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ijwrff · 4 years

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Yandere! Wilford Warfstache

Hello! This is a commission from my good friend @nerdqueenkat. I haven’t written anything for egos in a while so I hope this turned out okay!

It...wasn’t very hard to notice Wilford Warfstache. That is...unless he didn’t want you to know he was there. Somehow the world around him seemed to bend to his will. If you didn’t know any better you’d say he was some magical being who could make all your wishes come true.

That was how it started. You were going about your day as usual, when you took notice of the man with the pink suspenders sitting on the bench you would normally wait on for the evening bus back home.

“Is this seat taken?” You politely asked, before he gave a shake of his head and scooted over to accommodate for you. Before, he was slouched across it, not leaving any room for a second person.

“Of course not...you can see me?” It was straightforward, and you turned to him in shock.

“See you...of course, you’re right here.” He looked as real as anyone else...actually. There didn’t seem to be anyone at the stop. It wasn’t usually a popular spot, but a good two or three people were common. You’d even come to know a couple by name in your time taking the same bus every day. But none of them seemed to be here today.

“Well now what day is it…” The man looked perplexed, as if he had no bearings on what was real in the world around him. This man surely must be mad.

Even so, you indulged, hoping that he wasn’t the dangerous kind of mad. “It’s September. The 21st?” The bus would surely be here soon. Maybe he wasn’t intent on riding the bus, and was simply using the bench as a place to stay.

There were too many things that didn’t add up.

“No, no, the month or day doesn’t matter, silly! What year?” He didn’t seem to be harmful at least...if anything maybe a bit confused. There was an odd drawl to his speech, maybe he was simply recovering from a late night out. A hangover could certainly explain the confusion.

“2020.” A short answer, maybe he would get the message and not try pushing any buttons until your bus got here.

Your answer only seemed to confuse him more as he began muttering to himself. “No that’s not right...I don’t meet you for another…”

Now he was starting to worry you. He sounded like he seriously lost his marbles, you just wanted to get back home and curl up on the couch with your favorite show on. Maybe a nice cup of hot chocolate.

You turned away from the man and saw the headlights of a bus in the distance, gradually getting closer. “Well it was nice meeting you but I…” When you turned back he was no longer there. Where could he have been able to go so quietly?

Shaking off the strange encounter, you got off the bus and made your way back home. That would have been it, a strange encounter. But that wasn’t the last time you saw him.

Months later, into the chilly weather of February, you were sitting in a local cafe, browsing through the internet with the help of their free wifi. It was quiet, and nobody paid you much mind, until one familiar person came around and changed your life.

“It’s good to see you gumdrop, I’ve missed you!” Before you could react, you were being pulled into a side hug. You aimed to push the stranger away, but you recognized him. He wasn’t easy to forget. His strong grip made it near possible to escape, but as quickly as it happened it was over.

The man spun around to the other side of the table and kicked his feet up onto the table. You looked around quickly to see if anyone else was seeing what you were, but they didn’t turn. They didn’t seem to notice you at all.

“How has the new job been going? Got time for a few questions?” He seemed more...peppy than he had been. In fact, he seemed to be almost formal. He had a notepad out and a pen he pulled from behind his ear as he seemingly read through a list of potential questions.

You were still stumped on the first one. “New...new job? I’m sorry I think you’re confusing me with someone else.” Getting up to leave and give this man some space, you shuffled your things into your bag. He didn’t let you get away.

“Wait! Just a minute, no worries my darling it probably hasn’t happened yet.” Flipping quickly through a few pages he cleared his throat. “Ah yes, here we are.” He seemed to find his place, quickly throwing out another question before you could process the insanity that was leaving his lips. “What would you say your favorite animal is? If you could have one as a pet what would it be?”

“I’m sorry...animal? I don’t even know your name.” You wanted to give this man a chance, clearly he thought he knew you. “Um...if I’d have to pick I’d say rabbit. They seem easy to take care of in my current apartment.”

With a nod he wrote down your answer, not that you had given him permission to. But honestly? Anything to get this odd situation out of the way, you had to search for a job soon or you’d lose your apartment…

“My name?” The man let out a loud laugh, leaving you to once again check to see if you had caused a disturbance, only ro yet again be met with obliviousness. Not a single person was turning to look at you. It made you feel...uneasy. This man seemed to have an air that said he can and will get whatever he wants...so what does he want with you?

“My name is Wilford Warfstache, my dear y/n.” The man you now know as Wilford leaned forward, leaving you to wonder how he knew your name. “And you...are my spouse. Maybe not now...but surely later. It’s only a matter of time. No matter how relevant such a thing may be.” He leaned forward, and you found yourself leaning forward as well. What was so enticing about this man?

You couldn’t help it...when you leaned forward it was almost as if there was a pink hue to his eyes, swirling...captivating. What...were you just worried about?

Your lips never hit his though. But a sweet taste filled your mouth. You were alone at the table, your favorite flavor of sucker hanging from your mouth.

It was months later when you found him for the third time. Since then, random gifts have arrived at your door. You knew it was him, but how he knew your address was beyond you. You resorted to staying at home for fear of running into Wilford again. He wouldn’t be able to make it into your home...right?

You had tried moving multiple times. It only took three times for you to give up. He always knew. How did he always know?

Something was off...something was wrong about him. You knew telling the police would do nothing. He couldn’t be human. He was in your dreams...telling you of a future that you’ll have together. It got to the point where walking around your empty apartment day to day seemed more like a dream.

The dreams became more...enticing over time. Everything you ever wanted was a reality. All of your problems were just...washed away. The dreams would all always end the same. Wilford would say the same line at the end of every dream.

“I’ll see you soon.”

At this point...it was unclear even to you if it was a promise or a threat.

One day, or one gift rather, shined through more than any other. When you opened your door to the sound of the mail arriving, you were greeting with yet another gift basket. This one...was completely full of things you recall telling Wilford about in your dreams.

A book from your childhood, a postcard from the place you most wanted to visit, and an array of your favorite candies, all mixed in with something you thought you’d never see again. The vase that you broke in childhood, that you were told held great history in your family. Your parents gave you hell for breaking it, and there wasn’t a family gathering you went to where someone didn’t bring it up. How did he know the exact one?

The dreams had to be real, or he would never know. Or maybe...this was a dream as well. It seemed as if every time he asked you a question, the answer directly correlated with what gifts you would receive next.

Sometimes they were out of order, but they all arrived at some point. You intended to ask him about it in your dreams tonight.

The stage was set. You had soothing music playing to help you fall asleep, and were dressed in your most comfortable pajamas. You knew he would be in your dreams again tonight. It was near every day now that it happened. You almost...looked forward to it.

The dreams range in length and content, and each night was different than the last. A different location, a different theme, but each romantic in it’s own way.

As you fell asleep, a familiar comforting feeling crept through your body, and you opened your eyes to see Wilford throwing carnival game balls at a set of milk bottles. It seemed the theme for tonight was a carnival.

“Win any games yet Wilford?” By now, you had grown used to seeing him. The conversation always seemed to flow freely.

Throwing a smirk your way, he replied “Of course, I always win the best of prizes for you.” As if on cue, you noticed the array of stuffed animals sitting on the counter next to the balls. Any and all kinds and sizes were sitting on display just waiting to be grabbed.

“Wilford...this time I have a question for you, if that’s alright.” For once, you were almost at a loss of what to say, despite knowing you had spent the day preparing what to say to him tonight. Would he react negatively? Would he stop sending gifts? What if you said the wrong thing and he realized that he didn’t need you. At this point...you needed him.

Wilford didn’t seem to notice the anxiety, and gave a smile over his shoulder as he knocked down another bottle. “Changing things up on me, sugarplum? I think you’d make the most amazing interviewer.” Throwing the last ball he turned, putting his arm over your shoulder. It was also something you had grown used to, the physical contact.

It was always either a hand around the small of your back, one draped over your shoulder, or him holding your much smaller hand in his own. If a stranger were to touch you in such a way, you’d probably throw a few punches their way if they didn’t take the hint. But contact with Wilford had an almost calming effect on you. As if his very existence made you feel more comfortable. Being with him made all your problems dissolve away.

Shaking your head clear of your thoughts you spoke aloud the question you prepared to ask. “Why do you send me gifts every day?” Straightforward and to the point. Tonight wouldn’t be about enjoying time with Wilford, like every other night, tonight was about answers.

He gave you a confused look in return, “Haven’t I told you? We get married eventually. And I see no problem in spoiling my spouse.” He spun around, talking openly with his hands, “Our time together starts soon, you just have to be patient.”

His words soothed you, almost made you feel like being with him was meant to happen. You saw the pink gleam in his eyes again, and lost your words. All you could think about was him. As your mind begins to go blank, every stress in the world melts away. Looking into his eyes was all you needed to do right now.

Somehow...it felt right. He declared he would always give you gifts, and you would get to meet him in the real world soon. For now...you were happy to have him in your dreams.

As time passed...more gifts arrived. You started to grow grateful. Wilford has spent so much time and effort getting you things you enjoy. Someone who seemed so...sweet couldn’t possibly be bad.

It had now been months since you last saw Wilford in person, and only days since the dreams stopped. You knew he was coming. It was finally time. You were ready for him.

When he finally returned to your door, he was wearing a pink suit with a bouquet of matching pink roses.

“I’ve missed you, my special little gumdrop.” He extended his arm to give you the flowers, which you quickly grabbed, moving them out of the way to give Wilford a hug.

“I’ve missed you too.” Never had you spoken words so true. Something had always been missing in your life. You knew you were destined for more. He was everything you need. He would give you the perfect life you’ve always wanted.

“Have you made your choice my dear?” He would never force you to do anything you didn’t want to. At least that’s what his eyes were telling you.

One look into the beautiful pink swirls in his eyes, and you knew.

He had been preparing you. In your dreams of lavish lifestyles, and endless fun to be had, you knew you only had one choice. One dream in particular you knew would be your future.

Living your life as his most prized possession. You would spend the rest of your days not having to worry about trivial things that life has tasked you with. You didn’t need freedom. You didn’t need friends. You would only have Wilford and Wilford alone. He was yours forever, just as much as you were his.

“Together...forever.”

#wilford warfstache #wilford warfstache x reader #wilford x reader #x reader #markiplier egos #commission #yandere #yandere wilford warfstache #yandere!wilford x reader

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metalnmagick · 3 years

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Well I started out wanting to write nickles mic sharing but it turned into Magnus having his first of many diva tantrums and well. Here you go.

Contains: Nickles (if you squint) and also MagNate (also if you squint), fighting, and general jackassery and jealousy on Magnus’ part. Enjoy!

Let the record state that Magnus Hammersmith did not intend for any of this to happen.

They’d never intended on Pickles usurping Magnus as backup vocalist, but Nathan figured since Pickles had been a vocalist previously and his voice was more distinct, he was a better fit. That much had been fine with Magnus, who preferred to devote himself to his guitar anyway. But this… This was a little much.

“No, it’s never gonna work if we don’t come in at the same time.” Pickles sighs, getting up from his drum kit and walking over to Nathan. “Look, just keep yer eyes on me when we do it.” He reaches forward, hands touching Nathan’s as he holds the mic with him.

Let the record state that Magnus Hammersmith does not have feelings for Nathan Explosion. They've just become used to each other over the time they’ve spent together trying to get Dethklok off the ground. Nathan has been the only one able to handle Magnus. Nobody else has the right dedication or vision to keep up with Magnus’ lofty standards.

And sometimes if cramped hotel rooms throw them together into one bed, and they’ve both been drinking, that’s just been due to circumstance. Nothing deeper to being tangled together on a twin sized bed, nothing deeper to whiskey flavored tongues pressing together under the flickering light of a lamp whose bulb should have been changed long ago, nothing deeper to heaving chests and desperate grunts in the fevered heat of drunken passion.

Let the record state that Magnus Hammersmith is absolutely not jealous. He just thinks it’s embarrassing how shamelessly Pickles flirts with their frontman.

“You don’t have to hold the mic for me, I’m not a kid.”

“I’m not holdin’ it for ya. I’m holdin’ it with ya.” Pickles rolls his eyes, smiling good naturedly. “We gotta sync up if we want this t’sound any good. We’ll go slower this time. Don’t think about how it sounds, just think about us keepin’ pace.” Nathan nods in response and Pickles turns to Magnus, pushing teased red hair off of his shoulder to see him better. “Okay, let’s try this again, but a little slower. Ready?” Magnus grunts in response, placing his fingers on the strings. He starts to play, a little slower this time.

Let the record state that Magnus Hammersmith did not write this song to be a duet. Pickles was the one who swooped in with his brilliant idea, and Nathan never turns Pickles’ ideas down. He insists Pickles knows what he’s talking about, but Magnus thinks he knows more. He wrote the damn song after all. But he hates arguing over relatively small details, so he had let Pickles do what he thought was best.

Nathan has to crouch slightly so they’re on the same level, and their mouths are separated only by the microphone and scarcely an inch of space on each side. Magnus bites his tongue to keep from telling them to get a room, and continues playing.

Nathan’s eyes are fixed on Pickles’ lips as they sing, trying to stay with him as the song picks up. They’re doing alright so far, and once they get through the first section of the song, Pickles gestures for Magnus to stop.

“Yer doin’ great!” He pats Nathan on the shoulder encouragingly. “Just pay attention to when I breathe in, because there’s not a whole lotta room to do it in this one.” Nathan nods, and they stand there, talking about nothing, faces still so close they look like they’re whispering about something.

“Magnus, you okay?” Nathan asks, taking him by surprise. “You look pissed.”

“I’m fine.” Magnus says, letting out a short huff. “I just need a drink.” He sets his guitar down on a chair and leaves, walking to the makeshift kitchen in their practice space, not even asking if they want anything.

He stands by the fridge, beer in hand, and tries not to think about the way Nathan’s eyes lingered on Pickles’ lips a little too long after they finished singing. Tries not to think of the way their fingers locked together around the mic, as if it was all too natural for them. Tries not to think about the way it burns him up inside how they look at each other, how they laugh together like old friends, how Nathan gushes about him nonstop when he isn’t around.

Magnus peers into the room as he finishes off the latter half of his beer, and nearly rolls his eyes all the way back into his skull. Pickles is standing half-behind-half-beside Nathan at his drums, hands on his, guiding him with the sticks to show him how it works. Like something out of a cheap romance movie.

“So that’s the easy part. But now ya gotta multitask.” Pickles slides one leg forward between Nathan’s to hit the pedal. Magnus can see Nathan blushing from here, and it makes him sick. He pulls a cigarette out of his shirt pocket, lighting it and taking a deep drag.

“So how did you even learn the drums?” Nathan asks.

“‘S a helluva lot easier than the guitar. Just kinda paid attention to our drummer in Snakes n’ Barrels when he played. Easy enough to pick up on.” Pickles shrugs, keeping his eyes on the drums.

Smug fucking bastard. Magnus thinks, scoffing to himself. False modest piece of-

“Magnus, you almost done in there?” Pickles calls, walking away from Nathan and his drums and back over to the mic. “I wanna try ‘n go through that last one a couple more times.” Magnus crushes the empty beer can in his hand on a countertop, tossing it in the trash and walking back in. He tries to maintain his composure as he puts his guitar back on.

“Yeah, let’s just fuckin’ go.” He grunts, cigarette still in his mouth.

“You sure you’re okay?” Nathan asks again, walking back to Pickles and taking the microphone off its stand.

“I’m fucking fine. Just go.” He starts playing, hardly giving the two of them time to get ready, and they start up again.

Let the record state that Magnus Hammersmith never really thought they needed a drummer. He’s firmly convinced that he and Nathan could have been great all on their own, vocals and guitar, and they didn’t need some bigshot from a has-been glam rock band coming in and telling Magnus how to do things. Now Nathan is suggesting they get a bassist, and maybe someone on keyboard, or a second guitarist. Magnus is convinced Pickles is the one giving him these ideas.

“Dude, slow down. Yer goin’ way faster than normal.” Pickles breaks his reverie, and Magnus stops all at once, giving him a venomous look.

“Why don’t you write the fuckin’ songs then if you know so goddamn much?” He asks, a sudden outburst of bitterness that takes both of the other two men by surprise.

“Jesus, calm down. What’s up with you today?” Nathan asks, letting go of the microphone and leaving it in Pickles’ hands.

“Yeah, ya don’t normally act like this…” Pickles gives him a look of concern, and that only pisses Magnus off more.

“I don’t know. I don’t know! Maybe I’m fucking sick of watching you-” he points an accusatory finger at the drummer, “-practically riding his dick all the goddamn time to get your way!”

“Dude, what?” Pickles looks genuinely confused, holding up his hands. “Where’s this comin’ from?”

“You know what the fuck I mean. You fucking flirting with Nathan all the time to change shit about our band!”

“I’m not flirtin’ with anybody. And I’m not tryin’ to change shit! I make suggestions, y’know, like someone in a fuckin’ band.” Pickles’ gaze turns from sympathetic and confused to defensive and angry on a dime.

“Guys, come on-” Nathan starts, stepping between them.

“No, clearly he’s got a fuckin’ problem with me. I wanna hear what it is.” Pickles says, stepping past the vocalist and towards Magnus. “Go on, let’s fuckin’ hear it.” He crosses his arms, challenging the guitarist.

“Oh don’t act so fucking clueless.” Magnus scoffs, setting his guitar aside. “I see the way you hang off of Nathan. Making my songs duets just so you can get close to him, holding his hands to show him your fucking drums, telling him we need more people in the band just to fuel your ego. It’s pathetic.”

“Y’know, not everyone thinks they’re God like you do, Magnus.” Pickles replies, his eyes cold. “I don’t know where you got the idea that I’m out to get you, but it’s not fuckin’ true in the slightest. I’m not some evil mastermind or whatever the fuck. I’m just a guy in a band, and I’m tryin’ to participate. I never expect my ideas to be fuckin’ accepted without question. The only reason anyone’s suggestions get by is because we all fuckin’ agree on them. And I’m not out here tryin’ to seduce Nate or whatever! Maybe you’re just projectin’ because you’re fuckin’ jealous of me or whatever.” Nathan, face flushed and eyes wide, puts a hand on each of their shoulders.

“Guys, stop it! Nobody’s taking control of the band on their own, and nobody’s trying to fuck anybody! Just calm the fuck down and-!” Nathan is shoved aside by Magnus, who lurches forward to swing at Pickles. The drummer steps back at the last second, looking shocked.

“Oh you’re fuckin’ dead, asshole.” Pickles shoves Nathan back and lunges at Magnus, the two of them grabbing each other’s throats. Magnus easily overpowers him, pinning Pickles to the ground and choking him with one hand, using the other to take the nearly-forgotten cigarette out of his mouth and grind it into the drummer’s arm. Pickles cries out and swings a leg up, kneeing Magnus in the dick and forcing a pained grunt out of Magnus, who lets go of him. The drummer shoves him off, getting on top of him and winding back a fist that Magnus manages to catch, inches from his face.

“I’m so fucking sick of you. Always fuckin’ getting whatever you want. You think you’re fucking better than me?” Magnus growls, using his free hand to take the other man by surprise and punch him directly in the nose. There’s a sickening crunch, and Pickles falls back, eyes watering hard.

