his right and left.  Seeing many freshmen working on projects.  He was slightly impressed by one girl’s robot.  Until it took two steps and caught on fire.  He flinches backward from the sight.  Before the fire could spread the emergency fire extinguishers that were around the cubical went off covering everything including the student in white fluffy foam.

After the girl quickly says “I’m ok” Hiro continues down the room.  He starts to notice he is getting near end seeing more and more cubicles were empty.  He was about to leave to search one of the other labs until he heard some clanking in the distance.  He follows the noise to a cubical on the farthest corner.  He turns the corner seeing all sorts of tools, robotic parts, nuts and bolts.  There was even a bunsen burner and some tubes in a corner.  

There was a student wearing all black except for his white lab coat sitting in the center of the lab hunched over working on a big metal body of something Hiro couldn’t quite make out.  He couldn’t make out the face due to the safety goggles that were worn.  But once he saw the blue streak in the guy’s black hair, he knew he found his man.  Hiro straighten up and went up to him about to tap Varian on the shoulder till he froze at hearing him say “What do you want?”  Varian sat up a bit brought his right hand up to the safety goggles and removed them. That’s when everything Hiro was going to say leaves him.  Seeing those light blue eyes staring at him takes him into a trance.  Which all to soon was broken when the bangs that were drawn back from the goggles came back to cover Varian’s face.  Making Hiro look at the rest of Varian’s face.  There were light freckles lining the top of his fair skinned nose and cheeks.  Smudges of grease on his cheek, his left ear has two helix piecing’s and a regular piecing on his lob.  

Hiro didn’t realize how long he must have been staring.  Varian brought him back to reality by rudely saying “Can’t you see I’m busy here?  Get lost.” The last two words make Hiro feel melancholy.  But he sucks it up and tried to speak but starts to stutter because he knew his faces was turning red from embracement having look at Varian’s cute snarky face.  “I…I was going to. -Uh…I-…”  Then the all too familiar squishy vinyl rubbing together came within ear shot.  Making Hiro look behind him to see Baymax.

“Oh, another robot someone wants me to look over.”  Varian huffs as he scoots his stool away from the machine.

He got up from his worktable and headed over to Baymax. Once Varian was close Baymax announce “Hello I am Baymax. A medical health care companion.”  Varian ignores him as he continues to walk around looking the robot over.  Baymax interrupts Varian’s concentration as he asks, “who are you?”

“Oh uh Varian.  White Vinyl, making him look like a walking marshmallow.  Hyperspectral cameras, carbon-fiber skeleton making him super light. Some adequate actuators.

Hiro interjects with “He can lift a thousand pounds.”

“I don’t see how with his marshmallow state a simple corner of a box could potential deflate him.  But this model is actually better than the other robots you amateurs have brought me”  Hiro gets offended at the word amateurs.  

Varian continues talking, “I would change the lower half of his carbon skeleton to something that would give him more speed.  That way you won’t be dragging him around to keep up with you.”

“Baymax is fine the way he is!  I upgrade him when he needs it.”

“Hey, you brought him over for me to look at.  So, you either take my advice or leave it I don’t really care.”  After his statement Varian turns around puts his goggles back on and continues his work.  This time gabbing a hammer and pounding on the metal body.

“I wasn’t here for advice.”  Hiro knew he was not heard do to the continues hammering that was happening.  He stood there watching Varian hammer a little longer seeing how his decently sized biceps bulged as he swung.  Feeling eyes on him Varian looks to Hiro.  Who’s face turns red and quickly leaves grabbing Baymax in tow. Varian goes back to work.

<> 

“Ah that guy is unbearable.”  Hiro states as he enters Tadashi’s lab.  “I don’t want to see that smug know-it-all again.”

“By my calculations you will be seeing more of him.  Due to you sharing five classes with him.”  Baymax pulls up Hiro’s class schedule on his belly.  “Also, you do want to see him again.”

“What no I don’t!”

“Your heart rate increased, and pupils dilated when you made that statement. Clearly stating you were lying.”

“Ah so what if I want to see him again?”

“With my scans of you indicate to me that your hormones are spiking indicating you like Varian.”

“No, I just want to challenge him and wipe that stupid grin off his face.

“You are lying again.”

