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lloydskywalkers · 4 years

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any port in a storm

Pixal and Lloyd and the evolving nature of friendship, as highlighted by the regular burning down of your city.

(desperately trying to break through writer’s block and classes again, this was supposed to be under 2k and it is...very much not hdfjkgh but! i’ve been meaning to write for Pixal and Lloyd for a while so here are a whole bunch of feelings about the two of them and s8)

Pixal meets — truly meets — Lloyd Garmadon shortly after his brother’s been blown to pieces.

She says truly, because if you ask her, Pixal will tell you she met Lloyd Garmadon at exactly 8:48 in the evening outside his father’s monastery, moments before a horde of nindroids led there by Pixal herself descended upon them.

But Lloyd argues that since they said about two words total to each other, it doesn’t really count as meeting, and by the time Pixal’s spending the better part of her day with him running high and low around Ninjago City, she’s learned that it’s easier not to press the point.

Lloyd can be stubborn, like that.

She’d first learned that when she’d met him, just after they’d lost Zane. That loss hadn’t lasted long, especially for Pixal, but the immediate aftermath of it had been devastating. She’d watched with blank eyes as the team had fractured, splitting at the seams as they all fled their separate ways, too heartsore and dizzy with grief to do much otherwise.

All of them had fled, save Lloyd. She hadn’t paid him much attention before that point, the surprisingly small bearer of the Golden Power. Of course, he wasn’t the bearer of that power anymore, but his eyes alone had shown the experience of it. There’d been a brief, lost look that had crossed his face as the others had mentioned leaving, before it had been swept under a mask of stubborn, determined blankness. He wouldn’t be leaving. Someone had to stay behind and watch out for things, he’d claimed, even as the loss had bled through his voice.

Pixal hadn’t quite grasped the concept of empathy at that point, but she’d felt something dangerously close to it.

At any rate, the only interaction they’d had alone was brief. In fact, the only one Pixal can truly remember — and her memory never fails — is the quick exchange they’d had in the hospital lobby directly after the battle. The hospital was for Mr. Borg, and for the ninja’s minor injuries.

There was nothing any hospital on earth could do for Zane.

Pixal had found herself next to Lloyd in the waiting room, trying to distract herself from those thoughts while Lloyd stared at the stark white tiling with dull eyes.

“They never mentioned what your power was,” she’d asked him, almost absently. Collecting data, processing information — anything she could do to distract from the crushing grief.

“Oh.” Lloyd had blinked, startling back into awareness. He’d suddenly looked painfully young. “It’s, ah, I guess it’s just green, now.”

It had been Pixal’s turn to blink. “Green.”

“Yeah.” Lloyd had bit his lip, rubbing the back of his head awkwardly, two habits he’ll never quite lose. “I mean — it’s more than that, but it’s like — energy, I guess, is the best way to put it?”

“Interesting,” Pixal had remarked.

“Yeah.”

They’d stared at each other in silence after that, before they’d both been called off to other errands — and then they were having Zane’s funeral and then Pixal was making realizations she never got to tell anyone, and that had been that in her early introductions to Lloyd Garmadon. Quiet, awkward, and possessing an incredible power he hardly even knew the name of.

Looking back, Pixal figures her introduction hadn’t gone much better.

They’d continued as passing acquaintances as time went on, separated by danger and the confines of Zane’s head, and Pixal had figured that’s all they’d ever be. But then their Sensei goes missing and, despite Pixal’s increasing disappearances on Zane as she rebuilds her own body, she’s been given the role of watching out for Ninjago city along with Lloyd.

She quickly learns that quiet is not a term fit for Lloyd Garmadon when you’re trapped alone with him.

************

“How is there not a single station playing actual music?” Lloyd seethes, flicking through the channels almost manically. “It’s two am, who’s gonna be listening to your stupid commercial for toothpaste now, are you kidding me?”

“Statistically speaking, this is the prime time for long-distance driving near Ninjago City,” Pixal supplies, her voice a hint scratchy where it comes through the his car’s radio speakers. “Or, if you factor in the construction in the east district, there could still be traffic from late-night bars.”

Lloyd groans, thunking his head against the steering wheel as another ad screeches through the small space. “Wonderful.”

“Your vocal tones suggest you find it otherwise.”

“Dont trust ‘em, my vocal tones are traitors.” As if to solidify his point, Lloyd’s voice cracks in the middle of his sentence, shooting up an octave higher. Lloyd goes bright red, and thunks his head against the steering wheel again.

Taking pity on him, Pixal aims for reassurance. “It is normal for your voice to break, Lloyd. It shouldn’t last too long.” She pauses, momentarily scanning through another article. “On second thought, this one suggests it could also take two to three years for your voice to stabilize.”

Lloyd gives a strangled moan. “End me.”

“Unfortunately, that would defeat the purpose of why I’m here in the first place.”

Lloyd tilts his head, cracking an eye open as he glances at the camera feed he knows she’s watching him from. “Unfortunately, huh,” he muses. “So you’re saying if Zane hadn’t made you promise to look out for me, you would end me?”

“That — no, that is not — of course I wouldn’t end you,” Pixal backtracks. An odd feeling flickers through her, almost as if she’s lost her place, floundering.

Or embarrassed might be more accurate, she thinks wryly. She briefly considers projecting a a glaring face at Lloyd from the monitor. This is his fault. She rarely stuttered before Lloyd started teasing her at all hours of the morning.

“I mean, you wouldn’t be the first,” Lloyd continues, conversationally. “And if we’re being honest, I’d definitely rather you be the one to off me, instead of like, random bad guy number eighty-five—”

“I know you think you are funny,” Pixal cuts over him. “But casually planning for your death is something Kai listed I was not to let you do. Also, it is not nearly as funny as you think it is.”

“Ouch,” Lloyd mutters, though he looks chastised. “Never mind, you just took me out in one sentence.”

Chastised might be the wrong term.

Pixal studies him through the monitor, then sighs. “I am, however, honored you think highly enough of me to offer the right to murder you,” she gives in.

She’s rewarded as Lloyd breaks into a bright grin.

He still looks painfully young these days, but it’s less obvious. His voice is pitching lower and he wears his hair different, and he’s gained a whip-like tendency to quip at people, as Pixal’s experienced firsthand. Kai calls it sass in grumbling but fond tones, and Nya calls it snark somewhere between the fourth book series she’s sent for Pixal to try.

The ninja have been kind like that, sharing the interests they have in an attempt to make her feel…well, more human, she supposes. Less confined to a voice in a computer. Of course, Pixal isn’t confined to a voice in a computer anymore, but they don’t know that yet. She’ll tell them someday soon, she promises herself. Any day now.

In the meantime, it’s easy enough to keep up with Lloyd by lurking in his car radio, as he spends half his time in there anyways.

************

“You’d think we’d have found their hideout by now,” Lloyd notes, as they wait in a darkened alleyway again. It gives them an excellent view of the major highways, so if the rumored biker gang does show up, they won’t miss it.

If they show up being the key point.

“Whoever their leader is, they certainly know how to keep a low profile,” Pixal answers, closing out another dead end police report in frustration.

“It’s weird,” Lloyd says, propping the notebook he’s sketching in on his knee as he squints at the paper. “Normally the boss types aren’t this quiet. They like to show off, y’know? Make a big scene, dramatic speeches and all.”

“Are you referring to the villains, or yourselves?”

“Touché,” Lloyd snorts. “But still, you gotta admit it’s weird they haven’t even made any demands. What’s their end game here, elaborate advertising for motorcycle design?”

“I would hope not,” Pixal says. “Their color coordination is lacking.”

Lloyd fights back a smile, his pencil scratching as he shifts his notebook again. “I don’t know, I kinda like the punk look.”

“I noticed that, when you tried to redecorate the car.”

“Hey, skulls are cool.”

“They are also conspicuous, especially when they come in acid green colors.”

“Everyone’s a critic,” Lloyd sighs, making a face as he scrubs the eraser across the paper. Pixal tries to tilt the camera further, to see what he’s drawing tonight, but the angle he’s holding it at remains just out of sight.

She could probably guess what he’s drawing, if she tried. The notebook is one they’ve been steadily working their way through on these late-night patrols, the pages filled with little hangman games and Lloyd’s sketches of animals and his teammates. He’s drawn her a few times from memory, and she’s been tempted to ask him to draw her in the new Samurai X armor more than once.

Soon, she tells herself.

“What are you drawing?” she finally asks, curiosity getting the better of her.

Lloyd’s cheeks tinge pink, and he quickly plasters the notebook to his chest, hiding it entirely from view. “Nothing.”

Pixal waits, letting the silence fill with her judgement. “Lloyd, I have seen your drawings before.”

He doesn’t reply, and Pixal tries again. “It gets boring, being stuck with the car monitors for eyes.”

“I know you can hack other cameras,” Lloyd mutters, but he sighs, relenting as he turns the notebook over. Pixal’s eyes rake over the detailed sketch — it’s a comical little thing of her and Lloyd, jammed together on a tiny lifeboat in the middle of a darkening ocean. She can spot the smudges where he’s redrawn her head several times, and the numerous attempts he’s made at his own hair. Pixal studies Lloyd’s portrayal of himself, which is noticeably lacking in facial features. While Lloyd draws the others plenty, it’s a rare occasion that he draws himself, and she can’t help but be curious.

“I thought you were drawing the others again,” she admits.

“They’re on the ship,” Lloyd says, absently. “I’ll draw them when they remember to pull us back in.”

There’s nothing bitter in his tone to suggest it has any bearing on their actual lives, but the lost expressions Lloyd ends up giving their tiny caricatures feel familiar nonetheless.

“Zane has assured me they will be back as soon as they can,” Pixal speaks ups quietly.

Lloyd finally looks up fully, and flashes the monitor a smile. “I know,” he says. “So we better have this thing busted by the time they do, or they’ll never let us run a city on our own again.”

“If only we were truly running the city,” Pixal grumbles. “I could do a better job in two days than the current leaders could do in a year.”

“I’d vote for you,” Lloyd says, sincerely.

It’s a sweet gesture, but Pixal is unable to resist. “You don’t know how to vote.”

“Yes I do, it’s not hard!”

“Really? Then why are you not currently registered in the Ninjago voting system?”

Lloyd makes a strangled noise. “That’s a thing?”

She’s unable to keep the smugness from her voice. “I make my point.” Lloyd scowls, and scribbles a mustache on his drawing of her in revenge.

Pixal thinks it looks nice nonetheless.

************

She can’t really hold it against Lloyd for talking as much as he does, considering she does the same. It gets dull, sitting on patrol for hours on end, and there are only so many hours of light reading they can do before the silence begins to drive them both insane.

Pixal finds herself talking about more useless things with Lloyd than she has in her existence, pointless conversations in circles with each other. She also finds she doesn’t entirely mind. She’s become quite good at quipping back and forth with him, at least. It’s different than the kind of talk she has with Zane, lacking in the depth of feeling with the love they share. Her exchanges with Lloyd are lighter, though that’s not to say they’re less sincere.

For example, Zane hasn’t tried to teach her how to redesign a gi in poor lighting in the early hours of the morning because he’s bored out of his mind, that’s for sure.

“I’m teaching you how to sew,” Lloyd corrects, wincing as he accidentally stabs himself with the needle. “And I’m not redesigning the whole thing, I’m just adding some designs to spice it up.”

“I did not know you were allowed to wear colors other than green,” Pixal comments.

Lloyd pauses, squinting at the monitor. “You’re teasing me,” he finally says. “You’re making fun of how much green this gi has in it.”

“I would never,” Pixal replies, her tone flat and even. “The intricacies of your human humor evade me—”

“Human humor, nice—”

“—unlike the unusually bright shade of green you’ve chosen will fail to evade any eyes of your enemies.”

“I knew you were making fun of me!” Lloyd accuses, then flinches as he stabs his finger again trying to point at her. “And bright colors are our thing. Being subtle is, uh…not. Usually.”

Pixal is losing the battle to laugh at his expression by the minute. “I am shocked.”

Lloyd glares at the monitor, shifting his sewing to rest on his knees as he slouches in the car seat. “How’d you even get so good at sarcasm, anyways,” he mutters. “Zane still doesn’t get it half the time.”

“Perhaps it is part of my glowing personality,” Pixal says. Lloyd gives a huff of laughter, relenting.

“Fair enough,” he says, shifting in his seat again. “Fine, you win. The green is probably too bright, but that’s not the point. I’m gonna show you how to do a backstitch."

Pixal falls quiet, letting Lloyd gesture with the needle as he explains. There are a hundred, a thousand tutorials she could pull up online, digitized knowledge instantly learned on all the countless types of stitches she could use, sorted and categorized in neat columns of use and effectiveness. All of them more detailed, more easily understood than Lloyd’s absent rambling and unsteady hands as he struggles with the end of a knot.

Not one of them will care whether or not Pixal learns the odd way Zane likes to loop his stitches, or will quietly add which stitches knit skin back together quickest.

So Pixal ignores her programming, and does her best to follow Lloyd’s rambling instructions, watching as his scarred fingers tug another thread of dull gold through the green mess of fabric, the city quiet around them.

“You never did tell me where you learned how to sew,” Pixal says, as Lloyd starts up a new thread of black on the other side of the gi. “Was that something the others taught you in training?”

“They’d have to know how to be able to teach it,” Lloyd snickers. “And, uh, no. I taught myself to back at Darkley’s.”

“Oh,” Pixal falters. She’s heard about Darkley’s, both from Zane and the legal reports she’s read online. Neither gave a positive impression of the place. Her mind is suddenly filled with images of a younger Lloyd trying to give himself stitches, and her heart twists.

Lloyd starts, seemingly having picked up on her train of thought. “I mean, I did it for fun, mostly. I like sewing,” he explains. “It’s useful. You can pull things back together, and fix ‘em.”

Pixal is quiet, but she hopes Lloyd takes her silence as agreement with his motive. She likes to think he knows her well enough for that, by now.

************

Pixal finds, somewhere during their fourth month alone, that she’s glad the team elected to stick her and Lloyd together. Not because she doesn’t want to be with Zane — there’s never a moment she doesn’t miss him, and with every day that passes her resolve to keep her secret from him grows weaker, as the longing for actual connection grows stronger.

But there are conversations she can have with Lloyd that she can never have with Zane, and the dangerous thing about spending time with Lloyd, Pixal finds, is that they’re more similar than she’s realized.

“Sometimes I think I’m jealous,” Lloyd whispers to her one night. It’s one of the bad ones, the ones where their enemies struck too sudden to stop, and the mission ends in the hospital. “I think I’m jealous of Zane, and I hate myself for it.”

Pixal is quiet, trying to pick apart the tone of his voice in the words he’s just spoken, and factors in the victims they’ve just left behind at the hospital. She finds herself no closer to an answer.

“Is it the metal skin part?” she finally asks, though she knows that’s wrong. “The, what was it, technical immortality?”

“No,” Lloyd shakes his head. “I’m not afraid of dying,” he says emphatically, his fingers fluttering at over the steering wheel, tapping incessantly with unspent energy. “I don’t want to, but that’s — it’s not what I’m scared of. I’m more scared of how I go out.”

He swallows, and his fingers move to dance over the woven bracelet on his wrist instead, twisting at the tiny beads and tracing senseless designs in constant, steady movement. It’s a motion he does often, and it had puzzled Pixal at first. She’d decided to write it off as an odd tick, a way to spend excess energy.

Now, she recognizes the desperate kind of reassurance that movement gives. She understands too well the need to remind yourself that you can move — that your body will obey you and you alone.

Pixal thinks back to the other factors in tonight’s accident, of the way the drugged man’s eyes had cleared when they’d finally turned him over to the police, the way he’d sworn he’d never do such a thing in his right mind. She thinks of the way the first victim had thrown themselves over their companion.

That victim hadn’t made it to the hospital.

“Ah,” Pixal says, quietly.

She’s silent again, and she thinks back to when she’d met him, the very first time. She recalls the way her programming had rebelled against her in favor of the Overlord, corrupting her body and forcing it against her, twisting everything she was and wanted to be into something different.

She thinks back again, to the searing-hot anger, the terror, the despair as she was torn apart, piece by piece like a machine, burning out at the whims of another. Her end purposeless, her demise belonging to someone else, just like every other part of her.

She thinks of the last glimpse she’d caught of Zane, bright and beautiful as a supernova. Burning with the terrible brilliance of his own, determined choice. Terrible, because the death of something always is. Beautiful, because it was his own. Zane died, not a machine, not a weapon, not a tool of anyone or anything, but as himself. Zane died to save the ones he loves. Pixal could’ve died for spare parts.

Never again, she promises herself. If she goes out, she goes out on her own terms. This time, they choose the end of their own destiny themselves.

In hindsight, it’s the kind of promise they’re both too young to make, but neither of them have ever seen themselves as such, and promises like that are easy.

“Love can be terrible, sometimes,” Lloyd murmurs. Pixal watches him scrub at the blood on his uniform, and thinks how ironically well-timed it is that he finished the stitching on his new gi this morning. “Sometimes I forget how ugly it can be.”

************

The end of their nighttime stakeouts begins with a break-in at Mr. Borg’s tower. Lloyd argues that she should get to call it her father’s tower, if she wants, but the ninja aren’t the only ones Pixal’s hiding herself from.

And then Lloyd gets very tense at the thought of fathers very fast, and they never finish the conversation.

They stay at the edge of the bridge long after the parachute, emblazoned with the unmistakable visage of Lloyd’s father, disappears from sight. Pixal wonders if it’s burned into Lloyd’s eyes, like the way she’s read black spots linger in humans’ vision after they’ve looked at something too bright. The way Lloyd stares at the river, his shoulders tense and his teeth worrying at his lip, she thinks she might be right.

They’re waiting on the report from the commissioner —they’re waiting for anything, anyone who can offer them any explanation of what’s going on. Pixal’s reminded of how much she loathes this kind of waiting.

“It could be—” Lloyd begins, then breaks off, his voice wavering. He swallows, and Pixal can see the way his fists clench tightly from the cameras they’ve put in his car. There’s a fierce part of her that longs to reveal herself, to meet his eyes herself and offer some semblance of comfort. But there’s a time and place for things, and Pixal isn’t ready.

“It could be anything,” Lloyd finally continues, his voice small. “It could — it doesn’t mean anything. It could mean nothing, right?”

Pixal is silent, her mind racing. She’s run the calculations over and over in her head already, scouring the internet for anything related to the bikers. She’s been foolish, she realizes — they both have. Letting the gang go unnamed for so long, thinking nothing of it. Now, with the name flashing vibrant across Pixal’s vision, a part of her wants to let them go nameless just a bit longer.

Before she can answer, Lloyds phone goes off with a sharp ping, just as Pixal’s sensors alert her to the message from the commissioner. Lloyd snatches for his phone like it’s on fire, and Pixal’s already scanning the message frantically, as if she can salvage this if she’s fast enough, save Lloyd from this one pain.

Lloyd’s gotten much better at reading quickly though, these days.

She can pinpoint the moment he reaches the last paragraph, because his breath hitches. There’s a long, pressing pause of silence, Lloyd’s hands trembling as they clutch weakly at his phone. Then it’s punctured by a reedy, wheezing gasp, and Pixal’s suddenly wishing she’d revealed herself after all.

Instead, all she has is her voice as Lloyd crumples, crouching over in visible distress. Pixal’s mind races, recalling everything Zane’s ever told her about his team, the way their panic manifests in different shades. Lloyd’s is quiet but desperate, rapid breathes that stutter as his eyes slide more and more into a frightening kind of blankness.

“Lloyd, please, listen to my voice,” she begs, trying to reach him in the only way she can. “Please, you have to breathe—”

“He’s gone,” Lloyd rasps, unhearing of her words. “He’s s’posed to be gone, it’s supposed to be over, I’m supposed to be done—”

Pixal fights back the sense of overwhelming helplessness. She knows loss. She knows how to finish his sentence. He’s supposed to be done grieving, done mourning, done clinging to false scraps of hope that his father isn’t lost forever only to be met with heartbreak.

And now, to be met with the possibility of something so much worse.

“We’ll stop them,” she tells him, unflinching. “We won’t let it happen.”

Lloyd’s eyes are a vivid green where they stare at her through the monitor, almost ghostly in the misting light reflecting from the river.

He’s silent, but Pixal is, too.

Pixal remembers the way her head had spun when she’d first picked up the traces of Zane in the system, how the world had rushed then steadied, flooding with color as she’d realized he might not be lost after all. She remembers the surging, overwhelming flood of joy, that someone she’d thought she lost might live after all. She remembers being so happy, at even the smallest chance to get him back, because the voice was Zane’s, without a doubt.

She watches the color seep from Lloyd’s expression as his shoulders shudder, the words from the commissioner’s message almost echoing through the air. Watches the terror as the both of them fill the silence.

Will we?

The radio scratches, as if echoing Pixal’s anxiety. Love can be terrible, sometimes. She’s underestimated how it also be so cruel.

************

She’s also, apparently, underestimated how the universe on the whole could be so cruel.

She should’ve revealed herself to them from day one. That way, when Harumi’s corrupted programming suddenly ravages through her like an electric shock, she could be reassured they’d at least be familiar with the person they were fighting.

Instead, she doesn’t even get to scream. Pixal’s only able to force out a desperate, broken warning before she’s lost again, drowning in her own body as she’s forced under. Furious panic grips her as she screams without lungs, bashing herself against the overwhelming helplessness that’s taken over her.

Not again, not again, not again—

Her limbs creak and jolt against her will, lashing out at the people she cares most about, and Pixal can’t even rage back in her own voice. She’s sworn, she’s promised herself she’d never let anyone do this to her again — she’s sworn she’d die before she let someone reach into her head and snatch control away, and yet here she is, frozen as her body’s used to target her friends.

If she could cry, she might.

There’s not much more to say than that. She breaks free, her body her own once again, but by then it’s too late.

************

If Pixal had the same gift of foresight that Zane did, maybe she would have seen it coming. Maybe she’d have remembered how similar her and Lloyd are, and that this kind of pained desperation always yields impulsiveness and mistakes.

She doesn’t, though. She barely even manages to do what she’s trying to, which is convincing Lloyd to join the others while they celebrate their victory. Their off-key singing is something he normally wouldn’t hesitate to join in on, she thinks, and she hates Harumi a little more.

Maybe she’ll try his mother next. The expression on Lloyd’s face screams unapproachable, and remains fixedly sullen.

Almost to her surprise, he meets her eyes as she draws near— it’s odd, being able to meet his back — and his own eyes are dark, from despair over Harumi or despair over his father, Pixal isn’t sure. She’s thinking it might be both, when his eyebrows crease, and a flicker of concern cuts through them instead.

“You good?”

It takes her a moment to realize why he’s asking, but the answer is obvious. Her head tilts downward, and she watches as her fingers curl and uncurl. Her movements, her choices. She lets out an even breath.

“As I can be,” she replies. Lloyd nods, and his eyes are understanding. His lips twist in a scowl.

“She shouldn’t have done that to you. That was a low blow.”

Pixal’s mouth curves into a humorless smile. “That it was. She’s rather good at those, isn’t she.”

Lloyd’s eyes shadow again, and he looks away, crossing his arms. “This isn’t supposed to be about me,” he mutters.

“Yes, it is,” Pixal counters. “It is why I came over here, in the first place. She hurt—”

“All of us, and who’s fault is that,” Lloyd snaps, his arms crossing tighter.

“I would hope you know it’s hers,” she says, holding firm.

Lloyd looks away again, biting his lip, and Pixal shifts anxiously, rolling her wrists. The sensation of control sliding away still haunts her, worse than it had the first time. She should be better than this, she tells herself hotly. She’s lived without a body long enough that losing it so briefly shouldn’t effect her this much.

Curse her programming, she thinks, tapping agitatedly at the banister. She knew she should have reinforce it sooner.

“Hey, um.” Lloyd is looking at her again, hesitant. He twists at his bracelet, and his eyes lose a fraction of that darkness. “Kai made this for me, after Morro,” he says. “I kept shredding the sleeves of my uniform, so he told me to mess with this instead, when I needed to remember that…that I was in control.”

He shrugs, hesitant. “We could make you one too, if you wanted. It helps, having something.”

Pixal lets out a steady breath, despite not actually needing to. The action is grounding, she’s found. “I would like that.”

Lloyd gives her a ghost of a smile in return. “Soon as this is over, then.”

There’s a heavy weight to his words, and Pixal’s eyes narrow.

“Lloyd,” she says. He looks at her, his eyes dark. “Don’t do anything foolish.”

He’s quiet, not meeting her eyes, and this is where Pixal should stop him. This is when she should see the end of the road they’ve been on since they started this, and force him to turn before it’s too late.

“I know what I’m doing.”

She doesn’t.

************

Lloyd is battered and bleeding by the time they drag him onto the ship, a gruesome portrait of cruelty. Pixal is frozen as she watches him writhe in Kai’s hold, his screams cracked and wet as he thrashes erratically like a broken thing.

Nya is already barking orders before they’ve even gotten Lloyd fully on the ship, and Zane is running scans with a horrified, wavering focus. Pixal follows Cole as he carries Lloyd to the medbay with a blank numbness, the rush of wind streaming past the Bounty sails thunderously loud in her ears.

This isn’t Lloyd, she thinks, staring at his crumpled form. Lloyd isn’t this battered, broken shell of a person. Lloyd isn’t hazy eyes that fail to recognize them and frantic murmuring through bloody lips. Lloyd is bright-eyed and gentle and would rather die before he screams the way he does when Cole moves him to the table.

Lloyd is her friend, and this is where that promise they made has led them. She knows why Lloyd set out for the prison, hot on the collapse of his own star. She also knows he wouldn’t have chosen to burn out like this.

Cole calls out for Zane, his voice ringing in panic as Lloyd screeches in pain again. Pixal thinks of quiet words in the safety of his car, and she feels sick. This is the ugliness of love, the terrible, hideous side of it.

And Lloyd would hate it, if he could see himself, if he were any semblance of lucid. He’d hate to know just how much better he was at breaking himself than Morro ever was.

Zane is gentle as he pushes past her, but Pixal can feel the tremble in his hands. He’s every bit as rattled as she is, if not more so — Zane’s heart is larger and softer than hers has ever been, and he cares about each and every one of them with a painful intensity. It’s a cruel thing, to have to pull those same people back together with your own hands.

Kai’s eyes are streaming as he clutches at Lloyd’s wrists, pinning him in place. Zane’s hands waver again over one of the jagged wounds near Lloyd’s ribcage, the green of his uniform already dyed dark in blood, soaking over the careful stitches Pixal watched him put in himself.

Pixal finally finds her footing, reminding herself of the solid wood beneath her feet. She recalls the steady, smooth stitch Lloyd’s scarred fingers traced out for her.

“Here.” She takes the needle from Zane’s hands, squeezing his briefly before letting go. “I can do it.”

She sets the needle against Lloyd’s skin and wonders what kind of stitch it’d take to pull your heart back together.

************

Pixal cannot cry. It’s one of the features Mr. Borg spent hours debating, weighing the pros and cons of giving her the ability before he was truly sure how rust-proof she was. He’d never gotten the chance to, as the Overlord had interrupted him, then Pixal had lost any body to give the ability to cry to, which had eliminated the need entirely.

She cannot cry, but she can hurt, and the rain that streams through her hair, dripping down her forehead spotting raindrops on her cheeks, could be tears if she pretended.