“I don’t think I’m better than anyone, douchebag!” Pickles cries, bleary eyes keeping him from seeing as Magnus gets above him again, about to deliver another blow. “Yer the one actin’ like a psycho jealous girlfriend outta nowhere!” The words have hardly finished leaving Pickles’ mouth before Magnus punches him again, this time in the mouth. There’s a splurt of blood against his knuckles, and Magnus feels satisfied somewhere deep down inside. He feels like he’s inflicting pain that’s been earned, causing bloodshed that Pickles has been begging for. He’s about to do it again when strong arms grab him from behind, easily pulling him off of the drummer and holding him still at last.

“GUYS.” Nathan shouts, apparently finally having had enough. He sighs, frustrated, and turns Magnus to face him. “Dude, what the fuck is wrong with you today? You’re acting crazy.” Pickles sits up behind them, assessing the damage done to his face and spitting blood onto the floor.

“Are you kidding me? You two are all fucking over each other!” Magnus tries to wrench free of Nathan’s grip, to stop those piercing green eyes from looking into him, but it’s no use. “Every time you share a mic you look like you’re about to french each other! I leave the room for two minutes and you’re holding hands and feeling each other up by the drum kit! It’s disgusting!” Nathan’s face reddens at the accusation, but his expression remains stony. He shoves Magnus aside, not bothering to look at him anymore.

“Go the fuck home. You’re done for today.”

“Oh come on, you can’t be serious.”

“I am. Go home, get the stick out of your ass or whatever, and stop acting like a fucking lunatic. You’re just pissing everyone off.” He walks over to Pickles, kneeling down to assess the damage Magnus has done to him. Magnus clenches his jaw.

“Fine. I get it. You two have fun practicing.” He practically spits the words as he grabs his guitar and turns to leave. He can hear their voices faintly as he walks out, every blood cell in his veins feeling like fire.

“...don’t know why he’s acting like this…”

“...s’fine...dealt with diva shit before…”

“...sure you’re okay…?”

“...m’fine, Nate’n…worry too much…”

Let the record state that Magnus Hammersmith has never once in his life been jealous, especially not now, as he turns back for a moment to see Pickles smiling sheepishly as Nathan holds his face in his hands as if he’s made of glass. Especially not when he sees the way their eyes meet and expressions soften slightly before he turns around. Especially not when he punches a hole in the cheap plaster of the wall in his apartment when he gets home.

#dethklok #metalocalypse #magnus hammersmith #nathan explosion #pickles the drummer #magnate #nickles #my writing

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pilot-boi · 4 years

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Shouting In Cafes: Chapter One

Neptune keeps getting dumped and is honestly about to give up on dating all together. He'd much rather focus on his crappy job, and his schoolwork. Anything but dating. The universe, as always, conspires to ruin everyone's plans.

Or: The coffee shop AU that nobody asked for or wanted, but that I wrote anyway.

(In the same universe as Coffee Cup Woes, but before that timeline wise)

Unfortunate Meetings

As far as first impressions went, there was probably some way that this could have gone worse. But you’d be hard pressed to think of one of those ways.

AO3 LINK

Neptune was working his shift more than a little hungover from last night. Plastic cups kept toppling out of his hands and coffee streams began shifting just to the right of the mugs. Thank god for dim aesthetic lighting and the constant smell of coffee beans pumping through his senses.

It had happened again. As soon as Neptune finally got a straight dude to realize how not straight he really was, the dude thanked him for this realization and left. Leaving Neptune with a bottle of wine to mull over alone.

How many times had this happened? Five? More? Numbers were a little fuzzy at the moment. Neptune silently thanked god that he wasn’t working the cash register.

“Excuse me?” a bored voice called, followed by a harsh tapping on his shoulder.

Neptune blinked and jerked his head upright. Oh god, his head. Dull pain pounded against his skull, black spots popped up in his vision. How much did he actually drink last night? This was not at all healthy.

“Huh?” Neptune asked.

“Your turn to work register.” God dammit. He should have known it was too good to last.

“Fine,” he managed after a pause.

“Dude, you’re drunk as hell.”

“Just very hungover.”

“Why are you here?”

“Do I look like I can afford college?”

“I mean, a little. You’ve got some fancy ass hair.”

Neptune groaned out a sigh. “Thank you, I try.”

“Good luck.”

His coworker clapped him on the back and the spotty vision returned. This was going to be an extremely long shift.

After a moment, Neptune registered a blurred moving object passing in front of his face. A second later, there was a snap by his ear that his headache did not appreciate, and then someone said. “Hello? Dude, can you take our order?”

More blinking. More time to register. There was a lot of blue, but maybe it was a face.

“Welcome to the Daily Grind. What can I get for you today?”

“Um, buddy, my eyes are up here.”

Neptune was a tall guy. Like, annoyingly tall. Sometimes he hit his head on door frames tall. But Neptune actually had to tilt his head up to look this guy square in the eye. Guy was a basketball player. He had to be. What else could he be doing with all that height.

In a moment of horror, Neptune realized he had been talking directly into this customer’s chest.

“You’ve got quite a pair of pecs,” Neptune heard himself say. The hangover was doing bad stuff to his brain. For some reason he was combing his well refined casanova talk with his already terrible mocking talk, and it was turning out awful. The embarrassment didn’t register.

As soon as the words left his mouth, the guy’s face registered. Very high cheekbones, very spiky hair, and a very surprised expression on his face.

“What?” the customer asked, eyebrows trying to escape into his hairline.

There was a light giggle beside the customer and Neptune felt his eyes drag a foot and a half down to where a pretty brunette was covering her mouth and giggling. Neptune tried to push away the judgement. It wasn’t like he was any better after all. And he had practically just catcalled this paying customer’s chest. Oh god, what was he doing?

“Oh Lord. Sorry, sir. I’m a little out of it,” Neptune admitted. It kind of felt like the entire coffee shop was suspended in honey and his mind was trying to keep him afloat.

A hearty laugh burst from the customer’s mouth. Hearty? Was hearty the right word? It started a ship captain’s bellow and dissolved into woodland pixie giggling by the end. “I can tell. Who says that? Kind of ridiculous thing to say right off the bat.”

Well. Even though Neptune was in the wrong, he still had pride in himself.

“I’m guessing a black coffee and a unicorn frappuccino? I’m not sure whose is whose though,” Neptune commented, shooting a sideways glance at the pair of them.

The customer prickled. His date laughed again.

“Hey, dude, what the fuck?” the guy said. He said “fuck” loud enough for some heads to turn. “I’m on a date right now.”

“I see that, and honestly, she seems to be enjoying the company of a horribly hungover guy more than a douche in a wifebeater.” Neptune should probably stop. The leftover alcohol was making his tongue and his brain disconnect.

The girl laughed again. It felt good that he could seduce someone through a pounding headache, but also awful because it was her date she was laughing at.

Her date was a douche, though. It was a moral grey area.

The customer pointed at Neptune. Pointed at him! This was a coffee shop! The fury in his eyes said murder, the finger said the time was now. His nails said he hadn’t ever seen a nail clipper other than his own teeth.

After an intense stare down, the finger was lowered, and the customer spat out a “Grande white mocha and a plain cappuccino.”

“What’s the name?”

“Sun.”

Neptune smiled. “Just a few minutes until that’s ready, Sun.”

His smile was returned with a glare and snarl. Again, this was a coffee shop. Not a wrestling match. Neptune wouldn’t be surprised if he was called out onto the street to throw down after the order was made.

He could feel himself punch in a few numbers while making deliberate eye contact with the guy, Sun. As soon as his receipt printed out, Sun reached across the counter and snatched it out of Neptune’s printer before moving down the line to wait at pick up, staring and squinting all the while.

As soon as they were out of each other’s sight, Neptune caught somebody else’s glance: Sun’s date. She wore a tiny smile on her face as she slid by, pupils following Neptune until they couldn’t. She was cute, though not really Neptune’s type.

“What just happened there?” Neptune’s coworker, Jaune, appeared beside him. It would’ve made him jump had his brain not been moving so slow.

“Asshat in flip flops talked back to me.”

“He’s a paying customer, Neptune!”

“And an asshat, Jaune!” Neptune slumped onto the counter. Lucky for him the coffee shop was so tiny and crummy. It was always slow, giving him some well-earned time between customers to mull over his life choices. “He pointed at me!”

“Pointed at you?”

“With his finger! Right in my face! Who does that?!”

“Who started the argument?”

“It was…” Neptune thought for a moment. “Technically me. But he said ‘my eyes are up here’ when I was staring at his chest.”

“Why were you staring at his chest.”

“I’m very hungover.”

“Why are you hungover.”

“I got dumped last night.”

Jaune paused, sighed, and opened his arms for a hug. Neptune raised an eyebrow. He did not hug. He did not show the urge to display physical affection.

“Neptune, give me a hug.”

“No.”

“Neptune.”

“I don’t want a hug.”

“You got dumped. You’re hungover. You need a hug.”

Neptune gave into the hug. Jaune was a very soft person, emotionally if not physically. So even though their similar heights made it awkward, all his hugs were very comforting. The perks of having like a million siblings. And Neptune kind of needed it, though he would never admit it.

The wine had been swung back between fits of crying, but the more wine he drank the more he would cry and by the time the sun started to peek through his curtains, there was a bottle gone and Neptune had to deal with the fact that he’d been practically inhaling a bottle as he fell asleep.

He didn’t even like the guy that much. But five times is a few times too many to get denied just when you realize you like someone. It hurt. And the hurt had been building up for a while.

“I just can’t keep a guy,” Neptune said into Jaune’s shoulder. His curling blonde hair smelled like dish soap.

“Maybe you have bad taste in guys?” he asked.

“I do not have bad taste in guys.”

“You obviously do if they keep dumping you!”

“Hug over.” Neptune tried to pull away but Jaune resisted. That oversized sweatshirt hid the strength of a mammoth.

“Hug not over. Stop bottling everything inside! It’s annoying.”

“I can’t not bottle, Jaune! I’m not a feelings guy!”

“You could be if you tried!”

“Let go!”

“Ahem.”

There was a customer waiting.

“Shit,” Neptune said. Jaune finally released his grip and pushed Neptune out of the way and into the syrups.

“Sorry about that, ma’am! What will you be having today?” Jaune said in his brightest customer service voice. He caught his eye for a second, giving him a look that said, ‘You’re really out of it. I’ll take care of the cash register. Go do something useful.’

Neptune silently thanked god for Jaune Arc.

Only two more customers came in during the thirty minutes Neptune was on syrup duty, leaving Jaune and Neptune to make idle chatter. The whole time, Neptune kept glancing back to the dude from before. Sun. He kept laughing with his date, pounding on the table and overall being very loud.

Everything about him was loud. His sandals, his shorts, his shirt, his hair spikes that defied gravity and Neptune could verify just how weird they were because he saw them with his own two eyes. Why the hell would this dickhead dudebro come into a tiny local coffee shop with crummy staff and crappy food? On a date?

Sun’s date would still softly giggle when it looked like Sun had cracked a joke, but Neptune caught her writing something on her straw wrapper when Sun turned around.

And then they were leaving.

No fight, no duel, no screaming match. They were just leaving. The only suggestion of bad blood was the glare Sun shot Neptune as he opened the door for his date. Other than that, nothing.

Nothing except Sun’s date passing something to Neptune without looking as they passed by the bar.

Neptune unfurled the crumpled straw wrapper in his hands and stared at the telephone number written there.

“What’s that?” Jaune asked, leaning on a broom.

“A number.”

“Oooo. Is he cute?”

“She. And I guess.”

“You gonna call her?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“She was the date of that douchebag.”

“Oh, wow.” A pause. “Oh wow! I guess the date didn’t go well, then?”

“Who could've guessed?”

“And you’re not gonna call her.”

“Why would I?”

Jaune smiled. “I’m proud of you, Neptune! And here I thought you were gonna call her in an act of revenge against the shorts and sandals guy you initiated the fight with! I guess people can-”

“I’m gonna call her.”

“There it is.”

#rwby #neptune vasilias #sun wukong #jaune arc #seamonkeys #mine #my writing #shouting in cafes #chapter 1 #writing wednesday

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kriffingunlucky · 5 years

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modern! 104th x bullied! reader

You walk back to your locker, head lowered and eyes glued to the ground. Your hands clasping the books that you hold to your chest very tightly as you hear people talk about you. You tried to brush it off though, ignoring them. Why pay attention when there’s nothing that you could do about it anyway? It’s not like you were going to stand up to them and tell them to cut it out, that’s not even remotely in the picture.

You glanced to the side while walking by a group of boys, they laughed and talked, playfully shoving each other around. You recognized them as some of the football players, the tough guys who called themselves the Wolfpack, the ones you wouldn’t dare mess with. They were never mean to you, actually, they just kindly left you alone. Not interacting more then when the one with the ponytail, which said you could call him Comet, was fighting with the vending machine because it ‘cheated him his snacks’ and ‘he needs his snacks’. You’d withheld laughter as you’d put in your own dollar, choosing the snack that he did but got stuck, and gave it to him. He thanked you a good five times before leaving with a large grin on his face.

Focusing on the current day, you shake the memory with a small smile. Enjoying the interaction between them, you start to tear your eyes away from them before it was weird that you were staring, but before you could your eyes catch the tallest ones brown orbs. He doesn’t glare but he doesn’t smile, you couldn’t look away though, it felt as if he could see straight into you. Like he could see the fear, anxiety, depression and worry just by looking into your eyes. But he just keeps the eye contact for a moment and then turns back to what he was doing.

Well that was awkward. You think to yourself then freeze at the sight in front of your locker. It was them, the people who continuously made fun of you and pushed you around. The meanest one was directly leaning on the door to your locker as well, not allowing you to avoid interactions with them. You swallowed hard and took a couple steps closer, quietly asking. “Um, could you please move? I need to get to my-”

“Did you say something?” He laughs asking his friend, interrupting you with crossed arms.

“Nah, it must’ve been a pest.” His friend shoots back, making the group of six explode in laughter. Drawing the attention of nearby students.

“Yeah, just a pest. An ugly little bug. One in need of squishing.” One smirks.

“We don’t have time to call the exterminator so I guess I’ll substitute for ‘em.“ The largest cracks his knuckles and walks closer, shoving you backwards.

“I didn’t even do anything to you.” Your voice was shaking slightly as you tried to stand up for yourself, stumbling backwards because of his shove you struggled to catch your balance again.

The girl in the group laughs, placing a hand on her hip. Her nose upturned. “Oh please, you existing is enough to piss me off. You repulsive thing. You carry yourself like you actually look good, but you don’t, you’re so fat and ugly.” She spits and continues, “You always get good grades, but you don’t have any friends do you? Do know why that is? Huh? It’s because you’re annoying, (Y/n).”

“So why don’t I take care of this annoying brat, babe?” The one that towers in front of you coos to the female darkly.

“Oh, that’d be lovely. It’d help a lot of people out.” She replied in the same tone.

Your eyes widen, tears in them as you hold your hands up in defense. “No, no please don’t.”

He didn’t listen though and went to punch your stomach, your eyes snap closed as you tense up. Waiting for the impact you got pretty often but it never came. You slowly open them when you feel someone in front of you, the fist of your attacker in the boys hand. “Try picking on someone your own size.” He growled lowly, shoving the bully backwards easily.

You glanced around and saw that the entire Wolfpack was surrounding you in a protective way. The leader standing in front of you. But the one thing that you noted on all of their faces was that they looked angry, furious. Their jaws clenched and hands balled into fists, eyes narrowed and nostrils flaring.

You stepped back slowly, watching the events unfold in front of you. First it was the group of bullies to try and hit them, but the amount of time actually spent equally fighting made you wonder why you were afraid of them instead of the Wolfpack. In the end, it was mostly them just beating the living crap out of the students who had been so mean to you. Once they were satisfied, and many snarky comments were said on top of threats, they let the beaten group scurry away. Comet looked back at you, who stood in shock.

“Are you okay?” He asked in concern, his brown eyes soft as he inspected you for injuries. His face turns into confusion, like he was thinking hard about something then he snaps his fingers. “Hey! You’re that girl who helped me out at the vending machine not too long ago!”

“Uh, I, uh, yes I am. To- to both, both questions.” You stutter, now nervous because all of his friends had walked up to the both of you. Looking at you expectantly.

“Those jerks, I think we taught them a lesson, eh?” The redhead scowls in the direction they ran off to, then looks at you with such a bright smile. “My name’s Boost, and yours is?”

“(Y/n).” You reply, taking a deep breath. Your body still trembling slightly.

“You can call me Sinker.” The white haired one smiles softly.

“And me Wolffe.” The tallest looks down at you, his eyes softening when they meet your teary (e/c) ones.

You slowly nod and look down, trying to find the correct response. You didn’t truly know what to say. They just defended you from the bullies that have been bothering you for a long time. How do you thank them? Could you ever repay it? And why, why did they do this? You’re not worth the fight and trouble they’ll get into for it.

The tears start to run down your face and that makes Comet frown, because he noticed. But before he could say anything your shaking voice is heard. “Why did you do that? You’ll get in trouble! Because of me! I didn’t want you to get in trouble, you helped me and now.. now..”

“Love, listen.” Sinker lifts your chin very gently and makes you meet his beautiful gold eyes. “Don’t apologize, really, it’s nothing. We aren’t getting detention and it’s not your fault. You didn’t ask for that.”

“It’s mostly because Wolffe’s dad, Principle Koon, knows we don’t fight unless it’s needed. So he’ll believe us when we tell him what happened.” Comet adds.

“Or because he spoils his son, either or.” Boost mumbles with a small smirk, looking off to the side. Acting like he didn’t say anything but he still gets a sharp glare from Wolffe.

Sinker rolls his eyes and then focuses back onto yours, his face turning serious but his eyes are full of love. “But even if we were going to get detention, it would be worth it. Nobody deserves that kind of treatment. Especially not such a sweet girl like you. None of us would be angry at you, and if we still look pissed, it’s probably because we’re furious at those bullies. We hate bullying.”

Comet looks at you now, brown eyes full of emotion and yet, you could see how honest he is being. “I myself used to be bullied, until Wolffe stopped it, just like he did for you. I know how you’re feeling right now, but listen, you’re worth what we did. And if I had to fight everyday to make you feel right again, I would. All of us would. These guys gave me the support and love I needed, accepted me and my weirdness-”

“And love it.” Boost cuts in quietly behind him.

“And I know that they will accept you as well. I will start out by doing this, saying this, if anyone is ever mean to you again let us know. And we can send Wolffe to beat the tar out of them and I’ll buy us popcorn to eat while watching. Because if you think his fighting was impressive on school grounds, you should see him fighting in a parking lot.” Comet says with a small smile then lays a soft kiss on your forehead.

“Thank.. thank you.“ You breathe out, tears rolling down your cheeks.

“Of course.” Boost and Sinker say in unison, making you laugh slightly.

“It’s my pleasure.” Comet beams, “We mean it. You want to walk and sit with us at lunch?”

You blink away your tears and dry your eyes with the end of your sleeve, nodding furiously. They smile and turn, starting to walk with you. They chatted about the most random things as they walked, not really noticing the looks you were getting from people nearby, well you thought they didn’t.

You felt a nudge against your hand and you looked down, seeing someone’s hand touching yours in an asking way, then looked up at the culprit. Wolffe. You let him take your small hand in his large, warm one. You smile at him, your eyes happy and heart warm. He catches this and turns back to where he was going.