“Ah!” Hiro screams as he puts his hands over his face mumbling “Alright wipe that cute grin off his face.  Man, I got it bad.”

“That is true.”

<> 

Light streams from a hall light as the front door to a dark apartment opens.  Varian enters locking the door behind him.  He walks down the small hall that leads to the kitchen.  He sets his bag down.  “I really wish you wouldn’t let yourself in to my place Cassandra.”  He turns on the light revealing Cassandra sitting at a small circular table.  

She is slicing an apple as she says, “Hey, I was told by your father to watch over you and that did include making sure you eat.  I opened that fridge and the only thing in there was mustard and baking soda.”

Varian opens the fridge to see all sorts of healthy quick make meals on the shelves.  He grabs a bottle of water and closes the fridge as he says, “Thanks, but I could have done that myself.”

“Yeah all energy drinks and beef jerky sticks.”  She snarkily says as she pops an apple slice into her mouth.  Varian sits in the opposite chair as he drinks his water.  “So how was your day?  Make any new friends?”

“You know I don’t make friends and same old.  Someone came for advice and didn’t want to hear it.”

A ping from Cassandras phone distracts her as she starts to look over a news article.  But continues their conversation with “Oh? Boy or girl?”

“Boy.”

“Was he cute?”

“Ew, gross Cassie he’s my age.”

“Oh, then he’s perfect for you.”  She jests as she continues reading.

“I’m going to bed.” Varian says not liking her little joke getting up and heading to his room.

“Alright I’m going to leave in a bit.  Oh, with these so-called heroes and villains rampaging around the streets I want you back here no later than an hour after school hours.  Ok?”

“Yeah.”  He states as he closes the door behind him. Till he mumbles “like that’s going to happen.”

[whisker-biscuit]

Silent as the Grave: Chapter 1

Fandom: Sly Cooper

Summary: When Connor Cooper and his wife are found dead in their home, the result of a forced break-in and assault, Interpol is called in to find out who did it. The only witness is Cooper’s eight-year-old son, found in a closet with a full view of everything. Nobody is really sure what to do with the kid, but that’s just fine.Because young Sly Cooper doesn’t know what to do with himself either.

The first real thieving lesson Sly’s father ever taught him, when he was three years old, was how to be quiet. He’d thought this was dumb and not nearly as fun as robbing a bank, so he’d told his father exactly that. But instead of reprimanding his son, the elder Cooper only chuckled and sat him on his knee with the patience of a master parent.

“Silence is the language of thieves, kiddo,” he told him gently. “How can you rob a bank if everyone knows you’re coming? How can you steal someone’s wallet if he can hear you behind him? What do you do if he turns around?”

“Hit him,” Sly announced, chin held defiantly high. “Hit him and take it.”

“You’ve been spending too much time with McSweeney.”

“Nu-uh!”

Connor smiled at that. “Well, I suppose not. But if you were quiet, then he wouldn’t turn around at all, and then you wouldn’t have to hit him. Do you understand?”

Sly considered this point with solemnity only a toddler could manage. Then he blinked up at his father and nodded, mouth closed firmly.

“Good. Now it’s time for you to learn how to never make noise. Starting…NOW!”

Connor had taken this moment to grasp his son around the waist and suddenly lifted him high in the air above his head. Sly shrieked in delight and wriggled with his arms and legs. His tail flickered every which way as he collapsed into giggles.

“Come on kiddo, I thought you were going to be quiet!” His father was grinning up at him, hands steady as rocks.

“No fair, no fair,” Sly laughed, “Not ready!”

“Master thieves have to be ready for anything. If you get surprised or scared, and you make a lot of noise, then you get caught. I surprised you, but if you want to learn to be a master thief, you have to know when it’s okay to laugh and scream like that, alright?”

“Okay Daddy!”

“Good,” Connor brought his son down to his knee again. He grinned with all his teeth, and Sly mirrored the look with his own baby canines.

“Here we go.”

Five years later, Sly doesn’t remember much about that conversation except its most basic part; he has to be completely silent, right now, no matter what. Because that’s what master thieves do when they’re surprised, or scared, or hurting. That’s how they survive.