She doesn’t, though, because tears are a waste of water and overall useless in the grand scheme of things. She doubts they’d have helped her fare any better in the battle with Colossi, either.

Tears won’t bring anyone back.

Lloyd cries anyways. She can’t see him, but she can hear it in his voice, the way it wavers and breaks over the radio, nasally tones pronounced.

He’s barely able to gasp a few coordinates to her before he cuts the radio off abruptly. Pixal’s spent enough time with him to envision his scarred fingers snapping it off with a particular desperation, green sparking from his hands in distress.

She reminds herself those sparks are gone, now, bled away into nothing like the vivid green of Lloyd’s eyes had. The thought makes her sadder than she’d expected. She had a joke, about his eyes, she had wanted to make. Now that she has a body, and her own set of glowing green eyes, she’d — there was something he would’ve laughed at, she thought —

It doesn’t matter, now. Neither of them are likely to laugh anytime soon.

The coordinates blink brightly in her vision, and she’s almost surprised she managed to key them in. She’s running on autopilot, she supposes. It could be ironic — she’s been so desperate for control, it’s been so important that she’s the one feeling. Now, she’d give anything not to feel at all.

She lets out a shaky breath, dispelling the mist in her vision left from the rain. She leans forward, just over the edge of the building she’s crouched on, and her loose hair falls forward, silvery and synthetic and horribly tangled. Irritated, she reaches for another hair tie, and her hands falter around her wrist.

Lloyd had promised her a bracelet there. But he’d promised Kai would make the bracelet, hadn’t he, and Kai couldn’t make the bracelet if he was dead, could he.

Pixal blinks, her breath hitching. She’s been so numb to the pain of Zane’s loss, it hasn’t yet occurred to her that she’s losing Kai, too. And Jay, and Cole, and—

She sucks in the same shuddery kind of breath she’s seen Lloyd do, and carefully fists her hand in the area of her uniform above her chest. Her fingers dig in tightly, clutching in a hopeless attempt to feel some sort of comfort she knows she’ll never find.

But perhaps, for these few seconds, she can pretend the action is holding her together.

************

“It was inevitable,” Pixal tells Lloyd blankly, as he rasps out his third apology in the dark cover of their small hideout. “That one of us would fall, eventually. It had nothing to do with you.”

Lloyd swallows thickly. “It could’ve — it should’ve been—”

He doesn’t finish, but he doesn’t need to. Pixal’s hand shoots out, clamping tightly around his wrist, and there’s a beat of gratitude that she doesn’t need to rely on her voice alone anymore.

“Don’t.” Her voice is strung tighter than the tension in their shoulders. “You cannot change anything. You can’t, Lloyd, and you should not wish to — to change it that way.”

Lloyd jerks his hand free, wiping miserably at his eyes. He sets it back down within her reach, though, and if Pixal were any different, she’d take it.

But Pixal isn’t that different from Lloyd at all in the end, and neither of them reach for the other’s hand, no matter how desperately they crave the contact. Fear is more familiar, and it’s easier to give into it than it is the clawing need for comfort in your chest, after all.

“Still,” Lloyd finally whispers. “Still.”

Pixal swallows. She doesn’t disagree. If one of them had to fall, she knows she gladly would have taken it upon herself. She knows the others care for her, certainly, but she also knows her place in the grand scheme of things. They were six before she came along, and even now she’s kept far too many secrets to be fully counted among them.

She listens to Lloyd’s quiet, cracked voice, and she wonders if he’s thinking that they were five before he came along, younger than Pixal got to know him as.

Now they’re three, hollow and heartbroken. Though counting herself as one whole feels like cheating, right now.

Pixal squeezes her eyes shut, and wonders what it’s like to cry. Perhaps it helps, though Lloyd doesn’t look any less miserable.

************

“I was thinking,” Lloyd tells her, during one of the precious few quiet moments they have while trying to overthrow Garmadon and Harumi. Pixal’s turning the tiny tea flower he’d given her over in her hands, a part of her mind already marking articles about flower-pressing, another part wondering if it’s already too late to save the blossom. “About that promise we made, before all this.”

Pixal finally tucks the flower into the pocket of her uniform, pressed close to her chest. If anything, it can be a reminder of the lives that are safe — the life that’s coming back to her, if she has to drag him back from another realm herself. “And?”

Lloyd’s hands twist together. “Maybe we should focus more on staying alive.”

Pixal coughs out a laugh, breathless and startled. Lloyd wrinkles his nose at her, but his eyes are amused, even with their light lost. “I mean, the emphasis would be on keeping everyone else alive, but it’s kinda hard to do that if we’re dead, so…yeah. Priorities.”

“Staying alive should always be a priority,” Pixal corrects him, but she tugs the edge of his armor out of place with a smile.

“Why didn’t you teach me how to graffiti?” she nods at the designs on the green leather. “Or was this another Darkley’s tradition.”

“This is a refined art, called whatever I had on me that showed up on dark green,” Lloyd grumbles, fixing his armor. “I’ll teach it to you when we get out of this.”

“Another reason why staying alive would be a more productive focus,” Pixal points out. “I’ve heard teaching is easier when you’re alive.”

“And I’ve heard you’re a real riot,” Lloyd mutters. “It’s a promise, okay? I promise to teach you how to do cool armor design if you promise not to disappear into another realm on me.”

Pixal nods, adjusting her own armor tighter as screams ring out from a street nearby. “A promise, then.”

She keeps both the promise and the flower, the tiny blossom dried and faded by the time she’s escaped from the prison, heart racing with leftover adrenaline as Zane sweeps her into his arms. She clutches back every bit as tight, listening to his breathless laughter as cheers rise from the streets behind them, the smoke drifting across the early morning sky above them pale against the lightening blue. Pixal buries her face in his shoulder and breathes, tucking the moment away in her heart where it won’t fade. There’s a future stretching out before her, and she’s got the limbs to walk her path on her own, but all she wants right now is the steady ground beneath her feet and the bright laughter of what she’s managed to keep.

Lloyd meets them shortly after, his own promise kept as he tears his gaze from his father, handing him off to the authorities before sprinting for the others. Pixal barely snags a moment alone with him, and even then no one’s particularly keen on letting him out of their sights.

He meets her eyes as they pick their way through the wrecked streets, the city more alive around them than it’s been in weeks. In the dark of the early morning, Pixal’s eyes glow a bright green, reflecting oddly in the windows they pass. It’s always been her preferred color, in contrast to Zane’s bright blue. Lloyd glances at her, his own eerily green eyes glowing back. He bites his lip, but it’s to hold back real laughter this time.

“My eyes were green first,” she tells him.

“Sue me,” he shoots back, before Kai’s throwing an arm over his shoulders again, tucking Lloyd neatly in between him and Nya. Pixal smothers a laugh at the look on his face, and tightens her own arm further where it’s linked firmly in Zane’s.

It’s going to be an easy promise to keep, she thinks.

#lego ninjago #ninjago #lloyd garmadon #ninjago lloyd #pixal #there was a point to this but it got lost in pix and lloyd do arts and crafts #either way i'd die for both these characters #ninjago where is the pixal love i miss her #my fic

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mallowstep · 3 years

Text

visual impairment in the uk in the early 20th century preliminary research

so it's july, disabilities pride month, i'm researching for watlcitf (1910s ireland au), and i figured i should share what i'm looking at.

(the title for this post is so incredibly specific but that's because most research is. my previous post for watlcitf was like, 2k words exclusively going through census data for one census and one county in ireland. i named maybe twenty characters.)

anyway, disclaimers out of the way, tagging @foxstride because i think they'll be interested in this, let's get started.

unlike last time, i have a specific research goal: to determine what jay's life, as a blind person, would be in the uk (specifically, ireland) in the early 20th century (specifcally, 1900-1914), given that he's from a well-off family.

so i have the benefit of being a bit more focused.

unfortunately, i don't have a great backlog of information. i can't just pull up the national archives and start going through census data. that's alright, what else is research for?

i'm going to try to keep to things that are broadly accessible, but if i can't find things on the internet, i will be turning to my university's library resources.

getting my footing

so after checking that the obvious search (various combinations of the keywords form the title) didn't pull up anything particularly useful, i started going after disabilities in general in early 20th century england.

(i know i'm not set in england, but i also know that i can find broad coverage of information about the uk by starting my research in england.)

before i do that, thoough, we did have britannica's history of the blind, something i found fairly unhelpful. i already know braille was around by the 1910s, and then for some reason it tailspins into the us, which is exceptionally unhelpful.

(an interesting story might be sending jay abroad for a better education, but this is not that particular historical au.)

anyway, as per usual, britannica told me a lot of what i already knew and didn't offer any good leads to new information. (i draw the line at buying books for a fanfic. this is a one-shot. i am going to have written more about my research for it than the actual fic. sigh.)

so next up: historical england's a history of disability, which covers a wonderfully long time range, making it good for anyone from the middle ages to the recent past.

i jumped straight to disability in the 19th century, because their 20th century starts covering 1914 and on.

for those following along at home, the 4 headings in the sidebar are clickable links to articles with more information.

i know jay is going to be living at home, so while i did skim through the section on asylums and workhouses, neither of those are applicable here. we're skipping straight to the daily life of disabled people.

since about 50 years pass between the main time period of this article and my time period, i'm not sure how much i can rely on the attitudes section, but jumping off places.

some key quotes:

"These were the ambivalent Victorian attitudes towards disability - a combination of fear, pity, discomfort and an idea of divine judgement."

"Henry Fawcett (1833-1884), blinded as a young man, became Postmaster-General in 1880; he introduced the parcel post and the postal order."

"In 1838 the London Society for Teaching the Blind to Read was formed and in 1866 the Worcester College for the Blind ('for the blind sons of gentlemen') became the world's first further education provision for disabled people."

"In 1868 the British and Foreign Blind Association was formed by Dr Thomas Armitage, initially to promote the use of braille. It was to become the Royal National Institute for the Blind."

"In 1894 the first branch of the Guild of the Brave Poor Things (motto: 'Happy in My Lot') was formed as a self-help group for people with physical disabilities. They described themselves as a group to "make life sweet for the blind and crippled folk of all ages"."

so great! that gives me a good number of jumping off places. nothing ideal, but it's a start.

henry fawcett

seems like a good enough start. researching attitudes won't help me entirely, here, mostly in that i'll be better off starting with other things and seeing what i pick up.

well according to wikipedia, he was blinded as an adult while he was already in education.

that's incredibly frustrating.

moving on.

royal national institude for the blind

as i know this exists, i figured it's as good a place to start as any.

sticking with wikipedia, because frankly, sticking with wikipedia is as good a place to start as any, we're on the wikipedia page for royal national institute of blind people

wikipedia's history summary was saddening.

moving on.

rnib's history page is next up on the list.

well, the first key takeaway is the adoptation of a braille magazine ("progress") and braille contractions. i'm not doing an overview of braille here, because these research posts are primarly for my own benefit, and i'm comfortable with my understanding of braille as it stands.

alright, i'm frustratingly limited in what i've learned, but i'm making progress.

the white cane

i took a bit of a change of course. we went back to the drawing board: literally just googling "history of blind people" in vain hope but lo! i actually stumbled upon something.

a list of facts about the white cane lead me to the wikipedia page for the white cane lead me to an archived web link about the history of orientation and mobility and good lord! have i finally started getting somewhere.

this is entirely focused around the us, and i'm not going to type up a summary here as it's quite long.

that said, it's alltogether helpful. the biggest takeaway is that mobility was taught by individual teachers going home to home. exceptionally helpful tidbit, that is.

the thing with historical research is that there are things that feel like reasonable assumptions to make often aren't, so i feel quite happy in that knowledge.

to the specifics: ireland

alright, while i'm mostly unsatisfied with what i've done, i want to move on. i have a feeling that i'm going to need to revisit this. i actually just changed the title to preliminary research to account for this.

sigh.

so we've moved to the history of ncbi, the national council for the blind of ireland.

they were founded in 1931, meaning that my instinct to start in england was correct, but still. their history page confirms that home teaching is the big thing at the start.

summary and moving on

okay so i went to do some research into the history of education in the england (the status of ireland vs england is at the moment Complex, but suffice to say that for most purposes i'm searching for english history) to see if i could find any sort of wrap-up about home tutors vs schools, and.

lo.

i found something fairly useful. it's an elemetary education act for blind and deaf children, which, like, god. so useful.

laws are just. good ways of establishing the general outlook of a time period.

so.

unfortunately.

it does not apply to ireland and scotland, and yes, i do have to do research into the history of education in ireland, but i feel i have hit some kind of nebulous conclusion.

because this is half research notes and half helpful information for others (if anyone else needs this kind of specific information), i'll try to summarize here

schools were possibly able to handle blind students. by "handle" i mostly mean "provide a seat and something resembling education", but that's better than nothing.

most mobility, braille, etc., skills seem to be taught by instructors going home to home

thanks to the relatively low traffic, population density, etc., blind people seem to have a decent amount of mobility

that's all for now. my skills in research are not historical research, so i can't promise that like. i have the best critical thinking skills here. etc. etc.

#mine #txt #6th #July #2021 #July 6th 2021 #research #masterpost #ref #watlcitf #i gotta like sit down and start digging through primary sources next #the thing is because jay is his Brother it's like #annoying to do a lot of work because jay isn't pov #but he's also too important to brush it aside #anyway

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lockefanfic · 4 years

Text

Business Trip - Part 5: Negotiations

“Sit up on the edge of the tub,” she says softly, and you make eye contact with her to find her cute features flushed, her eyes heady with pleasure and lust.

Seolhyun lifts her body off your lap and you raise your body above the waterline, shuddering slightly as the cool night air hits your naked shaft. Seolhyun’s gaze lingers on your cock for a long moment, and a look of satisfaction appears on her face. She locks eyes with you again and bites her lip as you sit down on the tub’s edge. She draws closer, kneeling on the underwater seating ledge, and thinking you are about to kiss again, you lean forward - only for Seolhyun to dodge your face altogether and sink her face between your legs.

In a moment, you go from expecting another passionate kiss to having her lips, tongue, and mouth wrapped around your shaft - and it is an amazing feeling, as Seolhyun wastes no time with delicate foreplay or slow build up. Almost immediately she is bobbing her head up and down, and it is all you can do to grip the edge of the tub with one hand and the back of her ponytailed head with the other as Kim Seolhyun takes your cock in and out of her hot, slick mouth.

“We’d be idiots to not acquire this company,” Hirai Momo says in a serious, business-like tone, “if we don’t buy them, some other company will, and then we’ll wish we had.”

“I agree,” Park Choa says with a small nod, “their tech is legit. Their logistics and resourcing could use some restructuring, but with our capital behind their team that won’t be an issue. Their personnel and their tech have a lot of potential.”

“You’re both right. I don’t even think we need to consult with the boss on this one. I say we move forward and submit a proposal for acquisition,” you finish.

Momo and Choa respond with affirmative nods. Their faces are weary after two days of long hours spent in presentations, meeting with company executives, and reviewing company data. They are both happy to have come to a decision about the company, and both glad that the three of you were in agreement.

“Choa, have legal back home start up the paperwork. Momo, the boss will want a full summary report including all their presentations and the data they gave us on their tech. He’ll want to know everything about what he’s buying. I’ll meet with their management and start on a framework for the acquisition terms, and perhaps get started on financial negotiations.”

“Roger that, sir,” Momo says with a mock salute as if she were speaking to a superior military officer, “I’ll get on it right away, Captain. But first, sleep! To the hotel!”

Momo turns on her heel and pretends to march out of the meeting room, her long legs straight as they march in exaggerated fashion like a soldier on parade, her tablet held against her shoulder like a rifle.

Choa giggles as the younger woman leaves the room, then turns to you and whispers softly:

“Maybe it’ll be my turn to call you sir before this trip is over?”

“Maybe,” you say softly in reply, your lips widening into a smile that is returned on hers.

“I’ll make that call to legal in the morning, but first I think I’m gonna go PTFO,” Choa says with a smile, before she too turns and starts to gather her belongings from the boardroom table. “You wanna share a cab back to the hotel?”

“Thanks, but I need to finish up a couple of things here before I call it a day. I’ll see you guys bright and early tomorrow morning.”

“Sure thing, boss,” Choa says, managing to smile kindly at you despite the fatigue wearing at her cute features. With one last wave, she throws her backpack over her shoulder and heads out of the office.

Finally alone in the moderately sized boardroom atop a tall office tower in downtown Seoul, you sigh deeply as you recline in your expensive looking leather chair. It has indeed been a long couple of days of work following a long haul flight, and the weariness in your body was proof of it. The sun has begun to set, and you glance idly out the window as it begins to paint South Korea’s capital in tones of orange and red. You search for a moment of respite for your mind after days of hard work amidst tall towers of glass and steel.

The floor to ceiling glass window gives you an excellent view of downtown Seoul. The entire office itself was like something out of a hipster interior designer’s sketchbook, all glass and hardwood and exposed brick. It was a gorgeous space, and you could see why it attracted a talented crowd of young professional employees.

“Ahem.”

A female’s exaggerated cough interrupts your reverie, and you turn to find the form of a young woman leaning into the entrance of the boardroom. You are struck for a moment by her beauty as the sun throws a splash of orange on her features. It is Kim Seolhyun, the Director of Marketing and Communications of the company. She gives you a short bow with her head as you make eye contact, a polite smile on her lips.

“I’m sorry, I left my notepad in here,” she says in only lightly accented English, stepping cautiously into the room, “I hope I’m not interrupting or disturbing you.”

“No, not at all,” you say quickly, “I was just taking a breather after meeting with my colleagues.”

“I see. Well if you’d like some water or tea or anything else, I can grab it for you,” Seolhyun says, gathering up the blue notebook on the other side of the table.

“Actually, some water would be great,” you answer, “although I think a stretch and a walk might do just as good.”

You are happy to find that a wide smile has appeared on Seolhyun’s face, and you are stunned for a moment at how lovely she looked when she smiled - her face was round and small, walking the thin line between attractively cute and dangerously hot. Her body was tall and slim, model-like in its proportions. As if that weren’t enough, she was extremely charismatic and was an excellent public speaker, handling the majority of the presentations you had listened to over the past couple of days. There was a reason she had risen to become the Director level, and it was obvious in the way she spoke.

Gorgeous, intelligent, and charismatic. This young woman won the genetic lottery, and she knew it.

“Great, follow me!” she says, turning to exit the room with a flourish. A smile on your lips, you get up from your chair and follow her out the door, the fatigue that was settling into your body suddenly held at bay by the prospect of spending time with a beautiful young woman.

---

“I lived overseas until I was ten, and when we moved back here my parents put me into an international school,” Seolhyun says, “my dad was away on business overseas a lot, so he knew how important it was that I know how to speak English.”

You nod in understanding as Seolhyun answers your question regarding her linguistic abilities, taking a sip from the cool glass of water she filled for you. You are both sitting in the spacious, modern, and quite well equipped cafeteria, empty at the moment aside from the two of you.

“Anyway,” she continues, “how do you like Seoul?”

“It’s gorgeous,” you answer, “I haven’t had a chance to see much of it, obviously, but now that we’ve come to a decision I hope we’ll have more free time to go explore it.”

Seolhyun nods apprehensively.

“So… you guys have made a decision about whether or not to acquire us?”

“...Yes,” you answer, realizing too late that you had spilled the beans. The need to engage in conversation with the beautiful young woman in front of you had caused you to forget that the deal still hadn’t been finalized.

“And…?” Seolhyun asks, her large eyes searching for the answer in yours. For another moment - and you noticed that these moments were happening quite often around her - you are stunned by her beauty. At the moment her face is inquisitive and ridiculously cute; she had the puppy dog eyes going on, and it was working.

“And… I think we’re going to put forward a proposal of acquisition.”

“Yes!” Seolhyun exclaims, her sudden outburst surprising you as she rises from her seat, pumping a fist in the air.

“Whoa, whoa,” you say, waving your hands in front of you in a “calm down” motion, “It’s not for sure yet. We still have to get our ducks in a row with regards to your data and tech, and then it has to go through our president before we can make a formal movement for acquisition.”

“But you’re intending to buy us, right?” Seolhyun says, her eyes wide and bright with enthusiasm, “that’s all that matters! All the details will work themselves out later.”

“Well, yes,” you say, realizing that a wide smile had appeared on your own lips - her enthusiasm was infectious.

“Oh, that’s awesome,” Seolhyun says as she plops herself back down in her chair, “that’s exactly what I wanted to hear. You have no idea what this means for our company. The founders are gonna be ecstatic! With more capital behind our tech I think we could really do some amazing things.”

“I agree; your stuff looks good. I think our companies can accomplish a lot together. You did a good job of selling what your company is all about in your presentations over the past couple of days.”

Seolhyun’s face is the very picture of happiness, her lips wide in a toothy smile. The girl had a magnetic, charismatic charm that was irresistable.

“I guess I’m pretty awesome,” she says smugly.

“You are,” you reply with a smile.

Seolhyun holds your gaze for a moment, a split second, before leaning forward slightly.

“This calls for a celebration, mister.”

“I’m tempted,” you say wearily, “but I’m honestly wiped out, and we have a couple more days of work ahead of us. Maybe towards the end of the week we can-”

“I have the perfect idea,” Seolhyun says, interrupting you mid sentence.

“What-”

“Shut up and come with me,” the young woman says, grabbing you by the wrist and leading you to elevator.

---

“You guys have a hot tub on your roof?”

“Yep!” Kim Seolhyun answers with an enthusiastic smile on her face, “We did really well last quarter so the management got it installed as reward. We work late a lot, so it’s nice to kick back and relax a bit after a long day’s work.”

It takes you a moment to realize what Seolhyun’s intentions were in bringing you up here.

“And you’re suggesting we use it?”

“Yes, Sherlock, yes I am,” the young woman answers sarcastically.

“Well I’d love to, but I don’t happen to have a pair of swimming trunks in my briefcase.”

Seolhyun considers the predicament for a moment. She gives you an appraising look up and down, exaggerating the head to toe scan she gives you.

“I guess you’ll have to go in naked,” she says with a wry smile on her lips, “the locker room is that way. See you in a bit.”

With that the young woman gives you one last suggestive look, her eyes suddenly seductive. She steps away, and in what was probably the most arousing thing she could have done at that moment, she bites her bottom lip. Sure that you noticed it, she turns and heads towards what you presumed were the women’s changing rooms.

You sigh to yourself, before smiling and making your way to the locker room.

---

Seolhyun was right - the hot tub was just the perfect respite after a long day of hard work, the warm waters soothing the aches of your body as you lift your arms to rest along the edge of the tub and let your head fall backward until you are facing the quickly darkening Seoul sky. The roof had LED lanterns hung up along a wooden fence that provided some privacy and a little light. To one corner stood an expensive looking outdoor barbeque and a couple of picnic tables atop a large rug of artificial grass. It was a gorgeous space, and had you worked in the building you could see yourself spending a lot of time here.

The opening door to your right captures your attention, and as Seolhyun steps out of the women’s changing room, your breath catches in your throat.

To say she was gorgeous fully clothed was a bit of an understatement, with her long, tall, slim body and her long dark hair that fell perfectly around her shoulders. In a white bikini, she was nothing short of breathtaking. It wasn’t even like it was a skimpy bikini - it was your run-of-the-mill swimsuit, but it did well to draw attention to her round, perfectly sized breasts, pushing them together slightly and creating a delicious looking cleavage. The lower half of the ensemble was tied loosely around her full hips, tied at each side of her waist with cute bows. Her hair was tied up in a ponytail, accentuating her long neck and seductive shoulders. She had the body of a model with the face of the girl next door; a dangerous combination.

You are suddenly ridiculously aware of the fact that you were naked beneath the water, and as Seolhyun reaches the hot tub and climbs the steps (giving you an enticing view of her cleavage as she bends to drop into the water), you give thanks for the fact that she couldn’t see the evidence of your arousal beginning to take shape between your legs. She takes a seat opposite you in the small tub.

“Pretty sweet view from up here, huh?” the young woman says with a smile, and for a moment you are unable to understand that she is speaking, so enraptured are you by her beauty as she sinks into the hot water.

“It’s… pretty,” you answer, immediately cursing yourself for not being able to come up with a better descriptive word.

“Yeah, I’ve spent a lot of nights up here, after everyone else has gone home,” Seolhyun answers, “it’s a good way to burn off some steam.”

Unable to say anything clever or witty, you resign yourself to simply nod in agreement.

“So! Tell me about yourself. I don’t really know anything about you aside from your name and what you do with your company.”

“I’m nothing special,” you say, your humility coming from honesty and not from pride, “I’m just a guy doing a job he loves to do that happens to send him on business trips to awesome places.”

“Ahh,” the young woman replies, “interesting. Girlfriend? Wife?”

“No,” you answer, “not yet.”

Seolhyun takes a moment to consider your answer, her slim smile hiding the questions she was surely formulating in her head.

“So you work closely with Hirai Momo, I guess?”

“Yes.”

“And… is there anything going on between you two?”

“No,” you answer quicker than you would have thought, “We’re just friends. Why does everyone think that we’re more than that?”

Seolhyun shrugs. “Maybe because it’s the way she looks at you. I noticed it in the meetings we were in whenever you spoke. That’s not the way a girl looks while listening to her colleague. That’s the way a girl looks at a guy when she wants more than friendship.”

You consider Seolhyun’s answer for a moment. It wasn’t as if you didn’t harbor any feelings for Momo at all; but you weren’t madly in love with her, either. She was certainly a large part of your life and you had feelings for her on some level, but you didn’t quite know what they were… yet..

The silence lingers for a moment between you and Seolhyun, and for a minute the only sound you can both hear is the soft hum of the hot tub’s water jets.

“What about you? Attached?” you ask, eager to steer the conversation away from the topic of Momo.

“No, I’m single,” Seolhyun answers, “I’m not really looking for anyone, either. Too busy with work at the moment. You know how it is.”

“I do,” you reply, and you find an understanding in her eyes.

“So I guess if you guys acquire our company, we’ll be seeing a lot of each other,” Seolhyun says, that flirty smile once again on her lips.

“Maybe. Or maybe we’ll take your tech and run away,” you say with a smile, ensuring she knew it was a joke.

Seolhyun feigns surprise at the notion.

“You could run away,” she begins, “but I will find you. And I will kill you,” she finishes, doing her best Liam Neeson impression. It’s so terrible you laugh out loud.

“That might be the worst Liam Neeson I’ve ever heard.”

In response, Seolhyun splashes water at your face; clearly she overestimated the strength of her splash, she ends up getting most of your face and hair drenched. The shock is apparent on her face as she realizes what she’s done.

“I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean-”

Seolhyun’s sentence is cut off as she receives a faceful of water.

“Don’t start a war you can’t win, Ms. Kim,” you say in your best cartoon supervillain voice.

Seolhyun’s smile turns into a naughty one, and she quickly crosses the hot tub, splashing more water at you as she does so - she gets one good splash in before you catch her wrists while she is going for a second one. She struggles playfully in your grasp, until she finally relents and comes to rest on your lap. You are both suddenly aware of your proximity, and the playfulness of the moment washes away and is suddenly replaced with a healthy amount of sexual tension.

“I guess you’ve got me,” she says, her eyes glancing at her wrists, still captive in your hands, “what will you do with me?”

Her eyes have taken a look freighted with lust, her eyelids half closed, and you take that as permission to proceed.