But he smiled at you anyway, slightly, and you caught it from the side. He makes a mental note that he loves how you smile and that he should make effort to see you smile more often. So you both, including the rest of the Wolfpack, walked to lunch.

You’d gained a group of good, close friends that kept their word about protecting you. They uplifted you and took you out to hang out with them. Encouraged and complemented you because you deserved it. They told people off, sometimes beat them up, if they degraded you. You got lots of hugs and smiles, sometimes forehead kisses, because you’re now a part of their pack.

Wolffe’s father, Plo Koon, has basically adopted you as a daughter as well. You’d go to their house and hang out with the boys when not at school, studying with them often.

They loved you, and you loved them.

And that’s all that matters to you anymore.

---------------

honestly don’t ask why I wrote this, because I don’t even know, it took me a little bit today but I got it done. I love my Wolfpack boys very much and thought this would fit nicely! I love notes and reblogs, so thank you to all who have been supporting me! :)) What do y’all want me to write next?? I can do any clone- any setting- I love fluff followed by sadness- I can write what you please just ask!

#reader #fluff #commander wolffe #sinker #boost #comet #bullying #wolfpack #plo koon is the principle lol #notice that?#swtcw #clones

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flatlineforest · 4 years

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Sakura - chapter 1. [Shimadacest ABO]

This was one of the first fics I wrote for the ship. It started off as a one shot and grew in chapters as a result of requests.

Warnings: A/B/O, Omega Hanzo, Alpha Genji, heat fic, manipulation, mildly dubious consent, sibling incest. In later chapters: Father/ child incest, threesome, somnophilia ish.

Wordcount, chapter 1 - 1,659

Read all chapters on AO3 here. Originally posted on: 12/05/2017.

Genji wakes up unusually early one summer morning to the overwhelming scent of sakura blossoms. It is a curious smell, sweet and floral but undeniably strong. It seems to permeate the air of his bedroom, and perhaps even is seeping through the walls. It doesn’t make a lick of sense; the blossoms only occur in the spring and even if there was a particularly late tree it shouldn’t smell so strongly all this distance from the courtyard.

He sniffs at it lazily, normally reluctant to get out of bed early after being out all night but today he is willing to make an exception in order to feed his curiosity. The smell pulls a sense of urgency from him - he isn’t quite sure why but he is certain that finding the source can’t wait. He pulls on a pair of sweatpants and pads out of his bedroom to begin his hunt.

The smell is so strong, it seems to even draw the attention of the beta housemaids who flit about the private quarters of the Shimada estate. They murmur about it and sniff as discreetly as they can but they do not currently hold his interest.

As he approaches the eastern wing of the quarters, the scent takes on a new spiciness - a punch to it that runs down from his nose to his dick as he prowls the halls. He follows that spiciness as his dick chubs up, and wonders if perhaps one of the servants had gone into heat while they were cleaning. It seemed like a logical explanation - and perhaps Genji could be so kind as to offer his services should he come across some hapless omega in need.

…

The last thing Genji expects is to find the epicenter of that scent at the entrance of his big brother’s room.

It didn’t make any sense. He had registered the scent as omega heat scent but it wasn’t supposed to be coming from his brother’s room. His older brother wasn’t an omega - he hadn’t even presented but Shimada men had presented as alphas for as far back as ten generations!

Maybe Hanzo had come across an omega in heat and brought her back to his room? Maybe he was going to help her - or! Or keep her all to himself since his brother did have a thing for cherry blossoms. Genji bared his teeth at the thought- his instincts offended at the thought of his brother keeping such an amazing smelling omega away from him.

He burst open the door, growling loudly as he looked around for the omega within his brother’s bedroom.

Laying in the center of the bed, writhing with widespread legs covered in slick was none other than Hanzo himself. The man seemed to be mostly out of it, one hand fisted in the sheets while the other was shoving two fingers into his cute, pink, virgin hole.

Genji’s mouth was watering. He couldn’t tear his eyes from where Hanzo was desperately fingering himself, as his dick fully chubbed up in his pants. “Anija,” he breathes out, his body on autopilot as he approaches the bed. He is kneeling down on it soon, bringing him so tantalizingly close to Hanzo’s gorgeous, sweet smelling hole. He notes how his brother’s legs are completely covered in that tantalizing slick.

He can’t help it - he starts lapping at the slick on Hanzo’s thighs, eyes on that hole as Hanzo thrusts his fingers in faster - seemingly frantic as this heat eats at him. Hanzo’s slick tastes like ambrosia, and he cannot stop. He cleans the slick from Hanzo’s thighs completely, making his way closer to Hanzo’s ass with each passing lick. Soon, he’s panting and drooling, kneeling between Hanzo’s thighs as his breath hits Hanzo’s sensitive, delicate hole.

“Genji,” Hanzo rasps out above him - and Genji’s cock jerks. He sounds as if he’s moaned himself hoarse and Genji wonders when exactly did his brother’s heat start? And what as his brother going to say- ask him to stop? Genji couldn’t even think of stopping - of not being able to taste that wonderful slick directly from the source, or not being able to give his brother the sweet relief he needs.

“Genji, please,” Hanzo whines and god, if it weren’t for all the pheromones in Genji’s system telling him he has to breed his brother, he probably would have came in his pants. He reaches out, pulling on Hanzo’s hand and assisting the other in easing out his slick covered fingers.

“I’ve got you, anija,” Genji breathed out, and pressed forward those last couple of inches and pressed an open mouthed kiss against Hanzo’s asshole. He moans at the taste, fresh slick infinitely better than the older liquid coating Hanzo’s thighs. He seems to dive into Hanzo’s ass, his mind short-circuiting as he tastes his older brother properly.

Hanzo’s hand is in his hair, pulling on the green locks as he is overwhelmed with the sudden pleasure. His heat had obviously been eating at him for hours - and there had been no chance for relief until his wonderful, amazing, baby brother had come finally come over to assist him. He could only think linearly - didn’t even think of any of the moral or physical consequences of eaten out by his baby brother and instead focused on the feeling of one of Genji’s long, pianist fingers pressing into him. He cried out and tightened his grip, thighs clamping around his brother’s head.

“Shh, anija, I am going to take care of you,” Genji sighed. He peaked up at Hanzo, the other barely catching a glimpse of his dilated eyes before the other was diving head first once more and doubling his efforts.

----

Genji could have spent hours eating his older brother out. The sweet and spicy taste of Hanzo’s slick was nothing less than addictive and Genji wished he could bottle it to drink later. However, Hanzo’s heat was getting unbearable and he demanded that Genji do something about it.

As if Genji wouldn’t willingly stick his dick in that warm, wet place he had been eating out for no less than twenty minutes. He doesn’t even bother to push his sweatpants all the way off, tucking the waistband behind his balls and taking his dick in hand. He rubs his dick across Hanzo’s hole and along his crack, lubing his cock in a combination of his own spit and Hanzo’s slick. He pressed the head right against his twitching hole, looking down at Hanzo’s blissed out face and his cute, omegan cock. “I’m gonna breed you up, Hanzo,” he breathed out. “I’m gonna knot you and give you lots of cream for your needy little hole. Aren’t you excited, anija?”

Hanzo moaned beneath him, hands reaching up to grasp Genji’s shoulders and pull him down face level. “Genji, I have been in heat at least four hours...If you do not fuck me, I might just have to kill you.” The statement is supposed to sound like a threat, but it really only draws a quiet ‘awwh’ from Genji.

He did take pity on his older brother, pressing his hips forward steadily and slowly until the tip of his cock popped in. He let out a moan of his own, feeling his brother’s hole clench tight and wet around his just the tip of his dick. “God, look at you. A perfect little omega whore already,” Genji groaned. He wasn’t able to hold back, starting to fuck the rest of his cock forward into that welcoming hole.

Normally, when he had an omega beneath him, he really went all out to be good to them but god, just this once he wanted to be selfish. His hips humped forward, fucking in and out just a couple of inches.

“Gonna breed you up, anija,” he grunted, leaning over Hanzo to sniff at his scent glands as he fucked. “Nobody can touch you, you’ll be all mine to have all of our little Shimada pups,” he added, licking at those sensitive scent glands and relishing in the wash of pheromones through him. He wasn’t brave - or rude - enough to bite down on them without Hanzo’s true consent but fuck, if it wasn’t tempting.

Hanzo’s cheeks were bright red - the way Genji had only ever seen when Hanzo was half a bottle of sake deep- as his cock jerked between them, covering them in a few, thin ropes of cum.

“Good boy,” Genji breathed out. He gathered Hanzo’s cum on his fingers and popped one into his mouth. He fucked his hips forward at the taste, the head of his dick pressing in as deep as he could manage as his own orgasm washed over him. His knot swelled rapidly, locking him inside of that wonderful hole.

“You feel that Hanzo? You better keep my cum in you even after the knot goes down. You want it don’t you? You want to have my pups, right, anija?” Genji asked, all the more excited as his cum started to paint Hanzo’s insides. If he had a tail, it would be wagging furiously with his excitement.

Hanzo looked up at him, mouth ajar as he panted. He seemed content - a cat who got the cream as Genji’s knot left him warm and full.

Genji had never seen him so happy.

---

It was not until later in the day that Lord Shimada returned to the estate. He was met at the front gate by an advisor.

“Sir, your eldest son presented as an omega. He is in heat,” the man reported, eyes downcast as he waited for the Lord’s reaction.

“Ah...Does he have any company to assist him through this? I’d hate for my son to have to suffer through this alone…”

“About that, sir...Genji has been in his room all day. He will not let anyone enter.”

#shimadacest #old fic #a/b/o #dubious consent #forest writes

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templeofgeek · 6 years

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Star Wars Fan Art By Erin Lefler for #ForceAgainstCyberbullying

With the every growing popularity of geek and nerd culture, more and more people come together to join in on the celebration of their favorite franchises and characters. Fandoms are a wonderful place of community and belonging. Unfortunately, they are still not immune to the eventual toxicity that comes with any large populous.

One such toxic behavior is cyber bullying. No one is immune to cyber bullying. Whether you’re a young kid or a big Hollywood actor. Cyber bullying has a way of bringing a dark cloud over our happiness. Actress Kelly Tran was harassed online for her portrayal of Rose Tico in the latest Star Wars installment, The Last Jedi. So much so that it drove her to delete all her Instagram posts.

Cyberbullying is bullying that takes place over digital devices, and on social media platforms (such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, via text etc.). It includes sending, posting, or sharing negative, harmful, false, or mean content about someone else. Sharing personal or private information about someone else causing embarrassment or humiliation. Some cyberbullying instances can be criminal behavior.

According the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Suicide is the second leading cause of death between 15-19 years old. It was this realization that sparked artist Erin Lefler to make a stand against cyberbullying. In an hopes that cyberbullying would not contribute to any of those deaths by suicide. We spoke to Erin about her project and what it means to her.

What is The Force Against Cyber Bullying Campaign? Erin: The #forceagainstcyberbullyingcampaign is a campaign I created to shed light on cyber bullying as a problem, as well as to provide support and love to those being cyber bullied. I feel with all the social movements and topics that we see every day on the news, in papers, and on social media, Cyber bullying as a topic gets put on the back burner. But it’s a HUGE problem!!! And it’s something I feel personally should be discussed.

Star Wars Fan Art By Erin Lefler for #ForceAgainstCyberbullying

What inspired you to create this campaign? Erin: I created this campaign after being on the receiving end of a lot of harassment and cyber bullying on some Official Lucasfilms licensed work I’ve done and non licensed Star Wars work that I have done. Which, after those started getting it, it then also started happening on other work of mine, like marvel work, original work, etc. As someone who really loves what they get to do for work, (I mean I get to work for one of the coolest companies [Lucasfilms] ever!) it really felt like a punch to the gut, and like all the air was taken out of me. These were so called “fans” of the exact things I create for work, some of which had been following me for awhile. And they were now targeting and harassing me, for what? Because they didn’t like the way the last movie went down? Because they didn’t like the character I had drawn? This was something that I feel shouldn’t be allowed to happen. No one should be able to call you names, threaten your safety and well-being, or trash your reputation just because you’re doing something you love. You see, I just make art for the company. I’m not the one who wrote the script, I’m not an actress from the film, or even the director. My job is so small compared to those directly involved with the film; like really small. How many people actually know my name compared to say Mark Hamill, Rian Johnson, or Kelly Marie Tran? I’m just doing what I’m paid to do like they are, and I’m also getting to do what I love. It’s every fans dream. But because I have the the name ‘Lucasfilms’ attached to my name, I receive the same amount of hate and harassment if not worse then what the big names do. Having this happen to me got me to think how this type of behavior is so prevalent on the Internet today, and how it has spread across so many fandoms/ many online communities. And most people turn a blind eye to it! Which, I really feel is not okay. I felt alone. I was hurt and confused as to why all this was happening to me. As someone who tries to always look for and be positive about everything, it was hard to accept people could be like this. I had been been physically bullied growing up, but this was a whole new thing I had to learn how to deal with. When I began to publicly share what was happening with my followers across my social media accounts, not only was there an outpouring of support to me, but I was also receiving so many messages of those who were also once cyber bullied, or were currently being cyber bullied. To hear so many voices saying “I’ve been there and I wish I had help” or “ I’m facing the same thing right now and I don’t know what to do”, honestly broke my heart. I wanted to be able to help them all, but how could I? I barely knew how to help myself. I had to take a small break from social media for a few days because I could feel it almost bringing me into a depression. I felt so helpless. Not only were the words of these people harassing me getting me down, but seeing so many others going through the same thing and crying out for help shocked me. I thought ‘How can so many be facing this, and nobody be speaking about this?’ We see and are bombarded everyday by headlines like “which celeb wore it best”, “this celeb got implants”, or “this celeb power couple broke up.” And while there’s nothing wrong with taking an interest in these things, I wondered why are these things are trending when people are out here LITERALLY losing their lives to cyber bullying. Which, made me realize there’s almost no conversation about cyber bullying. It was almost NONEXISTENT. Which is a scary thought when you think about it. What are we saying is ok and teaching is ok to the next generation? So after getting past my anger at those harassing me and the sadness over what they were saying, and for those who were also going through this experience too, I decided someone had to stand up. Enough was enough. We can’t keep pretending this wasn’t happening. So I determined the best way to do this was to create a campaign to spread awareness. Maybe it would become a thing and catch on. Maybe it wouldn’t. But I know I wouldn’t have been happy if I just stood by and let it continue to happen. What type of person would I be if I did that? I’m given the resources and the following to make something of it, so I said “well I mind as well do something.” And it sparked a fire within me, and A determination I never really had before.

Gaurdians Of The Galaxy Fan Art By Erin Lefler for #ForceAgainstCyberbullying

Why do think cyber-bullies bully other people online? Erin: Its hard to really determine the exact reason why people decide it’s OK to do it, but what I can come up with is many people find a strange sense of power behind a keyboard, and there’s almost no fight against cyber bullying. People most likely wouldn’t say these things if they had to look the person in the face, but hiding behind a screen? ‘Aha! There’s no consequence!’ People think. And it’s actually quite the contrary. Cyber bullying can have worse affects! Many people don’t know, but cyber bullying is the leading cause of suicide world wide. That’s a problem! And all for what; just so someone can feel better about themselves online? So they can feel bigger? Unfortunately this is what’s happening. When did this become an okay thing to do? If it’s not OK to do face to face and we raise awareness about that, why do we let cyberbullying slide? There should be accountability like there is for face to face harassment. But since there’s none, it’s open game for them you could say.

How much of a problem do you think cyber-bullying is in Fandom? Erin: I think it’s a huge problem! I’m sitting here, not only as someone who is working for Lucasfilms, but also as someone who is a fan of it. And sadly I’m watching this pull Star Wars fans apart. But it doesn’t stop at Lucasfilms. It spans from marvel, to Disney, to even cosplay. It spans over EVERYTHING. Fandoms are made to bring people together over something that we love. Not to slam someone from having their own opinions, not to say “oh, well this is cosplayer looks so much better than you” or “this art is so much better than yours.” Are you a fan of something? You probably express it in your own special way then. So if it’s okay for you to express it in your own way, it should be acceptable across the board for everyone to express in their way how they’re a fan. Now I’m not saying you can’t have an opinion on how someone expresses their love of a fandom, but is your opinion shared in kind? Should it even be shared at all? If we remembered this, I feel fandoms would become a lot less toxic towards one another. But as of right now it’s a big problem, and it needs to be addressed.

What can people do to stop cyber-bullying? Erin: Surprisingly there’s a lot you can do to stop cyber bullying from happening! First, here’s how not to be a cyber bully: if you don’t have something nice to say, simply DON’T SAY IT. Don’t comment on the tweet or post. Don’t direct message your displeasure to the person. Keep scrolling. Keep moving past it. Don’t hang up on the person to try to shame them. Just think, someone might do the same thing to you down the road. So how do you think you’d feel? If you wouldn’t like it done to you don’t do it to someone else. Simple as that. Next, here’s how to help if you see someone else being cyber bullied: stand with them. Stand up for them. If you see someone commenting ridiculously rude or obscene things at someone, maybe tell them something like this: “Can you please stop? This isn’t appropriate behavior. You wouldn’t like if someone did this to you, so don’t do it to this person.” Or if you see people ganging up against another person, saying it’s ‘just a joke’ or ‘constructive criticism’, try telling them something like: “Saying this doesn’t make your actions here ok. Please stop doing this to (insert person here). You didn’t need to say anything at all if you didn’t like this. So please just leave this person alone.” If you don’t feel brave enough to stand up like that, just send the person being affected by this a message saying something like: “hey I’m sorry you have to deal with this. If there’s anything I can do, please let me know. Please know that you’re not alone and if you need to talk I’m here for you.” If you’re being cyber bullied, there’s a lot of actions you can take to stop cyber bullying. First of all, do not isolate yourself. That’s the worst thing you can do. Talk to others. Surround yourself with those who love you and support you. Next, stand up for yourself. You don’t need to sit back and let it happen. You can politely tell the bullies to stop but honestly that will just add more fuel to their fire. They’re honestly not worth it. So the easy way to stand up for yourself is: 1) block, 2) report, 3) delete.

1). BLOCK. No one has the right to follow you if they’re harassing you. So just block them. This way they won’t be able to message you or comment at you to bully you. 2). REPORT. Now on some social media sites this is more effective than others. Twitter has an amazing report feature. Not only do they do an investigation on it, they let you provide proof to them of what’s happening, and give you updates on their findings. I’ve personally had to use this feature a lot on twitter and have seen some pretty great results with it. Instagram’s report feature isn’t as detailed, but you can still report if you have a problem. 3). DELETE. Okay, I know this might sound generic but yes, delete! (Insert Cyberman here…) if people are leaving harassing comments on your posts, or sending you harassing DM’s, there’s nothing saying they need to stay on your post. Just delete the comment. Delete the direct message. This way you don’t dwell on it, and it doesn’t bring you down. Shake it off!! Don’t give them the satisfaction of a response. Not only are you showing you’re a bigger person, but you’re also sending a message to the bully that their actions have no effect on you.