That’s how he will survive, in this little closet, as he watches his father get pinned down on their bloody living room carpet. As his mother’s horrible screaming from the dining room stops with three muffled bangs and a wet choke. As something bigger than anyone he’s ever seen taps iron claws against Connor’s back and flips him over.

Sly doesn’t make a sound as someone else breaks open the family safe and pulls out the Cooper family’s heritage, the Thievius Raccoonus. He doesn’t cry as the book is torn apart by five different sets of hands over his father’s struggling body.

Doesn’t scream when those talons decide his father shouldn’t struggle anymore.

All he does is stay still as a statue – don’t move kiddo, movement makes noise and we don’t want to be caught – as the five murderers leave just as swiftly as they came. He stays in that closet after that, not because he thinks they will come back, but because he knows now what death looks like, and if he steps out of his hiding place, he will have to acknowledge the reality of what has happened.

He’s not enough like his father to do that.

When the local police office gets the call about a night disturbance in a nearby suburban area, they’re mildly surprised. It’s always been a quiet neighborhood on the edge of town, and the most recent call from out there had been for an ailing older rabbit who needed a quick pick-up to the hospital. They’re even more surprised at the call’s contents.

“911, what is your emergency?”

“I heard screaming next door!” The voice is almost hysterical. “And there was a big car in the street I’ve never seen before, and I saw, I saw something huge fly into the sky – it blocked out the moon!”

The operator gets their address and name immediately, and promptly sends two officers to go out while promising the distraught caller that everything will be fine and to expect someone to arrive to ask them a few questions in person.

“What do you think it is?” Fangmeyer asks as he opens the driver’s door, settling in behind the wheel.

“Dunno,” McHorn shrugs, squeezing into the passenger seat. They pull out of the station. “Might be a domestic disturbance, with the screaming. Someone probably had someone else come pick them up, if there was a strange car.”

“Yeah, sure, but what about the big flying thing? I’ve never heard of anything like that.” The tiger keeps his eyes on the road, on the lookout for street signs.

“Who knows. The caller probably psyched themselves out, you know how people get.” They both go silent for a moment and watch rows of houses pass by. “Don’t forget, it’s a blue house with gold trimmings. You got better night vision than me.”

“Yeah, I got it.”

They find the address of the caller with little trouble, then the house next door where the screaming supposedly took place. It’s a modest little home on the end of the street corner with a plastic swing set in the yard, colored just as McHorn described. Light spills through the front entrance, and the rhino cop assumes it must be one of those full-glass doors.

He starts to get out of the car but is stopped by a fuzzy paw on his shoulder. He turns to his partner, who is staring at the house with sudden intensity.

“McHorn, call in for backup.”

“What? Why?”

“The front door’s been ripped from its hinges.”

They call the station, backup is promised within five minutes, and the two officers step up to the doorway cautiously, on high alert. The door is lying on the floor just inside, and there’s immediate wreckage throughout the hallway. Hanging portraits have been smashed to the ground, littering broken glass everywhere. A coatrack is on its side with garments strewn about. A low bookcase along the wall has been overturned, its books scattered and torn.

The first room to the left seems to still have the lights on, so the two pull guns out of their holsters and sidle quietly over that way, peering in carefully. It’s the dining room.

There’s a raccoon, a woman, slumped on the ground against a chair leg with three bullet holes through her body. McHorn goes as rigid as a bowstring. Fangmeyer holds his paw to his mouth as bile threatens to come up his throat. They both rush up to her and the tiger checks her pulse. Nothing. One of them brings the radio up and manages to call in a 10-79 with a trembling voice.

This is when they see the next doorway leading to the living room.

And it’s here that they learn exactly whose house this belongs to, because the world-famous thief Connor Cooper is splayed out on the floor with his chest ripped open.

Fangmeyer can’t hold himself together any longer; he staggers to the farthest side of the room and retches, leaning against the doorframe of a coat closet. McHorn is about to call this in as well, to report that they’ve found the corpse of one of Interpol’s most wanted criminals, when he sees the tiger suddenly collapse to his knees.

“Oh my god. Oh my god.”

“Fangmeyer, what is it? Did you find another body?”

His partner doesn’t respond except to shake his head without turning around. Instead he pulls open the closet door all the way, and the rhino forgets to breathe.

A child stares back at them with tear-stained fur and shell-shocked eyes.