“I’ll find something to do to you,” you say, and with that you move your face forward to hers. She meets you halfway, and in a sudden moment of passion your lips crash into one another. You release her wrists from your grip and her arms immediately snake softly around your neck, your own arms wrapping around her torso as she shifts around on your lap and is now sitting with her knees on either side of your waist.

You’ve been in the situation enough times to know what this was. You knew what that first rush of passion meant, knew what would likely soon transpire. You knew that you were both young professionals looking to blow off some steam after a hard day’s work, and that this likely meant nothing more than that. Both of you were perhaps a little high off of the recent decision to acquire her company, and this was just a small way to celebrate.

Seolhyun breaks the kiss to look into your eyes, as if searching for permission, for some sort of indication that you wanted the same thing as her.

“Seolhyun,” you say, eager to ensure there were no misunderstandings, “you don’t have to do this to seal the deal or anything. I don’t want you to do something you might regret.”

“It’s sweet of you, but I want this,” Seolhyun says, her voice barely above a whisper, “I want you.”

With that your lips crash together again, and you are surprised to find Seolhyun’s tongue darting into your mouth, searching for and finding its counterpart, your mouths duelling as your hands roam each others’ bodies, exploring new flesh for the first time. You caress the firm, tight muscles of her back as you break the kiss and dive into her neck, unsatisfied with just her lips and eager to sample more of this young woman’s body, hands roaming freely over wet, soft skin.

Seolhyun lets out a soft moan as she raises her head to allow you access to her neck. You take your time, dipping your head to lick her collarbone before planting kisses upward, loving the feel of her wet, soft, unblemished skin on your lips, tracing your tongue lightly across her neck. You reach her ear and give it a soft nibble before moving back to her lips, which are ready and eager to receive you - this time it is your tongue that enters her mouth, eager to reciprocate her earlier advances.

Seolhyun breaks the kiss and draws away from you slightly, and for a moment you are afraid that you’ve gone too far and she wants to end things - but she puts your fears to rest as she raises her body slightly so that her upper torso is well above the water. With her eyes locked on yours, she reaches behind her back and undoes the simple knot that holds her bikini top to her body. Quickly, she grasps the garment and pulls it over her head before tossing it out of the hot tub, forgotten for the rest of the night.

Your eyes have been locked with hers the whole time, but you finally move your gaze downward to rest on her breasts. They are small, but like the rest of her body they are well shaped and with a delightful curve, her nipples enticing and already erect. The water dripping down her torso makes her even sexier than any woman has a right to be.

In that moment you wonder what you’ve done to deserve the run of luck you’ve been having with gorgeous women.

Satisfied that your eyes have taken their fill of her breasts, Seolhyun leans forward to allow your mouth to take their share of her body, and you oblige her, moving both your hands to her mounds and giving them a soft squeeze before taking her left breast in your mouth, your tongue playing random patterns around her hardened nipple. Meanwhile your left hand cups her free breast softly, squeezing and palming the soft flesh before taking her hard bud in your fingers and teasing it playfully with the pad of your thumb.

The young woman lets out a soft moan, the loudest yet, and her hips drive forward, making contact for the first time with your erect penis beneath the water. At the initial contact Seolhyun gasps, the only barrier between your intimate parts the thin layer of cotton of her bikini bottom. But she soon moves her hips forward again, and before you know it she is grinding against your shaft, the thin, wet cotton creating a delicious friction against the underside your cock.

Regretfully tearing her breasts from your mouth, she leans down until her mouth is next to your ear.

“Sit up on the edge of the tub,” she says softly, and you make eye contact with her to find her cute features flushed, her eyes heady with pleasure and lust.

Yet again you find yourself letting your head drop back in pleasure as the young woman between your legs works her magic with her mouth. Every entrance and exit of your shaft from her lips is a shock of pleasure that you feel in your entire body. You eventually gather the wherewithal to look down as Seolhyun’s head bobs up and down, her naked back glistening with sweat and water from the hot tub, the setting Seoul sun painting it with tones of orange, the toned muscles of her back working to pleasure you.

You do your best to fight it, to keep the pleasure at bay, and for a few minutes you succeed as you savor the pleasure, the simple pleasure of knowing you were in a rooftop hot tub getting a blowjob from one of the most gorgeous girls you’d ever met. But as it so often does, the feeling of impending orgasm began to come all at once.

“Seolhyun… fuck that’s amazing. Fuck. I’m gonna cum if you keep doing that,” you say, although even as the words leave your mouth you know you want to do exactly that - cum in this gorgeous young woman’s mouth.

In response, Seolhyun gives your cock a hard suck, starting from the base of your shaft, climbing up inch by inch, her lips wrapped tightly around you and her tongue pressed hard against its underside, until finally, your head pops out from between her lips. Wasting no time, she locks eyes with you and whispers.

“Cum in my mouth... But later I want your cum in my pussy.”

Normally, with other women, you’d have declined her offer - cumming in a woman’s mouth was wonderful, indeed, but it compared poorly to driving yourself inside a woman’s pussy and cumming inside her. But there is a heaviness, a strength in Seolhyun’s demands, in her tone of voice, that made her impossible to resist. With Momo, Sana, or Choa, you could have stopped her from proceeding, turned her around and started fucking her on the edge of the hot tub - with Seolhyun, you were powerless to do anything except follow her demands. This was a girl who demanded and got what she wanted, and you were unable to resist.

As she returns her mouth to your shaft, you realise that it was a pleasant problem to have.

Your eyes remain locked forward, because if you’d looked down to witness Kim Seolhyun taking your shaft in her mouth once more you think that it might be too much, and you’d cum almost immediately. And so in an effort so stave off that wonderful bliss for as long as possible, you gaze out at Seoul’s rapidly darkening sky.

Seolhyun, working between your legs, bears no such desire to prolong your pleasure, and you notice that one of her hands has joined your mouth, working the base of your shaft in a corkscrew motion - together with her hot tongue, gliding along the base of your cock and around the underside of the head, you quickly find yourself on the brink of orgasm.

“Fuck. Fuck, Seolhyun. I’m gonna cum.”

If she heard you say it, she must have ignored it. Seolhyun’s head continues to bob up and down on your shaft, and before you know it, your orgasm rocks your body from head to toe, your hands almost immediately gripping the back of the young woman’s head as your shaft erupts, sending hot, warm semen into the young woman’s willing mouth and throat.

You stay locked in that position for long moments, your body shivering in pleasure as the throes of orgasm rock your body, Seolhyun’s mouth wrapped tightly around your pulsating shaft as it empties hot, thick semen into her mouth. Finally, mercifully, your orgasm winds down, and Seolhyun takes your weakening grip on the back of her head as a sign that it has finally ended. She lifts her head from between your quivering legs, and, sure that your eyes are locked on her, she opens her mouth reveal a tongue and mouth painted in glistening white cum.

Then, without breaking eye contact, she closes her mouth and she swallows it all in two gulps, and she tilts her head back slightly to let you watch as her throat pushes the semen down and into her body. She opens her mouth again for you to see, and her pink tongue is all the evidence you need that she has swallowed it all.

She doesn’t speak a word - there is only that sultry, seductive smile playing once again on her lips, as she slowly, carefully rises from the hot tub, the warm water dripping down her sexy, topless frame, curving around her naked breasts and down her toned midsection. She rises and swings a long leg, then both, over the edge of the hot tub, before making her way to the women’s change room. When she is halfway there, she turns her upper body midway, her ass still facing you as she raises a hand in beckoning motion. Her lips still curved in that lusty smile, she continues into the women’s change room, closing the door behind her.

---

It takes you a few minutes to gather your senses and recover from the ridiculously pleasurable blowjob - Momo and Sana gave amazing head, and Choa was no slouch, but Seolhyun was probably on par with Momo for the most skilled at the task. Eventually you make your way to the door of the women’s change room, hesitating for just a moment at the fact that you were entering a room normally forbidden to men.

But this wasn’t a normal moment in time, after all, and you soon found yourself turning the knob and entering the dimly lit changing room. Like the rest of the office, it sported a classy, modern design. Two long rows of lockers lined one side of the room, while to the right, immediately after the door, was an open space with two showers - one of which was running.

Turning the corner to look into the shower stall, you find Kim Seolhyun leaning with her back against the shower wall, the shower head spraying her body making her somehow even hotter than she already was. Hair hair has been undone from its ponytail to fall around her shoulders, strands of black glued to her face and neck by the water. You take a long moment to fully admire her near-naked body; earlier you had resigned yourself to stealing glances at her beneath a veneer of gentlemanly consideration. Now, with any pretense of propriety banished by lust, you had no such reservations about admiring her gentle curves, her soft, unblemished skin, and her gorgeous face, lust and want written all over her small, delicate features.

Most alluring of all, however, is the fact that her right hand is at her crotch, working between her legs underneath the drenched, thin cotton of her bikini bottoms. The fabric is so wet, so thin, that you can easily make out the outline of her knuckles as they move her fingers in swirling patterns around her intimate areas, her face contorting to a heady mix of pleasure emanating from between her legs.

“Took you… long enough,” Seolhyun says softly, her words soft, her tone wavering, no doubt thanks to the pleasure she was eliciting from her own body.

“I had to recover from what you did to me,” you answer, and you were fully recovered indeed - the sight of the almost naked, wet young woman in front of you, pleasuring herself, had brought your shaft back to full attention. You reach a hand out to lean yourself against the shower wall; it is an almost cocky gesture, given the wanton young woman in front of you, but you want to keep her waiting.

“Good. Then you can stop staring at me and start fucking me.”

You smile slyly at the young woman.

“You seem to be doing a good job of fucking yourself.”

Seolhyun smirks at you, before licking her lips, her pink tongue, covered only moments before in your cum, licking her lips. She bites her lower lip again, the action almost unbearably sexy given the circumstances.

Without a further word she withdraws her hand from her bikini bottom, and with swift fingers she undoes the knots keeping the slim garment attached to her body. She tosses the drenched article away from her to land between the both of you. She is shaved clean between her legs, and the water flowing down her body from the shower head only serves to draw your attention to that wonderful space between her legs as it flows downwards towards her crotch.

“I’m so fucking wet. I want it so bad. And I want it hard.”

Seolhyun turns around so she is facing the shower wall, her round, perfectly shaped ass facing you, the delightful curve of her slim thighs creating a delicious looking gap directly below the soft lips of her pussy.

You had grown used to soft, pleasureable sex over the past couple of months, with elaborate foreplay and delicate, soft touches, ensuring that the woman orgasmed before you did - but here was a woman who said, straight up, that she wanted hard, fast sex. Who were you to resist?

No force in the world could have kept you from stepping forward, your eyes glued to her backside as you reach out your hands, placing them on her hips. She moans softly as you press your torso against hers, your wet skin meshing against each other. You bring your tongue to her ear and lick it softly as you breathe in the soft, sweet aroma of her hair, plastered against her scalp. Your mouth opens involuntarily in pleasure as your shaft rubs against the small of her back, the soft, wet skin creating a delicious friction against the underside of your cock.

“Don’t waste my time. Fuck me. Fuck me hard.” Seolhyun says, her words tinged with desperation, “I want it hard. Now.”

With other girls, you were able to restrain yourself, able to postpone sex until they were practically begging for it. With any other girl you would have teased her more, played with her breasts and ass and pussy and made her beg for you to penetrate her. But with Seolhyun, you were almost powerless, as though every order and demand she made was something to be done immediately.

And so you found yourself taking half a step back as Seolhyun bends slightly at the waist, lining up your most intimate parts. Taking your shaft in your right hand, and admiring for a second the sight of the gorgeous young woman’s body bent over for you, you bring your cock to her pussy and penetrate her in one, smooth stroke.

Every woman was unique, and Seolhyun was no exception, her pussy wet and slick, incredibly tight at her entrance but more comfortably soft further inside. You had grown used to Momo or Choa’s wetness, and Sana’s almost unbearably tight pussy, but Seolhyun’s body was new, wonderful territory - and as you bury your cock to the hilt inside of it, you allow yourself a moment to savor the tightness of her entrance, as though she were squeezing a hard ring of flesh around the base of your cock and massaging the rest of it with soft, warm flesh.

Your initial thrust has forced Seolhyun into a more bent position, her body leaning at an almost 45 degree angle forward. From this angle the shower head is pointed at her toned back, and you watch as the water cascades down her shoulder blades, along her spine, and down the firm, rounded cheeks of her ass. A wordless, soft gasp of pleasure escapes her lips, her eyes shutting involuntarily as the feeling of first penetration, and the sudden fullness between her legs brings with it a hot rush of heat throughout her body.

“Fuck. Fuck that feels good!”

You respond by withdrawing your cock, relishing in the feel of her ridiculously tight pussy lips of her entrance wrapped tightly around your shaft as it leaves her body, only for it to welcome it back in as you drive yourself forward, quickly establishing a hard pace as you thrust in and out, in and out, in and out of Kim Seolhyun’s pussy.

For long, pleasurable minutes, you fuck the young woman in the shower stall with hard, swift strokes into her willing pussy; this is not some soft lovemaking session, or even the rough, wild nights you sometimes shared with Momo - this was hard fucking with a single intent: to cum as fast as possible.

You are happy with your pace, happy to relish the feel of her tight, wet body, the sight of the shower water hitting the toned muscles of her slim back, happy to watch her grip the shower head desperately with one hand, the other hand pressed against the tiles of the shower wall, searching, in vain, for something to hold on to. You are happy to listen to the young woman’s gasps and moans, each sound heavily laden with pleasure. You are happy with all of these things, but Seolhyun wanted more, and you were all too ready to oblige.

“Fuck… harder! Fuck me harder! Spank my ass!”

You are taken aback by her commands, taken aback by a woman who was so demanding during sex. You had had sessions with Momo that you could both consider rough, but she never demanded and ordered you around like Seolhyun did, and truth be told it was kind of hot.

And so you draw your right hand up and bring it down onto her right ass cheek with moderate force, careful not to hurt her, and satisfied at the slight reddish tone it has left on her unblemished skin.

“Fuck! Do it harder!”

You are unsure whether she is referring to the pounding you are giving her pussy, or the slap on her ass, and so you do both, using your left hand, gripping her hips, to drive her harder against your shaft while your right hand smacks her ass with more force, the loud smack of your hand hitting her wet flesh vying with the wet squelches of your cock and her pussy as you fuck her.

You know now that she is not only comfortable with rough, hard sex, but that she wants more of it - and to that end your right hand leaves her reddened ass cheek and moves forward to grip a handful of her wet hair, plastered against her neck and upper back, and you pull back with a force that you are initially worried is too forceful. But the loud moan that erupts from her throat is enough to convince you that the young woman enjoyed it.

“Fuck, I’m gonna cum. I’m gonna cum. I’m gonna cum!” Seolhyun says, the words spilling unbidden from her lips, a torrent of pleasure just barely formed into a coherent sentence, announcing her impending orgasm with words even as her body reinforces it with the slick wetness and tightening walls of her pussy.

“Fuck me. Fuck me as hard as you want! Fuck my pussy with your hard cock! Oh god, I’m gonna cum. I’m cumming. I’m cumming!”

Seolhyun’s world erupts in white as her orgasm overwhelms her senses, and it is all you can do to lean forward and keep her from collapsing as her body is wracked in pleasure radiating from her pussy. You wrap your arms around her shivering body, even as you bury your shaft into her pussy, your strokes slowing down in pace as her orgasm continues to hit her body with a force neither of you were expecting.

Thankfully, you are endowed enough to maintain significant penetration even when with the both of you pressed against the shower wall. Your pace has lessened to a near crawl, your shaft entering and exiting her body softly and slowly, and for the first time since you started fucking you are able to truly savor the feeling of her body as you are finally able to set the pace.

“Fucking cum in my pussy,” Seolhyun says with a gasp, the fatigue of the last few minutes finally hitting her all at once, “cum in my pussy like you came in my mouth. Fill me up with cum.”

It has been a quick session - only about fifteen minutes since you first entered her, but this was a quickie if there ever was one, and the sheer hotness of the woman you were currently buried in was enough for you to throw away any pretense of gentleness, any consideration for her pleasure or comfort - there was only your orgasm to reach, and that was all that mattered.

To that end you begin to pump in and out of her body, slow strokes at first but quickly building up to the fast, swift thrusts you were making when she came minutes ago. Your bodies are closer now, both almost upright, Seolhyun bent forward ever so slightly, her breasts and upper body pressed forward against the shower stall. You look down, and see only a slight glimpse of your shaft as it disappears between her ass cheeks with each thrust.

“Fucking give me your cum already,” Seolhyun says, her voice full of needy, lusty impatience, “cum for me.”

“You’re.. Fucking demanding… aren’t you?”

“I always... get what I want…” Seolhyun says, her sentence interrupted by the jolts your thrusting cock send throughout her body, “and right now… all I want.. is your cum in my pussy.”

You are so close now, too close to that point of no return when orgasm becomes inevitable, and her words are enough to drive you over that ledge. The feel of her wet, slick skin under your palms, her firm, tense ass cheeks as they crash into your lower abdomen, and most of all, that tight, vice-like grip of her pussy lips wrapped tightly around your cock - it is all too much to handle. In that moment you forgo any pretense of care for Kim Seolhyun - she is just a body, just a tight embrace of flesh for your cock, a hole to fire your cum into.

You wrap your right arm around her torso to grasp her left breast, squeezing the soft flesh there with a grip that you worry might be too hard, but the loud gasp that escapes Seolhyun’s mouth convinces you in an instant that she doesn’t mind it. Your other arm grips her left hip, driving it back against yours as you come to within seconds of orgasm.

“I’m gonna.. Fucking cum in you, Seolhyun.”

“Yes! Cum! Cum inside me! Fill my pussy with your cum!”

With two more strokes, you bury yourself as deep as you can inside her tight, warm pussy, before the throes of your orgasm wrack your body. Your shaft pulses strongly as it sends squirt after squirt of your warm semen into Seolhyun’s willing body, and you thrust forward slightly with each thrust, seeking every miniscule amount of pleasure from this moment.

You are pressing her body tightly against the shower wall and later you would wonder if you hurt her with your thrusts against the hard, wet wall, but at this moment, this wonderful moment, all you can feel is the soft, hot, wet flesh wrapped around your shaft as it finishes sending your hot semen into a young woman’s body.

After a long minute or two of silence as you wind down from your orgasm, Seolhyun turns her head slightly, her forehead still pressed against the shower wall.

“It’s going to be great working together,” she says softly.

“Definitely,” you agree, as you kiss the soft skin of her shoulder and the crook of her neck, relishing the taste of her wet skin on your lips.

“I guess you can buy our company, on one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“You fuck me whenever I want.”

---

It is 7:54am the next morning, and you find yourself back in one of the downstairs offices, ready, if not entirely willing, to start the day’s meetings. After finishing up with Seolhyun in the shower, you headed back to the hotel where you were able to grab just a few hours of sleep before your alarm woke you, frustratingly early, to get ready for work.

You are engaged in small talk with Seolhyun, who is sitting on the edge of your office table. She is explaining the various positions on a company organization chart that she has printed out for you when the office door opens. Hirai Momo and Park Choa enter the room, but with a third figure following closely behind them - Minatozaki Sana.

Your heart leaps slightly at the sight of Sana, and the bright, cheery smile that appears on her face when you lock eyes captures every ounce of your attention, as though nothing else existed. It takes a moment for you to come back to reality as you notice that Seolhyun is still speaking to you.

“...and that’s me,” Seolhyun says, pointing to her position on the chart. She pauses the conversation as Momo, Sana, and Choa approach, offering the three of them smiles and small bows of her head.

“Good morning, loser,” Momo says.

“Good morning to you too,” you reply sarcastically.

“When did you get back to the hotel last night?”

“Late,” you say, with a glance at Seolhyun, and Momo, who is following your gaze, sees the blush appear on Seolhyun’s face along with a sultry smile. Momo suddenly looks sullen, and at that moment you are struck by the split second of hurt that flashes across her features. Next to her, Sana puts two and two together, and her eyes betray the disappointment and betrayal she felt inside.

“I see. Having fun with our new colleagues, I bet?” Momo asks, her tone suddenly heavy with sarcasm.

“You could say that,” Seolhyun begins, “I gave him a... tour of the office. Including the hot tub on the roof.”

Momo nods, but you’ve known her long enough to know that there is disapproval there, and hurt beneath her eyes. Sana, still standing next to her, has cast her eyes downward, a corner of her lip pursed together. It was the look of a girl who has just been struck.

“It was fun,” Seolhyun continues, “he was very… energetic.”

With that, Seolhyun hops off the office table and saunters over to her place in the boardroom, taking a seat opposite you along the long central table, every stride and movement full of confidence.

“Momo, Sana,” you begin, “it was just-”

“Save it,” Hirai Momo says, her tone sharp, “I don’t wanna hear it. I need some coffee. Let’s go, Sana.”

Momo drops her briefcase and tablet on the office table - two seats away from you. Sana catches your gaze, and you think, for a split second, that there is a glassiness in her eyes that is a precursor to tears - but Momo grasps the young woman by the upper arm and drags her out of the room. Momo’s stride is full of anger and betrayal, but Sana’s sad shuffle and small steps are the walk of a girl who has just been hurt.

Choa, who accompanied them into the office, sees the empty seat next to you, and sets down her belongings on the desk before taking the empty space.

“Do you want some advice?” she says, her tone serious.

“Sure, why not,” you say with a sigh, as you bury your head in your hands on the table.

“I’m sure this thing with this Seolhyun chick was just a one night stand, and that’s fine. And Lord knows there are no strings attached when we have our fun in the office too. But you’re an idiot if you think you can bang all these girls and still pursue a relationship with either one of those two.”

You give Choa a look and find earnestness in her eyes. She was, as always, a good friend before she was your executive assistant.

“And eventually, you’ll have to choose between them. If you chase two rabbits, both of them will get away.”

“Thanks, Choa. I appreciate it,” you say, meaning every word. You manage a soft smile, thankful to have someone like her in your life.

Choa nods and smiles softly, her small, cute face bringing a splash of joy into the otherwise dreary start to the morning.

“Great. Now let’s buy the shit out of this company.”

#kpop fanfic #kpop fanfiction #kpop smut #pov smut #reader insert #male reader #aoa #aoa seolhyun #seolhyun #kim seolhyun

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victimhood · 3 years

Text

Mr. Nile Freeman

GQ, September 2027 issue

Inter Milan’s midfield maestro Sébastien LeLivre is finally hitting a steady stride. This is a man who has swung from extremes in a volatile career—the highs and lows at Liverpool under James Copley, the sublime performance against Brazil in the Men’s 2026 World Cup semifinal to the controversial foul in the final against Italy, to joining the very team helmed by his World Cup nemesis, Nicolò Di Genova. Today, he says he has a cordial relationship with his team captain, and at Inter Milan he has quickly established himself as a key player in the starting eleven. Who can forget the footballing masterclass at the Bernabeu, where Inter Milan schooled the home side with their lethal combination of precision and artistry?

[The Old Guard football!AU, Book of Nile + Andy as a football manager]

Hi Sébastien, congratulations on winning the Champions League. You have been monumental to Inter’s pivot to a beautiful attacking style, as one of the most complete midfielders of the game.

Thank you, I’m just carrying out my manager [Andy] Skifka’s orders. She should get the credit for this pivot.

Very feminist of you. How would you describe Skifska’s approach as a manager?

She’s the hardest working manager I’ve seen. She always thinking, processing football data and churning out new ideas. She’s very creative tactically, and she dares to try things that sound crazy on paper. She’s very open to feedback too—she operates on this model of constant improvement. Nothing is ever perfect to her, but she never expects you to start perfect either. It’s a great psychological sweet spot that she’s managed to foster in the team. There’s a good balance of feeling secure and yet feeling driven to get to the next level. She definitely deserves her spot amongst the greats.

She is truly groundbreaking, hitting many firsts for women in football. This brings us to the topic of the Women’s World Cup too. You helped draw audiences to support the French women’s team.

Isn’t there the book that goes, “We Should All Be Feminists”? Anyway, I think I’m given too much credit for the Women’s World Cup. I’m just a spectator like everyone else. I like to think people would have watched the French women’s team anyway because they did so well, especially when they made it to the finals. They play with so much grit and determination despite the comparative lack of resources. I hope this shows that women’s football is equally deserving of the same kind of monetary investment and rewards.

Ah, yes, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is the author of that book you mentioned. Women’s football has indeed come a long way despite its relatively short history. And of course, one of the biggest women’s stars has been Nile Freeman. The internet has been rife with speculation about what’s going on between you two, ever since Nile 1, Booker 0. Care to clear the air?

[groans] Okay I have many points, let’s go back to what you said. Women have been playing football for as long as the game existed. Their game was so popular the English FA banned it for fifty years from 1921 to 1971. That’s why it looks like it has a short history to us—but their game has always been part of the story since the beginning.

Wow, thank you for telling me that. I’m glad to be wrong on this point, how did you come to learn it?

Well. You’re going to love this answer. Nile [Freeman] told me. We must give her the credit for this one.

So you two have been talking to each other?

Of course we talk to each other. We’re married.

Well, my heartiest congratulations to the both of you. Please forgive me for asking the obvious, but this is news to me. How did it all start? When did you two first meet?

Hmm, I think it was the FIFA awards in Paris.

Wow, that sounds like a meet-cute! Were you introduced?

I might have approached her first...

What motivated you to do that?

She’s really cool? Anyway we both moved to Milan at the same time, for work.

And you kept that all a secret from the world until now!

Yeah...I mean, you saw how crazy everyone got with the Nile 1 Booker 0 thing right? For the health of our relationship we need to maintain strict boundaries between ourselves and our work, our work and the general public, and so on.

Certainly gives us more context to what you said now.

[groans] Yeah, that was a moment of weakness on my part, I’ll admit. I wasn’t going to say anything—L’Equipe, Le Figaro, Le Monde—they all tried to get some words out of me, and I refused them—but then this BBC reporter mentions Nile by name and I caved.

We all have our weaknesses.

I certainly do. [grins]

The internet was also very interested in the feud between you and Rachida Achouri. It seems the two of you have made peace now.

[in French] Rachida—top cool, trop canon. I mean, her parents didn’t want her to play football, but she went ahead and did it anyway. She’s a true rebel and the exact kind of personality we need as our national team captain. How cool would it be if we could play in the same team?

So, like Nile Freeman, you think men and women should start playing together?

If it isn’t obvious by now, it is the same game that we all play. I understand the need to develop the women’s game as a safe space due to the years of discriminatory setbacks, but we don’t see that reflected in terms of resource distribution. No one’s spending more money on the women to get them level with the men. If we want the game to be equal, the women need the same resources, and the only way to do this is if everyone plays together. I don’t have the answers to the best system to work this out, but the game is changing all the time. We need to trust that it will only get better—and maybe I play for the men’s game now, but twenty years later, for the next generation—what will their game look like? Can we do better for them?

(source)

#i love this chapter so much i'm just going to post it like i'm posting an article #the old guard #book of nile #sebastien le livre #nile freeman #tog fc #tog: the beautiful game

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starlightsearches · 4 years

Note

could you write a second part to the secretary story, please?:) thank you xx

Under My Service Pt. 2

Of course! Here’s the first part for those who missed it!

Requests are closed ✨

Kylo Ren X Secretary! Reader

AN: Mild language and some medical drama!