What message do you have for people who have been victims of cyber bullying? Erin: I think the message I have for those being cyber bullied, or those who have been cyber bullied is: you’re not alone. You’re NEVER alone. You are loved by so many and they all want to help you. There are so many who have been through the same things and have made it out OK. Talk to someone you trusts, don’t go through this by yourself. Don’t ever feel like these things being said to you are true. There’s a reason it’s happening behind a screen. Because the people who are doing it are cowards. And liars. And if they even just barely knew you, they’d know you’re so much more wonderful than their words. Simple as that. And if you’re feeling as the life you’re living isn’t worth living anymore, due to the harassment you’re going through: please rethink this. You are amazing, you are loved, and your life is more than worth it. Please seek help. You don’t have to go through this and feel this way alone. You don’t need to take your life because of people’s thoughtless actions. You have so much more to live for and accomplish. You are worth more than words. Please, remember that. I know I’m rooting you on… You can do this!! I’m going through it too. I know it’s not easy, but you can do it. And you can come out the victor. Just keep fighting against this.

Advice from Stopbullying.gov:

Prevent Cyberbullying

Be Aware of What Your Kids are Doing Online A child may be involved in cyberbullying in several ways. A child can be bullied, bully others, or witness bullying. Parents, teachers, and other adults may not be aware of all the digital media and apps that a child is using. The more digital platforms that a child uses, the more opportunities there are for being exposed to potential cyberbullying.

Warning Signs a Child Being Cyberbullied

Noticeable increases or decreases in device use, including texting.

A child exhibits emotional responses (laughter, anger, upset) to what is happening on their device.

A child hides their screen or device when others are near, and avoids discussion about what they are doing on their device.

Social media accounts are shut down or new ones appear.

A child starts to avoid social situations, even those that were enjoyed in the past.

A child becomes withdrawn or depressed, or loses interest in people and activities.

What to Do When Cyberbullying Happens

If you notice warning signs that a child may be involved in cyberbullying, take steps to investigate that child’s digital behavior. Cyberbullying is a form of bullying, and adults should take the same approach to address it: support the child being bullied, address the bullying behavior of a participant, and show children that cyberbullying is taken seriously. Because cyberbullying happens online, responding to it requires different approaches. If you think that a child is involved in cyberbullying, there are several things you can do.

Advice For Adult Victims

Justin W. Patchin from Cyberbullying.Org suggests:

“First, it is important to keep all evidence of the bullying: messages, posts, comments, etc. If there are ways you can determine who exactly is making the comments, also document that. Second, contact the service or content provider through which the bullying is occurring. For example, if you are being cyberbullied on Facebook, contact them. If you are receiving hurtful or threatening cell phone messages, contact your cell phone company to obtain assistance. Along those same lines, familiarize yourself with the Terms of Use for the various sites you frequent, and the online accounts you sign up for. Many web sites expressly prohibit harassment and if you report it through their established mechanisms, the content and/or bully should be removed from the site in a timely manner. To be sure, some web site administrators are better and quicker at this than others.

Also, please be careful not to retaliate – or do anything that might be perceived by an outsider to have contributed to the problem. Do not respond to the cyberbully except to calmly tell them to stop. If they refuse, you may have to take additional actions. If you are ever afraid for your safety, you need to contact law enforcement to investigate. They can determine whether any threats made are credible. If they are, the police will formally look into it. The evidence that you have collected will help them to evaluate your situation.

You should also take the time to check your state laws. We have discussed some of these laws on this blog and have a summary of many applicable laws here. In Wisconsin, for example, it is a misdemeanor if someone uses computerized communication systems to “frighten, intimidate, threaten, abuse, or harass another person.” It is also against the law to “harass annoy, or offend another person.” See what the laws in your state are to determine if the police should get involved.

If the threats or comments are detrimental to your health, safety, or occupation, you might want to consult with an attorney who specializes in harassment, defamation of character, false light, intentional infliction of emotional distress, or similar types of civil action. A letter sent from an attorney (on law firm letterhead) to the bully may be all that is necessary to get the bullying to stop.”

If You Are The Bully

Wiki How has a great post about ways to identify bullying behaviors and how to help control them.

Understand Bullying. Know what constitutes bullying. Learn to identify bullying and fully understand its consequences. Know what causes bullying.

Conduct a Self-Examination. Identify bullying patterns in your life. Identify your insecurities. Reflect on how it feels to bully others.

Take Control of you Behavior. Put yourself in the victim’s perspective. Ask yourself how the victims of bullying feels when you’re bullying them. Ask yourself what the reason is for the bullying. Stopping yourself from bullying. Take a moment to think. Remove yourself from groups of people who reward you for bullying others. Practice empathizing with others. Change outlook on things. Get help from a professional.

Make Amends. Apologize to people you have bullied. Forgive yourself. Treat people with respect from now on.

We can all help prevent suicide. The Lifeline provides 24/7, free and confidential support for people in distress

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline Call 1-800-273-8255 Available 24 hours everyday

For more from Erin Lefler you can visit her website at: https://linktr.ee/butternut_gouache

The Force Against Cyberbullying Campaign With the every growing popularity of geek and nerd culture, more and more people come together to join in on the celebration of their favorite franchises and characters.

#Butternut #butternut_gouache #cyber bullying #Erin Lefler #fandom #Force Aginst Cyber Bullying #GEEK #geek news #rose tico #rose tico instagram #Star Wars

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violetsystems · 3 years

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#personal

I survived without a concussion. I still can’t figure out whose bass that was. i still can’t imagine playing in a Sting cover band either. So there’s a lot of things I’ve been throwing out regardless of their immediate threat to my person. I feel like I’ve been punched around and then I don’t really feel like I care too much. Inside my apartment is cozier than before. I feel a lot of uncertainty about the future and then none at all. I sent my parents Christmas gifts last night and talked over text. They’re supportive and they don’t really pry which leaves me to live my own life. The value of that life I live is the ultimate mind fuck. I’d argue everybody needs some time to spend with themselves to care about their self worth. Not many people have that option. My situation is always unique for as long as anybody has ever read my ramblings. It feels dizzying at times. Like I’m spiraling in freefall in outer space trying to figure out which way is up. Most of the time staying put and maintaining position is the best course of action. People get antsy and nervous. I had a lot of that over the last six months. These days I don’t know that I really have much else to do for the moment. The vaccine is on the horizon at some point. I was thinking to myself that the virus was the reason I was let go from my job. The ultimate protection against that is to get vaccinated. And I have all the time in the world to get that done before summer at the latest. Realistically I could hobble this entire thing out until next November draining everything and still be at zero. But it’s the silence that fucks with me the most. The act that regardless what I do nobody really cares or pays attention. Which is probably why it made sense to start a corporation out of nowhere. If you have enough money, you can do anything in America. And arguably, there aren’t any roadmaps out there for people like me. This is especially true when large tribal groups of people in power like to pretend you don’t exist. And you are supposed to read further into that understanding that this is part of the culture of the successful. You wonder how they got successful in the first place. Certainly not on their own. And certainly not without a lot of money to go along with it. It is for certain that I don’t really worry about money for the time being. I worry about the scarring around all of the open wounds nobody attended to. Which the latest was enough to shake me a little emotionally when a guitar that I did not own came flying out of a closet onto my head. I would say nobody was there to kiss the pain away. But the thought of you is always on my mind. So maybe that’s why I survived a good night’s sleep.

I survive a lot of things. At this point, people on the internet think of me as some combination of Solid Snake and Palpatine with a frappuccino. I wrote here for years just to stay sane. I still write here to stay sane but mostly to share my thoughts with my friends. One of the most bitter realizations I’ve had in my adult life was the reality of my friendships. In your twenties, we all have this romanticism about working with our friends. When you spend two decades working and building entire communities in a city, things evolve and change. That’s the nature of true culture. It doesn’t stay stagnant. The solutions are not always the surefire answers you want. Democracy is messy over time. And yet for all the pretention of the last twenty years, I still walk out the door and people know who I am. There’s entire subsets of people that signal me on the street corners because of the things I support. I don’t know that anybody knows exactly what is going on with me other than here. It’s all so vague because day after day I don’t really talk to anybody very deeply about anything. It’s mostly surface level conversation. I walk everywhere. It’s safe enough for me. I don’t know about anybody else. After having my self worth plummet into the toilet being let go from my job, I wondered what I had left. And I have a lot. I also still have a lot of bitterness and anger at my situation. But ultimately, I get over it. I’ve been through enough shitty life experiences to know I get back up again and reinvent myself into a better version of who I need to be. This doesn’t mean that loneliness isn’t a motherfucker. The trick is that everybody is probably more lonely than you. It takes some guts to face yourself in the mirror. More guts to answer to the problems that you cause yourself. Kind of like putting a bass guitar so high up in your closet. I have shot myself in the foot so many times being awkward. And you live and you learn. I do worry excessively about a lot things. And then again I plan for a silver lining. I do look back at how isolated and alone I feel. And then I know this is completely the opposite if I just believe in myself and my self worth. You have to do that first. And if you believe in yourself you already know how hard it is to overcome the fear. The fear never goes away. That’s another trick. I spent a lot of time getting rid of the baggage as they say. Spent a lot of time cleaning out my closet recently too. You have to dust off a lot of cobwebs. You start to notice a lot more chips in the walls. You address things with care and attention. And you start to transform your environment through action. I spent some time weaving rags and cleaning spaces for an arts collective years ago. We had a show at Jane Addams Hull House museum. A lot of what drew me to the practice was the healing and meditative nature of cleaning. I’m unfortunately your token cis heterosexual male in this regard. There’s a lot of privilege straight boys can face if we just look at our bathroom sink on a daily basis. And some of us do. Today I am marginally unsuccessful based on a cursory look over my shoulder aside from the shelving I added last week.

Of all the shit my friends on here know is that I’m a really genuine person. It hurt so much to feel like I wasn’t part of a community I serviced for years. And at some times I felt like I didn’t really belong. White rich people always trying to control the institutional dialog on something. I spent years going to raves and underground shows enough to know everybody dances. I’ve spent years on social networks like these listening to what people really had to say. I’ve scrolled through enough dick floods to know that my dick is enough for me. And I know how I live is my own business and everybody deserves to live and be free. It should be obvious we are all different and we live in the perfect country to accept and celebrate that. Being unique shouldn’t be at odds with who we are as a country. And yet, we all know the reality of conservative and populist values. That the money thinks it can rule the world all the same. It should be easier to fight it these days. And yet, nobody wants to acknowledge anyone exists or the real history about people and what they’ve done. It’s worse than cult behavior and it’s fractured the very social fabric that holds people’s dreams together. I don’t really worry much about it at all these days. I’ve survived this much with a pretty ridiculous story to tell my friends every week. My question has always been where do we go from here. If you are me, you look in the mirror and just know there isn’t much to do but continue to evolve. And being accountable for your own shit by yourself is something I think everyone could agree is a pretty good goal for a man like myself. So many times I cried to a wall wondering if I was good enough. I look back at that and know that I am. It took work. We spend so much energy caring about what the world thinks and not enough time finding our own voices. We parrot out beliefs that make us seem woke but never walk those beliefs around in public out of fear of being tested or provoked. When you are staring life directly in the eyes, the words come differently. I wish I could say I had it all figured out. But at least I can admit I’m only human as I am. Humanity is something we should be able to feel these days. And all we really feel is the ugly parts of it. The ugly parts are celebrated while the real emotion is frothing below. Genuine communication can’t be commodified. It can’t be manipulated if it wants to be sacred. Intimacy is a complex thing in modern times much like modern love. People think they can shortcut their way through anything. And these plans fall apart. These emotions don’t last or stand the test of time. And people show their true colors in the face of adversity. I know what it feels like to be abandoned. And I know what it feels like to be betrayed. And I know what it’s like to have a community that supports each other no matter who we love. That’s a real safe space to build from. I intend to fight to keep it that way for everyone. However invisible I’m meant to become. Maybe that’s my superpower after all. Being the exception. It takes work to survive. in that respect nothing has changed with me. <3 Tim

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xtruss · 4 years

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9/11 & Mumbai Attacks Were Inside Jobs: A Detailed Analysis By Elias Davidson

Elias Davidson is an author of several books, including the ‘Betrayal of India.’ GVS team sat down with him in Islamabad and tried understanding his perspective on history since 9/11.

— Magazine Desk | June 8, 2019 | Global Village Space

Most in the west may see German author Elias Davidson as he describes in his own words: “an idiot conspiracy theorist”, but he defines himself as a researcher who works like a historian. Unlike a journalist who travels from place to place, he collects and analyses all the published material, all data in public domain, and the claims made by the government agencies and then attempts to discover the truth hidden behind the trove of lies. GVS team sat down with him in Islamabad, during his recent visit, and tried understanding his perspective on history since 9/11. We offer excerpts from a detailed interview. His claims and judgments are provocative. Readers are the best judge.

GVS: What made you take interest in Mumbai terrorism?

Elias Davidson: Let us begin from 2001, that is, 9/11. I believed, like many others, that it was an operation carried out by Osama Bin Laden, a war backed by Muslim fanatics who professed that they are going to punch the noses of Americans because of what they were doing in Israel and the Muslim world. To be honest, many people in the left felt a little bit happy about it that finally, someone is banging on the head of Americans – and I believed it too. I didn’t really care about 9/11; I thought it just happened.

Until a year later, a friend of mine lent me a book by Thierry Meyssan, who was a French journalist and wrote the first critical book, “The Horrifying Fraud,” on the event. The book explained that it was not possible for a plane to enter the Pentagon and there were contradictions in the official story. So, I read it thoroughly. I checked all the sources, that is, Washington Post, New York Times, to see if he was making something up. However, I realized that he had thoroughly researched and produced the book.

I was astonished that I did not know about these things. It peeked, my curiosity, therefore I went on to investigate 9/11 and I did so for ten years. Rather early in my research, I began to pose the question, ‘who were the perpetrators and what evidence was there from the American government to say that they were Islamic terrorists?’ I searched and tried my best to find evidence, but I found none. There were four categories of evidence in my research. Firstly, the names of passengers; secondly, security videos from the airports; thirdly, witnesses who saw these people at the airport or the boarding phase; fourthly, identification of their bodily remains from the crash sites.

I looked for all this information on the FBI’s website, FBI’s documentation, which was sent to the 9/11 commission, on newspapers, and in books. I combed everything I could and found not a shred of evidence. To sum it up, I documented everything in my first book published in 2013, ‘Hijacking America’s mind on 9/11’. There is a full chapter devoted just to the absence of evidence.

In the last few years, I sue everyone who dares to mention Muhammed Atta, the alleged pilot, as a terrorist or mass murderer. They have to deal with me; I will take him to court and accuse him of defamation – I am a defender of Muhammad Atta in the world. This is a strong statement, and I stand by it because I know it is the truth. I have accused 130 German journalists about it, in another book I published in Germany. I sent the journalists a letter where I stated that I would give them a possibility to retract those accusations on Muhammad Atta and apologize or provide some evidence of their assertions.

GVS: Questioning 9/11 makes people question your credibility, how did you come around to not believing in the American statements on 9/11 in the first place?

Elias Davidson: Let me say one thing; my book was published in the United States in 2013. I commented in black and white with all the sources mentioned. The entire story of 9/11 was a lie; especially about what happened on the day, no Muslim hijackers, the two planes which had crashed were still in the air after the alleged crash time. There is documented evidence from American sources that two of the four planes were still in the air at the time of the alleged crash.

Nobody until today has challenged a single fact in the book. Why? Because there is nothing to question. This is thoroughly documented. Many people in America endorse this book. There are 14 positive reviews of this book on Amazon and zero bad ones. Anybody who is trying to challenge me, please do so. I would be satisfied because I get bored of always getting commended. Please call it wrong. I have sent letters to American professors rebut the book, but nobody takes up the challenge.

GVS: The Mumbai attack, which happened on 26 November 2008, when did you get interested in that?

Elias Davidson: After I finished this work, I began to look at other terrorist attacks, which were attributed to Al-Qaida or Muslims. I thought I’d like to see if they had the same features as 9/11, state operations and so on. I began with the London attacks in 2005. I did in-depth research on that – around 70 pages – which I published as an ebook and came to the same conclusion that it was a state operation.

There were four people, three of them were British Pakistanis, but they were not involved, and they were not the perpetrators. If they were at all involved, then they were patsies and sent with ruck sacks without knowledge of what they were doing; it was just conjecture. What is clear is that the entire official London story is a lie, so I documented it as well.

GVS: We wonder why you don’t find the official explanations convincing? Two of us were in London on the eve of 7/7, in 2005 and we saw it developing the media reports as they poured in?

Elias Davidson: It is not a question of convincing, and you could have been in London, but that doesn’t give you an advantage over me when it comes to details. You did not go through the inquests for four years; I went through all the documents of the investigation that are available publicly. It is thousands of pages long, and I went through every sentence.

I researched in-depth like I usually do and concluded that the story was a fabrication. I don’t know which agency in the UK did it. It is possible that the New York Police department was also involved as they showed an extraordinary interest in the London affairs. They even constructed the so-called bomb factory in New York – a copy of the bomb factory from Leeds – which was allegedly where the bomb was produced.

GVS: What is so surprising about that? If an attack has happened in the UK, it would worry them that a similar attack might occur in the US, so they would simulate similar exercises to know how to deal with it.

Elias Davidson: I understand, but basically, we have the same case with Mumbai, and the New York Police Department was particularly interested in the Mumbai Attacks. They sent a delegation directly, held a conference a couple of weeks later in New York, and made simulations as if they knew everything.

GVS: What do you think is the real reason for their interest?

Elias Davidson: Okay, we will come to it after we discuss London. Everybody interested in my research on 9/11 has to read my books to have an opinion about it. To say that I have any conspiracy theories is not a rational way of addressing anything of that kind. I am a scholar; I have published articles on International Law in the United States, UK, Netherlands, Iran, etc. So, I am not a ‘nobody,’ I am an expert in international law and human rights who has written comprehensive books about these things.

So, anybody who is to deal with these things will first of all have to read them and then can say that they do not agree. However, to call me a conspiracy theorist is like calling me a nut. It has to have a meaning; it should hurt me, but it is so stupid that it doesn’t deserve a response. Anyhow, conspiracies exist everywhere. Even a police investigator is a conspiracy theorist because every crime committed by people is a conspiracy. The term has no meaning basically and is ridiculous – it just a term to demean people.

GVS: Did you visit India for your research on the book?

Elias Davidson: No. Do you think it is not possible to study and come to an understanding unless you physically see the place? How do historians do it? If you want to write about something that happened a hundred years ago, what do you do? You go to manuscripts and documents. Nobody can charge you for not living there; otherwise, there will be no history.

A journalist, typically, is usually not at the scene of the crime. Sometimes he doesn’t even have access to witnesses. So, if you are working as a scholar and you know how to work with evidence, you don’t have to go and speak to a person. I don’t think that I will get more by speaking to somebody who already spoke extensively to the newspapers in India, ten years ago; he will now tell me another story or repeat it. I don’t know but it will not add very much to the investigation and what is already available is so much information and so helpful that I didn’t see a need and I knew that it would not add any value.

I knew that I would get closed doors with the police, even Vinita Kamte, the widow of the slain officer. She came to closed doors with the Mumbai police – people with whom her husband worked. Do you think me coming from Germany would find opened doors? Not. So, there was no point in going there. Moreover, I think anybody using that argument should, first of all, go on the merit of what I wrote. Is there something wrong in the book? Tell me because I am open to that. However, don’t judge me because I am in Germany. I can be in Germany and do better work than someone in India.

GVS: Has the Indian government reacted to your book on Mumbai terrorism?