After that, things move very quickly.

Backup arrives just in time to find two haunted officers coming out of the house. The tiger is green through his fur and staggers to the nearest cruiser to ask for water and a forensics team. The rhino behind him walks solemnly through the yard, carrying a raccoon kit who clutches a very recognizable cane to his chest and won’t look at anyone.

Within two minutes, the Police Chief orders the house to be sectioned off completely while they sort things out. Twenty minutes after that, he orders an evacuation of the whole street because curious neighbors and nosy townsfolk are drawing a crowd to gawk at this unusual occurrence. When a local news station pulls up just outside the evacuation zone, the chief calls for all present officers to declare an oath of silence until everything has been investigated thoroughly. Then the Force contacts Interpol.

Known only to the first few responders – and to the international detective they’re informing over the phone – is the presence of Cooper’s only child, who has been whisked to the nearest hospital in secret. He’s miraculously unharmed, but they keep him there, in a private room with an officer guard, for fear that whoever had it in for the Master Thief might come back to finish the job.

They don’t know his name or his age, but those are things easily found in records and birth certificates. What they’re really wondering is how he survived this horrific encounter, how he managed to sit in a little coat closet and not give himself away.

They won’t get this answer from him directly, but they’re getting an inkling of how it was possible anyway. Because Cooper’s son hasn’t said a word to anyone since he was found.

He hasn’t made any noise at all.

A/N: I'm very sorry. I'm not sorry. I don't know.

 This is probably going to be the worst chapter as far as violence goes, but I'm not making any promises. But here we are, the real kick-off of Sly's story. I'm super excited to get to Bentley and Murray, but there are a few other things that have to happen first. Interpol has yet to actually arrive, after all.

Thanks for reading!

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Ernest Hemingway's Florida home is ready to withstand its 168th hurricane season

New Post has been published on https://nexcraft.co/ernest-hemingways-florida-home-is-ready-to-withstand-its-168th-hurricane-season/

Ernest Hemingway's Florida home is ready to withstand its 168th hurricane season

With Hurricane Irma bearing down on Florida, the team at the Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum in Key West had an important decision to make: What should be done to protect the 54 historic cats that live on the property, many of which are descended of the author’s very own felines? One option was to launch an evacuation, packing the cats in crates, and driving their way to the mainland. The other was to shelter in place, trusting the 167-year-old house to keep the staff and their prized 6-toed pets safe, even as a category 4 storm raged nearby.

To the surprise of many media outlets, Dave Gonzales, the museum’s executive director, chose the latter option. Several staff members decided to remain in the historic home with the cats—and a bevy of emergency supplies, from veterinary medicine to bulk Gatorade. While Gonzales stresses that his decision should not be a model for others (no one should follow the Hemingway House’s lead and shelter in place if evacuating is a safer choice for them), the staff seems to have had a nice time, all things considering. “Besides the downed trees we were having to carve around us, and picking up the debris around us, we were living and eating normally,” he says.

The reasons for this normalcy are up for debate. Some attributed it to Hurricane Irma’s last minute deviation from its projected course, which ravaged the middle Keys, but left Key West and many of its historic homes relatively unscathed. Others, more critical of the decision to shelter in place and ignore the government-mandated evacuation mandated, called it sheer dumb luck. But Gonzales says it was the Hemingway Home’s unique architectural qualities that kept his crew safe. (Well, that and a priest’s blessing, bestowed on the iconic cats and their human keepers shortly before the storm hit.)

“We have probably the strongest fortress on the island that is not only a safe structure, but has been there since 1851 with zero structural damage,” Gonzales says. While climatological records remained spotty until the late 19th century, this means the house has successfully weathered approximately 20 hurricanes and tropical storms that have historically pummeled Key West—and the corresponding onslaught of wind and water. In a climate changed era, where once-rare storms seem increasingly common and resilient engineering is on the mind of many architects and city officials, one has to wonder, what is this house doing right?

Southern Florida was originally inhabited by Native Americans. But the recorded history of the region string of islands today known as the Florida Keys begins with the Spanish, who colonized the area in the 16th century. The conquistador Juan Ponce de León initially named the archipelago the “Los Martires” islands, which is Spanish for “the martyrs.” Five hundred years later, his reasoning remains unclear, but the name is fittingly foreboding.