It’s the middle of the night when you hear knocking at your door, and you know it’s him. Waiting for this has been torture. After weeks of scribing notes that you knew he’d never look at, following him around the ship as he went about his business, running petty errands, he still hadn’t laid a hand on you. At first it was fine, but then it became frustrating. After all, the admiral hadn’t been able to keep his hands off you, and now that you were with Ren, and you wanted it … nothing. When he had first transferred you to his service, you thought it was obvious that he felt the same. Now you weren’t quite so sure. You don’t have to doubt any longer though. He’s here. Finally.

“Can I help you, Commander?” you ask as soon as the door opens, leaning against the frame in your best attempt to appear alluring. He stands there, imobile, and you clench your fists, feeling awkward. Maybe you really had misread his intentions, and you stand away from the door, embarrassed. That’s when he collapses. He falls into you like a battering ram, and you’re knocked to the ground, the weight of him crushing you. He’s trembling.

“What happened to you?” you ask, more to yourself than to him. There’s a warmth soaking into the material of your pajamas; he’s bleeding, badly, from somewhere on his abdomen, and from the amount of blood covering you, it’s amazing that he’s not already dead. The feeling makes your stomach tighten and you wiggle out from under him, careful to make sure you don’t jostle him too much. It takes all of your strength, but you manage to roll him onto his back, laying him down flat on the floor. He’s still breathing, his chest rising and falling, but barely, and for a moment you’re at a loss. What are you supposed to do now?

“Help me,” he tries reaching for his helmet, but he flinches, pulling his arm back into his chest. His body is rigid with pain, so stiff it hurts just to look at him. You scramble for the release on his helmet, pushing it off roughly and unveiling his face. It’s not the first time you’ve seen him without it, but right now you hardly recognize him. His skin is pale, bloodless, the stark freckles dotting his skin and he’s covered in a sheen of sweat. You brush the tendrils of his hair out of his eyes, and he closes them for a moment, his breathing turning shallow. Panic grips your heart. He’s going to die.

“You need a doctor.” You’re not sure when you started crying, or why, but your words come out as a sob. This is no time to by hysterical, but apparently that’s not going to stop you.

“No,” he gasps, gripping your hand in his, “it’s … it’s not as bad as it looks,” he squeezes his eyes tightly to ward off the pain. It might actually be worse than it looks. You scramble to your feet and find an old shirt before returning, pressing it into his uniform where you think the blood might be coming from.

“We need to get you to the medbay. I’ll call for someone,” you search for your data pad with your eyes, but he holds you in place with a grip much stronger than you would assume he was capable of in his current state. It gives you a little hope, and you pause. He could have gone the medbay, and he didn’t. He must have a reason.

“What do you want me to do?” you ask; there’s adrenaline pulsing through your veins now, and you’re prepared to fix this as best you can.

“I need to see the cut.” You start removing the layers he wears, but it requires a lot of effort, both on your part and on his as he shifts to allow you access to the different fasteners and to pull the material over his head. Your fingers finally brush against bare skin, and you’re grateful, until you see the wound. Then you think you might be sick.

It’s a thick gash, low and center on his abdomen, pooled with blood so dark that it’s almost black. You cover it immediately, pressing the shirt back over his stomach and he groans.

“You really need a doctor, sir,” you say again, and he shakes his head. Damn, he’s stubborn. You try to be more persuasive. “I don’t have a medkit. I don’t have supplies.”

“Can you go get them?” You want to tell him no, but he’s looking so frail the idea of moving him frightens you. And another fear, a more selfish one. You don’t want him to leave.

“Fine,” you give in, moving his hand over the shirt so he can staunch the blood flow, and you wait to watch him press down. He seems stronger now, like maybe laying down has given him some of his strength back. His eyes are clear and focused, as well, even if they are a little wild with pain. He probably won’t pass out, but you grab your data pad from the place by your bed, and leave it next to him within reach, just in case.

“If you think you’re going to faint, call somebody,” he nods in agreement, and you roll your eyes, sighing. This was not how you thought tonight was going to go.

“You better not die before I get back,” you mumble on your way out the door, and break into a run. The medbay isn’t terribly far from your quarters, but that doesn’t mean much on the Finalizer. You have to move fast.

There’s only one attendant in the medbay, sitting at the desk and watching some holoshow with the volume turned off. You run at the desk, hitting it with some force and she jumps, glaring at you.

“The commander, he’s hurt,” you say before she can scold you, “I need some supplies so that I can patch him up.”

“What do you mean- I mean, who are you? What’s going on?” she babbles incoherently, and you slam your hand down on the desk to quiet her.

“I’m the commander’s assistant. He’s injured, some kind of stab wound, and he’s currently bleeding out on the floor of my quarters. I need some supplies now.” The woman still hesitates, and you curse under your breath. Could she not see that this was an emergency?

“If this is all true, then the commander needs medical attention from a professional,” she says, turning stern, “I can send a droid to your quarters to retrieve him.” She opens a command screen on her data pad and you grab her hand to stop her, and for a moment, you wish that Ren were with you. No one ever questioned you when he was around. It was a nice feeling, to be taken seriously. You need to channel some of that power right now.

“The commander specifically refused to come to the medbay. How do you think he’d feel knowing that you questioned his judgement? Do you want to be the one to tell him that he’s wrong?” Her expression turns pained.

“I’ll go get you some supplies.”

Medpack in hand, you race through the halls once again, only stopping once you reach your quarters, out of breath and praying that Ren is still alive. The attendant gave you some basic instructions as she packed the kit, and you go over them again in your mind so that you don’t forget anything.

The door opens, and Ren looks up when he hears the sound, thank the Maker. He’s not dead yet, but it looks like he’s leaning that way. You drop the medpack and run to the sink, scrubbing your hands furiously so that you can get this over with as soon as possible.

“You know I don’t have any idea what I’m doing, right?” you ask when you get back to him, and Ren nods in confirmation. You get a better look at him now, and it scares you, the way his eyelids flutter and his jaw stays clenched. He lets his hand fall to his side, peeling the blood-soaked shirt away from his abdomen, and you swallow down the bile threatening to make its way up your throat. After this, you’d definitely deserve a raise. You open up the medback and search through the supplies, pulling out the medisensor first. “We could still go to the medbay?” you venture, one last time, but he reaches for your arm, his hand shaking, his grip weak.

“Please,” he whispers, and he draws in a labored breath. There’s no time to argue anymore.

Cleaning and dressing the wound is horrible. Your hands tremble the entire time, and it seems like every movement, no matter how gentle, sends him into spasms from the pain. Luckily, the cut isn’t deep—not that you could give him stitches anyway—and you grit your teeth, smearing bacta over the rippled break in his skin. That seems to soothe him a little, and you’re relieved when the color returns to his cheeks and he can sit up long enough for you to wind a clean, white bandage around his midsection.

Your hands are covered in his blood when you’re finished, and you force yourself to lie down on the ground next to him, waiting for the shaking to stop. The adrenaline has left your system, and a heavy exhaustion has taken its place, but your need to feel clean overpowers your need to rest.

You scrub your hands once again, but decide to leave the rest of the mess for morning, which isn’t too far off now. Ren dozes on the ground, breathing evenly. He looks young, lying there, half-asleep. Without warning, fierce need to protect him wells up in your chest.

“Hey,” you nudge him in the shoulder with your foot and he stirs, looking up at you with sleepy eyes, “let’s get you to bed.” You help him up, lifting him with great care, and he leans on you steadily as you make your way to the bed. He doesn’t stumble, but his skin is searing against yours as he moves, the soft material of the bandage shuffling against your dirty pajamas.

He flops onto the bed over the covers, leaning back against one of your pillows, his eyes falling closed before he’s fully reclined. You’re about to go change into something else when he grabs you around the waist, pulling you back towards the bed.

“Stay here.” Even though his voice is weak, he’s no less commanding than normal, and certainly no less enticing, the corded muscles of his arms and chest on full display. You climb over him, careful not to disturb his injury, and his hand follows until you’re out of reach, planted on the small of your back. He looks very peaceful, despite everything, but there’s a nagging at the back of your mind that won’t go away.

“Why didn’t you want to go to the medbay, Ren?” you ask, and he shifts again, pulling you closer and resting his head in your lap. His hand finds yours and he places it in his hair. You were wrong before, apparently; he’s not just stubborn. He’s stubborn and bossy and surprisingly needy. You love it.

“They wouldn’t have let me leave,” he says quietly, the words brushing against the skin of your thigh, “they would have made me stay overnight.”

“I’m making you stay, too, though,” you said, wiggling your fingers deep in his hair so that you could scratch at his scalp. He sighs in appreciation. You’re surprised to find that you’re angry. At Ren, at yourself. What did all of this mean anyway? What were you searching for? Hot tears sting in your eyes and you throw your fists to the mattress, frustrated. He looks up at you, probably wondering why you pulled your hand away, and he blinks for a moment when he sees the sadness in your expression.

“I want to stay with you,” he says again. He sits up with a little effort, and for the first time, you really get to look at him. A bit more color has returned to his cheeks, and to his lips, and his eyes are warm and brown and entirely closed off to you. He’s so pretty it hurts to look, so you turn away. His hand is firm on your shoulder as he turns you back to face him.

“I want to stay with you,” he keeps repeating the same words, but all your foolish heart can hear is I love you, even though you’re sure it’s not true. He leans in closer, experimenting with the feeling of it, and you bring one hand up to stop him, covering his beautiful mouth with your fingers.

“You’ve gone giddy from the blood loss,” you say, pushing him away, “you’ll regret this in the morning.” But he only pulls you closer, wrapping his arms around your waist in a hungry grip, until you’re so close that your nose brushes his.

“I know,” he says, and you don’t think he’s talking about your medical diagnosis, “we want the same things.” There’s no air in your lungs when you try to speak, and you pull in a broken gasp, unable to form the words.

“Then what took you so long?” you ask with what little breath you can muster. He smiles, pulling your head to his chest and laying back down on the mattress, and you fit against him perfectly.

He falls asleep almost immediately, but you can’t fault him for that after everything he had been through. You feel yourself drifting away as well, wrapped comfortably in his arms, your fingers dancing lightly over the smooth planes of his chest. A smile breaks on your face, and you let your eyes drift closed. You don’t have all the answers you want, but there would be time for that later. For now, this is enough.

#Anonymous #kylo ren x reader #kylo ren x you #kylo ren fanfic #my writing #requests #long post #kylo ren

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luke-o-lophus · 4 years

Text

Coming Back to Life (Part 3)

Part 2 can be found here

Sam Wilson, Indian/Desi Reader, Bucky Barnes friendship

Warning: This episode has mention of attempted sexual assault. Apart from that, canon-typical violence and injuries, and conversations regarding these. Mention of smoking. Do tell me if I need to add more warnings/missing out on any warning.

Bucky took another drag of his cigarette, his phone pressed to his ear. In the dying light of the day, Sam could see his silhouette where he was standing in the balcony. Sam was on his fifth cup of coffee, sitting on his couch and flipping through some magazine. He could hear snippets of the conversation.

“....still at Sam’s...not yet....dunno Stevie...yeah...no you don’t have to...’kay...love you too....don’t you dare...yeah bye’‘

Sam wipes the tiny happy smile off his face before Bucky can see it (he’d never let him live that down). But times like this make him think of those years. Wondering if he was a guy who should be saved, or stopped. And now here Bucky was, on a phone with his century old lover, worrying over a friend who was still sleeping nearly twelve hours since she came home. The situation today is far from ideal, but it’s still days like this that still give him hope.

“You should stay”, Sam tells him as soon as he gets back to the living room. They’d tried to wake you up once, for lunch. You’d just opened your eyes with a blank stare, cowering slightly. Then recognition had sparked a bit, but you’d rolled over and continued to sleep.

Bucky lets out a noise between a hum and a grunt, pondering whether he should sit, or go check up on you. It was past six, and you’d really need food and another dose of medicines soon. Also the fact was, he wasn’t very good at waiting. Especially when you were passed out, hurt and prone, and he didn’t know why.

“I think we should try again”, Sam says with a sigh, dropping his magazine. Bucky shrugs in response but follows eagerly. The guestroom is dark, the last glow of dusk peeping in from between curtain flaps. Sam flips on the light, and does a double take.

You're in bed, yeah, but curled up on yourself. Eyes open wide and lost somewhere in the distance, an unnatural glaze in your dark iris. Bucky recovers first, and covers the two strides to your bedside. He calls out your name softly, and your response is squeezing your eyes shut. A hand gingerly touches your forehead. Bucky's lips fall open at the jarring temperature difference between his cool vibranium and your forehead. "Sam, she's burning up", he whispers curtly. You blink your eyes open to the sight of both of them hovering over you.

"Am fine..", you insist, your voice small and rough from sleep. You try to offer a tiny lopsided smile,"Hey Buck. When'd you come?"

"Around six...In the morning.", He swipes some locks away from your clammy forehead. "When'd you wake up, doll?"

You look away at that question and make a move to sit up. You're grimacing the moment you lift your torso off the sheets; Sam steadies you silently as you lean back on the pillows Bucky fluffs up.

"I'm sorry", you whisper to no one in particular. "I... Should have told you I had a mission." Your words are spoken stiffly with obvious effort, you tried not to move your lips as much as possible.

"We can talk about that later...", Bucky offers an encouraging smile. You close your eyes with a sigh, letting Sam replace the blanket with a thicker one.

Bucky makes a move to get up for a cool washcloth but notes Sam's figure go still. He turns and quirks a brow at his expression, and the other man makes a quick motion with his head towards your legs. Bucky's blood runs cold when he follows that gaze.

Your shorts have ridden up in your sleep and the exposed flesh of your calf and thighs were marred with long purplish marks. Of fingers, gripping too hard? Looked that way. But, could be something else too, right? A quick glance to your face, eyes closed and blank, and another glance at Sam's face that looks this far from tortured. And he knows, the same thing's going on in Sam's head too. Bucky storms out of the room.

"What the fuck, Barnes", Sam hisses. He's standing inches from him in his kitchen, Bucky's fists flexing in anxiety.

"You know very well what the fuck." Bucky seethes, his blue eyes piercing into Sam's brown ones.

"How 'bout we let her tell us instead of making assumptions?"

"We could call Natasha...Or Wanda...Maybe she'll..."

"Man, she doesn't know them well. She trusts you, a lot."

Bucky looks up at that comment, his eyes softening somewhat. "She trusts us, Wilson. She did choose your place to crash." And that could be the biggest compliment Bucky has ever spoken aloud.

"Guys?", Your small worried voice makes them turn swiftly, to the sight of you leaning against the door frame, sheets wrapped around your form. You take a tentative step, supporting yourself with a hand on the wall. "It's not what it looks like", you whisper, lips and body trembling. Maybe, fever...maybe, nerves. You weren't sure.

"Jesus Christ" , Sam swears. Walking over, he takes your hand in his and guides you to the nearby couch. "Grab an ice pack, Barnes", he calls over his shoulder. His fingers gingerly touch your cheek that was more swollen around the cut. "You didn't have to get out of bed, tiger", he soothes you in his warm voice.

"You were worrying", you argue. After a pause, you blurt out, "My mission was successful, but it didn't go as planned."

The couch dips beside you where Bucky sits; he's waiting for you to go on, ice pack forgotten in his left hand. Gentle strokes on your cheek have you look up to Sam. He is nodding, egging you to go on.

"It was simple", you shrug. "It was this rich white guy who runs an illegal weapons ring as a side business. Has connections with..Terrorist organizations, trafficking rings. Has location of important bases. And apparently a 'taste in exotic young women'. The last words are spoken with obvious disgust, makes both men clench their jaws.

"You're not supposed to go solo on stuff like this", Bucky chides gently, dropping the ice pack to the floor before he can unwittingly ruin it with a squeeze.

You wring your fingers, turning to face him. Sam pulls a chair to sit; Bucky's cold metal fingers cup your cheek in the gentlest hold possible.

"Wasn't alone...." You whisper breathlessly. The men share a glance and Sam speaks up.

"Who was with you?"

"Harry"

"Harrison Drew? Agent 35?"

"Yeah..."

"Where's he now? In the hospital or..."

"Home....I think"

"How's he faring?"

You suck in a breath, pulling back from Bucky's touch. "He's doing well, yeah", you say, your head hanging. Tears brim in your eyes, you sniffle, not meeting their gaze.

"Sweetheart, can you tell us what happened, please?", Bucky whispers. "Or do you want us to call Wanda or..."

"I can", you interrupt indigantly. "You know I tell you guys everything", your eyes shine with unshed tears when you look up.

"We know", Sam is quick to comfort. "Of course, but if.."

"I don't want...you to freak out. Or..I don't know...I know you care about me...I don't want to be the reason Harry...."

"What'd Harrison do?", Bucky's voice has a sharp edge.

"I'm...I'm sure it was a misunderstanding", you try to reason.

"Yeah?", Sam holds your hands to give a comforting squeeze, encouraging you to continue.

"Hmm...", You hum. "There's no other reason why he'd turn off his comms, right, and..."

"What?"

"Yeah and it was fully charged so it couldn't have run out. The plan was to seduce the guy and let him take me to his place..Harry would follow and download the data while I kept him distracted, then kill him and get out, but....."

"But?"

"Harry didn't follow from the bar...I thought he hadn't noticed we left. I tried to contact him...Send the emergency signal when we reached...I thought he was coming but...The guy brought over two more people...And...I..Kept up the game, tapping out the signals...He, he didn't..."

"What... the hell", Bucky whispers.

"How'd you get out, tiger?", Sam coaxes you gently. You swallow and blink, tears spilling out at that motion and drawing a wet line down each cheek.

"When they were....You know..You saw the marks right? I know you did. I knew I had to get out before they could...Do it. But my hands were tied up... this freaky game of theirs...And I...For a moment..." A small sob rips from your throat. "This was..Was stupid but...For a moment I really thought I wouldn't make it. I'd never see you guys again and even if I did...I don't know how I'd...And I hadn't even told you I was going and...No one was coming with help 'cause...They thought Harry was with me and..."

Bucky's face, the tips of his ears, they're red. He's fuming with guarded anger. Sam is still too, his eyes wide.

"But yeah...Long story short...I broke out before they could do anything else...And..You know the rest, all is well.."

"Where...Was.. Harrison?", Bucky's voice is dangerously low and even Sam glances towards him in concern.

"In...In front of the bar? He drove me here."

"And..He just gave you his jacket? That's all?"

"N-no...That was one of the target's...I felt..Like I needed more cover..."

Sam sighs deeply, rubbing his face and sending the other man a gaze that told him to zip it for now.

"Sweetheart...You know how serious that breach is, right? Even if we don't take action, what he did would warrant a suspension anyway. Maybe more."

"He..He said he'll fill the paperwork..And report..."

Sam balks at that. "He..Said that? He had the fucking audacity to suggest that?"

The two men watch you finally break down in heaving sobs. "I..I thought he cared..I thought he actually cared, I thought after this mission I might even...", You hiccup.

Your face crumples in pain and guilt and you choke on another sob. "I ...I wasn't thinking Sammy...I agreed to it...He told me in the car he'd do it and...I just couldn't argue...I don't wanna go on a mission with him again Sammy and..Oh god I..I just let him do all this to me..."

They let you cry. Bucky quietly wraps an arm around your shoulders and Sam's thumb strokes on your palm. They ground you, but don't ask you to stop, or say anything for that matter. You cry till the sobs have ebbed to sniffles, then all is quiet. When you come to yourself again, you're resting your head on Bucky's shoulder, and Sam is wiping the tears from your cheeks.

"You people...Have raised my standards in men", you attempt at joking. Bucky snorts, relieved to see you pull yourself together. His fingers stroke through your hair in slow soothing motions.

"Men are stupid, and irresponsible", he adds.

"You're a man, married to a man", you deadpan, making Sam chuckle.

"That changes nothing", Bucky huffs.

"You did amazing, okay?", Sam slides onto the couch on your other side. "You were strong, and damn brave. I'm proud of you." You give him a lazy grin, your eyes already closing.

"We'll deal with this tomorrow, rest up now. You're safe."

That word alone is enough to send you into peaceful slumber.

A/N: This was supposed to be a oneshot but it's turning into a series! Part 4 is in my head already!

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nika-the-hunter · 4 years

Text

House of Mist [Ch. 11]

Central Seattle Ruins, Pacific Northwest. House Mist Territory +157 days

Nicole and Rykis walked down the path that had been worn through the tall grass. The old road surface was clearly visible here under the dirt. It was cracked and crumbled, resembling gravel more than the flat concrete it had once been. The other trees, not the evergreens, were starting to get their leaves again, and were bringing brighter shades of green to the pale urban ruins. This was her first spring, and it was wonderful, everything was so full of life.

Her meeting with Fort Discovery had gone well; so well in fact that she was absolutely convinced that working with the House of Mist had been the right decision. She and Rykis had spent the remainder of the day walking around the small settlement named after the original park it was built on. There had been a fort there before at some point in ancient history, but its name had been lost to time.

She met many Humans in the fort; over half of them had ties to the region that went back to before the Collapse. Those that had migrated over to Fort Discovery from elsewhere had interesting stories of the world outside the region as well. She had made it a point that return trips would be common for her. The children that her Ghost was entertaining followed him the whole time, trying to play tag with the mechanical ball.

Pedro and Athena had ideas for expansion that Nicole could help with. They had been in radio contact with a group of people due east that were worried about a band of Fallen lurking around their town. The town had been cautious about Mist, but stories of the friendly Fallen out west had apparently made the journey to them. They were willing to move into Mist territory but had no way to do it without drawing the attention of the local Fallen crew. Pedro had planned to bring it to the Kell’s attention soon, but the campaign against the House of Devils had kept the Kell busy. Now that things were calming down, he would bring it up and suggest that Nicole help convince the others that Mist was extra safe.

When Nicole finally left Fort Discovery, she found the Archon taking a video call with an Eliksni Vandal who wore a banner she did not know. Though there was a lot she did not know already. It was hard to tell the color of the armor with the screen glare from the angle they were at, but it looked green. Marakis had ended the call and turned to face the two who had approached. He briefly mentioned that he was speaking with the House of Exile, before asking about their tour. Later Rykis told her that the House of Exile was an Eliksni collective that lived up on the moon. Mist apparently had a trade deal with them regarding Ether.

On the flight back to the Archons compound, they all talked briefly, Marakis was interested in how she and Rykis were getting along. He seemed really excited with a Guardian and Eliksni living together and seemed to read the subtext of what was really going on quite well. Sparing them the embarrassment of just saying it.

The day was nearly over by then with the sunset lighting the sky in a bright gold. Their walk back towards downtown kept them in the shade already. Her Ghost spent his time orbiting around the two and occasionally flying off to scan something dangling in the old windows. The ruins were mostly empty, Mist Eliksni lived in the newer buildings that were further downtown. Those buildings were still old pre-Collapse construction, but they were in much better shape than the stone and steel skyscrapers that made up ninety percent of the city. Over the centuries after the collapse, those buildings had remained free of overgrowth and were still somewhat waterproof, unlike her hotel across the lake.

“So, are we headed back to the Kell to catch that truck back, or are we walking home on our own?” Nicole asked.

“No, the Kell gave you the choice of living elsewhere now. You’re not restricted to Baron Acskis’ outpost.” He replied.

“So... where are we headed then?” He did not really answer her question.

“We’re headed to where I lived before. I think that you might like it.” She could see the edges of his face move behind his mask in what she recognized as an Eliksni smile, then he shrugged. “If you do not, then we can go to your hotel tomorrow, or maybe somewhere else.”

“Oh, alright. It’s been a while hasn’t it?”

“Mm, not as long as you think, I visit it whenever you’re busy around Bellevue.”

Nicole nodded. “Well that’s good; I’d hate to keep you from home.”

There was a bleep from her helmet that was clipped to her belt. She looked down and saw something flashing on her visor. “Oh hey, give me a second.” Her helmet slipped over her head, but she did not activate the seal.

The blinking icon opened into a list that took up half of the view screen. The word Quests was in bold at the top, with little icons and what she guessed were the quests themselves listed on it. There were only a few entries. The currently highlighted ‘quest’ had a graphic of one of the metro trains she had seen in the tunnel over a banner for Umic. Memory Troubles was the name with the description “Locate Metro Security Records.”

The chirp of her Ghost sounded from the helmet’s internal speaker. “Hey! You finally checked out the Quest tab!”

“What is this?” She asked.

“Well, you seemed to be getting a lot of things to do, so I decided to put together some of my own quests for you. Usually these come from the Vanguard at the Last City but given how we’re not planning on going there any time soon, I’ll do it for you for now.”

“Okay... why did it just pop up now?” she stopped Rykis. “Hold on for a second.”

“Well follow the marker and find out!” the Ghost replied, at the same moment a diamond shaped marker appeared. He sounded excited which was very unlike himself.

Nicole nodded in the direction the marker showed and started to go. “Sorry Rykis. My Ghost found something he wants me to see. We gotta’ detour.”

“Then lead on, Neh-cole.”

The marker led back and over one block, to the front doorway of a tall office tower. The building's stone facade was crumbling in places, leaving piles of rubble underneath the trees. Once at the door, the icon appeared again further inside. It stopped at a stairwell leading down into the dark. “Alright, we’re here. What did you find?”

Her Ghost appeared from inside the doorway and played his flashlight over the remains of a sign hanging on the wall. The letters had faded but most were still legible. -Metro Transit Authority. Regional Security Office.

“I found the place!” He did a spin inside his shell. At first, she was not sure what he meant, but the name of the ‘quest’ connected the dots. The camera down in the subway tunnel had been looking right at where her body had been. It was still working and sending the data back somewhere and something was still giving it the command to record. Robust systems were still working somewhere. But if she wanted to find out what had happened to her, all she needed to do was go down and find the network hub. It was not a priority; she had actually forgotten about it up until now. The discovery of her cause of death was more of a hopeful curiosity than an actual objective. However, there it was... at the bottom of the staircase were some answers about her previous life. Under the helmet she bit her lip and gave it a good two seconds of thought. The answer was obvious.

Down she went. Quickly at first, but immediately slowing for caution; the stairs were slick and covered in moss. That was something she was used to seeing out there. Buildings, trees, rocks, and even growing on the side of Eliksni crates that had been sitting just a little too long; moss was everywhere. The bottom step was submerged beneath a few centimeters of water and somewhere deeper in the basement she could hear flowing water.

At the far end of the large open space, Nicole could see dozens of blinking green lights hidden behind a window. The working systems were a good sign that this was the right place. She stepped into the ankle-deep water and apologized to Rykis. He was not wearing any sort of water-resistant footwear, but he followed her anyway without complaining. Sloshing through the water, Nicole noticed that people had died down here fairly quickly. A few had died at their workstations, leaving their skeletons collapsed over keyboards and left computers in stand-by mode.

The sign on the side of the door said that it was the data-storage room. It was exactly what they were looking for. The blinking lights were the status lights for over a dozen large computer racks. The hum in the room was loud, and the air was warm. The doorway was raised higher than the water, someone had some forethought when they built the place in the basement, so there was no water inside. Once inside with the door closed behind them, Nicole could not hear the water flow anymore.

Nicole had no idea how to search all this for what they wanted, so she waved to the machines. “Okay Ghost, do your thing.”

He chirped and flew over to one of the stacks. “This might take a while. These cameras have been recording for centuries...” The Ghost flew from stack to stack, an optical beam connecting with each tower. “Just have to find the feed from your station and trace where it goes. It was Olympic... I think?”