Elias Davidson: They have reacted like everybody else – they have hidden under the tables – no reaction. Nobody in the official governments in India or anywhere else, no media or journalist reacts to my writings. How can they do it? They can only call me an idiot conspiracy theorist. They cannot deal with the facts which are there with all the sources.

GVS: What were the key facts that attracted you to study the Mumbai attack?

Elias Davidson: I began with London and then I went to attacks in Djerba, Istanbul, etc. These were different terrorist attacks that I studied. I wanted to write an anthology on terror attacks with different chapters, including Mumbai and Bali. So, I came to the issue of Mumbai and began to work on it, just like the others. I never went to these places because I work like a historian; taking information and studying it. So, I deliberated on all of these and tried to find a common thread to compare them.

I thought the study on Mumbai would be only 50-60 pages of research, but it grew and grew to become an entire book because the information available on the issue was huge. Also, the judgment of Ajmal Kasab had a lot of media coverage, and it was a very complex operation – comprised of 8 locations. It required much effort to study the issue and became a book of 900 pages.

It took me two years of work to write it, and I did not write it for any publisher. I just went on researching and had contacts with people in India. I am very thankful to Inspector S. M. Mushrif, who wrote the first critical book on Mumbai attacks called, ‘Who killed Karkare?’ So, I got in touch with him, told him what I was doing, and he encouraged me.

My discoveries on the Mumbai operation grew and grew, and I used only publicly sourced documents. All of these documents are cited in my book, and I have cached all of them on my website in case an article in the Indian newspapers is made to disappear later on. So, in the book, I give a number to Google, which will lead directly to my website and the original document. I don’t know of any author who goes as far as that to help the reader to check his sources. I give all of the sourced documents to the reader.

GVS: What is the significance of the assassination of Karkare?

Elias Davidson: That is very simple – nationalist Hindus threatened him because he was exposing Hindu terrorism and he was shot. He confided to different people, who confirmed that he was afraid for his life, even on the day of his murder. The current Prime Minister of India, Modi, had publicly threatened him and called him a traitor, which under Indian law is passable of a death sentence. So, he was threatened and murdered with 26/11.

GVS: What is your understanding of Ajmal Kasab, who was in Indian custody and whose confessional statement was on television?

Elias Davidson: First of all, I don’t know if his name was Ajmal Kasab because the first information we got through the Indian media was a different name, which gradually changed to Ajmal Kasab. I don’t know if it was his real name and I also don’t know who he was. He told in his stories that he was already arrested in Mumbai two weeks before, etc. Secondly, nobody from Pakistan, neither family nor officials, came to identify him personally. So, we don’t know who he was, or even the photos we have are of this guy or someone else.

GVS: There were rumors in Islamabad that Ajmal Kasab could have been a small-time spy or an infiltrator that entered India from Nepal and was there for quite some time. In his confessional statement, he spoke local Marathi; he was very fluent in the local language and hence, could not have just landed in India through the boat.

Elias Davidson: I did not look at that. Looking into that presupposes that Ajmal Kasab was legitimate and involved in the attacks. However, I don’t have any evidence for that. So, whatever he told in his confessions, which he retracted in his statements, was for me like hot air – I don’t know if he was coached. You see, someone who is held by the police has hardly any access to his lawyers and he was not interviewed by any Pakistani; how can you comment on what he said or what the police said he said. So, for me, it was all hot air.

GVS: Why do you think the Indian state was so quick to execute him?

Elias Davidson: Why should they keep him in alive? This guy was hired to play some role in these attacks by those who organized it. Maybe he was asked to be at CST, to be photographed, if he had admitted in front of people that he was asked to stand with a Kalashnikov at CST, he would have revealed the entire story. So, the best thing is to eliminate this guy.

This is what usually happens with all the so-called Islamic terrorist attacks in the west – the alleged perpetrators are typically eliminated because they do not want these people to come to court. Also, this was maybe a mistake or not, in Mumbai, but here was one case in the Boston marathon. They didn’t kill one guy, and then he was sentenced to death in America, but this usually doesn’t happen. Look at the attack in Berlin, in the Christmas market in 2016.

I wrote the first book on this attack in Germany, it sells very well and is already in the fifth edition. I showed that there was no attack at all, and it was a staged theatre. The German government accuses Anis Amri, an Indonesian guy, who rode a truck and killed twelve people. That was all bullshit. And he was murdered in Milano. The police shot him because he tried to kill the policeman. You see, all these people are eliminated before they can talk, so there is no trial. And so, the government does not have to prove the case.

GVS: In the book, you mentioned that there was no public trial, but there was a trial, and he had lawyers.

Elias Davidson: Let us put it this way – it was a sham trial. It was a judicial farce and was not open or fair. It violated all the basic rules of a fair trial. If you look at the qualifications of a fair trial according to the international human rights law, you will see that this trial violated all the necessary provisions of a fair case and in fact, Amnesty International and other human rights organizations protested against this unfair inquiry.

So, this is not only my conclusion, but many others also considered the trial unfair, which is honestly an understatement. This judge, M L Tahilyani, should be imprisoned, in my opinion, because of how he undermined justice in India and the trust of the public. A person like this deserves to be punished. There was an appeal process, but I am sorry to say that the next levels, the Bombay Court and the Supreme Court of India, abdicated their obligation to seek the truth and justice.

The Supreme Court heaped admiration for this judge. Many years ago, I met a lawyer who was entitled to represent people in the Supreme Court of India, and he told me how the institution is fantastic. His judgments impressed me a lot, so I had a positive opinion of the Supreme Court of India, but I lost all of it after reading what they wrote about the lawsuit.

GVS: Indian position is that the trial was difficult because Pakistani government was not cooperative.

Elias Davidson: There was nothing like that. This is an argument of little standing. I will give you an example; the court could have interviewed the many people who saw all kind of things around these attacks, which contradicted the official account. However, they were not invited to testify. I have named in my book, around 40-50 witnesses who saw things which completely contradict the official statement.

GVS: We had read somewhere that while official account mentioned the use of Kalashnikov AK 47 assault rifles by the attackers, the subsequent autopsy reports at the hospital do not indicate the use of automatic rifles. What do the autopsy reports show, how these people died?

Elias Davidson: There were no autopsies; I am not aware of any autopsy reports. An important point I think I should mention is that there were two parallel series of attacks in Mumbai. I call them domestic attacks and international attacks. The internal attacks began in the CST terminals, railway stations; they then proceeded to Cama hospital, which led to the assassinations of three officers and their assistants and continued to the synagogue on the way to Girgaon.

So, there were four attacks which we will call the domestic operation, which was concentrated and designed to get rid of Karkare. The international operations begun in the Leopold hotel touched the Taj Mahal hotel, Oberoi Trident, and the Nariman House Jewish center – four locations which were mostly frequented by foreigners. The other one was primarily visited by locals and poor Indians. So, there were two operations which had to be coordinated.

There was probably overall coordination of both operations, but most likely two command centers – one for the local and one for the international operation. The Mumbai police commanded the local operation led by Rakesh Maria. He was the key person in the local operation. I don’t know who ran the international operation, but I suspect that there were Americans involved. Now, if we go by that description, we have two operations which are coordinated by one body or one mind.

This mind must have been automatically connected to those who wanted to kill Karkare – the policeman investigating Hindu terrorism. It cannot be, that some people in Pakistan were doing their own thing, and others joined in precisely at the same time.

GVS: Could Karkare not have been an accidental victim of the whole episode?

Elias Davidson: Exactly, this is what the official account says. However, if you look at all the details around the assassination, you will find nothing accidental. For example, police officers who were around the place at the time of the assassination got an order to stand down and not impede. They said it publicly that they were not supposed to go to that place. So, this operation was organized so Mumbai Police would not interfere with the assassination.

Another thing is that in this domestic operation, we were told that there were two people – Ajmal Kasab and Ismail – who went from one place to another and did this killing. However, this is impossible. Why? Because the shootings in the CST continued even after the Cama hospital operation began. The Cama operation started before the end of the shootings at CST and finished by the middle of the night – far longer than the assassination. So, we had at least two to three teams; one team at CST, one at Cama hospital going on until the middle of the night, another team to assassinate Karkare and a fourth team to shoot people near the cinema. So, we had at least four teams in the domestic operation, not just a few people.

GVS: So, none of the attackers, apart from Ajmal Kasab, were identified? How many attackers were there in total?

Elias Davidson: No, not at all. I have no clue. The official story says ten, but there could have been way more. You see because witnesses reported that in each location there were more attackers. In CST, people said there were three or four attackers outside the station. In Leopold, one witness said that three people were coming on a motorbike, and one of them looked European. Moreover, all of these witnesses were never identified.

I don’t know, some of them might be mistaken, but as long as you don’t go into the details and interrogate you will never find out. One attacker, Ajmal Kasab, was captured alive on the cameras with a gun and then made a confessional statement. It was said that he was captured alive, but this was not the first news. The first news was that two people were killed at Girgaon Chowpatty, through the night the story slowly changed that he was not killed but was shot; then a doctor came and said that he was never shot. So, we have these three versions about the capture of Ajmal Kasab.

GVS: What does your research show about the rest of the nine attackers? What happened to them, their dental records, skull records, bodies, identification, etc.?

Elias Davidson: We have nothing, nothing concrete about these nine people. We don’t know where they came from; we don’t know to whom these bodies belong – we only have first names of some of them. I cannot find it because there is no information about them.

GVS: Indian authorities identified a motorboat that sunk, and they had communication intercepts between Mumbai and Karachi, the FBI had a witness, Dawood Gilani, who was American of Pakistani origin. What does your research show about all that?

Elias Davidson: About the boat, in my book, I present four witnesses who said something about it. One witness, as it was reported in the news, spoke to the police, that he saw people coming out of the boat; one person said six and another said there were eight people. However, the one who said that he saw people coming out of the boat stated something else in court; he said that he went fishing and found an empty boat.

So, there was a contradiction between what was said in court and what was said to the newspaper, so we don’t know whom he was lying to. However, in any case, his testimony got dismissed because it was unreliable. In another case, a lady said that she was taken to America, from a fishing village, to testify secretly in January. Her name was Anita, and her story is entirely surreal. She revealed that she saw six people coming out of the boat. I have an entire section on her, as it was reported in the media, both in India and abroad.

GVS: What about the satellite communication intercepts between India and the FBI?

Elias Davidson: Do you mean the telephone calls? It’s nice that you brought that up. It is the biggest blunder of the organizers. They should have been smarter about them. First of all, the phone calls were organized by the FBI in such a way that you cannot see who called. It said that the call was made from Pakistan, but the calls were transmitted from a company based in New Jersey. A company in Delaware owns the VOIP Company in New Jersey.

The FBI intercepted all the calls and later when the investigation was to be conducted, organized an interview from the court, with the owner of the company on video. The FBI connected the court to this man in Canada, through an agent in California. So, the FBI was a central agent around the calls. They intercepted all the calls. Basically, the FBI was organizing all these things.

GVS: How can you say that the FBI was organizing this? We can argue that the FBI claims to have intercepted all the calls which were made via the internet, and telephone, and the FBI got to see all that.

Elias Davidson: Well, this is one part of it. If you focus logically, the FBI has many things to worry about. How could the FBI come to the idea of intercepting calls, in the spur of the moment, between somebody in India and somewhere else? You cannot do it unless you know. Indian witnesses said that they knew telephone numbers of the attackers before the attacks.

There was foreknowledge of the telephone numbers used by the attackers. So, the foreknowledge existed already in India, and I suppose with the FBI; otherwise, they could not intercept the calls. It is not logical. You cannot intercept the call unless you know something is going on and you are alert. All that I am saying is well-documented.

GVS: Have you not talked to the Indian authorities after 900 pages of research?

Elias Davidson: Let me give you an example, if you have a criminal unless you have the power of an Attorney and unless you have the ability to subpoena people and to force them to come and interview, you cannot interview a criminal or a suspect.

GVS: However, the critical questions regarding the evidence, the nine attackers that were never identified, you could have raised questions to the Indian officials about the inconsistencies in the case.

Elias Davidson: Do you think, realistically, that a guy sitting in Germany will get answers from Indian authorities who are implicated in that? This is not realistic. I am writing letters every day to officials in India, to ask questions, and I never get any response. They don’t want to implicate themselves. I would have liked to talk to witnesses, but you can never reach the witnesses. I was talking to a victim (I will not disclose where she is), and she said that she went to Mumbai later and everyone was afraid to speak to foreigners. They are fearful for their lives.

GVS: Why do you think India organized this? What was the motivation or the goal?

Elias Davidson: It is clear that this was a massive and complex operation. My approach was, first of all, forensic. I did not think about motives in the beginning. I began to look for motives after finalizing the forensic part. I started with India, but also what could motivate Pakistan, United States, Russia, etc. As per my research I see several motives for India. One was to provide adjustment for increases in the budget for the military and the police; they pushed for that.

Secondly, and an essential thing, was to accelerate the buildup of a national security state or a domestic surveillance state or the big brother state in India; this was a program that had started earlier but accelerated automatically after Mumbai. As I discovered later, India may be a test laboratory for the United States, on how to create a big brother society in such a big country. So, it might have even been supported by Obama and the administration at the time, to use India as a laboratory for such an enormous national security state.

However, this is conjecture; what is not conjecture is that India is building a national security state. Third, politically, it helped to unite the Indian public around the threat from Pakistan and shift to the right for the BJP. Fourthly, this event galvanized the middle class in India, who were previously very complacent about national security; all at once they were on the streets to demonstrate for more security in Mumbai. After that, the security industry boomed.

Fifth, certain elite segments of the Indian society who had wanted to increase cooperation with Israel and the United States; benefited directly. After the Mumbai attacks, the interim minister resigned, and Chidambaram took over, and he was the key opener for the FBI to give them direct access to Ajmal Kasab, and all the information on Mumbai attacks. He opened the gates of India for American Intelligence, American law enforcement, etc. This was auto commanded, he said it himself, and the Americans confirmed it.

GVS: Did the FBI ever make definitive judgments about the Mumbai issue? Have you ever seen anything in which they concluded black and white? Like the Dawood Gilani case.

Elias Davidson: No, Gilani or Headley is a Red Herring. It is utterly irrelevant to Mumbai. To my knowledge, the FBI did not issue a paper to cite anything directly. What the FBI did was first, they sent a team straight to Mumbai during the attacks. Second, they got direct access to Ajmal Kasab even before he got a lawyer; they interviewed him for nine hours. Thirdly, they were participants of the phone calls.

Fourthly, they organized with the New York police department, if I remember correctly, about one to two weeks after the attack, a seminar on how to cope with such an attack. Now, at that time no investigation had been released, but the FBI and the NYPD were ready with a blueprint of how it was done. And this is documented. They had a conference with people from all over the United States, to discuss the modus operandi of Mumbai. At this time, as I said, they could not have had such information because it requires much more time to investigate such an operation.

GVS: You must have heard the Indian argument that the Mumbai attacks were orchestrated by elements in Pakistan so that there is continued hostility between India and Pakistan; otherwise, India and Pakistan could have come close to each other. What is your perspective on that?

Elias Davidson: Well, this might have been one of the reasons. I don’t think that it was the primary reason. I mentioned already the motives of India; this could have been one of the reasons. However, I stand with my investigation to think that it was not the main reasons. Pakistan was only the by-product. It is handy politically, but the main thing was the domestic and economic reasons with the United States.

GVS: However, Mumbai terrorism provided the pretext for the United States and, mostly, India to declare Pakistan as a terror-sponsoring and terrorist state. And the Pakistanis have often thought that the Mumbai attacks were arranged to get Pakistan by the neck and to take it to the Security Council as a terrorist state.

Elias Davidson: Yes, this is true and absolutely correct.

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simpcitybaby · 7 years

Text

Don't cha know I'm in love

A/N: Okay so I have the song “Uptown Girl” stuck in my head so that’s kinda what this song is based off of, ya feel? Curly is such a fucking complex character and I wrote him my way.

PSA: That Was Then, This Is Now is on YouTube also I’m on mobile so this formatting is shitty, also I didn’t proof read

Word Count: 2703 words

Curly x Reader

Warnings: Idfk, swear words ig —————– Let’s Begin ——————- In the middle. That’s what you were. You weren’t a greaser nor a soc but you had friends in both categories. You were best friends with Sherri Valance and Angela Shepard, the three of you were unlikely friends. You were always caught hanging around with Ponyboy, Johnny, and the whole gang. Cherry would constantly invite you to hang out with her and Bob to which the answer was always no. Bob was a complete asshole and so were his friends. You met Angela’s brother Curly when you were 8, he wasn’t as bad back then but he always felt the need to upstage his older brother Tim. He would always tag along with you and Angela but you didn’t see him as much anymore since he was in and out of the reformatory for awhile. He managed to be released and today the Shepard gang was having a party for him which meant that you had the job of inviting your main greasers. You inched up the stairs of the Curtis residence and the door swung open, revealing Sodapop.

“You guys! Our little uptown girl is here!” You rolled your eyes at the nickname that he had given you so many years ago. Out of the gang, Soda was the easiest one to talk to when it came to boys and relationships. He was an absolute sweetheart but he’d get down and dirty if he needed to protect you or the boys.

“Maybe you should change the name to middle-class girl.” You poked your tongue out as you teased him. “Uptown girl has a better ring to it. It also sounds cool when we’re called the backstreet guys.” “You mean the Backstreet Boys?” “No (Y/N). Uptown girl is always looking for the backstreet guys.” You sighed before shaking your head, “It’d sound better if you said downtown boys.” You were met with the sound of a pencil scribbling across a piece of paper before hearing, “Ponyboy is going to write a song about you. Did you get that Pone?” Soda peeked over Pony’s shoulder as Pony read,

“Uptown girl, she’s been living in her uptown world, I bet she’s never had a backstreet guy, I bet her mama never told her why… That’s all I have for now.” The whole room filled with laughter when Johnny brought out a guitar and started playing some chords to go along with Pony’s new poem. “I came to invite you guys to the Shepards party tonight not to have a song written about me.” You laughed before Two-Bit piped up, “Are you excited to see your Romeo?” He was met with an eye roll and a quick, “he doesn’t like me that way.” “(Y/N), man. The boy has the hots for you.” A chorus of yups and who wouldn’t’s filled the air, causing you to blush.

Curly was stone cold and hardheaded. He never wanted to admit when he was wrong and he prided himself on the amount of arrests he’s had. He was never serious about relationships but he was always there for you. When you got a lead in the school musical he was the one who dragged Angela to go and see it. The whole time he was going on and on saying things like “what the fuck is this shit? Fucking stupid that’s what this is.” and “nobody actually does that in real life.” But he was lowkey enjoying himself and his smile widened once graced the stage with your presence. Curly even brought you flowers but reminded you, “don’t think too much about it. I just didn’t want you to be embarrassed about not getting any flowers.” You just smiled at him and reassured him that his bad boy image was still present and that you were thankful for his thoughtfulness even though you had several bouquets of flowers in your hands. On your birthday he had stolen a pearl necklace for you but quickly added, “You know I can’t afford to buy you pearls but I can steal some for you, so be fucking grateful.” Unbeknownst to you, his face lit up every time he saw you wearing the necklace.