Like a broken necklace, the Key’s countless specks of limestone and coral curve west around the tip of Florida. Until 1912, when a railroad was erected, one could only reach Key West, the farthest island in the chain and the location of the Hemingway Home, by boat. Today, the Overseas Highway and its 42 bridges do the job, but only if one deems Margaritaville worth the 113-mile-long drive. Naturally, the narrow passageway generates gridlock even on the laziest afternoons. In the midst of an evacuation, which are called every few summers as mighty Atlantic hurricanes swirl around the exposed islands, traffic grinds to a complete halt.

Despite de León’s early warning, sun-seekers and shipwreck salvagers eventually populated the Keys. In 1850, when construction on Asa Tift’s mansion at 907 Whitehead Street was nearing completion, the census tallied 2,367 residents living on Key West alone. Among them was Tift, who’d made a small fortune recovering the many marine vessels—and their corresponding cargo—shipwrecked off the coast. He decided to use that money to build a tropical palace, across the street from the soaring Key West lighthouse.

Today, Tift’s stately home still has pride of place on the island. It’s painted avocado and key lime, draped in palms, and boasts a lush green lawn. Each year, it’s visited by thousands of tourists and is a destination for dozens of weddings and other events. But the visitors aren’t there to learn more about Tift (though the avowed Confederate is immortalized in the Key West Shipwreck Museum at the end of Whitehead Street). Rather, the masses assemble for Nobel Prize-winning novelist Ernest Hemingway, who lived in the house from 1931 to 1939. In his backyard studio, Hemingway wrote such acclaimed short stories as “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” and tended to his cat, Snow White, whose world-famous polydactyl descendants live on the property to this day.

But it was Tift who built the house. And, Gonzales says, it was Tift who built it right.

From President Harry S. Truman’s “Little White House” on Front Street to Shel Silverstein’s house on William Street, which was completely crushed by a felled ficus Irma uprooted, the architecture of Key West is wood, through and through. That’s how Old Town, the historic heart of the island, earned the distinction of having the highest concentration of wooden structures of any district listed on the federal government’s National Register of Historic Places. But Tift took another route, building his home from 18-inch thick limestone blocks, dug up from the bedrock beneath the construction site. In doing so, Gonzales says Tift created something akin to “a vault or Fort Knox”—not a bad idea when you’re smack in the middle of hurricane alley.

Tift had another storm-proofing trick up his sleeve: His breezy abode is built on the second-highest point in Key West, some 16 feet above sea level. Only the Key West Cemetery is on higher ground, which sits 18 feet above sea level. When Hurricane Wilma hit the island in what the National Weather Service deemed the “hyperactive 2005 season”, it brought with it one of the highest storm surges ever seen in the Keys. But even then, Gonzales reports, “We were high and dry. No water accumulation whatsoever.”

Careful preparation, such as stockpiling necessities, securing the storm shutters, and covering windows with plywood, is imperative. But Gonzales says it’s these two structural features—what the Huffington Post termed a “limestone fortress,” and some serious elevation—that have kept the structure standing even as neighboring homes faltered.

Craig Fugate knows a thing or two about natural disasters—especially those that regularly threaten his home state. Before he served as the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, from 2009 to 2017, he was the director for emergency management for the state of Florida. In that role, Fugate oversaw the response to the “Big 4 of ‘04,” when Hurricanes Charley, Frances, Ivan, and Jeanne pummeled the panhandle state in short order. In the process, he witnessed firsthand how evidence-based construction and rigorous enforcement of building standards could minimize the misfortune wrought by a storm.

Retired from FEMA and back in Florida, Fugate described a street walk he did with then-President George W. Bush and his brother, then-Florida Governor Jeb Bush shortly after a serious storm had subsided. As the politicians and press ambled through the disaster area, talking with homeowners and surveying the damage, people began to remark on the difference in how local homes were affected. On the same block, ranch homes from the 1960s and 70s were blown to smithereens, while more recent construction, built after Florida began to enforce the nation’s most stringent structural safety rules, looked good as new. “Bush turned to his brother and basically said, ‘What gives?’” Fugate recalls. “And Jeb just said, ‘Building codes.’”