“Well take your time, Ghost. It’s not like Rykis and I can do anything.”

After a few minutes scanning through the various racks, he had found the data. “I got it!” he exclaimed with all his fins expanding out from his core. “Well, are you sure you want to watch this, last chance.”

Rykis looked at the Ghost, and then to Nicole. “What did he find, what are we looking for?”

“Well he found the recording of how I died. The first time.” Nicole grimly smiled. “I'm hoping it’ll give me something to work with. So yes, Ghost, start it up.”

He floated over to a dormant computer station and interfaced with the monitor. The screen flickered and flashed to life. The multiple camera feeds from across the station appeared. There was even sound.

Olympic Park Station -28 minutes

Umic Security Officer Nicole Walker rushed down the escalator leading into the chaotic subway station. Her heavy plasteel ballistic vest almost knocked her off balance in the shifting sea of Seattle citizens. Thirteen hours ago, she had thought that the vest had been overkill; her regular uniform had woven strands of sapphire wire which was good enough to stop mid-caliber ammunition. But as the day progressed, she no longer felt that way, and was grateful for the vest.

Gunfire at the top of the stairs brought her around with her rifle, aiming the carbine towards the odd colored daylight streaming in at the top of the shaft. The citizens and refugees parted and dropped to either side, clearing a firing lane to the doors. At the top of the stairs her partner, USO. Keane, fired out the door and onto the street. An explosion rocked the shaft and people fell, more pushed deeper into the station. “I’m gonna’ close the doors!” Keane shouted. “Get in here now.”

He fired again, Nicole tried to get back up the escalator, but the parted sea had closed and everyone that was up near the top was making their way down whether she was in the way or not.

A cluster of blue energy shots peppered the wall above Keane. A large group of people finally made it through the doors, and he slammed his fist into the switch on the wall. The station’s storm shutters dropped from the ceiling and bounced once off their rubber seals.

They were locked in, and the bad stuff was locked out.

Another explosion from outside shook the ground again, more gunfire erupted nearby, it was all muffled by the storm shutters. “Everyone downstairs.” Nicole ordered. People that had remained on the stairs, even after the crowds fled, slowly got to their feet, and moved down to the station.

The trains were still running, “Thank the Traveler...” Nicole muttered. There were casualties and moving the injured on foot down kilometers of tunnel was just not going to work.

“Please form a line! Cue up at the marked positions!” A Transit cop in a high-visibility vest was directing the panicked people to where they could board the next subway car. “We’ll get you all out of here as fast as we can. The trains are running double-time and filling up at previous stations!”

Nicole walked over to one of the small coffee shops along the wall that had its lights still on. The windows were smashed, but two of the original employees were busy passing out water and snacks to anyone who came for them. She grabbed two bottles of water and a small bag of sugar cookies. Downing her bottle in one go, she headed back into the space between lines where Keane was wiping the sweat from underneath his helmet. “You alright?” She offered him the other water.

Taking the water, he also drained it. “Yeah... uh... just glad those doors are doing the job.” He nodded over to a group of Seattle Police Officers talking on the other side of the next line. “They got working radios. Military’s been trying to get up here for hours apparently. Something is bogging down the roads, and the weather is just insane.”

She nodded. “We could really use the help. A bunch of street cops and some deputized, heavily armed, and highly skilled, security guards ain’t going to help everyone.” Nicole smirked; trying to add some humor into the situation.

Keane returned the look with a thin smile. “Yeah, doesn’t mean we can’t try.”

The ceiling chimed. “Train approaching... train approaching.”

At the front of the lines, the Transit cop checked his wrist pad. “Alright people, this train is only two-thirds full! Stay in line and wait your turn. We’ll all make it out, just don’t push.”

The sleek subway train slid into the station and squeaked to a stop. The cars were packed, but apparently only part full. Once the doors opened, no one got off, and the lines began to squeeze in wherever they could. With a blow of their whistle, the crowds stepped back and allowed the Transit cops to get the doors sealed and sent the train on its way. “Next train arrives in... five minutes,” chimed the ceiling.

Two more trains came and went, but the population count in the station did not seem to be decreasing. People were just spreading out now that there was more room.

Nicole noticed a lone kid standing in the middle of the station clutching a stuffed animal. It was covered in dirt, but she thought it might have been an Orca. The little girl could not have been older than five, but she did not look scared or sad. Nicole walked over and took a knee beside her. “Hey there kid, where are your parents at?”

The girl looked at her and shook her head. “I dunno, mommy went to get daddy. She said to wait here.”

“Well which way did she go?” Nicole asked. Hopefully it was not far.

The little girl pointed the stuffed Orca up the stairs. “She went up there.”

Nicole looked up that direction and frowned. That was not good.

“Train approaching... Train approaching.”

Unknown to Nicole, the station security system picked up a conversation going on down one of the maintenance corridors, coming towards the station.

“Holy shit Sam, where did you get those?” Voice one spoke out, in audible surprise.

“From nowhere. I ain’t telling.” Voice two was gruff, and noticeably angry. “Here, take it, it's loaded.”

Voice one huffed and had to hurry to follow “What the hell are we going to do with them?!”

“We’re getting on that next train. I'm getting us out of this place.” A sharp click-clack sound was registered with the system. It was identified as the racking of a shotgun pump by algorithmic analysis.

It would have alerted the authorities if there was anyone left to pick-up. There was not.

Back in the station proper, the next train was slowly gliding into the station. It was only one fourth full. Plenty of room for evacuees. The door in the backside of the station burst open and out rushed two men. One had an assault rifle, and the other in the front was carrying a large gauge semi-automatic shotgun. He fired it into the ceiling once. “Everyone fucking back off. We’re getting on that train, you hear me?” the man bellowed. Chunks of plaster fell to the ground around them.

People froze in place, some dropped to the ground. The traffic cops had their hands on their sidearms, but nobody drew their weapons; not with a threat like that in a crowd of civilians. “Hey now, there's plenty of space for everyone. Just put the guns down.” One of the cops motioned slowly.

“Nah, we’re going. Now. Get everyone out of the way.” The guy in front swept the gun across the station. “Stay the fuck back.”

Nicole eyed the gunmen, both the shotgun and the rifle had large drum magazines, however the guy with the rifle seemed put off by what was going on. That did not change the fact that he was still waving the gun around the crowd.

One of the cops that had been back near the coffee shop came around slowly and half crouched. He looked like he was going to try and tackle the shotgun wielder. If shots started flying, things would go bad very quick.

Nicole threw herself in front of the kid who was just out in the open, well in the line of fire. Too many potential targets had been behind the kid.

The man with the gun reacted to Nicole's sudden movements and fired at her. Under normal conditions, if that shotgun had been loaded with buckshot, it would have just caused a few dents in her plate vest. However, that gun had been loaded with high-velocity solid slugs.

At the range they were at, there was nothing that could be done. The slug smashed into the center of her plasteel plate, causing it to deform beyond its threshold. Her chest cavity was crushed. The plate had stopped the bullet, but not in any manner that would have saved her life.

Central Seattle Ruins +157 days

Nicole watched her original self crumple to the floor and die. The others, who she did not know or recognize, took down the men with the guns. They tried to revive her, but it was no use, she was already gone. Her fellow security guard was visibly distressed and started to kick the guy who had shot her while he was detained. However, the officer in the bright yellow vest pulled him off and shoved him away. The girl was loaded onto the train with the Umic guard and sent away almost immediately.

The people that remained in the station pulled her body far out of the way, moving it to its final resting place on top of the mezzanine above the tracks. One of the people that helped carry her body placed her arms on her chest and draped a tablecloth from the store over her. He seemed to say a prayer and leave, but there was nobody else up there to witness it.

“Well there you have it.” Her Ghost blinked. “There is more to the recording near the end, but that's how you died.” The video sped up and the station eventually emptied, leaving her body sitting alone on the platform. Nobody else entered the station after the last train zipped down the track. “Huh...” She had expected some firefight with the cause of the collapse, not getting shot by fellow Humans. It did not change anything though, she had hoped that when she found the video of her death it would unlock the memories of that past life, but nothing came from them. No insight into who she was, or any of the people they had known. It felt almost like a wasted trip; the question of how she died was answered, but there was no extra reward. “I can tell you're disappointed. If you thought that it would help your memories, I could have told you that it wouldn’t.” The Ghost replied to the look on her face. “This bit at the end though might cheer you up a little.

Nicole sighed as the video clicked and moved on. With no movement it switched to an ‘extended event monitoring’ mode. There were only subtle indications on how fast time was passing in the station; a steady drip became a flood of water down the tunnels, drowning the track. Dirt piles slowly grew across the floor from the corners, eventually enough for plants to grow and sprout under the steady station lights. Her body rapidly deteriorated on screen, becoming food for moss and other things that made the station their home.

The video would briefly slow when the occasional animal triggered the cameras, or some big event like part of the roof caved in. The system timestamp degraded into error symbols before the first lightbulb went out.

When the station was looking similar to how it was when she was revived, the camera slowed down back to real time. Movement appeared from the other side of the platform and an Eliksni scurried in looking around the space. They were small and about the size of one of the Not-Dregs.

Rykis made a sound behind her, like a squeak almost, but she continued to watch.

The Eliksni on screen cautiously poked around the ruined metro station, digging through the shelves and boxes left in the cafe. They crossed out to the station mezzanine and came across the moss-covered remains of Nicole’s former life. The Eliksni knelt and picked up the old ballistic helmet, the skull still secured by the chinstrap. However now that it was disturbed the skull slipped free and fell to the ground with a loud thunk. A dull ache spontaneously formed on the back of Nicole’s head and then faded.

Setting the helmet upside down, the Eliksni carefully returned the skull to its place on the remains. Then they pulled a backpack out from under the moss and ferns that laid beside her body. Digging through it, they pulled out a tablet and what looked like a small stack of notebooks. They put the notebooks back into the pack and threw it over their shoulder but put the tablet into another bag.

The image froze in her head as the video went on. She had seen that bag before. It was so familiar, still covered in paint brushes and other small tools. Her eyes slid over to Rykis watching from beside her. The same bag was slung over his shoulder, looking a bit smaller after all the years. If an Eliksni could look any more guilty, she doubted it.

“Rykis is that you?” Nicole asked him. “Did you take my backpack?” She would not say he stole it; she was dead at the time after all.

Slowly, Rykis nodded. “Yes. that was me. Years ago.” His fingers tapped together nervously, and he seemed to think he needed to say more. “I still have your stuff; I was going to give it back when we got to my place.”

Nicole raised her eyebrow. “Oh, really now? How’d you know it was mine before we saw this recording?”

He nodded towards the screen showing the current status of the old station. “When we went down there on your third day. You stopped over where your body had sat for so long. I recognized it right away. Yours were the only bones in the station, and the only bones I had seen down there that day.”

“Well we just saw why. I hope that guy made it somewhere safe. We’ll never know though.” Nicole sighed and waved her hand in the air. “Alright, we found what we were looking for. It didn’t help me, but let's get out of this flooded basement. Rykis, lead on to your place.” “Yes yes.” he chittered. “Follow me.”

They headed back up to the surface and into the early hours of night. The occasional streetlights continued burning brightly through the trees that grew around them. Some lights were still on in the various buildings, making the skyline an odd patchwork of light and dark. The walk only lasted a few blocks, not long at all. It was actually directly behind the Kell’s hall. Rykis had probably gone home after her last meeting there. She was mainly mentally exhausted, there was a lot that had happened today.

The building Rykis called home turned out to be the old Art Museum. She smiled at that, of course the local artist would choose to set up shop in an art museum. The windows had all been patched over with metal scrap, just like he had done over in her building, and the door was sturdy and weather-proof. He held it open for her to go in.

“Anyone else live here?” She walked in and found herself inside a small tunnel made of hanging tarps. The light was provided by the warm Eliksni tube lights that stuck up from the floor every few meters. Her question was nearly answered by voices from behind some of the curtains that broke off from the tunnel. “Yes actually. Many of Mist’s more artsy Eliksni live in the building. But there is more than enough space that I can have this for my own,” Rykis replied. He closed the door behind him and latched it shut.

Taking the lead again, he took her up the stairs and through a set of double doors, to a half sphere structure in the middle of a room. Tarps and string lights spread out from the structure which was attached to the walls and ceiling of the big room they were in. Nicole could see faded and water damaged paintings hanging from the walls which had to be old Human art. The dome structure was obviously Eliksni construction with heat and light pouring out into the cold building from behind the curtain. “Come in, this is my... uh... home.” He pulled the curtain open and gestured her inside.

"It looks very cozy." Nicole followed him through the curtain and into the space. He had probably left it to warm up while he went to meet her.

There was a mix of Eliksni and Human furniture inside. In the center of the space was a table covered in small jars and brushes; she could see a few unfinished canvasses sitting around it. It appeared that Rykis was quite good at traditional painting.

Rykis had walked over to a locker leaning up against the wall. "Take a seat, let me see if I can find it..." He motioned for her to sit at the table with his lower arms.

Nicole sat where he pointed and watched Rykis dig through the locker. From there she was able to get at a better look at the canvases he had leaning against the bench.

She recognized the scene in the painting. The looming Spiderwalker in the snowstorm. Nicole had been standing a meter to the right when this had happened. It was the battle at the Pass, when Rykis had charged the tank with a flare to alert the artillery on the ridge.

One of the other paintings was of the interior of her hotel tower, after she had done some cleanup of the swamp, and made it more like a pond. The light was captured perfectly, and the colors were wonderful. Her art viewing time was cut short as Rykis brought her attention back to him when he placed a hard-backed case on the table. It looked just like the one from the video, just a bit cleaner.

“So, this was mine? From before?” Nicole picked it up and looked it over. The case was made from a slick stretchy material, and the edges cracked when she bent it too much. The straps had rotted away at some point and their remains dangled haplessly at the side.

“Yes, it should be everything.” Rykis nodded, sitting across from her. “I was young and looking for salvage back then, I had tried to trade your tablet, but it didn’t work and wasn’t worth anything. I did like looking through your sketchbooks though.”

“Sketchbooks?” Nicole pulled open the bag and heard the rubber seal peel apart, still holding strong over the centuries. Carefully, she emptied the bag and found an old data-pad, and a few notebooks.

“Yes, there were some really old, stylized drawings that I think you did. Just take a look.”

"Well if you say so." Nicole opened one of the old notebooks and slowly paged through them. The pages were remarkably well preserved; they were filled with drawings of places and things, as well as some random animals and creatures she did not recognize. They were not as good as Rykis' drawings, but they were fairly good. If these belonged to her, Nicole wondered if she had retained those skills as well as her warfighting abilities.

While carefully flipping through the pages, a small rectangle fell out from between them.

The piece of plastic material was a photograph; it was not even faded at all. Five people were standing in a semicircle, and they were posing with bright yellow guns which looked really strange. She saw herself near the middle of the group in a Umic hat and leaning up against a man wearing a vest with Mars Tactical stitched onto the chest. On the other end of the group was the other Security guard from the recording.

She flipped the picture over and found that it was not actually a piece of paper, it was something more advanced. The back flickered and began to form words across its surface. "11th Quinquennial Intersystem Defense Technologies Convention. SimFire Combat 3rd place team. Hosted by Clovis Bray"

"Huh," Nicole muttered. "Check out me back in the day." She passed the photo to Rykis and put the sketchbooks back into the bag.

The data-pad looked to be in okay shape, but when she tried the power switch nothing happened. At the moment, it was not really worth her time. She figured she could get her Ghost to fix it, but she should probably save it for later. A lot had happened today, and her head was a little fried.

Setting the data-pad back onto the table, Nicole ran her fingers through her hair and let out a sigh. "Well... This has sure been a day. Wanna take me to bed and call it a night with the newest member of Mist?"

Rykis let out more of a purr than a chitter. "Mmm... Yes Guardian."

He dropped the photo on the table and came over to pick her up. By the time they reached the bed on the other side of the room, her armor and her Ghost had made themselves scarce. Hopefully the neighbors did not mind the noise.

#destiny #destiny the game #fanfiction #fanfic #fan fiction #eliksni #fallen #guardian #hunter

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evien-stark · 4 years

Text

✧I Need You✧ Chapter 138

“I just wanted to check in on you. See how things are going. I think it’s pretty telling that we’re still out in the field. I just… I don’t like being in the dark. Not when I can help.”

Steve wasn’t exactly the person you were expecting to get a phone call from the following day, but it was a welcome change from all the other terrible nonsense going on. ...even if it was sort of in the same vein. “You’re doing better work out there. Is um… Manilla- nice?” Brain still a little scrambled in the early morning hours, especially after the events of the night prior.

“Montenegro. And. Sure. It’s peaceful. I think we’re wasting our time here, though.”

Way off. Not even remotely close. Oh well. It didn’t sound like he cared so much that you seemed to have no idea what the Avengers were doing. Or where they were, at the very least. You should have, for sure. But. Clearly you had other things going on. “I thought Bruce was waiting on a few more data points?” Trying to prove not only to him but to yourself that you were paying attention. That despite your pains right now you did care about your family. What they were doing. That was important, too.

He sighed. “Sure. That’s what we’re being told. I just don’t think we’re making any progress.”

“Emptying out Hydra bases is not what I would call making no progress, Steve.”

“...you’re right. But it’s still not what we thought we’d be doing.”

The air was heavy and tense. You didn’t know how to make this right for him. He wanted to come home. You couldn’t let him. It wasn’t time yet. “The next ping might be the right one. Just hang in there a little bit longer.”

“...sure.” His discontent on the other end of the phone was abundantly clear. “I noticed you haven’t said anything about what’s going on over there, yet.”

It was highly unlikely if you told him the truth that he’d come rushing back home. Still… you weighed your options very carefully before answering. Gathered all your thoughts and tried to make them cleanly cohesive. “It’s… we thought we had something. And we still might. But it’s not going the way I want.”

“Seems like that’s going around.” You heard the amusement through his annoyed tone. “Look- I just… worry about you.”

“I’m okay.” It did your heart good, at least, to know that nothing between you and Steve was irreparable. Not even someone controlling him into almost murdering you and then shoving him on the next jet out.

“I doubt it.” The mood plummeted. “And I don’t think you’d tell me if you weren’t.”

“The feeling’s mutual.” It hurt you, to hear him say that. But maybe he was right. You also knew you were, too. Maybe it would have been better to process what had happened between the two of you. There just hadn’t been time. And also… you still never got confirmation Steve had actually ever attended a single therapy session with Deja. “We’ll talk when it’s over.”

“When’s that gonna be?”

“I can only say soon. And hope it’s true.”

“Yeah. Me, too.”

---

Though it would have been easy, and even nice to just do nothing and recover, a full day of radio silence from Jessica after all the other days of radio silence didn’t sit right with you. If Kilgrave had taken her at some point, you were sure he would have let you know. Then again… who knew. You certainly felt like you didn’t know anything about anything at this point. It was on Friday that you decided you’d had enough.

So you called. And called. And called some more.

Ten times in total. And she didn’t answer a single one. Which started to really knock at your anxiety pretty hard. Surely she would answer if she had her phone, right? Surely with such a grave situation she couldn’t be ignoring you, right?

A text came in around eleven o’clock at night. Succinct and angry:

My hands are full. I don’t have time for you.

What could you even say to that? It was probably too telling to be overtly angry with her. But at this point you had no idea what was going on. It was clear that was the way she wanted it. But that was interfering with your life greatly. And the lives of your teammates.

You better find some. Because you’re wasting mine.

Her response was quick and curt. Cute.

You left it alone after that. Eventually you were going to have to go find her and have a nice long talk with her. You imagined she was trying to control this disaster every way she could. She still didn’t want you around, that was very much clear. You were beyond thinking it was because she thought you were a danger if Kilgrave got his hands on you. It probably had more to do with the reaction you’d had when realizing exactly why she was running so hard at this.

But why did she get to do that and you didn’t? Another question she surely wouldn’t answer.

---

Slowly you were making a plan and a promise to yourself. You couldn’t be kept left in the dark like this forever. Eventually some progress had to be made. Whether or not that included dragging Jessica Jones unwillingly, kicking and screaming, that would be up to her. But if she didn’t get back to you by Monday, you’d go find her personally. She couldn’t keep avoiding you forever. You’d see to that. You had to.

A late meeting on Sunday ran a little too long, especially when your attention started waning and a headache crept in. It made it hard to focus on what anyone was saying. Now was the worst time to appear flippant about Stark Industries’ Q2 plans. Your team had left without you for reasons that everyone believed had to do with you being the CEO you’d been hoisted up as. If you couldn’t maintain both worlds equally, both words would equally fall apart. One more thing to worry about.

The sun was just setting as you stepped outside the restaurant the department heads had wanted to meet at (for the obvious purposes of eating at a plush restaurant and calling it a business expense, all part of the package). You hadn’t eaten much of anything, and perhaps unwisely sipped instead at a glass of wine that you’d never asked for. Mistakes you were paying for now as you stood out on the sidewalk, glancing at your watch. You’d quietly told Happy you thought the meeting would last another hour- and that was about… thirty-two minutes ago… if you called to tell him to come get you downtown now with the traffic- ...he was probably on his way anyway-

Boozy migraine maths came to a complete halt when a sharp call of your name drew your attention back up to the present. A microphone was about five inches from your face, and a harsh shoulder light from a TV camera was making you nearly blind. “Christine Everhart. WHiH.” As always. When you least wanted or expected her. Which was always.

“I know who you are.” What fresh hell was this. What had you done now?

In her other hand as she popped her hip out she held out some photographs. Ones you briefly glanced at. “We’re live in five, so consider this a gift. These are pictures of a building reportedly destroyed by the Avengers in Slovakia two days ago. Multiple civilian deaths and casualties. Care to comment?”

“Two days ago?” You really wished your confusion hadn’t come first. Wasn’t the team on a break? ...had they even been to Slovakia?

“That’s right. And here you are dining at five star restaurants while your team murderers innocent people. Fooling the public while they go break borders for you. What do you have to say about that?”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about-” “Seems like I have more of an idea than you.”

This was not what you needed right now. But if you just took a breath, you were sure you could get through it. You’d throw down a harsh assessment and shift the blame until you could figure out what the hell she was talking about-

At least that’s what you wanted to do. That’s what you should have done. But you no longer lived in a world that was fair. “Turn off your camera. Put it down.” A chipper English accent sent every muscle in your body so tight you thought you might snap.

In your ear LUNA buzzed. “Activating suit.”

“Stop.” The word clutched in your throat. Christine was suddenly too confused by her cameraman simply obeying that order to even care about what you were going on about.

“Ma’am?” LUNA seemed concerned, for about as much as an AI could. “Shall I call Mr. Stark?”

“No. Just. Wait.” All clipped as your breath started falling a little bit short of full draws.

It was so anticlimactic. You’d expected Kilgrave to walk out of the shadows on his next big reveal. Yet here… he was just strolling up the sidewalk, hands in his pockets, smile on his face. “Tear up those pictures. Destroy that recording- and any other evidence you had on this little Slovakia incident.” Putting his back to you, in clear defiance of what you could or might do to him. Clearly of the opinion you’d stand there and do nothing at all.

...which is exactly what you were doing. Staring at him. Horrified. Confused.

He leaned closer to Christine. “You’re going to go back to your little TV station and stop investigating this. Tell your boss it was all falsified. Now go. Leave.”

The both of them put their heads down, turned around without a word, and then walked away and back into the van they’d probably been waiting in all afternoon. Then, just like that, they drove off. Leaving you and Kilgrave on the sidewalk alone- save for the swells of innocent people milling about. Watching. Watching the CEO of Stark Industries fend off a reporter- and now seemingly speaking with an old acquaintance. Once Christine’s van was completely out of sight he turned to you, smile growing.

“Hello, puppy. I thought you and I might have a talk. I was getting tired of all the back and forth on the phone.”

You had to clamp down on every single part of yourself. Jessica couldn’t be right. You couldn’t fall to pieces just standing in front of him. “What makes you think I won’t kill you right now?”

He leaned in just enough to murmur, “There are people about, puppy. I don’t think that’d be very heroic of you.” His eyes never left yours. “Now- won’t you join me for a light dinner?” A question. He was asking you. Very pointedly so.

“What are you doing?” He could have made off with you again. A second time. And you’d been so wholly unprepared- ...well, LUNA had tried to fix this for you. But you couldn’t just go full Lady Iron in broad daylight in front of Christine after she had just accused your team of murdering people on foreign soil. Even if she’d been told to go away.

Easing back he gave a little shrug. “Seems to me that I’ve just done you a favor. So I’d like it if you returned the gesture.”

“I could have handled that.” A useless point to be making, but your brain was scrambling. Trying desperately to keep yourself talking so that you didn’t crumble into a mess that was even easier for the taking.

“I have no doubt. I do so love that sharp wit of yours. But I’m running on a tight schedule.” Still, when you didn’t budge, this little cute act of his dissolved just a little, his mouth thinning into a straight line with a tight twitch at the corner. “I’m being polite. Don’t make me ask again.”

He wouldn’t. He’d tell you. And he was trying to make you come with him without commanding you to. But why? Reaching into your bag you pulled out your cell phone and made a call to the last person who was expected to see you. “Happy- I’m taking another meeting. It should be quick, but I’ll find my own way home afterwards.”

“You sure? I don’t mind waiting.”

“I’m sure. Take the rest of the night off, okay? It’s Sunday, I feel bad.”

“...everything alright?” Damn him. You didn’t need this right now.

You just needed him to let you protect him. “Everything’s fine. Leilani’s all worked up about R&D’s budget for Q2 so I wanted to give her a little more face time.” Work jargon would no doubt turn his brain off.

And thankfully, “Oh. Alright. I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

“See you tomorrow, Happy.” What was the point of any of it, you wondered. Why set security for yourself if you were going to immediately trash all avenues of help? Maybe there was no point. Maybe the whole point of this was that it was all inevitable. “...where are we going?” Making no attempt to hide how dejected you were.

He was getting his way. Again. And he hadn’t even needed powers to do it this time. Hearing this he perked right back up. “I know this delightful little teahouse a few blocks over.”

You curled your hands into fists so tight the tremor snaked up through your entire arm. “Let’s go, then.”

---

He told everyone to get out as soon as the two of you arrived. Got you the nicest table in the back, all aglow with candles scattered about. Ordered first himself and then for you. And all the while you wondered what the fuck you were going to do about any of it. How were you going to get out of this one? What even was this one? What was he doing?

“I know you must be used to this treatment. Getting anything you want. I think we’re very similar. Have I told you that?” He was sitting half forward, hands clasped together atop the table. Staring at you.

“Can you please just cut to the chase? Tell me what you want. What are you doing right now?” Trying to take back any semblance of control of this situation. When clearly you had absolutely none.

This seemed to displease him immensely, easy expression disappearing into one of dissatisfaction. He then sat back with a little roll of his eyes. “We’ve been apart for two years and this is how you decide to patch things up?”

“Patch- are you out of your mind?” Maybe anger was easier. You just had to be careful not to let it bleed. You didn’t need him any angrier than the low level of simmer he was working with. “You kidnapped me. And tortured me. For months.”

“Torture.” Lips pulling back, teeth showing in a small snarl as if he’d eaten something bitter. “Don’t say that.” He was quick to realize and then held his hand up. “-I don’t like it. Feel free to say whatever you want-”

“Fuck you. How’s that.”