Darry pulled you out of your thoughts when he said, “Don’t let them bother you. Just go home and get ready, we’ll pick you up say 8 o'clock and then head over to Buck’s.” On the way out you were met with Cherry’s smiling face, “I knew you’d be here! I want to help you get ready for the party.” She wiggled her brows suggestively before pulling you towards your house which sat directly in the middle of the South and East side. Sherri decided that she wasn’t going to go to the party because she didn’t want to be the reason that Bob started shit with the gang. So instead of being your wing-woman, she was going to dress you to the nines. ——————-Time Skip —————— Your body was clad in a yellow pinup dress while your feet were snug in your white vans. Your makeup was ideal and it accented your (E/C) eyes, making them glisten in the moonlight. Your stomach erupted into a flurry of butterflies as time ticked down. You were about to see Curly for the first time in months and you didn’t know what to expect. He always bragged to Angela that you were his better half but what if that changed? You wouldn’t be able to blend into the scene and hide from him since you were wearing a bright ass yellow dress but you wore it because Curly loved the color on you. If you had it your way he wouldn’t be in and out of the reformatory, he’d be home with you.

Meanwhile, Curly had dragged Angela into his room and said, “What the fuck do I wear, Angel?” Angela smirked at the nickname because she knew that she was anything but. “Since when were you worried about wearing the wrong thing?” “Since (Y/N) is fucking going to be there! Is that what you wanted to hear, you cold hearted bitch.” “Wear one of those nice button ups that you stole and some jeans. Oh! Also wear your jacket, not that you could forget it but bring it just in case she gets cold.” “Angela this isn’t a fucking movie and I’m not going to sling my jacket over her shoulders and be cold myself.” “You know you’d fucking do it you big softie. You really like her even though you wouldn’t say so. If you want a girl like that, you’ve gotta treat her right.” “Get out of my fucking room.” Angela exited as Curly threw himself on the bed, burying his head in his hands. He always went for broads but with you it was different. You couldn’t be classified in that category, you were too good for that label. He wanted to prove to you that he’s good enough and that he’s worth your time. You were his better half and maybe if you were around more he’d change his ways. Not fully of course but enough to stop going to the reformatory. “Ready to go, you little shit?” Tim’s head peaked into Curly’s room and with that, they left. ————- Bitch it’s party time ————– When you stepped outside of your front door you were met with the boys dressed fairly nice. “Shit, you guys look sexy.” You announced this as you guys started walking to Buck’s. “Don’t you look beautiful as ever, (Y/N).” Steve slung an arm over your shoulder as he said this, causing you to let out a snort while laughing. “Aren’t you something, Randle?” It was a fairly nice walk filled with banter and giggles but upon arriving at Buck’s you started to freak out.

All of the guys made their entrance while Dally stayed back with you. “Stop freaking out, man. You’re making me feel nauseous for you.” You glared at Dally and responded with, “Dallas, what if he’s changed? What if he doesn’t like me anymore? I should’ve stayed home.” You rambled on and on which led Dally to put his hand over your mouth. “Shut the fuck up already. You look like an angel among us all and if he doesn’t like you then he can go suck a dick. You can find someone better than him if he’s going to mess with your emotions. You’re a good kid and you’re gonna have fun, yadda yadda yadda. Let’s go fucking party now because this pep talk is over.” You smiled because you could tell that Dallas cared for you. The two of you walked in an were met with dim red lights and alcohol.

Out of everyone, Tim spotted you first. “Hey (Y/N)! Angela’s over there. Have a good time okay?” He ruffled your hair before pushing you in Angela’s direction. “FUCKING SHIT! MY BEST FRIEND LOOKS LIKE A GODDESS. I’M ABOUT READY TO DIE OVER HERE, YOU LOOK SO FINE.” You were met with an embrace and a whisper in your ear which said, “Bitch, Curly is over by the stairs leaning against the wall. He’s been waiting for you all night. If you were anyone else I wouldn’t let you talk to him but you’re you so go get your man.” She pulled away and stuck her tongue out before grinding on some dude. “How much money did someone pay you to wear that?” You yelled this over the music while walking towards Curly.

“Get lost broad, I’m waiting for someone.” The boy was glancing at the door, his eyes were looking at anything but you. How stupid is he? How did he miss you walking in if he’s been staring at the entrance all night. “Call me a broad one more time and I’ll punch your fucking teeth in.” Curly froze and slowly turned around before pulling you in by your waist. “I’ve missed you so fucking much, you don’t even understand.” “Curly, are you sniffing my hair?” He rose a brow and said, “Yeah. Problem?” You shook your head before gesturing towards his outfit. “You look nice! Why are you so dressed up?” If you looked close enough you could’ve sworn that he was blushing. “Just wanted to look presentable for a certain Uptown Girl.” He was met with a shove and giggles. “Curly Shepard got all dressed up for lil ol’ me?” “Shut up before I leave.” “You can’t leave, it’s your party.” “I’ll leave and I’ll take you with me.” “What’s stopping you?” Next thing you know you’re being dragged away from Buck’s and all the way to the alley down by the tracks. “As much as I like it here, I’m not looking for any confrontation tonight. Let’s go to the lot.”

You began pulling him in the direction of the lot before he said, “You make me want things that I can’t have.” Stopping dead in your tracks you turned to him and asked, “What are you thinking about?” “When ever I’m out of the reformatory I come to see you. It’s always been you. I scare away anyone who even has the thought of hitting on you because you make me feel things. I hate myself so much for these fucking feelings.” You walked closer towards him and urged him to go on.

“I should’ve told you that I felt this way a long time ago but I didn’t want to screw things up. You have everything going for you, (Y/N). You’re the Uptown girl and I don’t want to drag you down with me. The Shepard gang only gets worse with age and I don’t want to be the reason that you don’t succeed in life because damn it, you deserve so much more than this.” Curly sighed and ran a hand through his hair while his eyes became glassy.

“Curly Shepard. I am so in love with you that I want to throw up whenever I’m near you. You make me a good kind of nervous. You’re always there for me when I’m doing productions or feeling down. You have this whole, I hate the world, persona but with me you’re different. You just need someone to love you and show you that there’s still good in this world. I can be that person.” Your arms looped around his neck as he let out a nervous sigh. “I feel like I can’t breathe, (Y/N).” Your fingers danced across his face, tracing every single trait and then they played in his curls. “I can’t let you get mixed up with me. I can’t lose you. I can’t let you throw your life away for me. I can-”

Soft lips were met with another pair. Delicate and pillow like. He tasted like cigarettes and alcohol mixed with a bit of icing from the cake they had at the party. You tasted like chocolate covered strawberries and all things sweet. He couldn’t pull you in any closer but he damn well tried. You guys ran your fingers all over one another in the most passionate kiss there was. Although you initiated it, he deepened it and kissed you softly as though you could break. Both of you guys pulled away in a dire need for air after your tongues just battled for dominance. “I’m willing to help you better yourself if you’d let me. I don’t necessarily want to change you because I love who you are. But if you’re scared of dragging me down, we can build each other up together.” “I’d like that. So we’re in agreeance that you’re mine and I’m yours?” You nodded before leaning your head on his shoulder as you guys continued your walk to the lot.

You shivered a bit, swearing because you were going to bring your jacket but Cherry didn’t let you. “Here.” Curly slid off his near and dear leather jacket then proceeded to help you slide your arms through the sleeves. “Shit. I’ll have to thank Angela for this later.” He whispered it under his breath but you caught on putting two and two together. Angela and Cherry must’ve planned it out so that this moment would happen, you definitely had to thank them later. At the lot you guys stared at the stars and traced each other’s features. He stared at you with loving eyes as you fell asleep in his embrace.

Johnny and Ponyboy happened to be on their way to the lot and when they saw you two, Pony whipped out his notepad. “Why were you carrying that, Pone?” Johnny gestured towards the notepad and pencil “New song lyrics, man.” He scribbled before turning the notepad so that Johnny could read it. “She’ll see I’m not so tough Just because I’m in love with an uptown girl You know I’ve seen her in her uptown world She’s getting tired of her high class toys And all her presents from her uptown boys She’s got a choice” After seeing the lyrics, Johnny dragged Pony to the Curtis household in dire need of his guitar to put the lyrics to music. ~ Fin ~

Jk there’s a bonus part: “I swear to who ever the fuck is up there in the sky that if you hurt our little uptown girl, I will personally take care of you.” Dally had Curly’s shirt balled in his fist but was met with laughter. Right in Dally’s face, Curly said, “Hey Pony did you hear that? No? I could’ve sworn that I heard a little bitch!” “We’re serious man, we’ll hurt you.” Curly nodded and said, “I could never hurt that girl in a million years and if I did, you guys could personally kill me but make sure you let Angela get in on it.”

#Curly Shepard #the outsiders #that was then this is now #curly x reader #curly Shepard x reader #the outsiders imagine

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volcanicpizza · 7 years

Text

FNAF 1 with the plot of Sister Location

I got this idea a few days back, and now that I've taken the time to think about it I might as well post it.

Mike Schmidt is still the security guard (and not a technician). There's limited free-roam in that you can walk to the doors and actually stand out in the hallway during sections where you're stuck in the office. The original gang is still in the same places, and in Foxy's case the same state of disrepair. The layout of the restaurant hasn't changed much, asides from the addition of an air vent directed at the office and the removal of the door lights (they've been replaced by a flashlight). The monitor tablet is still there.

Now for the plot.

Night 1:

Phone Guy's call is pretty much the same, but instead of being a recording he's talking to Mike in real time. Mike does his job with the cameras and watching the animatronics, and though they do wander close to the office it's impossible to die on Night 1. While Bonnie and Chica both move, Freddy stays completely still, never even staring at the camera, and is far more hidden in shadow to the point where he can barely be seen. At around 5 AM, Phone Guy calls again to tell Mike that he can leave early for the night, prompting a section where the player controls Mike to walk through one hall (you're given a redundant choice, as it doesn't matter which one you leave through) and dining area to the exit. As he leaves, he turns to look over the place one last time and sees that Freddy has moved for the first time, staring directly at him from the darkness.

Night 2:

Phone Guy calls Mike again to tell him that's he's doing great and encourages him to keep up the great work. He notes briefly that the animatronics have been acting a little off and tells Mike to watch his back before hanging up. Bonnie and Chica have AI settings similar to the original Night 2, and while Foxy does glare at the camera he never runs for the office. Around 4 AM, Mike hears what he believes to be shattering glass, prompting a section in which the player must choose a hallway to walk down (the decision not being arbitrary this time) and then go through the dining area, with Foxy wandering among the tables and the light needing to be off to avoid catching his attention. The noise of glass breaking was from Bonnie punching the glass doors and creating a relatively large hole, and when he sees Mike he chases him. Panicked, Mike ends up hiding in one of the stalls in the female bathroom, and Freddy speaks for the first time to Mike, telling him that he must swap between stalls by sliding along the floor, since Bonnie never looks down. Bonnie grows disgruntled eventually and mutters something about "can't get anything done while he's watching me" before leaving. Once he's gone, Freddy informs Mike that his shift is over and that it's best if he leaves now, which Mike does.

Night 3:

Phone Guy does his usual spiel before hanging up, and the night begins like normal, with Bonnie and Chica similar to their AI settings on the original Night 4 and Foxy suspiciously absent. Though Freddy can be heard laughing, he's never seen on any cameras. The night doesn't advance until the player checks the camera for the Dining Hall, at which point Foxy's hook can be seen lying on one of the tables. The power then cuts off abruptly, and Mike calls Phone Guy in a panic. Phone Guy tells Mike that he'll contact the power company and see what he can do. Mike sits in the darkness helplessly for a few moments until Freddy tells him to hide under his desk in case Bonnie or Chica come in. Freddy informs him that, when Phone Guy comes back, he'll say that he couldn't get them to pick up and that Mike will have to go outside and turn on the backup generator to restore power. Freddy says that Phone Guy will tell him that, to avoid triggering Foxy, he must move slowly and keep his light off at all times. According to the animatronic, this will kill Mike, since Foxy is much faster than anyone realizes, and Freddy instead advises that Mike move quickly (but use his light sparingly as Phone Guy advised). Phone Guy calls Mike's phone again and tells him just what Freddy predicted he would say. As always, Mike must carefully choose a hallway and run through the dining area. Foxy has taken his hook off and is racing around between the tables screeching the occasional threat. Mike goes out to the back of the building to hook up the generator, restoring power to the building, and walks back to his office. There's a disturbing lack of animatronics as he's going, and as Mike sits back down Chica erupts from the vent and jumpscares him.

Night 4:

Mike awakens inside a suit (Springtrap) sitting on a table in the backstage. Freddy informs him that he kidnapped him to keep him safe and gives a similar monologue to Baby in the original Sister Location. Two technicians bring Foxy into the backstage, briefly discussing the company's motives for finally getting rid of Foxy, before deactivating him and leaving him there. Freddy tells Mike that he'll have to unwind the suit head enough to get out on his own while keeping the other springlocks wound up, advising him that if Bonnie or Chica come in he should hide his head under the lower jaw of the suit and pretend to be an empty suit. Mike then spends six minutes of game time slowly climbing out of the suit and pulling the costume's lower jaw up whenever Bonnie or Chica come in, running out of the building in terror after he's freed.

Night 5 Real Ending:

Phone Guy profusely apologizes to Mike about the events of the prior night and the fact that he has to spend one more day here despite having quit after the last night (management wrote a clause into the contract involving staying one more day to work after quitting). He tells Mike that nobody's been in the building today aside from the dayshift guard (the building is closed due to it being a national holiday) and that if the day guard is still in there, Mike needs to kick him out. On entry, the day guard can be clearly seen hanging from the doorway to the west hall. Mike goes to where Freddy is standing on the stage and demands answers from him, to recieve a cryptic response about the passage of time. (If one looks closely, it can be seen that Freddy has no eyes, and his endoskeleton has been replaced by some simple metal bars.) "Freddy" tells Mike to take an SD card from him, take a tablet from backstage, and plug it in so he can continue to guide him. The lights are all off except for the one in the west hall and stage, and Freddy instructs him to keep it that way and keep his flashlight off, as the other three animatronics will be roaming and be far more dangerous than before, guiding Mike towards Pirate's Cove, where he claims all will be revealed. Mike enters to see a horrifying amalgamated animatronic (resembling the titular creature from The Joy of Creation: Story Mode) wearing Golden Freddy's suit head and outfitted with spikes and sharp bits similar to the Nightmare animatronics. (It's referred to in the extras as "New Fredbear.") Foxy, devoid of his costume, most of his face, and hook, stands silently behind the creature. Still speaking in Freddy's voice, the animatronic tells Mike that they all know who he is and what he's done, and though they've all tried to kill him it would be traced back to them as the culprits in the end. They say that the only way to be sure that they can keep entertaining and protecting the children is to ensure that he continues on under their control, with the message being clear that, since Foxy was already going to be scrapped, nobody will find it strange when his endoskeleton vanishes. New Fredbear tells Mike that despite what he did, they'll try to make his death as painless as possible, before lunging with a horrifying jumpscare. Subsequently, a first-person cutscene is shown in which Mike walks out of the building, giving the three now-reassembled (though showing some clear tears on their suits and protruding parts) animatronics on the stage a brief salute before getting into his car. He adjusts the mirror, showing Mike's silhouette but with Foxy's eyes, and the animatronic mutters briefly that if one of the others gets scrapped at least this song and dance will be easier next time. It then cuts to the credits, leaving it ambiguous what Mike did or if he was even ever guilty in the first place.

Night 5 Fake Ending:

To get the fake ending, Mike must simply continue walking past Pirate's Cove while Freddy is giving instructions and go into his office. He must then survive six hours with the amalgamation of Freddy, Chica, and Bonnie attempting to kill him alongside Foxy's stripped-down endoskeleton. New Fredbear aims for both doors, while Foxy lingers before suddenly either sprinting to the left door or heaving himself through the front air vent. (Should he do this, the player must shift out of his path into the right hallway, letting Foxy's momentum carry him out into the left hall, at which point the door must be closed on him.) The cameras are all down, with the player relying on audio cues and the occasional check of the hallways or vent, and it is intentionally a process of trial and error. Once Mike survives, a first-person cutscene occurs in which he races from the building and jumps in his car. As he prepares to drive away, something grabs him from behind, and he turns his head frantically to see Foxy's endoskeleton. The animatronic snarls "Didn't think you could get away, did you?" before slamming the stump of his arm into Mike's face. Cut to credits.

Night 5 Blaze Ending:

To get this ending, the player must have previously got both the true and fake endings. An option will appear to turn and run while the amalgamation is giving its speech, and Mike will run to backstage and hide inside the Springtrap suit. This cues a first-person cutscene in which New Fredbear enters the room and surveys it briefly. Mike remains silent and unmoving... at least, until the springlocks come loose. New Fredbear coldly makes a generic pun before walking out. Dragging himself along the floor, Mike pulls himself across the floor to the kitchen and manages to turn on one of the gas ovens and ignite the kitchen, laughing himself to death as he, New Fredbear, Foxy's endoskeleton, and the pizzeria go up in flames. It's left ambiguous if any of them survived.

#five nights at freddy's #fnaf #five nights at freddy's sister location #fnaf sl #freddy fazbear #fnaf bonnie #fnaf chica #fnaf foxy #fnaf golden freddy #fnaf fredbear #fnaf freddy #bonnie the bunny #chica the chicken #foxy the pirate fox

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newstfionline · 7 years

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To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider the Janitors at Two Top Companies, Then and Now

Neil Irwin, NY Times, Sept. 3, 2017

ROCHESTER--Gail Evans and Marta Ramos have one thing in common: They have each cleaned offices for one of the most innovative, profitable and all-around successful companies in the United States.

For Ms. Evans, that meant being a janitor in Building 326 at Eastman Kodak’s campus in Rochester in the early 1980s. For Ms. Ramos, that means cleaning at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., in the present day.

In the 35 years between their jobs as janitors, corporations across America have flocked to a new management theory: Focus on core competence and outsource the rest. The approach has made companies more nimble and more productive, and delivered huge profits for shareholders. It has also fueled inequality and helps explain why many working-class Americans are struggling even in an ostensibly healthy economy.

The $16.60 per hour Ms. Ramos earns as a janitor at Apple works out to about the same in inflation-adjusted terms as what Ms. Evans earned 35 years ago. But that’s where the similarities end.

Ms. Evans was a full-time employee of Kodak. She received more than four weeks of paid vacation per year, reimbursement of some tuition costs to go to college part time, and a bonus payment every March. When the facility she cleaned was shut down, the company found another job for her: cutting film.

Ms. Ramos is an employee of a contractor that Apple uses to keep its facilities clean. She hasn’t taken a vacation in years, because she can’t afford the lost wages. Going back to school is similarly out of reach. There are certainly no bonuses, nor even a remote possibility of being transferred to some other role at Apple.

Yet the biggest difference between their two experiences is in the opportunities they created. A manager learned that Ms. Evans was taking computer classes while she was working as a janitor and asked her to teach some other employees how to use spreadsheet software to track inventory. When she eventually finished her college degree in 1987, she was promoted to a professional-track job in information technology.

Less than a decade later, Ms. Evans was chief technology officer of the whole company, and she has had a long career since as a senior executive at other top companies. Ms. Ramos sees the only advancement possibility as becoming a team leader keeping tabs on a few other janitors, which pays an extra 50 cents an hour.

They both spent a lot of time cleaning floors. The difference is, for Ms. Ramos, that work is also a ceiling.

Eastman Kodak was one of the technological giants of the 20th century, a dominant seller of film, cameras and other products. It made its founders unfathomably wealthy and created thousands of high-income jobs for executives, engineers and other white-collar professionals. The same is true of Apple today.