New construction in Florida must now meet a few key requirements. For one, exterior glass surfaces like windows and sliding doors need to be reinforced with storm shutters or reinforced glass, lest they shatter in the face of flying debris or fearsome winds. Roofs must also be fortified; fortunately, a relatively inexpensive shift from smooth standard nails to the toothy ring shank nails increases durability dramatically. Most importantly, homes in the path of potential destruction need hurricane clips, also called hurricane ties. The small steel devices, each of which costs under a dollar, firmly connects a building’s rafters with its walls, dramatically increasing the amount of uplift (that is, wind pressure) a structure can cope with before lifting off.

Together these wind-proofing methods can help to preserve the outer shell of a structure and, in the process, keep a storm’s other worst side effect—water damage—at bay. After a roof is torn off or windows are busted open, Fugate says it’s easy for rain and storm surges to fill the house, causing walls to degrade and allowing mold spores to thrive, among other problems. “If you started seeing the roof fail, it was likely the rest of the house would follow,” he says. “Protecting the envelope of the home was protecting the rest of the house.”

In our wide-ranging phone conversation, Fugate provided anecdote after anecdote of his disaster relief work around the state of Florida, all illustrating that the date of construction was the biggest predictor of a house’s performance in a given storm. (“It was almost Goldilocks and the Three Bears,” he said of another streetwalk in the middle Keys. “The three houses: One destroyed, one beat up, one salvaged.”) So what to make of that 157-year-old structure, down in Key West?

Fugate says many of the Hemingway Home and Museum’s key features are surprisingly strategic, especially considering its age. “That kind of construction, the heavy masonry construction, is great to brace against wind,” he says of the limestone. And elevation, which the Key West facility has in spades, is an even bigger boon, according to Fugate. What the house has naturally—16 feet between its hardwood floors and sea level—is something people up and down the east coast are paying tens of thousands of dollars to get artificially, in the form of homes raised up on stilts, away from the hungry ocean and its rising tide.

Not everyone is so convinced. Illya Azaroff is an architect at +LAB and an expert in sustainable design. He says that the benefits of limestone construction aren’t so clear. “I would question if it’s better than any other material,” he says. Still, Azaroff acknowledges the naturally high elevation of the site is undeniably advantageous, as are many of the smaller livability features. “There’s a natural alignment to the vernacular of the environment,” he says of the house. In architecture, vernacular is a shorthand for buildings, typically constructed in a hyperlocal style, that prioritize function over everything else. “It’s orientation to the sun, it’s orientation to the wind, cross-breezes through the house—that’s [also] about resilience,” he says.

For all the time and money being poured into resilient design, Fugate, Azaroff, and many of their colleagues agree there will never be a totally disaster-proof home. The Hemingway House has made it this far, but there’s nothing to say the next storm won’t strike the museum a major blow. The same is true even for houses built with tougher nails and lifted on stilts. These features keep the wind and water out of many Floridian homes right now, but a time may come when it just doesn’t make sense to live in the Keys—or any number of other vulnerable places—anymore.

We can and should work to design hardier structures, but hurricanes will always be stronger than humans, according to Azaroff. And, he notes, even if there was a perfectly weatherproof home, it wouldn’t really matter if you were completely disconnected from the outside world. No matter how big your stockpile is, you’d eventually require more food, gas, or emergency services like an ambulance or firetruck, only to find those services have been suspended. “I have to consider that infrastructure I use to support my community and my house,” he says. Otherwise, “I’m putting others at risk.” That’s why, even if your home meets all the latest codes, evacuation orders should be heeded. It’s also why the places humans choose to settle could soon look a little different. “The traditional patterns of living in the United States… may not work in the future,” Azaroff says.

Walking the grounds of Hemingway’s house, visitors can stop and photograph any number of eccentric features. There’s the cat’s elaborate outdoor water bowl, which legend has it was fashioned from a urinal Hemingway stole from his favorite local bar, Sloppy Joe’s. There are typewriters, movie posters, and books. Animals are mounted on the walls and elaborate gardens bloom outside. There’s even a cat cemetery, where Bubba, Tigger, and their kin have been laid to rest. But for those in the know, the most compelling feature of the Hemingway Home and Museum may just be what you don’t see: damage from more than a century’s worth of storms.

Written By Eleanor Cummins