He heaved a terrible sigh, putting his chin in his palm. “There’s that fire. It’s getting old, you know. Can you speak to me like the civilized person you parade around as?”

“Just tell me what you want. Stop dragging this out.” You just wanted the right to know where your fate was ending. “Why go to all this trouble? What are you doing?”

The servers interrupted the both of you, setting down a large tea kettle, cups and saucers and what looked some weird meat aside some even stranger tea cakes. Because everything here was designed to upset you. You were sure he knew. There was no excuse otherwise. Once they left he began pouring himself a cup, letting silence hang beneath the gentle clink of ceramics and cutlery.

And then. Finally. “Jessica is not what you think she is.”

You really couldn’t help the twist of your face then. “Are you serious? That’s what this is about?”

“Did she tell you that Hope girl is in the hospital?”

That was twice you’d let yourself be blindsided today. You were growing weaker, that was the only thing you knew for sure. But quickly you reigned yourself in. “You can’t possibly think I believe you care about that poor girl. After what you did to her-”

He made an ugly grimace and waved an overly dismissive hand. “That was Jessica’s fault. And regardless- I know you do.” He was trying to play both sides against the middle. It really couldn’t have been clearer. You still didn’t know why though. “Jessica doesn’t care about anyone but herself. Not like you.”

“I couldn’t care less what Jessica cares about. So if that’s all the info you’ve got, I’m going to leave.”

He started cutting into his little dinner time snack. “She’s doing what she thinks she has to. You tried to get involved because it was the right thing to do.” Mocking the very idea at the same time he was trying to pitch it to you. He popped a small bite of that very pink meat into his mouth and continued. “I envy that about you, you know.” You rolled your eyes and shook your head. A mistake, as he continued. “It’s why I think you weren’t involved in that whole…” He waved his knife around in thought. “Kidnapping business. You care about what’s right. And the right way to do it.” Holding your gaze again, he grinned. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

You imagined he wanted you to admit you were here because you had no choice. No other viable option. He wanted you to admit that you were powerless and at his mercy. You also were still backed into a corner over not being able to admit the only reason you weren’t there to take him down the other day was because Jessica had kept you in the dark.

...or did he know that, too? He was here, after all, trying to paint her in a very bad light.

“Your silence is very poetic.” He took a bite out of a little cake and continued to bask in that aforementioned silence, glowing even, washing everything down with a sip of tea. What was the point in talking anymore. You just let it linger until he decided it was time to speak again. “I’m not going to tell you to, but I think in time you’ll realize all this fighting… it’s worthless. Eventually you will give up and come home to me when you’re ready.”

“Why?” The word escaped you in a hitch of a gasp. You’d lost track of your breathing again.

His smile was so very broad as he leaned in, tone dropping, candlelight bouncing like flames on the sides of his face and just underneath his chin. “I need you, puppy.” Looking at you- watching you- freezing you with words that did not belong to him. Not in that capacity. Not like that. “There’s no one in the world like you. At least not that I’ve seen- and not with our history. And when you’re ready, I’ll let you sit by my side again.”

The ice shattered the moment his hand touched over yours. Abruptly you stood, hitting the edge of the table, sending everything rocking sideways. Tea splashed all over him and all at once his entire demeanor changed as he growled. “Clean that up-” But once again, quickly, amended himself. “Never mind.” And then, as if he was in control of your reaction, too, he flicked his hand. “Go, if you’re going to go. I’m sure you’re late for something else or other. But I think you should think on it. Eventually you’ll realize I’m right.”

This was the moment. You could reach out and just… throttle him. Beat him to death. Choke him. Reach into his chest and-

“Try to think about all the unnecessary deaths that could be avoided if you’d just give in.” His smile was so sunny. So saccharine sweet.

Warning you. Warning you that he must have had a million fail safes. And that there was nothing you could do, otherwise you’d be responsible for so much more. Wasn’t that how you’d gotten into this mess in the first place? He must have known that, too.

Of course he did. The one thing Kilgrave knew for sure at this point. You were powerless against him.

---

How you got home you had no idea. Walked? Took a cab? Called a company car? It was a complete mystery. The sun had long since gone down. It was about ten at night. Which meant it had taken a little while. But you were a little too lost in a few other thoughts to see outside of yourself enough to know how you’d gotten from that cafe back to the Tower.

Maybe the point of all this, after all this time, hadn’t been to keep everyone away from Kilgrave. Maybe the lesson that you should have learned was the one you’d thought about when you were stuck with him in the first place. That you should have been grateful it was only you. That he only had you. So that his fascination wouldn’t wander- at least not to other super powered individuals.

Maybe you should have just really given up and not ran. And maybe you needed to give up now. Maybe you just needed to hand yourself over. He’d made it very clear he was about to move heaven and hell just to make that point to you. Why not cut to the chase? What else could you do? What were your other options?

As the elevator opened up on the penthouse floor, you saw Tony sitting on one of the couches, perking up immediately once he caught sight of you. “Honey-” Probably waiting up for you. Knowing your schedule wasn’t supposed to run that long but trusting that you’d been out doing something.

It was all too easy to just climb atop him and collapse in a heap over him, burying your face in his shoulder, eyes closing as his arms wrapped around you. Was this the life you could give up? For Tony’s safety- the thought flitted in. If Kilgrave had a mind to go after Tony, even with the knowledge that the suits would save you- what if he knew you knew that- he seemed to be doing a lot of cryptic hinting that he knew everything you knew.

So you had to assume he did. So you also had to assume he could hurt Tony if he wanted to. Burn Tony’s life to the ground, even. If he wanted to. But he’d stop wanting to. If you just gave yourself to him.

Tony allowed you to melt into him for as long as you wanted. Which seemed like a very long time. But eventually, when you found the strength, you sat half back, taking his face in your hands. Looking at him. Memorizing the way he gazed at you. The concerned warmth in his eyes. The love there. His hands moved at your sides, fingers spreading wide, keeping you steady.

“Did the team go on a retrieve mission in Slovakia?” This was stupid. And not what you needed to be talking about right now.

Even he seemed not to expect it, brows lifting straight up. “What? Uh-” Then knitting as he thought about it. But, finally, you felt a strange sense of relief as he shook his head. “No. Why? Are you okay?”

So Christine had fabricated it. ...or someone else had. Kilgrave had done your job for you. And expected you to thank him in return. How easy it had been for him, too, to just make her go away. Make all of it go away. Just a few simple sentences…

Leaning in as you still held him, eyes closing to keep the tears at bay, you pressed your forehead to his. “I love you, Tony.”

There was an uncertain pain that slipped from him to you. Clearly wading in your hurt but not knowing what to do about it. What it was about. How to help. “I love you, too. Talk to me.” Gentle encouragement.

So, with a shivering breath you did. “Kilgrave took me to a restaurant just now.”

There was something to be said of the steady, heavy and icy anger that choked the room so suddenly. It made it hard, but. You told him everything. And struggled not to tell him where you thought this was about to end. Because he was already holding on to you so tightly, so protectively it hurt.

And when all was said and done, once the silence of thought had fled, Tony offered what made the most sense. “He’s pitting you and Jones against each other.” This was what you thought, too. You wanted him to make it make sense for you. “You think she knows?”

...oh. Was that the reason she didn’t want you anywhere near her or her plans? Whether because he’d already played this number with her and she didn’t trust you- or because she did and she didn’t want to risk you? “I don’t know. She won’t answer my calls.”

Clear cut annoyance rebounded from him to you in a hard cycle. What he figured out next surprised you, “So he planted that bogus story on Christine to instill a sense of-” Waving his hand lightly around in thought. “-couldn’t be gratitude. This guy doesn’t care whether or not you like him.”

“Showing off.” You felt empty. “He was showing off. He made a potential mess for me and then cleaned it up, too.” Kilgrave was pointing out how easy it was to destroy your entire life if he wanted to. Just a few words. That was it. That was all he needed.

Suddenly reading the inevitability, his head turned up, looking at you instead of letting his thoughts connect off in the distance. The pieces were there. He was understanding a little too much. “We’re not finished. Not by a long shot. We’ll figure this out.” Somehow he knew, maybe just because he knew you. Maybe because of that string that tied you both tight- he knew how close you were to that edge.

He knew you were looking at where this ended. Not in a favorable light by any means. And he was suddenly begging you, with that look in his eyes, his hand gripping your shoulder and a tremendous pain pulsing from his heart to yours-

Don’t give up.

It was too much to ask that you be strong anymore. And because it was him… You let go of the idea. And just barely held on to him while he tried to soothe you through sobs so intense you could barely breathe.

---

The two of you spent the entire next day in exhausted rawness. He seemed unable to leave your side. Which made it lucky that you had no strength to move. Hours slipped by. Just holding on to each other. A sunrise came. And a sunset went.

Eventually he won out as the stronger of the two of you when he got up to order some food. It would help, eating, probably. Even though you already knew you had no appetite. You’d have to suffer through it for him. But just as he’d started giving a dinner order to Happy, your phone rang.

Lo and behold.

Jessica Jones. Who wasted no time as soon as you picked up the line. “I need you to come down to my office. Now.”

Tony had stopped talking. Just watching you. Waiting for news of the next bad thing.

A feeling that seemed to soak your entire lives.

#Tony Stark #Tony Stark x Reader #INY Chapter One Hundred Thirty Eight #Jessica Jones Spoilers

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gumnut-logic · 4 years

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Untitled 5

I am sooo tired, this is pretty much me writing in my sleep. Zombie Nutty! I hope you enjoy it anyway ::falls on face and starts snoring::

From here.

-o-o-o-

“A FALLING ELEVATOR?!”

The entirety of the Auckland City Hospital Emergency waiting room jumped at Scott’s exclamation. Every eye in the room landed on the tired, uniformed operative and Gordon wanted nothing more than to hide his big brother away from the spotlight.

But that would be after Gordon processed this new bit of information.

They had commandeered the far corner of the room, all three in their uniforms. Scott had been pacing like a man possessed from the moment they delivered their now unconscious brother into the hands of the doctors. The flight out had been hair raising, despite its brevity.

Virgil was obviously bleeding internally. He they had had to keep him on his side the entire way, fearing he might choke on his own blood. He’d been conscious most of the way, but as they landed, his vitals had taken a dive and they’d lost him to his body’s needs.

They handed him over as fast and professionally as possible, and apart from a report to hospital administration, they had been left to themselves.

They chose to ignore the holoprojectors showing the news and their wonderful shots of Virgil’s ‘bird parked on the green across the road. The voices of projected journalists speculating about what was going on was like the whine of mosquitoes in their ears.

John had been assigned to work out what the hell had actually happened to Virgil to injure him this badly.

Alan was in the naughty corner for not noting the injuries during the mission. His little brother could not come up with a reason for Virgil’s condition and was consequently fretting. Gordon would have to do some damage control sooner rather than later.

But first...

“Scott, keep it down!” It was hissed through his teeth. “What did John find out?”

“Chief McCready claims he was hit by a falling elevator.” The fury in Scott’s tone was only echoed by Gordon’s shock.

“What?!”

Again all the eyes in the room landed on the three Tracy boys.

“Apparently, they were climbing an empty elevator shaft when one of the cars fell from who knows how high. Virgil took the impact with his suit and saved the climbing party.”

The first question that came to mind was if the exo-suit could take it, but the answer was as obvious as the reason why they were standing in this damned room being stared at.

Gordon turned to Alan to find his little brother staring up at them in horror. “A falling elevator?”

Scott straightened. “Did you know about this?”

“NO! God, no!” Alan shot to his feet just as a nurse hurried over.

“I’m sorry, sirs, but could you please keep it down?” It was obvious she knew who they were and hated to ask the question.

Gordon watched Scott bite back a snarly answer and swallow it. He cleared his throat as his commander facade slid into place. “My apologies, ma’am. Is there anywhere we could have a private conversation?”

The nurse hesitated, but her eyes didn’t fail to track over Scott’s IR logo. A weak smile. “I will see what I can do.”

She disappeared for a short while during which Scott glared at Alan. Gordon had the urge to step between the two of them. This wasn’t Alan’s fault and Scott was just a ball of terrified worry prone to striking out.

The nurse returned and led them down a corridor to what appeared to be a small meeting room. “You are welcome to wait here. The staff have been advised of your location and will know where to find you.” A pause and a hesitant expression. “I’m sorry your brother has been injured. I saw what you did in London. Simply amazing.” Another worried pause, and when Scott didn’t react she added a couple more words. “Thank you for everything. I hope he recovers well.” And embarrassed, she hurried out of the room.

Gordon stared after her.

“I didn’t know he had been hurt. He seemed fine!” Alan had tears in his eyes. “If I had the smallest of indications...but he was fine! Kept going on about his ‘bird and how he was going to paint me with three ears and giant pimples. He was fine!”

Gordon reached out and grabbed at Alan drawing him into a hug. “It’s okay. We know you would have helped him if you knew.” He glared at his older brother. “Don’t we Scott.”

“Shit.” Scott dragged his hands across his face and into his hair before throwing himself into a chair. “Sorry, Alan. Virgil just...goddamnit, I’m going to kill him.”

The fist that hit the table top rattled every chair in the room.

Gordon didn’t bother asking his brother to calm down. It would be a waste of time and likely ignite him further. Instead Gordon dragged his little brother over to a chair and sat him there, taking a seat beside him.

He tapped his comms. “Johnny? You hacked the hospital network yet?”

“Of course.”

“Any news?”

“I would have told you if there was. He’s still in surgery.”

John’s tone was terse. Apparently, a brother nearly getting himself killed by elevator riled everyone. “Sorry, John. Can you tell us what exactly happened?”

“Not entirely, but we definitely have a clearer picture. I’ve been piecing together Virgil’s tracking data, Two’s sensor report, Five’s data and Chief McCready’s readings. I have the sequence of events and I have to say that Virgil is lucky to be alive. How he walked away from the collision, much less completed the mission and flew home is beyond my understanding.”

“He’s one stubborn assed son of a bitch?”

“Language, Gordon, and I don’t appreciate you calling our mother a bitch.” John’s tone was ever so serious.

Gordon rolled his eyes. “Okay, so he is one tough mother-“

“Gordon!” This time it was Scott who cut him off and glared at him enough to remove a layer of skin.

But at least Scott wasn’t targeting Alan any more.

A frown. “Johnny, did you hack the London Fire Department?”

“Of course.” It was said with the whole ‘well, derrr’ inflection on his space brother’s part. “I’m sending you a situation recreation, courtesy of Eos.”

Scott’s wrist projector flared into life and the three of them had the privilege of watching four stick figures climb a holographic elevator shaft and then get pummelled by a falling car.

Gordon found himself swallowing bile.

“And you saw no indication of this event, Alan?” Scott’s tone was cool but non-critical.

“No! Thunderbird Two was caught in the explosion. I was busy trying to save his ‘bird.”

Scott sagged where he sat. “I can’t believe this.” He dropped his face into his hands.

Gordon stepped away from Alan, approached his big brother and crouched down beside him. “Hey, he’s going to be okay. He’s Virgil, and as I said he is one tough mother-“

“Gordon!” This time his name came out in triplicate, John joining in from oh so far away.

“Hey, I’m not wrong here, you know Virgil knows how to kick ass and he will get through this. He will.”

Scott was staring into nothing. His voice parched. “He better.” An indrawn breath.

“He has to.”

-o-o-o-

Part Six

#thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds #virgil tracy #thunderbirds fanfiction #scott tracy #gordon tracy #john tracy #alan tracy

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goingoverthegardenwall · 5 years

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Chapter 8: Babes in the Wood

In this last hurrah of explicit homages to animation of the past, the most obvious discussion point is Merrie Melodies and its ilk: Babes in the Wood is essentially a full-episode reference to the bouncing musical shorts of yore, where everything can sing’n’dance and the villain is a blustery bozo who’s defeated with a sight gag. If we expand to children’s entertainment in general, as we did with Greg’s Beatrix Potter episode, then The Wizard of Oz is our logical next step: the song welcoming him to Cloud City owes everything to Dorothy’s introduction to Munchkinland, complete with the fact that our hero has just entered a dream.

And look, there’s nothing wrong with talking about the obvious. But as we near the end, I think it’s a little more interesting to instead explore the very beginning. So let’s go back to a newspaper cartoonist in New York—the one who inspired fellow New York newspaper cartoonist John Randolph Bray to become an animator, which in turn led fellow New York newspaper cartoonist Max Fleischer to become an animator, because it turns out that just like the birth of superhero comics a few decades later, the birth of American animation hinged on print artists who dreamed big in the city that never sleeps.

A boy named Zenas was born in Michigan on September 26, 1871. Or maybe he was born there in 1869. Or maybe he was born in Canada in 1867. He said one thing, and a biographer said another, and census data says another, and I wasn’t there. It’s similarly unclear when or why he started going by his middle name, but by the time he took his first job at age 21 (or 19 or 17) as a billboard and poster artist in Chicago, he was calling himself Winsor McCay. They sure did know how to name ‘em in the 19th century.

McCay began his newspaper career as a freelancer, but moved to New York in 1903 to work for the New York Herald, where he wrote a variety of comics before hitting it big with Little Sammy Sneeze. McCay’s art was always brilliant, but his gag work was formulaic to a fault: the joke for Sammy Sneeze was always the same, he would sneeze and ruin everything right before the last panel. That devotion to formula would continue in his second big comic Dream of the Rarebit Fiend, where a fantastical events would occur for ever-changing characters before the lead woke up in the last panel, revealing it was a dream.

That second formula was the basis of McCay’s masterpiece. Already a successful cartoonist in the two short years since he’d moved to New York, his fame skyrocketed with Little Nemo in Slumberland, which used the same “wake up at the end” formula but with recurring characters and a running story. He toyed with the medium like none had before, playing with panel arrangement and innovating the portrayal of motion in comics, and his art skills only improved with this full-color strip. His success led to the vaudeville circuit, where he turned the act of drawing into a performance, and this combination of stage entertainment and his continuing comic work led him to seek new ways to dazzle the crowds.

By 1910, the earliest animated shorts had already started to emerge, and McCay was inspired by pioneers like James Stuart Blackton and Émile Cohl to try animating the characters of Little Nemo. Under Blackton’s direction, McCay singlehandedly drew around four thousand fully colored frames to produce his first animated cartoon, presented at the tail end of a filmed short about said cartoon in 1911. As mentioned, animated shorts were already a thing. But none of them looked anything like this. (If you’re concerned that there might be racist caricatures in it, don’t worry, there definitely are, McCay had a lot of strengths but overcoming garbage prejudices was not one of them).

The sheer quality of his work, continuing with the legendary Gertie the Dinosaur, directly led to the invention of the rotoscope as a means to mass-produce cartoons of similar finesse. The influence of Winsor McCay over animation as we know it is hard to overstate (and let’s stress again that this was his side gig, and he was just as influential over comic art): as crazy as it sounds, it’s safe to say that Over the Garden Wall would not exist if not for a story about the whimsical adventures of a little boy who traveled across a land of dreams from his bed.

“Where’s Greg, Wirt?”

Babes in the Wood is delightful and goofy and lighthearted exactly once.

In the same way our fourth-to-last episode mirrored our fourth, this third-to-last episode mirrors our third: Chapters 4 and 7 focus on Wirt, but 3 and 8 are Greg’s. It’s not simply a matter of who the main character is, but what these episodes are about: Greg’s love of fun clashing with his drive to help others. Both times he's spurred by the desire to help others to go off on his own, both times he gets distracted by whimsical wonders involving funny animals and physical humor, and both times he ends up deciding to help out anyway. But despite switching his goal from making the whole world a better place to just helping his brother, the stakes are actually far higher now, so the fun has to be that much more fun if we want the full horror of the ending to sink in.

There’s no tonal shift in the series that’s more devastating than Greg falling prey to the Beast after nearly ten minutes of goofiness in Cloud City. It turns a moment of welcome relief from the growing tension of Wirt’s despair into a dagger in the heart, and the knife is twisted when we learn in our next episode what the Unknown truly is.

That despair is evident well before Wirt explicitly gives up. We get our second opening in a row featuring Beatrice in a hopeless search, and things aren’t much better for the boys. All sense of progression from the first episode feels lost, with Wirt reverting to mumbling poetry and Greg reverting to Rock Facts. Their boat is an outhouse and Greg uses a guitar as an oar, because (if you’ll pardon my French) they’re up shit creek without a paddle. When they land, Greg’s victorious bugle is a ridiculous sign of hope, but he soon drops it in the same way he abandons the guitar: in Schooltown Follies he takes instruments to help others, but this time he loses them.

Wirt’s frustration with Greg threatened to boil over in The Ringing of the Bell, only to be cooled when the Woodsman interrupts them. This time there’s no such interruption, so after Greg’s total failure to read the room gets to be too much, his brother finally snaps. It crucially isn’t entirely unjustified, as Greg’s antics might be funny to us but have not been appreciated by Wirt, and despite Greg’s age excusing his lack of emotional intelligence, it’s still gotta be frustrating for a teen to deal with that behavior nonstop. And Wirt’s “tirade” reflects his depression, because he doesn’t even seem that angry: he doesn’t shout or rave, he’s just openly irritated as he argues that they’ll be lost forever. This is apathy and fatigue, because he’s lost the energy to be furious.

But the most chilling part of the exchange isn’t Wirt cruelly blaming Greg for their mess, or abandoning their search. It’s when, after Wirt asks if they can give up, Greg responds with a chipper “You can do anything if you set your mind to it!”, a sentiment that the Beast will fiendishly repeat verbatim while tricking Greg. It’s such a generic positive expression that Greg hangs a lampshade on it, but it shows the darker side of the power our minds have over our well-being. Sure, it’s a great lesson that focus and dedication can help us achieve our dreams, but if we use that focus and dedication towards self-destructive behavior, there’s no limit to how badly we can hurt ourselves.

After a goofy sort of prayer (incorporating lines from the classic Trick or Treat poem, which will become super relevant an episode from now), Greg is whisked away by so-creepy-it’s-funny cherubim to the score of a so-overwrought-it’s-funny song. His flight aboard the bed/cart pulled by a donkey across the sky feels legitimately magical, but we soon switch to the surreal world of 1930′s songs and physics.

Cloud City is such a stark contrast to the tone of the episode so far that it instantly feels delightful, and such a stark contrast to the tone of the entire series that it lends a special sort of wonder to Greg’s dreamland. References to old cartoons are everywhere in Over the Garden Wall, and before we delve into the tension of our last two episodes, we get one last gigantic celebration of the past with a sequence straight from the golden age of animation.

The transition alone is enough to make this scene hilarious, but the actual jokes help quite a bit: Greg’s growing impatience with the numerous Wizard of Oz reception committees is my favorite gag of the night. Everything is cute to the point of being cloying, including our three angels that look and sound an awful lot like Greg, and the parade that he leads seems like such a fun and peaceful affair after so much time wandering alone. It’s easy to get as roped into it as Greg when we first watch it. But considering the events of our next episode, the scene destroys me every time I rewatch it, because there’s a very specific place Greg is being welcomed to.

Babes in the Wood gets a lot less cute when it becomes clear that it’s a welcoming committee for a dying child. Greg and Wirt are drowning, and this is the episode where the shock wears off and the cold sets in and the younger and weaker of the two looks into a bright light. Greg’s near-death experience is hammered in when we get to The Unknown, but for now it’s being rationalized in a way that brings him comfort.

The cold is Greg’s enemy, and the same childish tone is used to show that he’s willing to fight for his life: thus, the North Wind segment is ironically more hopeful to me than the parade’s warm welcome of death. This third song sounds enough like a Randy Newman number that I’m honestly still convinced it’s an uncredited Randy Newman performance, and it jolts us back to reality for a moment as we see the effect this bitter wind has on our babes in the woods. The boys are starting to freeze, and we again see Beatrice searching for them, getting so close before an owl that looks remarkably like the one we saw in our first episode scares her off. The episode doesn’t want to lose us completely to the sky, and this grounding helps keep the stakes clear as we complete Greg’s dream.

The Popeye-esque battle between Greg and Ol’ Windbag is a hoot, between the latter’s grumbling anger and the former rolling up his sleeve to get back into the brawl. Its conclusion is hidden from us, so we have no idea how Greg gets him in a bottle, but that fits right in with the weird logic of this throwback and allows us to meet the Queen of the Clouds.

I ought to bring up the theory that everything we see here is an illusion created by the Beast, even though I don’t really subscribe to it myself. The most obvious “hint” is that this sequence directly leads to Greg deciding to join the Beast with an off-screen promise, but we also have the old man in the welcoming march wearing an outfit just like Wirt’s and holding a lantern, perhaps a reference to the Beast’s intended fate for Greg’s brother. Plus there’s lines in the songs that seem like they’re luring Greg in, especially the assurance that the wonders of Cloud City “ain’t gonna lie,” which sounds a lot like what a liar would say. Both the Queen of the Clouds and the Beast pointedly call him Gregory instead of Greg, but so does Old Lady Mrs. Daniels (and Wirt when introducing him in Songs of the Dark Lantern).

While it’s a neat enough idea, I think the Queen of Clouds is pretty clearly on Greg’s side for real: she seems upset at his fate in a way that doesn’t make much sense for an ally of the Beast. I also think it’s more meaningful for Greg to truly have the choice between happiness and responsibility, between the possible peace of rest and the definite struggle of life, and for him to choose the latter right as his brother is giving in. But I’ve got no beef with folks whose interpretation of the show is enhanced by this theory, so believe what you want to believe about this ambiguous situation.

Either way, we cut back to Wirt instead of Greg when the dream ends, and he’s still annoyed as he’s trying to sleep. Greg’s strange new seriousness is already cause for concern, and asking Wirt to take care of the frog is even more alarming, but even that doesn’t compare the horror of realizing where he’s actually going. Or rather, with whom.

This is another reason why I think the Queen is an ally: while it’s obviously dangerous for Greg to go with the Beast, that’s what it takes for Wirt to snap out of his funk. It’s a hell of a gambit, but as soon as he starts to awaken, he’s immediately concerned for Greg’s safety despite whatever anger or resentment he had, sparing no time or thought to the branches creeping over him as he runs after his brother.

The quiet distortion as we follow his frantic search is soon met by the Beast’s song, but even as he blames himself for Greg’s plight, Wirt is no longer content to wallow in despair. Because it turns out that these brothers are more similar than they seem, and neither is truly capable of letting the other suffer. In the folk tale for which this episode is named, two children abandoned in the woods eventually die and are covered in leaves by small birds (with some versions seeing them enter heaven), but as we’ll see in our next episode, this isn’t a folk tale.

The thrumming noise intensifies as Wirt slips on the ice, then we add visual distortion as he plummets into the freezing water. He’s saved, but this isn’t water that sees him reborn: the distortion finally breaks as Beatrice asks the episode’s terrible question, and we’re left in the cold.

Every even-numbered episode of Over the Garden Wall, perhaps by virtue of airing twice per night, ends in a mood-setting cliffhanger that grows tenser and tenser with every iteration (or at least it does until the end). First we got a leaf symbolically caught in a fence, then the Beast’s introduction, then the fallout of Adelaide, and now the capture of Greg. Getting trapped has always been a threat for these roving heroes, but the greatest threat of all, that of Wirt trapping himself, has been handled. Things look bleaker than they ever have, but despite the glee of Greg’s dream contrasting with the harshness of reality, Wirt’s ability to climb out of the pit of despair keeps hope alive: even in absence, Greg’s influence looms large.