But unlike Apple, Kodak also created tens of thousands of working-class jobs, which contributed to two generations of middle-class wealth in Rochester. The Harvard economist Larry Summers has often pointed at this difference, arguing that it helps explain rising inequality and declining social mobility.

“Think about the contrast between George Eastman, who pioneered fundamental innovations in photography, and Steve Jobs,” Mr. Summers wrote in 2014. “While Eastman’s innovations and their dissemination through the Eastman Kodak Co. provided a foundation for a prosperous middle class in Rochester for generations, no comparable impact has been created by Jobs’s innovations” at Apple.

Ms. Evans’s pathway was unusual: Few low-level workers, even in the heyday of postwar American industry, ever made it to the executive ranks of big companies. But when Kodak and similar companies were in their prime, tens of thousands of machine operators, warehouse workers, clerical assistants and the like could count on steady work and good benefits that are much rarer today.

When Apple was seeking permission to build its new headquarters, its consultants projected the company would have 23,400 employees, with an average salary comfortably in the six figures. Thirty years ago, Kodak employed about 60,000 people in Rochester, with average pay and benefits companywide worth $79,000 in today’s dollars.

Part of the wild success of the Silicon Valley giants of today--and what makes their stocks so appealing to investors--has come from their ability to attain huge revenue and profits with relatively few workers.

The 10 most valuable tech companies have 1.5 million employees, according to calculations by Michael Mandel of the Progressive Policy Institute, compared with 2.2 million employed by the 10 biggest industrial companies in 1979.

Major companies have also chosen to bifurcate their work force, contracting out much of the labor that goes into their products to other companies, which compete by lowering costs. It’s not just janitors and security guards. In Silicon Valley, the people who test operating systems for bugs, review social media posts that may violate guidelines, and screen thousands of job applications are unlikely to receive a paycheck directly from the company they are ultimately working for.

And the phenomenon stretches far beyond Silicon Valley, where companies like Apple are just a particularly extreme example of achieving huge business success with a relatively small employee count. The Federal Express delivery person who brings you a package may well be an independent contractor; many of the people who help banks like Citigroup and JPMorgan service mortgage loans and collect delinquent payments work for contractors; and if you call your employer’s computer help desk, there’s a good chance it will be picked up by someone in another state, or country.

Across a range of job functions, industries and countries, the shift to a contracting economy has put downward pressure on compensation. Pay for janitors fell by 4 to 7 percent, and for security guards by 8 to 24 percent, in American companies that outsourced, Arindrajit Dube of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and Ethan Kaplan of Stockholm University found in a 2010 paper.

These pay cuts appear to be fueling overall inequality. J. Adam Cobb of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and Ken-Hou Lin at the University of Texas found that the drop in big companies’ practice of paying relatively high wages to their low- and mid-level workers could have accounted for 20 percent of the wage inequality increase from 1989 to 2014.

The same forces that explain the difference between 1980s Kodak and today’s Apple have big implications not just for every blue-collar employee who punches a timecard, but also for white-collar professionals who swipe a badge.

Phil Harnden was coming out of the Navy in 1970 when he applied for a job at Kodak, and soon was operating a forklift in a warehouse. He made $3 an hour, equivalent to $20 an hour today adjusted for inflation. That is roughly what an entry-level contracting job testing software pays.

The difference between the two gigs, aside from the absence of heavy machinery in Apple’s sleek offices, is the sense of permanence. Mr. Harnden put in 16 years operating forklifts before he left in 1986 to move to Florida. When he returned 10 years later, he was quickly rehired and even kept his seniority benefits.

In interviews, tech industry contractors in Silicon Valley describe a culture of transience. They can end up commuting to a different office park that houses a new company every few months; in many cases 18 months is the maximum a contractor is allowed to spend at one company.

“I would rather have stability,” said Christopher Kohl, 29, who has worked as a contractor at several Silicon Valley companies, including a stint doing quality assurance on Apple Maps. “It’s stressful to find a new job every 12 to 18 months.”

The compensation these white-collar contractors receive puts them squarely in the middle rungs of workers in the United States, and the most skilled can make six figures (though that doesn’t go far in the hyper-expensive Bay Area housing market). Apple, based on its consultants’ report, expected to be indirectly responsible for nearly 18,000 jobs in Santa Clara County by now at an average pay of about $56,000 a year.

There are some advantages. If they work for one of the companies like Apple or Google that feature a subsidized, high-quality cafeteria, contractors can enjoy the food. They can tell their friends that they work at one of the world’s most admired companies, and enjoy predictable, regular hours. Once in a while, a contractor will be hired into a staff position.

“It’s not evil,” said Pradeep Chauhan, managing partner of OnContracting, a site to help people find tech contracting positions. “They have a job and they’re getting paid. But it’s not ideal. The problem with contracting is, you could walk in one day and they could say, ‘You don’t need to come in tomorrow.’ There is no obligation from the companies.”

And that is the ultimate contrast with the middle-skill, middle-wage jobs of earlier generations of titans--a sense of permanence, of sharing in the long-term success of the company.

“There were times I wasn’t happy with the place,” Mr. Harnden said of his Kodak years. “But it was a great company to work for and gave me a good living for a long time.”

When an automaker needs a supplier of transmissions for its cars, it doesn’t just hold an auction and buy from the lowest bidder. It enters a long-term relationship with the supplier it believes will provide the best quality and price over time. The company’s very future is at stake--nobody wants to buy a car that can’t reliably shift into first gear.

But when that same automaker needs some staplers for the office supply cabinet, it is more likely to seek out the lowest price it can get, pretty much indifferent to the identity of the seller.

Labor exists on a similar continuum.

The right product engineer or marketing executive can mean the difference between success or failure, and companies tend to hire such people as full-time employees and as part of a long-term relationship--something like the transmission supplier. What has changed in the last generation is that companies today view more and more of the labor it takes to produce their goods and services as akin to staplers: something to be procured at the time and place needed for the lowest price possible.

There is plenty of logic behind the idea that companies should focus on their core competence and outsource the rest. By this logic, Apple executives should focus on building great phones and computers, not hiring and overseeing janitors. And companies should outsource work when the need for staff is lumpy, such as for software companies that may need dozens of quality-assurance testers ahead of a major release but not once the product is out.

There’s no inherent reason that work done through a contractor should involve lower compensation than the same work done under direct employment. Sometimes it goes in the other direction; when a company hires a law firm, it is basically contracting out legal work, yet lawyers at a firm tend to be paid better than in-house counsel.

But as more companies have outsourced more functions over more time, a strong body of evidence is emerging that it’s not just about efficiency. It seems to be a way for big companies to reduce compensation costs.

Linda DiStefano applied for a secretarial job at Kodak during Easter week of her senior year in high school in 1968, and was hired to start immediately after her graduation for $87.50 a week, today’s equivalent of $32,000 a year. She put in four decades at the company, first as a secretary, then helped administer corporate travel and other projects.

It bought her a house off Lake Avenue, a new car every few years and occasional long-distance trips.

Ms. Ramos, the Apple janitor, lives down the road in San Jose. She pays $2,300 monthly for a two-bedroom apartment where she and her four children live. Before overtime and taxes, her $16.60 an hour works out to $34,520 a year. Her rent alone is $27,600 a year, leaving less than $600 a month once the rent is paid. Overtime, in addition to the wages from one of her teenage children who works part time at a grocery store, help make the math work, though always tenuously.

She works from 6 p.m. until 2 a.m. On days when one of the other cleaners doesn’t show up, she may get a few extra hours, which is great for the overtime pay, but it means even less sleep before it is time to take her children to school.

There is little chance for building connections at Apple. “Everyone is doing their own thing and has their own assignment, and we don’t see each other outside of work,” said Ms. Ramos in Spanish.

Ms. Evans, who was a Kodak janitor in the early 1980s before her rise to executive there and at other leading firms like Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard, recalls a different experience.

“One thing about Eastman Kodak is they believed in their people,” said Ms. Evans, now chief information officer at Mercer, the human resources consulting giant. “It was like a family. You always had someone willing to help open a door if you demonstrated that you were willing to commit to growing your skills and become an asset that was valuable for the company.”

The shift is profound. “I look at the big tech companies, and they practice a 21st-century form of welfare capitalism, with foosball tables and free sushi and all that,” Rick Wartzman, senior adviser at the Drucker Institute and author of “The End of Loyalty,” said. “But it’s for a relatively few folks. It’s great if you’re a software engineer. If you’re educated, you’re in command.”

But in the 21st-century economy, many millions of workers find themselves excluded from that select group. Rather than being treated as assets that companies seek to invest in, they have become costs to be minimized.

#inequality #janitors then and now #Eastman Kodak janitor #Apple janitor #Gail Evans #Marta Ramos #contractors

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ezra-blue · 7 years

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You’ve Got Something - 38

For @baronvonriktenstein‘s Messy!AU

38: Bad Karma

The consequences of some bad decisions have come home to roost.

Thanks to opalmatrix for a little bit of unintentional inspiration I got from one of her comments!

Word Count: ~6100

38: Bad Karma

It should have been a Wednesday morning like any other. Really, for the most part, it was. The dim morning light filtering through the garage's skylight illuminated a typical tableau, the white light casting faint shadows on the concrete as Gojyo, Goku, and Gat moved around and through to attend to their usual tasks. There was plenty to do, and plenty doing: cars rolling in, customers with questions, phone calls, stock checks, the grind of gears, the whir of the drill, the clatter and clang of tools. However, something was missing. Gat found himself looking at the other two over the hood of the car open in front of him to study his boss and their apprentice. Goku was, notably, wearing the same shirt as the day before and, from the grease in his hair, didn't seem to have bathed, and he seemed to be sore, stopping every once in a while to stretch, twisting left and right at the waist, then looking around as if to make sure nobody had seen him. Gojyo's hair was tangled at the bottom, his ponytail sloppy, and he had deep bags under his eyes. He smelled like soap, but also like alcohol sweat. Neither of them looked like they'd slept.

However, that wasn't the real thing that had caught Gat's attention. It was what wasn't there.

He looked up over the engine again, from Goku working at a tire with his lips sealed tight, and Gojyo morosely putting up his tools. Not even looking at each other. Gat had to remark: “Awful quiet in here today.”

Both Gojyo and Goku merely sighed in response, and Goku glanced back towards Gojyo, as somber as a mourner, just as Gojyo turned around to face him. Gojyo knit his brow up as he studied Goku, then approached and asked under his breath: “You look like you could use some bro time. You think we can do some lunch together?”

Goku cracked a smile, his first that day. “Yeah, sure.” Gat continued to observe a moment longer, then returned to his work without a word.

Their days were becoming significantly less typical.

“So, the jackass dumped you.” Gojyo fell just short of kicking the soda machine as Goku finished explaining.

“Don't call him that!” Goku's cheeks went bright red, and he gripped his sandwich basket tighter as Gojyo scowled at the stream of soda filling his cup as if it was the drink's fault. “But, yeah.”

“Pfft.” Gojyo was rough setting the cup down to put a lid on it, then motioned at Goku. “He dumped you for no good reason, I'll say what I want. You need me to kick his ass?” Goku shook his head 'no' as hard as he could, and Gojyo scoffed, lip curling, then gestured to the room. “Whatever you say. Pick a seat, kiddo.”

Goku sniffed, but shuffled into the dining area of the sandwich shop to pick a table. He and Gojyo had come here before; Gojyo loved the avocado BLT, and Goku loved their french fries, and they'd spent a few happy lunch breaks joking and laughing and having mock swordfights with their pickle spears. Goku had a feeling today would be more of a talking day, especially because he didn't feel like talking, so he knew he had to. Goku picked at his fries as Gojyo got settled and took a long swig of his drink. When he was sure Gojyo was listening, Goku ventured a little further: “I think he had a reason.” Goku chewed his lower lip as Gojyo raised an eyebrow at him. “He's real logical, and all. He doesn't do stuff for no reason. I think, when I told him, y'know, how I feel, he got scared.” He let his chin fall a little. “Especially after he heard what happened between you and Hakkai.”

“He already knows? Fuck, you know?” Gojyo leaned forward, wide-eyed, and Goku cringed but bobbed his chin.

“He told me.”

“Fuck.” The word came out like Gojyo had been punched in the gut, and he sunk back just the same for a second, dumbfounded. Then, he leaned forward, elbows on the table, and scrubbed his hands down his face. “Did Hakkai tell him? How much did he tell him?”

“I dunno how he found out.” Goku scrunched his face and picked at a few more of his fries, as Gojyo moaned softly into his palms. “But I guess after hearing about it, me saying that, when you two were such a good couple and Hakkai did that to you...” He paused, swallowing, then tried to look into Gojyo's eyes. “I'm real sorry about that.”

“It's fine,” Gojyo muttered back automatically.

“No, really.” Goku fidgeted, thinking of picking up another fry, then nudging it back as Gojyo kept his palms pressed into his eyeballs. “You and Hakkai were a good couple. I thought it was a love story--”

“Mm.”

“Seriously, it was fairytale! Like, you meet by chance, you help him out of a pinch, and then you start talking, and--”

“Hey, don't go making a big deal out of it.” Gojyo flipped his hand around and dragged his elbows back across the table top. “Sometimes, stuff just don't work.” He swatted flippantly, his eyes dropping to his feet. “Bad luck, or maybe just bad karma. That's all she wrote.”

Goku's heart hit his stomach, and he lost his appetite a little. “Don't talk like that! Jeez, you sound like you don't care!”

“Nah, it's not that.” Gojyo sprawled a little in the seat, disaffected but avoiding looking at Goku directly. “The fact is, when it's over, it's over. He saw something better and left me behind, and there's nothing I can do about it. I just gotta get over it.”

“But you're not even sad!” Goku slapped the table. “Are you sad?”

This gave Gojyo pause, but after a moment, he shrugged. “Something like that, yeah. I mean, don't get me wrong, it sucks that it's over, but...” He paused again, hesitating, then muttered, “I never deserved him in the first place. This's for the best.”

“No!” Goku jumped up, palms planted on the table and shoulders hunched to his ear. “He's the jerk that cheated on you!”

“Hey. Shut up.” Gojyo grounded himself in the chair, back hunched, casting his glare sideways. “He did what he thought was right--”

“There’s nothing right about it, especially when it hurt you!”

“So what?” Gojyo patted his bicep. “I got thick skin.”

“Yeah, but if it hurt you, you can say it! You should be mad at him!”

“I'm not.” Gojyo shrugged, and Goku's face went as scarlet as Gojyo's hair. “I messed up, and it's over, and I'm gonna get over it.”

Gojyo slammed his hands on the table again. “How did you mess up?” Gojyo sealed his lips, sucking his lower lip in and chewing on it, then slid his palm up his cheek again. Goku leaned close to his face. “C'mon, you can talk about it. You'll feel better if you do.”

Gojyo spared Goku a glance between his fingers, then shook his head and pushed Goku back to his seat. “I'm fine, kid. Let's eat before we run out of time, I feel bad leaving Gat by his lonesome.”

Goku stuck his lower lip out, but backed into his seat. Gojyo didn't quite turn around in his chair, but slid his hand down his cheek to prop his chin up as Goku ate his sandwich without another word. He barely even tasted it. Even the french fries had been lackluster, and letting them get cold hadn't helped. He couldn't even muster the appetite to eat the cheese that had fallen out, but when he glanced up to Gojyo, he noticed that Gojyo had barely taken a few nibbles. His heart sank. “Hey, you need to eat, too.”

“Huh?” Gojyo snapped to attention, then glanced to the red plastic basket, not quite looking at the food. “Oh. Yeah, guess so.” Goku knit his brow up as Gojyo took half the sandwich up and took a bite. He remembered Christmas too well, his chest aching at the thought of Gojyo starving himself again. It was a small relief when he managed to eat half the sandwich before wrapping what was left in the paper. “I ain't that hungry, but I'll get a box. Maybe snack on it later.”

It was something, Goku thought. It didn't matter how much he was hurting, Gojyo had still never been anything but kind to him, even when he really, really hadn't deserved it. Like, the first week after they'd met.

Goku arrived at the front door and stared up at the sign. He could see a few chips in the wall where part of the lighting on the name had been peeled off, but maybe that was just from the last business that had been here. All he knew was that G's Auto Repair had agreed to take him on as an apprentice, and the instructions from the boss were “Come in and announce yourself, the receptionist doesn't get here until 10.”

So in he marched, to the distinct crunch of a wrench working at a bolt. He tried to peer in through the gap between the front and the garage proper, and saw a pair of legs sticking out from under a car. Long, skinny legs, clad in a baggy jumpsuit. Goku cleared his throat, making sure his voice came out at the bottom of his register, and called out: “Hello? Mr. G? Uh, I'm here about the apprenticeship?”

“'Zat so?” The rich, warm voice that reverberated back actually made Goku's heart skip a beat, and as the mechanic rolled out from under the car and jumped up to his feet, lean and long, pulling his jumpsuit off of his arms and shoulders, striding towards the garage. Goku gaped at him: the muscles! The broad shoulders! The long hair in that perfectly sloppy ponytail! That sexy smirk so casual it was like he didn't even know how sexy he was! Goku knew his mouth was open as the mechanic came close, and extended a long-fingered hand. “Well, first things first, none of that Mister stuff. Name's Gojyo.” He winked, and Goku realized he was meant to shake, and enthusiastically grabbed on and shook it hard, pumping it up and down.

“It's really nice to meet you!” He bounced on his heels. “Thanks for taking me on! I promise I'll work hard!”

“I believe you, kid, and you're gonna have to. It's just you and me here, y'know?” Gojyo chuckled a little, then yanked his hand from Goku's grip (oh no, had he been holding on that tight? At least Gojyo wasn't teasing him!). "I got a jumpsuit for ya hangin' in the hall, go ahead and pull it on, we got plenty to do. I'll give you the rundown of how things go around here as we work, but we're not what you'd call real formal." He chuckled, and Goku felt his knees wobble at that self-deprecating, charming grin. "Though, I say 'we' like it's anyone but me. Still. Royal 'we' since I'm King in this garage, right?" He winked at Goku. "Enough of me talking, especially since you're not answering and kinda staring at me with your tongue hanging out of your mouth. Let's go, yeah?" He motioned for Goku to follow as he pivoted around, stopping only to let Goku pull his jumpsuit on. Then, he strolled on into the garage, casual as you please, and settled back down on his roller board. "Give me a second to finish up this fuel line, and then I wanna see what you know."

"Sure!" Goku stood back, admiring behind sealed lips and a forced nonchalant expression as Gojyo stretched back out.

"So tell me, kiddo, how much experience do you have fixing cars?"

"Oh, y'know, the basics." Goku propped himself against the workbench, keeping a little distance as Gojyo rolled under the truck he'd been working on. "My foster mom taught me how to change oil and tires, and she let me use her car to learn some of the parts, but that's about it." He grinned nervously, as Gojyo hummed and kicked one long leg out, and Goku traced the line of his toned leg and thigh where it showed through the canvas with his gaze, and swallowed hard. Gojyo didn’t seem to notice how casually attractive he was.

"That's about what I expected."

"Oh, but we've gone over stuff in class, and--!"

"Monkeywrench."

Goku's jaw fell slack, a blush tinging his cheeks. "Um... do you mean... me?"

This got Gojyo to roll out and sit up, grinning. "No, no. Next to your head." Gojyo motioned, and Goku spun around to find the tool Gojyo was asking for hung on a pegboard behind him. Goku squeaked and grabbed it, then scuttled over to him with it . "Should I have said, 'Gimme the monkeywrench?' Or should I just start callin' you that?" He patted Goku's hand as he took the wrench, and the blush that had been threatening Goku completely overtook him.

Crap, Gojyo wasn't just hot, he was cute.

He had to be careful, he knew. So he tried to keep it light, casual, as Gojyo reviewed the basics with him. As Goku showed Gojyo he knew how to change oil with Gojyo right at his back, so close the skin on Goku's back got a little shivery at the thought of Gojyo's chest being that close, he started with, "Hey, can I ask about you a little?"

"Only a little," Gojyo chuckled over his shoulder.

"Do you have a girlfriend?"

Gojyo actually laughed. "Nah. Got a couple girls who know my name at the bar and the sandwich shop, but I'm not seein' anybody."

"Ohh, 'anybody,' huh? Do you date guys?" Goku winked at Gojyo, and Gojyo laughed again.

"Well, not formally, but I wouldn't say no. Is that a problem?"

"Nope. I date everyone! Or I would. You know." Goku grinned to himself, encouraged, but Gojyo planted his big hand on Goku's head.

"That's fine with me, but let's keep the love drama out of the workplace, yeah? I had a thing going with someone I worked with before, which made it all the messier when we started to disagree."

Maybe Goku could have taken the hint then, but he didn't.

Later, as Gojyo demonstrated how he tested for why an engine wasn't starting, in a lull between testing a spark plug and Gojyo digging out his jumper cables, Goku sidled alongside him. "So, hey, did you have dinner plans yet?"

"I got half of a can of Manwich with my name on it." Gojyo chuckled without looking at Goku, then swung his elbow wide as he yanked the cable off the wall, forcing Goku to take a step back. "I'm not much of a cook, but I get by."

“Well, y'know, I know this place in town--”

Gojyo planted a big hand on Goku's shoulder and bent over to get eye-level with him. “Wait, are you actually doing this?” He grinned wide and bright, obviously amused. “You're seriously trying to pick me up. You. Picking me up.” Goku felt his face nearly melt off of his skull, but he nodded furiously. Gojyo laughed again, his voice rich and sweet, but it reeked of condescension like someone leaning out of the window of a Cadillac. “Oh, oh man. That's cute.” He held Goku's shoulder a little tighter, and Goku flushed when he realized that for Gojyo, ‘cute’ wasn’t a good thing. “Listen, it's really cute, and I appreciate that you think I'm good-looking – let's face it, it's all I got going for me sometimes – but I'm your boss, and even if I wasn't your boss, I don't date kids.”

The 'kid' crack stung, and Goku stuck his lower lip out. “I'm not a kid! I'll be nineteen in April!”

“Yeah, sure.” Gojyo let go of Goku and set his hands on his hips, drawing himself up, his broad shoulders and dense chest stark through his jumpsuit (and God why did he have to still be hot when he was telling him off?!), and cocked his chin out. “Look, maybe when you can drink, but until then, you're a kid, and I'm still your boss. So, cool it, okay?”

Goku snorted and crossed his arms, and Gojyo turned on his heel and strode back towards the garage. Goku sucked in a breath and gave chase, but though Gojyo was talking about a loose muffler, Gojyo was watching the curve of his butt through his jumpsuit, keeping his admiration mute, and trying to dream up another approach.

The next day, while they were sharing lunch behind the counter, Gojyo flipping through the inventory on the computer while he ate, Goku leaned over Gojyo's shoulder watching. He took the chance to lean a little closer. “You sure you wouldn't want me to take you somewhere nicer to eat?”

“There's a sandwich shop nearby. But if you're trying to ask me out again, the answer's still no.” Gojyo didn't seem bothered, tone as level as concrete, but he chewed with his mouth open a little wider on the next bite as if hoping to gross Goku out.

It didn’t change Goku’s mind.

Gojyo was combing his hair out in the bathroom mirror after yanking the jumpsuit off later that day, and Goku peered in as he checked himself in the mirror. “So, uh,” and Goku paused to check the article on his phone. “Are you... sure that we didn't meet before I came here?” Gojyo made a noncommittal, inquiring noise, and Goku winked at his reflection. “Well, I just know I wouldn't forget a face as pretty as yours.”

“Sorry, what was that?” Gojyo dug his pinky into his ear. “I thought I heard a kid trying to flirt with me. And not doing a very good job, either.” Goku blushed fresh-paint red as Gojyo sauntered past him as if Goku hadn't said anything,

Fine! One last resort!

While reviewing the inventory notes on the computer, Gojyo heard something rattling in the garage – Goku knew he hadn't been subtle – and came to investigate, and found Goku with his jumpsuit pulled back, revealing his tee-shirt, sorting out the spare bolts while splayed out seductively on the workbench. Gojyo groaned under his breath as Goku turned towards him, presenting himself in a display. “Oh. Hey.” Goku winked, pretending he hadn't been waiting for Gojyo to walk in for twenty minutes. He wiggled an eyebrow. “I was just keeping my hands busy. You know, putting like with like. Just something I like to do.” He had briefly entertained putting a wrench between his teeth like a rose, but, for one, ow, and for two, he was still trying to talk Gojyo into giving him a chance. “You know, you could probably keep me busy, 'cause if you gimme a chance, I'll give ya lots of attention--”

“Goku.” Gojyo crossed his arm over his chest and pinched his brow, and Goku's confidence collapsed. “I told ya no once. I told ya no twice.” He heaved a sigh, and Goku slowly rolled up, shoulders and chest aching a little at the plain disappointment on Gojyo's face. “I ain't being coy with you, and I ain't looking for you to convince me. I don't date younger guys. Period. And, again, you work for me.”

"Well, yeah, but--"

"I need your help." Gojyo shook his head again. "You already know enough to handle some of the small stuff on your own, and I'm alone in this garage without you. I'm damn lucky to have you, you know? I can't risk your school snatching you back if they think I'm taking advantage, and I don't wanna take advantage of you in the first place." He sighed and held one hand out. "No more flirting, no more pick-ups. We can be bros, but that's it. You wanna be my bro?"

There was something a little desperate in Gojyo's shaky smile, something a little sad, and it hit Goku that maybe Gojyo really meant this. "You mean it? Like, friends?"

"I like you, kid. You're funny." Gojyo turned his offered handshake into a generous ruffle of Goku's hair. "Now hop on off there and let's get back to it, yeah?" He held his hand out again, and this time, Goku took it.

Back then, Goku had just wanted Gojyo to like him. Preferably, to like him a lot. It was after this conversation that Gojyo actually began to treat him like an equal, as both a student and friend, as a mentor to him, as an ally. Sometimes, Goku wished he had the guts to come out to him, but he only ever did that if he absolutely had to. No matter. Gojyo had wanted to trust him then. He should trust him now.

As Gojyo led the way out, Goku chased him close and tucked his head and shoulders up under his arm. "Hey, Gojyo? Just so you know, no matter what happens, I'm still gonna be your friend."

Gojyo cocked an eyebrow at him, but he didn't pull his arm off of Goku's back, instead letting it sling there. "I didn't think you wouldn't be."

"Just making sure." Goku huddled a little closer to his chest. He didn't love Gojyo, not like he did Sanzo, and he knew Gojyo would never love him like Gojyo loved Hakkai, but this was enough. "And you can talk to me anytime, okay?"

Gojyo hummed again, smiling but not looking at anything but the path ahead of them, and Goku sighed but let himself sag against him. He knew what that meant. He'd learned all of Sanzo's little noises, too.

Gojyo and Goku walked back all the way like that, but as they reached the door, Gojyo's phone rang in his pocket. Gojyo snatched it out, hope flashing over his features for a split second before sinking into puzzlement. “Go ahead, I'll catch up.” Gojyo motioned and turned away before watching to see if Goku left, and hurried around the corner to answer. “Yo, Jien, is somethin'--”

“Gojyo.” Jien's voice was stark and harsh down the line, and something about it froze his feet in place. He heard Jien take a deep breath, then growl, “What the hell is this?”

Gojyo shivered, glancing over his shoulders before answering. “What're you talking about?”

“I'm talking about this flash drive.” Gojyo flinched when he heard something rattle, and the clatter of a keyboard. “What is this? What are these pictures? What are these – videos?! What the hell, Gojyo?!”

Gojyo sucked in a breath, then exhaled. “It's exactly what it looks like.”

“No, no no, I want a goddamn explanation!” There was a smash on the other end, and Gojyo clearly heard Yaone gasp in the background. He winced, because now he could hear Kougaiji, too, and nausea threatened what little was inside of him. “When did you do this? How old were you? Why--”

“Why else would I have done it?” The words seethed hot in his throat, sour on his tongue, but he didn't bother to temper them. “I wanted money. I didn't think it’d matter. It seemed like a good idea--”

“This--” Jien snapped back, biting Gojyo's next words off, “This was clearly after you came back to me. I was taking care of you – I knew you and Banri were up to some shady stuff, but this, Gojyo?! Now answer me! How. Old. Were. You.”

Gojyo steeled himself. “Why does that m--”

“You know why it matters!” Gojyo had been ready for him to yell, but he had no idea how raw it would feel on his aching heart. “You didn't have to do this, and you sure as hell didn't have to do it when I was taking care of you! This is a crime, and the fact that nobody's in jail for it, it--” Jien choked on his words. “It sickens me. Look, we need to--”

“We don't need to do anything! It's ancient history, and the fact that you didn't know about it until now doesn't change anything!” Gojyo clenched his fist tight around his phone, feeling the plastic strain under his hand. “I'm still the fucking family embarrassment! So what?! What the fuck is new?! Sorry I didn't come out of my shitty childhood a fucking saint like you did! Fuck, you know your hands ain't clean but you still fucking lecture me every time I slip!” He could hear Jien winding up on the other end, but he wasn't listening. “Fuck you, I don't owe you a damn thing! Think whatever you want about me! I did it because we needed money and I didn't care what I had to do to get it, and fuck it, it ain't like I'm good for anything else, right? Fuck off!” He pitched his phone at the wall as hard as he could, and the plastic and glass shattered on impact, scattering in little glittering pieces at his feet. Gojyo caught his breath, shoulders and chest heaving, and took in the tableau of what used to be his phone scattered on the ground. He tried to kick most of it off the sidewalk into the gutter, but gave up and stormed off, deciding it wasn't worth the energy.

If Gat and Goku noticed that he stewed in silence the rest of the afternoon, they didn't dare say anything about it.

Gojyo worked until the shadows grew long, losing himself in the grind, even starting up on getting into a misfiring piston as the skylight went from pink to gold, until Gat cleared his throat near Gojyo's elbow. He paused in the middle of the turn of his wrench, not trusting himself to look back. “Boss, it's six. I locked the front door.”

“Oh, yeah?” Gojyo glanced back to the big clock on the wall, then dared meet Gat's heavy gaze. Gat was focused on him, his jacket slung over his shoulder, “Well, I got it from here.” He motioned vaguely to the engine. “Kind of in the middle of this, so I'll be here a little longer.”

“You should go home and rest.” Gat was surveying him, and Gojyo was suddenly keenly aware that Gat was looking down from above and not liking what he saw. He turned and got back to working the bolt loose.

“I'm good. Just wanna finish this.” Gojyo kept working at it, as Gat continued to watch him with obvious expectation. “It's fine,” he muttered into the engine. “I haven't got anywhere else to be.”

Gat hummed, then set his jacket down on the bench. “I don't have a shift tonight. Can I lend a hand?”

Gojyo knit his eyebrows up, then looked back and studied Gat again. He was still clearly watching Gojyo, but his expression was benign. His presence didn't hurt, anyway, but Gojyo did remember something. “You sure you wouldn't rather go home and enjoy your night off?”

The strange rumble Gat let out was either a soft laugh or a weary groan, but he dropped his jacket and rolled his sleeves. “I have nowhere else to be, either.”

For a faint moment, Gojyo felt a kinship with Gat as more than a coworker, or maybe he just really wanted to. Either way, he shrugged. “Sure. Throw your coveralls back on and bring me the oil can, willya?”

Gat cracked a smile, and the two settled into the quiet peace of a late night spent at work.

Hazel's apartment was vacant but for the bright sunlight that flooded the floor from the big window in the back of the room, and he scowled at it and hurried to close the curtains so he wouldn't be blinded in his own home. The comfortable shadow soothed his aching eyes, but even with that small comfort, the room was empty. No big lump sprawled on the sofa, dishes left in the sink in their minikitchen, not even the scent of his preferred deodorant. Hazel peered back towards the bedroom on the off chance Gat had fallen asleep after work, but their bed was empty, Gat's side made up, untouched for days now. Hazel wasn't even sure if Gat had been home. He snatched his phone out, still muted from class, and saw no messages from Gat, but a few voicemails. He swiftly dialed Gat's number. It rang four times, then went to the machine, just like it had every time up until now. Hazel groaned his frustration at Gat's curt voicemail message, hardly even listening to his words anymore (he'd heard them so many times now in the past days), before letting loose:

“Are ya really this mad at me? Leavin' without a word?!” Hazel stormed into the bedroom and checked Gat's drawers. His clothes were all still there, but even that didn't assuage Hazel. “I thought we were in this together. Movin' out here, startin' over.” He shuffled back towards the main room, their shared sofa. They'd spent so many nights together there, settled against one another, Hazel reading or doing his homework and chattering away, Gat relaxing and encouraging Hazel to keep talking in his gentle, taciturn way. “I miss you.” He grunted his irritation. “We at least need to talk. I know you don't like what I'm doin', but I'm done with it now!” He flopped onto the sofa. “Just... come home. Text me back, call me, somethin'. I don't want to go on like this.” He hung up, heaving a sigh and letting his head fall back onto the back of the sofa. He could see glimmers of the sunset dancing across the ceiling, but the brightness still stung his eyes.

“I'd thought it was the right thing to do, damn it.” He thunked his head against the back of the sofa. “Why ain't things fallin' into place?”

His voicemail message flashed insistently, and Hazel dialed it, put it on speaker, and dropped the phone on the table.

“Good afternoon, Hazel.” Oh, the Prof. Hazel raised an eyebrow. What did he want now? “I just wanted to follow up on our arrangement. I'm glad to say your services were most helpful to me. I got the information I needed to help my brother and my unfortunate former flame.”

“Well, good.” Hazel sniffed, glad the Professor couldn't hear him.

“... Although, you'll find it rewarding in life not to get too far ahead of yourself. All that extra information you gave me, not helpful, most distracting. It's a lesson you'll have to learn as you go.”

Hazel 'hmph'ed, and thought back to their last conversation.

Hazel texted Professor Ukoku the photographs he'd taken of Gojyo and that rotten blond fellow, and the Professor smirked as he looked them over. “Good information.”

“The pictures from the outside don't tell the whole story.” Hazel tucked his phone away. “I was questioning on that Gojyo fella too – you've got it right that he's from the wrong side of the tracks, he's not too well-learned or too well-spoken, but he tries hard and it's clear he's doin' his best to keep on the up-and-up. That conversation there? Seems like the blond fella was tryin' to convince him into a bad situation, but Gojyo there was tellin' him off. Sure, he was goin' for his throat, but he had a damn good reason. Your ex found himself a decent guy.”

Professor Ukoku raised an eyebrow. “Is that your honest opinion?”

“It is, sir.” Hazel crossed his arms. “Same goes for your little brother's guy. You tell me the same thing, he's another broke kid with no family and no prospects, but he's a good guy who's tryin' to make somethin' of himself. He's as honest as the day is long. Your brother was looking at buying a house for the pair of them to share, it's obvious he's happy.” He pursed his lips, well aware that Ukoku was studying him, listening. Hazel had never quite liked the Professor, but he had agreed with him on one thing, to start: one couldn't be too careful, and there were people one just had to watch out for. Even so, Hazel knew at least one person who others might say the same about. “I'm sorry to disagree with ya, sir, but just 'cause they're at a disadvantage don't mean they're bad guys. They're tryin' to make somethin' of themselves.”

“I don't suppose you might have some bias, just because that gentleman you're living with might be viewed in a similar fashion.”

Damn, he was keen. Hazel merely shrugged. “It's somethin' I've come to realize, watchin' them live. Even if it might have to do with him, too, I'd say that's just proof of concept.”

Ukoku smirked again and pinched his cheek. “How cute. What a good student you are.” He let go, practically throwing Hazel back, and Hazel rubbed his cheek and sucked back his tongue and irritation. “But that'll be all. With this, I think our arrangement is...”

“... over, but there is one more thing to discuss.” Hazel frowned and sat forward at this. “It was our arrangement that you would help me with this observation, and I wouldn't disclose to your guardians that you're living in a one-bedroom apartment with an older man of unknown history.” Hazel blanched, as Ukoku clicked his tongue on the recording. “Well, as your advisor and professor, I reconsidered the situation. It just seems far too dangerous for a young, easily-influenced man like you. I had to call the Sisters listed as your legal guardians and disclose the unfortunate details of your situation.”

“You did what?!” Hazel squawked at the recording, as if Ukoku could hear, as if it would change anything he'd said. The recording kept talking, but Hazel wasn't hearing, his head spinning. How could he? How could he?! After everything he'd done for him!

“... I imagine they'll have a lot to discuss with you, but really, you may find your arguments more convincing with them than they were on me. I hope to see you in class Monday. Bye.” How could that sonofabitch be sing-song when he'd just destroyed Hazel's life?!

Sure enough, the next message was from one of the Sisters. “Hazel, we just received a phone call from one of your professors.” Hazel sat forward, his face dropping into his open palms. “He alerted us to the details of your... situation. Your... activism. This alleged relationship, Hazel, it's wholly inappropriate in appearance, and if it's true, then it's inexcusable. Bishop Filbert would have been dreadfully disappointed, I can assure you...”

“No, he wouldn't,” Hazel sobbed back, and when had he started crying? “Christ, he knew I was... he said God loved me, no matter who I loved!”

“... considering your apparent lifestyle choices, we must reconsider the current status of your conservatorship.” He could practically hear the sister pursing her lips. “We expect reform, and we are certain you can achieve repentance, but until we have a conversation with you and evidence that you have returned to God's light, we must restrict your access to your trust fund. It will, of course, be turned over to you upon your graduation from college, but until such time as you show yourself deserving...”

Hazel couldn't listen to the rest, his heart racing. That was his college money. That paid his apartment, that paid for his food, that was how he lived! Sure enough, the next message was from his bank, surely letting him know that his account had been emptied and every last cent to his name transferred out, but Hazel's head was spinning, he was too sick, too dizzy to listen, nothing could possibly make sense.

He killed the message and redialed Gat. It rang four times again, then clicked to the answering machine, but Hazel had no more bluster. He listened to the whole message, trying to gather his words, but he couldn't figure out what to say. He could hear the hiss of feedback as the message recorded his silence, before finally whispering, “You were right. I'm sorry. I... I thought I was doin' the right thing, and I... I was wrong! I don't know what to do. You've been there to help me every time stuff has been rough before, and I... I don't...” He trailed off, as the answering service stopped recording, as the feedback turned into silence, and he whispered to himself: “I don't know how to fix this.”

There was no answer.

#You've Got Something #my writing #fanfiction #be honest you feel a little bad for him don't you?

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