Rock Factsheet

Dinosaurs had big ears, but everyone forgot because dinosaur ears don’t have bones.

Where have we come, and where shall we end?

Most of these were mentioned in the main analysis, but it’s great that we hear Wirt’s description of Into the Unknown right before the episode itself shows us what happened.

#babes in the wood #over the garden wall #otgw #steven universally #winsor mccay #little nemo in slumberland

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breezy-cheezy · 5 years

Text

Mmmmmkay I have to rant about Nier: Automata for a bit; I accidentally triggered the end of the game (playthrough 2, ending B) last night and stayed up till 2:00 trying to finish the stupid “not allowed to save” phase. But y’aLL IT’S SO GOOD??????? AND 3RD PLAYTHROUGH ISN’T ANOTHER RE-RUN OF THE SAME STORY WE GET MORE STORY AAAAAAAAA

(more under the cut because there is ALOT for those who care;;;;;)

- OK SO THE MUSIC IS AMAZING??? I love LOVE that the music dynamics build in instruments and intensity as you progress towards danger/plot, but also softens again for quieter moments and just...musical storytelling is so sooooo my jam I love it. Also that the music goes 8 bit when 9S hacks stuff, it’s actually kinda cute X’D

- ON THE SUBJECT of 9S being able to hack into enemies and you getting to play that as a little teeny ship shooting down viruses and barriers and whatnot. Genius???? That added SO MUCG to the story on the second playthrough as 9S. Particularly discovering the fact that all of humanity?? Is actually extinct?? ...even BEFORE the aliens/machines attacked earth?? WH A T?????? WHAT THE HECK ARE ANDROIDS FIGHTING FOR THEN????? *every time an android salutes and says “glory to mankind” now* GLORY MY FOOT THEY ALL DEAD MOVE ON--

- I realize it probably has alot to do with the lore of previous nier games and I’ll probably have to trawl through Wiki pages soon here. Emil himself really broke my heart aaaaaah baby...his side quest is so sad. I also looked at arts and he was a really cute kid?? Before he was turned int the freaky moon skeleton thing...?? Oh my goodness......

- The secret lunar tear flower room is gorgeous. I just sat there for awhile to soak it all in...the music is so nostalgic and I’ve never heard that song bfore how do y’all DO THAT--

- Emil’s shop is pretty cute. He just drives around the ruins and sells stuff if you shoot him and he’ll stop X’’’D It did ruin alot of serious moments tho. *Engels, talking about how he’d sinned for killing so many androids and choosing death--* “S-A-L-E SAAAALLLEEE~~!! EVERY SALE’S A WIIIINNNNNN~~~~!!!! LALALaaaaaa~~~...” Me: *facepalm*

- ...I just realized the little tune he sings is a cheerful rendition of the music in the flower room. H E C K

- ANYWAY. Onto the actual game. I really really enjoyed playing as 9S for obvious reasons (bABY) but it really did add so soooo much to the pretty much surface level story when you first play as 2B. Which sums them up pretty well...2B, Battle unit 2, pushes on relentlessly, avoids thinking too hard about things and what she’s doing because oh dear, EMOTION might get in the way...9S, Scanner unit 9, on the other hand, cannot stop his curiosity. He asks questions, he sticks his nose in way further than he should to some dangerous stuff. I think he realized Machines were sentient and had feelings long before 2B, but was in denial for a good while. You learn so much more about what you’re fighting as 9S, because he scans. He observes, searches, discovers. Heck, some hacking caused him to experience empathy for the poor things, to his horror...

- Actually, there are alot of scenes where either 2B or 9S questions why a machine they’re killing is screaming for help, of crying for lost family, or loudly proclaiming loyalty to a king they’ll give their lives for...they stop for a moment, but the other quickly jumps in and reminds them that it’s just imitation. It’s not real, it’s fake, machines can’t feel, yadda yadda...it was odd to me they kept switching off on reminding, but...I think they both know, deep down, what they’re doing. But denial. Because if machines DO have feelings, if they are sentient...what does that mean for all they’ve killed...? Just...hoo BOY the moral dellimas in this game?? Scary good. The quests get that across alot.

- I don’t like the theme of hopelessness in most of the side quests?? I do see many of them as cautionary tales though. We watch many characters lose hope and the will to live after their thing/person they’re living FOR is gone. It makes me worry alot about 2B, who is a soldier through and through. 9S actually does have hopes and dreams for things outside of the war, which I love ;7; they definitely lean on each other alot emotionally on this respect though...I don’t know quite what to make of the themes of the game this far in yet;;;;

- The love between 9S and 2B is of course my favorite thing. Familial, romantic, idk. I, being me, see it as more platonic, “You’re my rock in this storm” only friend/sister/brother vibe, but as more of a fan of platonic relationships, that is what I tend to do. But 9s following 2B around like a lost puppy and trying to do all he can to help and do his job but also getting bored with said job and trying to make the most of things, asking all the “why” questions, 2B acting irritated but also always keeps him close and makes sure he’s safe....going ballistic when someone hurts her boy ;;v;; I love...2 kids. Their operators and pods are such fun dynamics too~~

- As far as endings A and B...DANG. It hit worse because you get backstory on the giant ocean machine (that 9S just hit with a giant missle, which he also had to ride to keep it on the right path...DX NO SELF PRESERVATION) he just...wanted his mama......;;A;;

- Also it’s not fair. 9S is so injured by that missle attack, then I guess Adam finds him and is like “HM. *sticks the lil boy impaled on a wall* Perfect. *proceeds to emotionally and mentally torture said child*“ like YO ADAM THAT’S NOT HOW YOU DO THINGS. Then 2B proceeds to kick down walls for her boy and kills Adam and walks off carrying 9S bridal style into the sunset. Lovely. I have a comic idea for this part, lol.

- Oh I don’t like Adan very much, he is pretty tho?? There was alot of blood though...how do machines bleed?? How do the androids bleed?? What??? I question this alot.

- HHHHHHH THE BECOME AS GODS CHAPTER SCARED ME I DON’T EVER WANNA DO THAT AGAIN DANG SUICIDAL ROBOTS SCARED ME SO BAD

- Fighting Eve was...annoying but still heartbreaking. He misses his brother so much....even though Adam is a butthead and couldn’t care less he left his little brother behind DX just everything about that fight was Tragic. Also Eve developing more self awareness and realizing “Eve” is a girl’s name and being a bit miffed LOL that’s what y’all get when your first book is the bible kiddos...I realize they’re technically like what? 2 weeks old still???

- The ENDING. From 9S’s perspective is especially scary....the corruption transforming him, 2B coming in to kill him to stop the pain, he BEGGED her to, just....hhhhhhh babies ;;A;; 2B’s soft broken crying over him as she’s forced to strangle her only friend to death just aaaaaAAAAAAAA I DIE ;;;;;;;;~;;;;;;;;;

- I was actually able to cry over it this time coz. It was 2 am. No parent awkwardly watching over my shoulder. Because the pose for this scene is...........super awkward..........like......really........their clothes are super torn up and uh. The first time I was just hoping my parents wouldn’t mistake it for a sex scene or something hhhhhghhhhh;;;;;; I really really REALLY wish the pose was different, the game does need to give the fanservice a rest, at LEAST for a scene this serious DX I’m able to ignore it but when someone else is watching I don’t wanna have to explain;;;;

- That IS a big gripe I have with the game. The fanservice. Just. Why. How is 2B’s outfit practical?? Self destruct mode???? REALLY???? Get this girl battle shorts or something please.....I guess if I looked at it more as a ballet outfit?? I might make some edits when I draw her because GEEZ.

- 9S gets some of this too. Self destruct mode, his shorts are blown off???? WHAT THE HECK???? Welp, never using that again. also why is he the only yorha boy android??????????? X’’’’D They never explain that!!

- BACK TO ENDING STUFF why were there random data hologram girls standing there, watching 2B strangle 9S?? Just...silently there...they weren’t there in the first playthrough?? I’ve seen them a couple times but they’re NEVER mentioned?? WHAT ARE THEY-- is it a glitch?? Wha--

- Teeny 9S being able to dump his consciousness into a giant machine robot guy and cradling 2B in his hand ;;~;; he’s fine y’all I’m so GLAD (I wanna draw something for this scene.... I wanna draw alot of things)

- I love Pascal. He should adopt all the sad people to his happy peace village. He already started that...what a good egg.

- The accessories option is lovely. I’ve been running around with 9S with a blue bow in his hair forever now ;7; replaced with the flower in his hair because BOYS AND FLOWERS I LOVE but I think I might give the flower to 2B because she’d look lovely with it and....I miss the blue bow X’D

- Also the AMOUNT of things this could line up with a KH universe....as far as how androids work, hearts (black boxes), memories making you...you, being able to transfer “hearts” to new bodies when the old is destroyed, POWER OF LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP...there’s alot. I dunno what to do with this info...

Anyway, I have alOT of thoughts and feelings on this game, it’s like...a very cool book. I’ve had trouble putting down. These aren’t even all of them but idk who I can actually rant to so here it is for the Void

I’m so interested to see where it goes!

#breezy babbles #ALOT #idk where else to put this so here #for the void #this probably absolutely makes no sense I'm so sorry #nier: automata #nier #meta #????kinda #I loooove love love 9S with all my heart and soul #he's also voiced by Mob's english voice actor which is SO MUCH CUTER #they need to hang out #I love 2B so much too #their operators are cute #pascal is cute #everyone is cute

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migleefulmoments · 6 years

Note

Can you make sense of the gibberish ajw is ranting about Ben and the song Darren sang? Darren sang his friends song, its nice, not some secret message to the CCers! Fucking psychos.

Watching her- and her cohorts- lose their collective shit over Darren’s comments about Ben is rich entertainment because literally nothing he said was inconsistent with previous statements or what was obvious if you were just seeing pics of Darren, Mia and Ben by following D-CrissNews.

Let’s break it all down:

First the HELP sweater which ajw brought up in this post:

And Tonight, on the final night of LMDC, D threw some series shade singing a song by his platonic roomie Ben/ny. Oh these lyrics, I’d say he is singing to someone very specific while wearing this Help Sweater

(First I have to bring up the fact that breaking up Be/nny is beyond the usual level of stupidity. His name isn’t Benny-nobody will Google his as “Benny” and stumble on their vial blogs or whatever ridiculous rationale they give for do/ing thi/s). The idea that someone as well connected and well liked as Darren Criss would need to wear a “HELP” graphic on his shirt in order to get aid is.. well pat/hetic....bi/zarre and ridicul/ous. If Darren’s life was so pathetic that he had to resort to sending T-shirt-graphic smoke signals into the world in hopes that random strangers would send help... but remember- THE Contract is unbreakable, unreachable, a NIIIGGGHHHTTTMMMMAAARRRE- so all the “HELP” signal could possibly do is bring attention to his private struggles. Suddenly the entire world would know that what a spineless dwerp that Darren is; he can't even manage to end a contract with a show that has been over for 4 years and he keeps signing contracts for PROMOTION with MIa.

First of all, he is super private- he even mentions that again during this monologue- he isn’t going to share a HELP signal this way. He know Obama for God’s sake..and Ryan Murphy, and just about everyone in LA. I’m sure he knows a lawyer or two. Second, he’s worn the sweater before and it clearly didn’t bring help so why the hell would he keep wearing it for that reason. Oh, wait, I know... maybe Ryan Murphy saw it and that is why he has taken on Darren as his muse and signed another alleged contract with him because THIS, THIS is the time he is going to set Darren free.

Darren pointed out for everyone too obtuse to get the reference (***cough CCers cough****) he wore the Beatles graphic because HE IS IN ENGLAND and at the end of the day, he’s always just a fanboy.

Darren goes on to talk about Ben: “...I don’t talk about- I don’t post a lot of stuff about my life on the internet but he has been a very dear friend of mine for many, many years, just really close to the fam...he became one of my closets friends and even lived in my house for many years”.

@ajw’s panties twisted in delight when he said that because she glopped on to the idea that Ben and Mia lived together under Darren’s nose or while Darren’s was with Chris a long time ago. The most obvious point is that Darren is speaking in reverence and sharing a story he admits is something he normally doesn’t share easily. If Ben was Mia’s boy-toy, WHY would Darren talk about him at all? How could he be one of Darren’s closet friends? If Mia is as ever as CCers pretend she is, how could Darren be BFFs with Ben? He would HATE Ben and what he represented..unless he likes being a cuck.

But conspiracy theory “fact finding” isn’t about what is logical or even makes sense when looked at from a different angle. It is about finding a connection and running with it and illuminate CrissColfer confirmed.

I cannot imagine how Darren, playing Ben’s song in Birmingham is “shade”...maybe the tinhatters need to look up the meaning of “shade”. Choosing Ben’s song was done to honor Ben, and we know that because he talked about it before he started singing!

The CCers published the lyrics:

Beauty is in the eyeBeauty is in the eyeThankyou for this kissIt’s all I really wantedIf you believe that darlingThen you’d better runThankyou for this kissThankyou for this kissSo beauty is in the eye of the beholderIf you believe thatDarling I’m looking at youIf you believe thatDarling I’m looking at youGo on believing thatBut darling you’d better runYou’ll never be a cover girlJust facing factsYour face isn’t rightBut I’ll never want another girlNow I’ve seen you in this lightThankyou for this kissThankyou for this kissThankyou for this kissIt’s all I really wantedIf you believe that darlingYou’d better runIf you believe that darlingThen you’d better run, runCause you’ll never be a cover girlJust facing factsYour face isn’t rightBut I’ll never wantNever want a cover girlNow I’ve seen you in this lightYour never be a cover girlJust facing factsYour face isn’t rightBut I’ll never want, never needA cover girlNow I’ve seen you in this lightI’ll never be, never be a gentlemanJust facing factsMy face isn’t rightAnd you’ll never want, never wantA gentlemanNow you’ve seen me in that lightI’ll never be a gentlemanJust facing factsMy face isn’t rightYou’ll never want a gentlemanWhen you see me in this light

Frankly, the lyrics are stupid AF. But cheeky and ultimately it is a song about never wanting anyone else. Not sure how that is shade.

Finally, Ajw losing her shit over Darren repeating that Ben lived in his house for many years.

Hey stans, Be/nny lived in D’s house for “many, many years” are you listening? That is many, many not a man who just crashed there.

Glorious shade as D signs his good, good friend’s song. It is a little cheeky:)

Um...he already told us this...and none of us cared. Whether Darren had a friend crash when they are in town or not is irrelevant to me. My husband has a crash pad in Memphis he shares with 4 fellow pilots. One guy ones it. Who cares. First of all, Ben is rarely in LA for more than a few day- follow his IG...I have and he is rarely around. I suspect he crashed in their guest room when he was in town because who wouldn't rather stay at Darren’s and make music and have meals with friends rather than stay in another hotel room? But it isn’t our business anyway. Hell, Darren and Ben might be the lovers..or the are all together as a throuple. Who cares? Ajw wants us to get so pissed over this and the Stan’s just don’t care. I trust Darren is making decisions that fit his family and he’s happy. I have seen nothing in his demeanor or mood that suggest otherwise.

But she can’t stop herself. She is literally bouncing in her chair, maniacally typing about Ben and Mia and Darren living in a tree.

You know what the best part about B is. D is totally free to chat about his platonic roomie. Because M&B created this monster all on their own by shoving their relationship and living situation in fans’ faces for years as they are so narcissistic they thought they could get away with it. All the while laughing at the stans. And at d who was powerless to do anything about it.

And as a result of their idiocy, d has free reign to shade the biggest obstacle in the m/iarren narrative. The 30something year old, successful, wealthy musician that lived in his house for many, many, years.

He’s like fam, sleeping in the family bed with D’s “fiancée.”

Soooo she believes that if Darren was powerless; being played by Mia and Ben he would not only share stories of that with the world but would call Ben "one of my best friends” and “part of the fam”? Yes, because anyone who is fucked over by another human being- or two-cannot wait to share that with the world...total strangers. A celebrity who just won a major award and is doing lots of press can’t wait to present himself to the world as a spineless wuss being cucked by Mia and Ben...that make sense.

It’s funny how obsessed ajw is with Mia “laughing at (fill in the blank_” when in fact everybody is laughing at the tihatters and their convoluted, ridiculous, nonsensical theories. Conspiracy theories are nonsense because they use 3rd hand data to draw conclusions and that isn’t how you get accurate information. It is always going to be laughable bullshit. Always.

The problem with the tinhatters- and in particular Ajw who fabricated the entire Ben/Mia bullshit- is that she wants to be right more than she wants Darren to be happy or to be presented to the world as the person he really is. She wants to be right so bad she will keep screaming “booyah to the stans, Ben + Mia sitting in a tree KISSING” even when her only explanation for that would be that Darren is so weak he can’t keep his own house in order and is being ordered to do whatever evil Mia wants him to do...including being such a cuckhold that he has to pretend he is engaged to HER AND tell the world her boyfriend is his closest friend. That is A #1 fucked up. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy...or ajw...or any tinhatter

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verdigrisprowl · 5 years

Text

Donuts and Viruses

Prowl visits Tarantulas, partially to socialize and partially to see about moving some projects forward. The project they end up discussing is a defensive virus, meant to protect potential victims from being assaulted by mnemosurgeons. By the end, Prowl promises to get Tarantulas the brain modules of some deceased mnemosurgeons to use for research.

Prowl and Tarantulas also agree to set up space bridge drop boxes in their homes to send each other stuff.

Tarantulas

Visits from Prowl had always been a treat for Tarantulas, but these days they were particularly so. For one, visits happened far more frequently than they had millennia ago, and more importantly, this time the visit had also been preceded by a literal treat. He suspected the donuts were from Prowl himself, but he wasn’t totally sure, so…

“That was you, was it not?” Arms wrapped around arms wrapped around arms, all in greeting. “The donuts, that is. If it was, you have an incredibly accurate memory, but unfortunately so, hyeh.”

Prowl

That was. So many arms. He only had two to offer in return, but offer them he did. "They were me, yes. Er—accurate?"

He was pleased that Tarantulas had found them (and, Prowl hoped, consumed them). He hadn't wanted to interrupt Tarantulas's work with them, but, well—Prowl worried, from time to time, about whether he was remembering to refuel himself properly. His sleep schedule was erratic enough, Prowl doubted his other self-maintenance habits were much better.

Tarantulas

Thank goodness. Now Tarantulas didn't have to worry about delayed-onset poisoning via donut intruder anymore.

"Accurate - well, accurately positioned, according to where the cabinet was the day before." A bit of snickering, and Tarantulas let Prowl go. "The donuts didn't fall terribly far though, they were only slightly jostled. It didn't affect the taste, anyhow." A brief smooch of mandibles.

Prowl

"Ah. Yes." Right, most people didn't just... casually memorize the positions of everything they saw.

Prowl held on a moment longer. To even out the disparity in hug quantity due to his lower number of hugging limbs.

Okay. Okay, letting g—smooch—letting go. "I would have put them on the counter on the other side of the room, but I was worried there might be an experiment running on it." Tarantulas had eaten them, though. Good. "... Perhaps if you set up a, hm. Mailbox? That I could deposit things in?"

Tarantulas

No mech had the space to memorize things like that - at least, things they didn't consider worth keeping data on. Prowl, as per usual, was extraordinary.

Ah, how Tarantulas loved when Prowl hung on like that... "You were rightfully concerned. A mailbox, though...?" Tarantulas looked around, his visor squinted thoughtfully. "I'm sure there's somewhere I could set one up. But you'd have to arrange one of your own as well, or check mine in turn; I can't have you sending me things without proper reciprocation, now can I?"

Please say yes - because then it'd mean Tarantulas could send Prowl gifts, right

Prowl

Prowl considered that. "... I'll set up a drop box on the balcony." That wasn't IN the apartment, but it was within Prowl's property. "That could be very useful, actually." Beyond the obvious gift exchange functions.

Tarantulas

Score! Now Tarantulas had to think up a proper return gift, hm...

"Actually? Howso? For other mechs as well, you mean?" Tarantulas hoped not - it was much more disappointing to think of it as a general mailbox instead of a romanticized vessel of Tarantulas's affections.

Prowl

"No, in terms of shuttling supplies and projects back and forth. Dataslugs and devices and whatnot. Everyone else can just mail me things like normal." Or chuck them at his balcony door, if they happened to be a neighbor from a block away with a half dozen violent deployers.

Tarantulas

Oh, good! For presents and science, then. Romanticized vessel still intact.

"Ah, I see - far less lossy than comms, especially. I can't believe I'd never thought of that before." Tarantulas rocked on his pedes, fighting the urge to start roaming his labs for some reason. That'd be a little rude with company over. "Do let me know exactly where its parameters are once it's established. And - if there's a project that'd require greater volume than the balcony permits, I could connect the mailbox to a mutual subspace instead? That'd be simple enough

Prowl

"And far less hackable. ... Although more steal-able. But we can work on those details later. At the moment, I don't think we're working on anything incredibly sensitive that you'd need to drop off rather than having me come here to get it."

Prowl considered the possibility. "... We can discuss that once we have such a project."

Tarantulas

"I'd say our projects do lean more toward the tangible over the digital, so theft would be more of a problem." A fluttery tap-tap of mandibles. "That aside - yes, of course. It's a standing offer, whenever."

What projects was Tarantulas working on for Prowl at the moment? He'd spent so long researching Prowl's moral compass that he'd nearly forgotten everything else. There had to be something he was forgetting...

Prowl

"Some are digital. There's the virus, for instance." Prowl took the slightest step back, to a moderately more professional distance. "How is the virus going, anyway?"

The mnemosurgery virus wasn't the only reason Prowl had come over—Tarantulas's company was, of course, a major draw—but he'd come with it on his to-do list. He didn't think they'd discussed it since—since their whole... blowout. But that was now in the past, and prowl hoped very much to keep it there. It was time to get back to work.

Tarantulas

Professional distance? Prowl of all mechs knew that when it came to matters of science, professional distance meant basically squat. Prowl's slight step back was, of course, mirrored by a two-toed step forward.

"Virus? What do you -"

Oh. That virus. The anti-mnemosurgical malware Prowl had requested, a key project that had managed to completely slip Tarantulas's mind for months now. Yes, that virus. There wasn't any excuse for forgetting this one, moral compass research or no.

"Virus! Yes, of course." Alright, refocus your visor, you've been staring blankly at Prowl for too long. "It's - well, technically it's not going anywhere, since I haven't installed it in a host yet, hyeh." Fidget fidget. Where had he been when he'd left off? Time to hastily skim his abandoned files for some clues, and meanwhile think of a way to stall the ongoing conversation.

"Oh! First the donuts, though - shame on me. You graced me with such sweetness and I haven't uttered a single 'thank you' yet." Tarantulas put on his most apologetic expression as he reached out to Prowl in one swift movement again. Adios, professional distance. "They truly were delectable. Did you make them yourself, perchance?"

Prowl

"You know what I mean. Progress on making the virus." He paused. "Unless you're saying you're at the point where it can be installed in someone?"

Tarantulas was so inclined to jump from topic to topic that, for the moment, Prowl didn't realize he was specifically trying to dodge one. (Okay, they were touching again. Prowl was fine with that.) "Hah! No. Someone gave me a box. I don't even know where they were from. They were good?" "Delectable" was high praise for cheap goods.

Tarantulas

Was Tarantulas at the point of installation? No, he didn't think he'd gotten that far. Where was he, really...

"Hyeh, well it's really the sentiment that matters, not the exact origin of the goods. I'll admit I have a soft spot for donuts with filling especially, and the jelly-filled one -" Tarantulas pinched his fingers at his lips and dramatically outward in a mwah gesture of deliciousness that few could pull off without shame.

That arm fell in distraction as Tarantulas continued to skim the files. No, he really hadn't achieved much - gotten hung up on an intellectual snag and left it for his future self to handle. What was he supposed to do now? Prowl expected progress, and what Tarantulas had to offer him was meager at best, given how much time had elapsed.

Mmmmmaybe he could just... own up to it? That's what the whole not-lying-to-each-other deal had been about, right - transparency and honesty? Hopefully Prowl wouldn't be too disappointed with what he'd find.

"I..." Erk. This was already harder than he'd thought. "I, ah, back to the malware, though. Unfortunately it's... nnnnnowhere near comprehensive enough for installation. As a matter of fact, it's hardly progressed past the point of my last update, mostly because... I may have..." Squirm squirm. "Forgotten about it. R-regrettably."

Prowl

... And now, Prowl was focusing on Tarantulas's mouth. He was trying to figure out how to get a jelly-filled donut in there. "Wouldn't... How do you not make a mess when you eat them?" Unless he DID make a mess. Which wouldn't surprise Prowl.

He'd forgotten it. Prowl stared at Tarantulas a moment. He'd FORGOTTEN it. And then huffed in amused exasperation. Of course he'd forgotten about it. Prowl hadn't mentioned it in months—including a couple of months during which Prowl wasn't sure he'd ever even want to speak to Tarantulas again. The virus couldn't have been high on his list of priorities.

"It hasn't been immediately pressing," Prowl said. "Consider it back on the table, though. I WOULD like to receive the completed project." Preferably before he got too comfortable keeping his hands clean to do what needed to be done with Chromedome.

"Where did you leave off, then?"

Tarantulas

“I could give a demonstration sometime.” Tarantulas waved dismissively. “It’s really not that difficult.”

A tense moment passed as he waited for Prowl’s reaction – then a sigh of relief. Thank goodness it was exasperation and not pointed disappointment. Tarantulas was used to dealing with exasperation on a daily basis, that was nothing new.

“Duly noted, hyeh. The last section I recall completing…” His hands found their way to Prowl’s waist, never quite settling down. “I’m certain I’ve finished the coding required to activate the program upon mnemosurgical invasion, but that was simple enough. At least part of phase one is complete as well – preventing immediate access to your brain module, of course – but phase two I’m not as clear on. That’s – ah, the exact method by which the malware would disable their future abilities.”

Prowl

Did Tarantulas actually know how distracting hands fluttering everywhere were? He put his hands on top of Tarantulas's to trap them on his waist. Distraction managed. "Brain modules in general. Not just MY brain module." (He said, as though he was still fooling anyone that this virus wasn't first and foremost meant for his own protection.)

"That's massive progress. That alone is a stellar defensive tool." They could stop there and call it a success. ... Not that they were going to, but. They COULD. "Where are you having trouble with the method?"

Tarantulas

Judging by the tapping claws and shifting frame, the distraction wasn't entirely managed, but probably as best as it could be for now. Tarantulas was more than happy to keep his hands on Prowl's waist, at any rate.

"Ah yes, that's what I meant." Totally not specifically Prowl - because Tarantulas totally hadn't pieced together that Prowl had suffered mnemosurgical trauma and totally wasn't also hiding the fact that he knew. "But I did say part of phase one; it's not entirely ironclad. Put into action, it would prevent mnemosurgical alteration, but one would still be able to read another's mind, so to speak. So, yes - there's that to add, and then the actual virus module itself. Which..."

Tap-t-tap went his mandibles, rippling thoughtfully. "Disabling a surgeon's ability to operate requires two facets, in turn. Erasing current ability, and stymying future reacquisition. When I say I'm not clear on the method of disabling, it's - how do we attack the knowledge? Do I erase memories of having learnt mnemosurgery in the first place? That may help in the moment, but wouldn't one be able to discover what'd occurred, and maybe relearn such a thing? Reconnect with old contacts, actively seek to fill in holes of missing information? Or is there possibly a physical flaw in the process, some circuit to be permanently disrupted, as if chopping off whole servos to void their needles? Because if there is, I haven't found such a flaw, and it's so -"

Tarantulas would go on spilling the contents of his brain module as long as Prowl let him, words tripping over his mandibles in their haste to be said. Although, fidgeting and agitation would become a bit of a problem pretty soon.

Prowl

"Those are different functions? Alteration and reading? I suppose that's... not illogical." More than that, it sounded familiar. Like Prowl had been told so before; but attempting to recollect it was hard, the memory fuzzy and distant, and he couldn't quite grasp it. Had Chromedome tampered with that memory, too? Damaged Prowl's memory of how mnemosurgery worked during his invasion? Or did Prowl only suspect him because he happened to be thinking about the attack?

If what Prowl thought he knew about mnemosurgery had been tampered with, did that mean Chromedome might have inserted fake information? Prowl should look up mnemosurgery on his own, see whether the literature out there agreed with what he thought he knew...

Without noticing it, his grip tightened on Tarantulas's hands.

He listened to Tarantulas's questions and speculations until he was fairly certain that he'd gotten a sense for the problem he was grappling with, and decided he ought to cut in and attempt to help rather than wait for Tarantulas to run out of words.

"Maybe not a physical flaw in the circuitry, but—what about brain function? Their processors have to be doing something specific when they're doing mnemosurgery, I don't know what. Is there something in there that can be damaged, or made to malfunction, or just made incompatible with other brains, or...?"

Tarantulas

Tarantulas noticed Prowl’s tightened grip – had he done something wrong? Fidgeted too much? He’d quiet his hands as best he could for now, still letting his thumbs rub vertical lines on each side of Prowl’s waist.

“Yes, it’s akin to the difference between being able to reach through an open window, or only looking through a closed one, or simply looking at a wall. But -” Moving on. “The thing about mnemosurgery is that it’s really just another form of data-focused interface.” Like hardlining with needles - but Tarantulas figured that phrasing wouldn’t go over well. “As far as I can discern, there aren’t any specific brain patterns or centers that are unique to mnemosurgical activity, only ones that are key, by which I mean of course the robocampus. If I could simply delete the entirety of their robocampus, or - or maybe corrupt the needle compatibility software, I don't know – those would be effective, but I doubt they're viable options.”

Prowl

Prowl could feel his optics glazing over as Tarantulas started in on a metaphor— Oh, it was only a sentence long. That was fine.

"And... how bad would deleting their robocampus be? Pretty bad, right?" Prowl didn't entirely remember what the robocampus did, but he knew the word, so it had to be important. "I don't want to do permanently debilitating brain damage, here. Outside of the effect on their mnemosurgery abilities, I want to inconvenience them, not—not do damage that will leave them permanently hospitalized, or the like."

Corrupting software? Prowl frowned hard as he thought that over. "... Wouldn't they be able to just redownload the correct software?"

Tarantulas

“It depends on what you qualify as an inconvenience,” Tarantulas chuckled. “Inability to convert short-term memory into long-term? Impaired spatial perception and navigation skills? Among other things – I haven’t tried wiping a robocampus before, so I don’t know specifics.” He’d definitely wiped other module sectors though, with amusing results.

A defeated sigh. “Yes, that’s technically true... Unless somehow I were able to convince their system to permanently accept the corrupted software. That seems too… unreliable a solution. Someone’s bound to find a way around mere software glitches sooner or later – that is, if they don’t skip the whole debacle and install all-new hardware instead.”

Leaning down to bunt his helm against Prowl’s, Tarantulas grumbled something unintelligible. “I think - I think - the solution might be found in incompatibility. From what I’ve researched - what scraps I’ve gathered - it seems there’s something different about the file properties. It’s far-fetched, but it’s possible that mnemosurgery flirts with an entirely novel file system. I just don’t know if it does, or how.” Grumble grumble.

Prowl

"... I think the inability to store new memories is a bit farther than we want to go." This was, after all, not about revenge, but about preventing future incidents. Revenge was only an incidental second bonus and certainly not to be pursued to excess.

Prowl nodded; expert in viruses he was not, but it sounded unreliable to him, too. He bunted Tarantulas back, optics dimming as he listened. "What's different about the file properties? Which file properties?"

Tarantulas

“I thought as much, hyeh.” Revenge would certainly have been amenable to Tarantulas, given the situation that led to all this – but no.

He gave Prowl a strangely frustrated nuzzle. “I only know this information second-hand. I haven’t been able to get my claws on any primary reports or data or anything for me to actually dig into. There’s no chance you could be of any help? Even if it were just snagging a Primus-forsaken brain module for me, I’d be pleased.” A snort, then a thoughtful pause. “…I’d be thrilled, as a matter of fact. A mnemosurgeon’s robocampus alone would speak volumes more than any reports ever could.”

Prowl

That was the hard part, wasn't it? They were supposed to figure out how to make a virus that could take out a mnemosurgeon without the benefit of a mnemosurgeon to test it on. They could get so far simply by knowing the theory behind how they worked and general truths about how ALL brain modules worked, but to get something specific, something targeted... Well, up until now Tarantulas hadn't specifically asked for a mnemosurgeon's help, so Prowl had hoped they might not need it. They might be stuck now.

Except. Tarantulas hadn't asked for a mnemosurgeon. He'd asked for a mnemosurgeon's brain module.

Could Prowl supply that?

"... Does it need to be alive?"

Tarantulas

Tarantulas pulled back slightly, squinting into Prowl’s optics. Was this a trick question? “No, no of course not. I’ll be able to glean plenty from it so long as the robocampus is fairly intact. Did you think I would want a live sample? Goodness no, I’m much more comfortable with posthumous operation than having to deal with a living mech.” A noise of displeasure to go along with that half-truth. “But – you could acquire a brain module, truly?”

Prowl

(Tarantulas was pretty from this angle. Prowl could just lean in and...)

(Stay focused.)

"Data in brain modules decay and artifact quickly after death, I don't know if you needed a live sample to get whatever data you were looking for." Mnemosurgeons themselves preferred live subjects. Prowl didn't know how he knew that. Chromedome again, probably. The thought of it made him very faintly sick. "I'm not certain I can; but I know several places I could go looking."

Tarantulas

Tarantulas wouldn’t have minded if Prowl had kissed him - he never minded - but the moment passed. Instead, Tarantulas shrugged dismissively. “The decay is systematic and capable of being unraveled under the correct circumstances. I don’t require 100% recovery in any case.” If his vague hypotheses were correct, mere shreds of data could tell him everything he needed to know. “Curiosity compels me though – where would you even look? I’d adore anything and everything you can scrounge up.”

Prowl

"Classified. Of course." Sorry, Tarantulas. But he wasn't about to talk about the hidden stockpiles of resources left over from the New Institute—resources that, Prowl hoped, included the bodies of the Autobots who'd worked there. They'd kept stranger things. And the possibilities got more far-fetched and more secret from there. "Is there anything else you want me to try to scrounge up?"

Tarantulas

Would a little pathetic whine get Tarantulas any more information?

“Specifically, aside from the robocampus…?” A moment of thought. “I couldn’t care less about any actual experiments, but the background research and formative papers in the field – those, those I could use.”

Prowl

No, but it would get him a kiss. "I can certainly manage that."

Tarantulas

Yes, please. And it was only fair that Tarantulas returned the affection - once, then twice, three times. "But of course you can. There really isn't anything you can't do, after all. ...I ought to have just asked originally, if I'd had any sense, but..."

A leaned-forward nuzzle. "Is this the reason you came today, then? To tend to our poor, neglected project?"

Prowl

There really isn't anything you can't do. That was something Prowl ought to be saying to Tarantulas, not the other way around. Sure, Prowl could do anything—as long as he had an army of agents or a scientist ten times smarter than he'd ever be to do the hard work for him.

"It was an item on the to-do list," Prowl said. "But I would have come without it."

Tarantulas

Clearly each of them depended on the other to fully realize their potential, then, because Tarantulas certainly thought he was nothing without Prowl.

A pleased churr. "I'm flattered. Unless you mean to say there are more business items on the to-do list...?"

Prowl

"There are always more business items on the to-do list. Are you interested in doing any more right now, though?"

Tarantulas

Tarantulas hummed and pulled Prowl in even closer. "At the moment? Not exactly. I don't have anything planned, but I'd fancy a bit of quality time, if you don't mind?"

Prowl

He gladly let Tarantulas tug him in. "Ah, yes. That is, as it so happens, the last item on my to-do list." He offered Tarantulas a slight smirk. "Let's skip right to it, then."

#araneamechanica #chat

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magioftheseas · 6 years

Text

Jabberwock Reverie

for @i-demand-a-hug

Day 5: AU/Crossover (Alternative: Life/Death)

Summary: Kamukura is approached by an eccentric trainer with a Blissey. That this trainer doesn't like battling is just one element that draws Kamukura's attention. Pokemon Trainer AU taking place on the made-up region named Jabberwock.

Rating: G

Warnings: Vague references to injuries. And then nothing else.

Notes: Friendly friend, I wrote the pkmn trainer au! It’s short and slice-of-life fluff and I hope you like it! Since today’s prompt is also fitting, I’m submitting it to the week, too. Blissey is cute. Very, very cute. Komaeda’s full nickname for her is Blissey’s French name but shortened. His shortened nickname is...an obvious reference.

***Alternate Ao3 Link***

Commission? Donate?

“Hey...can you hear me?”

“Uuu... Uu...”

“Euphy, don’t hover. He might end up feeling suffocated.”

Immediately, crimson red eyes flickered open. The other trainer jumped along with his Blissey.

“Aah!” he gasped. And then, he caught his breath as Kamukura sat up. “So, you were just lying there of your own volition...? You really shouldn’t just lay out in the open like that. It’s rather dangerous. Do you at least have your Pokémon with you?”

“No,” he said. “I do not need them. I can handle myself.”

“E... Ehhh...?” Bored with the matter, Kamukura stands and dusts himself off. He turns to be on his way to nowhere in particular, but the other trainer is calling out for him. “Wait, wait...! Are you him, then?! The incredible Kamukura Izuru?!”

That Blissey slid in front of him, blocking his way. Even with his icy glare, she didn’t move. Kamukura blinked a few times, and the trainer caught up to him, albeit short of breath.

“I-I, um... I’m a huge fan!” he exclaimed. “Anyone who can lead any Pokémon like that...! They must be something else! I’ve heard all sorts of things!”

“Most of them silly rumors, I assume,” Kamukura replied coolly. “But if it is a battle you wish for, I have no interest. As I said, I have no Pokémon with me. And I have no interest in going and rallying a group for such a menial request.”

“I’m... No, no...” The other shook his head. “I’m not a battler. Too chaotic. Too messy.”

“Then a demonstration of skill? An autograph?” he asked, almost snappishly. “You and your Blissey are in my way.”

“I didn’t tell Euphorie to do that, but she tends to do as she wants.” The trainer gives his Blissey a look. Blissey was still glaring at Kamukura, however, for his rude attitude, so the trainer can only sigh. “Euphy’s been with me since I was a kid and she was a Happiny. So she feels pretty comfortable doing whatever.”

Kamukura blinks, once, twice.

“...it seems you two are quite close, then.”

“Aha...” The trainer blushes, tugging at his hat. It does little to hide the wild, white curls of his hair. “Hearing that from Kamukura Izuru is something else... But no, I just wanted to get to know you better.”

Kamukura quirks an eyebrow. And the trainer goes on.

“I mean... Anyone who can communicate with all Pokémon the way you can... You must really have a beautiful, wonderful heart,” he murmured, fiddling with his fingers. “Someone like you who can bring out the beauty of Pokémon...who understands them so well... I really, really want to see such things for myself.”

...Huh.

“Your name,” Kamukura said. “What is it?”

“O-Oh right! I never gave you my name!! O-Oh dear...” Flustered, he practically covers his face in his hand, taking in a deep, shaking, shuddering and steadying breath. He meets Kamukura’s gaze, his own eyes shimmering. “Komaeda... Nagito. I’m Komaeda Nagito. I-I’m from Laverre City, Kalos.”

“Kamukura Izuru,” Kamukura said. “Which you already knew.”

Komaeda nodded almost helplessly and waved his hands.

“It’s very nice to meet you, Kamukura-kun.” Despite everything, he manages a bright smile. “I hope we can get along in spite of myself.”

Euphorie chirps happily in agreement.

“...it is nice to meet you,” Kamukura echoed and then nodded towards the bouncing Blissey. “Now if you do not mind... I am rather hungry.”

“O-Oh, let’s eat then! I do have food we can share, Kamukura-kun!”

“Uu!” Euphorie happily waved an egg in the air, making Komaeda laugh.

“And Euphy has her eggs. You can enjoy one at your leisure. It would make Euphy happy as well.”

“Hm.” A pause. “Very well.”

“Yay, yay!”

“Uu, uu!”

And that was how they met.

Kamukura Izuru had never been too terribly interested in people. However, Pokémon were different. Their level of understanding and their intelligence was at a level that humans couldn’t hope to fully understand. And yet, despite that, so many of them wanted to get along with humans regardless save for a few exceptions.

Humans were careless and often cruel. Kamukura knew this well, even without taking his own experiences into account. There were many—far too many humans who were consumed by greed and ego. Humans who pushed their Pokémon to the brink for the sake of weakly-defined ambition.

But even humans who truly loved Pokémon were ones that Kamukura hardly connected with. After all, he cared little for battling, and he cared less so for being a trainer. If he were forced into a battle, he would just recruit Pokémon who would’ve charged after the other trainer anyway.

After all, he was built in with the strategies that would succeed, for any and all circumstances.

Unfortunately, that gave him an annoying reputation. One that only aggravated him further when people began to recognize him.

The Jabberwock Region was meant to be remote, but it seemed that no matter where he turned, a trainer would be waiting in the midst.

...all that said, he didn’t mind Komaeda Nagito.

Komaeda Nagito, for a trainer, was a curious one. As someone from Kalos, he expectably had an eye for beauty and aesthetic. Trainers who did not like to battle were uncommon, but not unheard of, however...

It was clear that Komaeda Nagito was a bit of an eccentric. His partner Pokémon fussed over him more like a parent. He often got into unique predicaments through the means of what could only be dumb luck. He seemed to be interested in anything and everything that Kamukura had to say. Even when it came to strategies that Komaeda had no use for whatsoever.

It was...strange and yet, this person’s presence was not an unpleasant one.

“Dia, look at all these brambles stuck in your fur... How despairing...”

“She is from Alola,” Kamukura observed. Komaeda perked up and nodded.

“Ah, yeah, as a Vulpix, she snuck into my bag and I ended up hiking with her. It took a while before I realized where the extra weight came from. But she really does have a lot of charm, doesn’t she?” Komaeda hums as he combs through one of the silky smoke-colored tails. “She prefers to laze around, that said. As expected, I suppose, of a former deity...”

Kamukura’s gaze flickers to the Ninetales’ relaxed expression, eyes shut and head ducked. Then, beady red eyes opened briefly to meet his own gaze.

“...as expected,” he merely echoed. “She has a unique color as well.”

“Ah... Yeah...”

Komaeda’s shoulders were tense.

“...a lot of my Pokémon have a unique color,” he mumbled. “Only Euphy doesn’t. Because... She was given to me as a Happiny by my parents.”

“I see.”

Curious. Pokémon of a different color tend to be rather elusive.

“A-Ah, oh, Kamukura-kun!” Komaeda gasped. “There’s so many brambles in your hair, too! After I finish with Dia, I can comb them out if you want.”

Kamukura blinks once, twice, and Komaeda frets.

“O-Or not!” he exclaimed. “Goodness, of course you wouldn’t want someone like me touching your hair...”

Komaeda Nagito is...

“Actually, I do not mind.”

...not a bad person to be around.

“A-Ah, oh...” Komaeda’s cheeks darken. One of Dia’s tails plops onto his head, tickling his nose until he sneezed.

Kamukura snorted at the sight.

Surprisingly, I really don’t mind this person’s company.

He wasn’t sure why. More data would have to be gathered.

At some point, he wakes up to something burning.

“Oh, no! No, no, no! Dia! Freeze it!”

And now, there was a frozen pot atop the pile of charred lumber that used to be their campfire. Komaeda whined as Dia yawned with disinterest. Already, Euphorie was trying to cajole him with an egg.

“...Komaeda Nagito, what, exactly were you trying to do?” he asked. “If you wanted to cook, you should have asked me.”

Komaeda sniffles as he nibbles reservedly on the egg. He brightens up a little, but it’s not much. “I wanted to make cupcakes...! Or poffins... Whatever seemed like a better idea at the time, I guess?”

Kamukura blinks at him.

“...I see.”

He guesses.

“But I really am a terrible cook,” Komaeda laments. “And even though I tried to do my best without a recipe... Uuu...”

“Uuu,” Euphorie echoes.

“Uuu,” Kamukura drones. And then he flips his hair back. “It is alright. This is expectable behavior from you at this point. I do not mind it much. The frozen monstrosity has a rather interesting smell. I cannot even tell what ingredients were used. That’s rather impressive.”

“Y-You really think so?” Komaeda asks, hands clasped and eyes sparkling with tears.

Making faces like that...

Kamukura averted his gaze, feeling his cheeks heat oh so slightly.

“It is...quite impressive.”

“Yay!”

He’s...endearing.

It’s strange, thinking that way about someone else—especially a trainer who sought him out at first, but for someone like Komaeda Nagito, it was...just what it was.

Komaeda Nagito, who once again had that forlorn face when staring at the frozen monstrosity that used to be a pot, a campfire, and miscellaneous.

“...what are we supposed to do with this...?”

It was not very often Kamukura Izuru was faced with a situation where he did not know what to do.

“Hmm.”

Interesting.

“...we should run a few experiments. With a factor this indiscernible, the possibilities are indeterminable, thus endless.”

“You really think so?” Komaeda asks. “Nothing too dangerous, right? Oh, not to presume that you’d be reckless, Kamukura-kun! Of course not!” A shudder. Komaeda holds himself. “B-But I can’t deny I’m getting a little excited at the idea of what might happen...!”

“Indeed.”

It was not very often he was the one running tests, after all. Preparations would have to be made first, however, such as...

“Uuu!” Euphorie chirped, and Komaeda immediately turned on his heel.

“Euphy. It might be too dangerous so please return to your ball, okay?”

“Uuu!”

“Euphy, please.”

“Uuu!”

“Euphy...!”

Eventually, they managed.

Afterwards, Komaeda was sleeping deeply and heavily and covered in bandages. Kamukura’s own fingers were bandaged as well, and the dull ache still throbbing in his joints and knuckles was still an odd sensation. Unsurprisingly, Euphorie was pressed up protectively against Komaeda, petting his hair as he slumbered and listening intently for anything that might approach them. She was also, occasionally, shooting him quite the dirty look.

A dirty look that he admittedly deserved.

Despite what happened, Komaeda Nagito was laughing it off with an easy smile as always. I suppose, then, that Komaeda Nagito is that kind of person. The kind of person who smiles in the face of misery, and one who has been through enough to become numbed.

He thinks he understands the person called Komaeda Nagito rather well at this point.

...and yet I’m still curious about him. Why?

It looks like he still had information to gather.

...yes... That is all there is to it.

His fingers hurt, but his chest hurt, too. Why? It was not like he was injured there but—

It hurts worse when I look at Komaeda Nagito slumbering so innocently without a care.

Komaeda, who sighed, smiling slightly as Euphorie brushed his hair back.

“...you do that for him often,” Kamukura said quietly. “Would I be accurate to assume it is because of his parents...?”

Euphorie nodded simply at that.

The pain worsened even more. How peculiar. Am I dying?

It really was so curious.

Komaeda murmured something incomprehensible. Before he realized it, he had already reached for him. He only noticed it because Euphorie was giving him a stern, disgruntled look.

“...I do not wish to withdraw,” Kamukura said lowly, not understanding it himself. “But you may smack my hand away if you wish.”

Euphorie’s glare sharpened, but she turned away with a huff, pulling away from Komaeda but still keeping him securely curled up her lap.

Slowly and hesitantly, Kamukura touches his hair.

Fluffy like Euphorie.

He shouldn’t be surprised, and yet, he couldn’t deny the sensation of running his fingers through was quite the pleasant one.

It really is soft.

He remembers Komaeda brushing through his own hair, humming as he did.

“Aha, Kamukura-kun’s hair is like fine silk. Oh, Dia’s fur is still prettier, of course. But Kamukura-kun’s hair is very, very pretty. I really am lucky.”

Lucky, he had said. Luck was such a fickle, boring thing.

“Everyone has the boring element of luck. Even I have luck.”

“Ehe, that’s true. But for me, luck is...mm, different.”

“Different?”

“I don’t want to bore you with talks about myself, Kamukura-kun.”

“Hmm.”

“That was wrong,” he found himself murmuring. “Komaeda Nagito is not boring. I would not have stayed as long as I have if he were.”

Euphorie snorts.

It’s—flustering. Because Komaeda is still sleeping, eyelashes fluttering and lips parting. Komaeda is—

Eye-catching.

“...in all my time wandering around aimlessly, among humans and Pokémon alike, I really haven’t met anyone like him,” Kamukura said. “Especially when it comes to humans. Humans are...predictable. Expectable. Boring. Trainers, especially.”

For a moment, he was quiet, watching Komaeda contemplatively before taking notice of Euphorie’s stare boring into him. With a wide-eyed stare like that, well, it was no wonder she was Komaeda’s Pokémon.

When Komaeda didn’t look at him with awe, it was with this same piercing curiosity.

Kamukura’s eyes fall shut.

“Mmm...” Komaeda shifts as a thumb brushes over the curve of his cheek. “Hnn...”

And then, a sigh.

“Kamu...are you...?”

“Not exactly human?” Kamukura watches blankly as Komaeda’s eyes flew open. “Yes. You’ve suspected that for a while, haven’t you?”

Komaeda flies up, Euphorie quickly taking his shoulders.

“I-I!” He stammers. “I-I was just dreaming...! I...!” Flustered, he tuckers himself out, groaning and rubbing at his temples. “I... So it is true...”

“I am impressed,” Kamukura said. “You did a good job of treating me so normally while suspecting something so abnormal. But you were observing me all along, weren’t you?”

“Not the entire time,” Komaeda mumbled, fiddling with his fingers. “But... Even though I heard the rumors, I didn’t really see anything to support them from you... You were pretty comfortable just sitting around and staring at things, Kamukura-kun. Aha, not what I expected at all. So lazy! So unmotivated! So boring! Not at all what you would expect of a genetically modified trainer!”

Kamukura folds his arms against his chest and turns away.

“Human experimentation is still a weird thing to wrap my head around,” Komaeda goes on, laughing without a hint of mirth. “But I suppose it does make sense. No matter how powerful the Pokémon is, it takes a trainer to make use of it in battle. In the hands of an incompetent trainer, Pokémon are as wonderful as they are completely wasted.”

For a moment, under the twinkling stars, the two of them were quiet.

“Battling is how people and Pokémon alike improve, and both parties are important. Strength can only go so far without strategy. Strategy can only go so far without strength. That said, I still don’t want to force my Pokémon through that with how incompetent I am.”

“Is that it?” Kamukura asked dully. “Or are you perhaps afraid of your own potential?”

With Euphorie nuzzling him, Komaeda could only huff.

“I want to find a way that causes the beauty of Pokémon to blossom like a flower,” he said. “Battling on its own, while inspiring its own specific sort of passion and hope—just isn’t what I’m looking for. Back in Kalos, I found myself utterly entranced by performances. So I want to try something more like that. Contests are nice, but I didn’t want to limit myself to just that, so I came to Jabberwock because I hear that here is where Pokémon shine especially bright.”

“The Pokemon and trainers here are stronger,” Kamukura replied. “But other than that, it is no different than any other region.”

“All regions have their individual charms and distinctions!” Komaeda exclaimed. “To just put it like that is really so boring, Kamukura-kun! Didn’t you come here because you wanted to witness more from people and Pokémon alike?”

Kamukura scoffed.

“I came here because it seemed to be more isolated. I thought I would have better chances of being left alone. Battling...is boring, when I am already designed to be a master of strategy and training. There is nothing more I can obtain in this state.”

Komaeda frowned, puffing his cheeks.

“That’s such a boring thought process to have,” he said. “But... It seems to me that you want to get as far from your intended purpose as possible.”

He didn’t say anything in response to that, but his silence was enough of an answer.

“What an unhappy person you must be,” Komaeda added.

Euphorie offered him an egg with a chirp. She whined when he did not take it.

“I am not unhappy,” he said softly yet firmly. “You are wrong. It is not like that.”

Euphorie whined once more.

“I am not unhappy,” he insisted. “I...”

...I have not been...for a while...at least.

“Is that so?” Komaeda asked enigmatically. He smiles. “Well, that makes me happy to hear. But it’s hard to believe, considering you were so aimless that you’ve just been dealing with my antics.”

It is because of those antics that I am not unhappy.

“It’s the truth,” he said instead. “You need not worry about it, Komaeda Nagito.”

“But I’m going to worry anyway, sorry.” Komaeda is beaming. “Because I really like you, for putting up with me, Kamukura-kun. I really, really like you.”

It was dark out, cold out, and yet he felt his face warm.

“...I... I do not dislike you.”

“That really makes me happy to hear!” Komaeda chirped. “I really am so lucky to be told that by someone like you!”

“Luck has nothing to do with it,” he pointed out. “My feelings are my own regardless of the circumstances that may transpire.”

“Ehehe, I suppose that’s true... Still, I feel pretty lucky...” With that Komaeda lays back down, head in Euphorie’s lap but still beaming up at him with eyes of starlight. “Kamukura-kun, let’s see everything the Jabberwock region has to offer. And if we come across any trainers... Let’s not meet their eyes, okay?”

That will only do so much.

If he is dragged into a battle—he wonders how Komaeda will react. Komaeda, come to think of it, is a bit unpredictable in certain regards. He really is—

“I also want to try cooking again,” Komaeda hums. “Maybe blocks...?”

Something else. He’s something else. Ironic. People would normally say that about myself.

“Your injuries are still healing,” he pointed out. “So, can you wait a few days before that?”

“Ehe. You almost sound like Euphy would.”

Euphorie looked at him pleadingly.

“...if we are going to stick together,” he said. “I might as well look out for you.”

Komaeda blinks at him, and then, ah, he blushes.

“...you don’t have to do that, Kamukura-kun.”

“But I will anyway.”

Komaeda shivers a bit, lips pursing before he turns away.

“You should sleep already. The stars will only be up for so long.”

“I suppose.”

He pulls up the extra sleeping bag that Komaeda owns and makes himself snug. He turns to Komaeda, and by then, he’s already back to fast asleep with Euphorie humming a lullaby of sorts.

Kamukura blinks once, twice, and then turns back to the stars contemplatively.

What the Jabberwock region has to offer... Somehow, I predict that it will pale in comparison to this.

#KamuKoma #izuru kamukura #nagito komaeda #KamuKomaWeek #KamuKomaWeek2018 #super dangan ronpa 2 #Pokemon #Blissey #alola ninetales #Pokemon GSC #Pokemon SuMo #crossover maybe?#Magi fics #i-demand-a-hug #sdr2 spoilers

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