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nerdygirlramblings · 4 months ago

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more Ren

When you get back to your room, you pull the jersey off and get ready for bed. You toss it onto your bed, intent on washing it at the end of the week and returning it to the barracks. You know you need a solid night's sleep as Price said you're starting field training in the morning. Their field work is what sets special forces like the 141 off from traditional squad and battalion structures, so you knew whatever came would be entirely new. When you were qualifying, Gaz had you run simulations verbally, but this is different.

The next morning, Price has you meet them at the barracks. You're dressed as he told you: standard issue cargos and t-shirt, both black, and your boots. You notice the others are in compression shirts over which they then pull regulation Henleys and windcheaters. A frown twists your lips. Price hadn't said anything about top layers.

He must sense your displeasure despite the scent blockers that keep the tinge of overripe fruit from their noses because he glances over at you. "Forgot to tell you about the Henley and windcheater, Ren, sorry. Had Adam grab these for ya." He tosses a black windcheater and grey Henley at you, and you snatch them out of the air before they whap you in the face.

Soap snickers, and you resist rolling your eyes at him. Instead you turn to Price and say, "Thank you, Captain." You pull them on and notice the faint scent of woodsmoke clinging to both. They're big on you, long at the arms and torso. Ghost stares at you, unblinking, and you pat yourself down, worrying there's something on the windcheater. When you assure yourself there's nothing there, you look back at the leftenant, furrow between your brows.

Before you can ask him what's wrong, he grunts and turns away. Trying to adjust the windcheater, you wonder if these are standard issue or if Adam orders them special for the 141. Maybe you need to have him order one in your size. You're about to ask when Price starts walking towards a pair of golf buggies on the side of the barracks you hadn't noticed before.

He turns to you, climbing behind the wheel of the first buggy, and motions for you to join him. You climb hesitantly in beside him, and he tells you, "There's a facility, about two acres large, where we do our field training."

"Er, sir, why don't we walk?"

You hear a bright chuckle behind you. You hadn't noticed Gaz getting in the back of the buggy. "There's two ways to get there: the road or the woods," he says. "Once we got our gear on, yer not gunna wanna walk over there."

Price starts up the buggy and pulls away from the barracks. "We'll meet the others there. They'll get the rest 'a the things we need." You have no idea what else you need or what equipment Gaz might be referencing.

Price heads across base and after several minutes you see several large airplane hangers next to a field strewn with city-scape detritus. There's no telling what's in the hangers, but given the what the 141 does, you're sure the debris is for practicing entrance and egress in active combat zones. Despite all the work you've been doing with the 141, the gravity of your new role doesn't hit home until Price cuts the motor of the buggy.

You climb out with Gaz and Price behind you. Price parked between a hanger and the debris, but you don't know what you'll be doing today. As you're looking at both, Price calls your name. "We're in here today," he says, opening the hangar door.

Stepping in, you feel the temperature drop, and suddenly the top layers make more sense. Without central heating or cooling, the hanger is several degrees colder than the outside. Overhead lights illuminate a three-story building. The facade is plain, but there aren't any windows to see into.

Price claps a hand on your shoulder and points at the building. "We're gunna be working on asset retrieval today," he says. He motions to a table off to the side you'd missed. On it are various innocuous objects: a file folder, a USB drive, a photo, a keyring. "Each item is the kind of thing we might be sent to retrieve. We'll run a few scenarios where you'll have to find one of these items, or something similar. I'm not gunna tell ya what it is in advance or where to find it."

Ghost and Soap come in carrying tactical gear and various weapons as Price tells you you'll run this training in pairs. "I want to see how you work with each of the boys." Coming into a previously organized task force it makes sense, but knowing you'll be paired with each man causes a chill down your spine. You can't let them down.

For hours Price sends you in with Gaz or Soap or Ghost, having you find a set of lab keys, proof of embezzlement, a picture of someone that can be used against a target. You learn not to take any item for granted. As the day wears on, Ghost gives you pointers about how to scan a room for information. Soap reminds you to watch for traps. Gaz teaches you how to pick small locks, like those on file cabinets and desk drawers.

You're more mentally worn out when Price calls an end to the work than you were any other day in the last few weeks. "Ya did a good job today, Ren. Solid work for your first time," Price praises. "Need to work on your reaction times, but that'll come as we do more training. An' we didn't run this wi' any resistance, which is unlikely in our job, so eventually you'll be up against foes in training."

You don't miss the glint in Soap's eye or the sharpness of Gaz's smile at this, and you guess the team becomes both hunter and hunted in those simulations. Your pulse races at the thought.

By the time you're back at the barracks, you're exhausted. Gaz invited you in for supper and footie. You beg off, planning to snag something quick from the mess and head straight to bed. The team waves you off as you head back to your quarters.

As they pile into their barracks, Gaz and Soap immediately begin talking over one another.

"-watch 'er put it on-"

"-was swimming-"

"-looked cozy-"

Price's voice cut through the verbal melee. "Olright. So now she's got Gaz's jersey and my top layers. We'll work on getting something of Soap's and Ghost's in 'er hands this week. Then we see wha' she does."

series masterlist | main masterlist

taglist: @sirbonesly @z-wantstowrite @thriving-n-jiving @cecelia97 @theycallmevalen @boogeysmoth @cryingpages @riley13 @luxylucylou

#cod #poly!141 #poly!141 x reader #tf 141 #tf 141 x reader #omegaverse #omegaverse 141 #omegaverse tf 141 #a/b/o #a/b/o 141 #a/b/o tf 141 #john price #johnny mactavish #kyle garrick #simon riley #nerdygirl says #fierce wars and faithful loves

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dickgraysonisnothereforthis · 4 months ago

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Everybody’s on the Call Line (Jason todd x gn!reader)

Humor, fluff, established relationship. whole batfam gets involved. Reader is a hacker

This happened because I read the latest coffee shop au from @jjenthusee (and you should too!) and I remembered that I can also write cute fluff. So here this fic is, straight from my drafts where it’s been languishing for months. Anyway.

Swearing, as always. No use of y/n. I don’t know how long this is

———

Jason eases himself carefully onto the fire escape, metal creaking beneath his boots. He stifles a groan. He’s taking a risk sneaking into your apartment like this, he knows he is. If you wake up and see Red Hood snooping around outside your window, you’ll probably call the cops. But he’s tired as all hell, patrol was long and stupid, and your apartment was closer. Jason will just slide in while you’re sleeping, stow his gear where you won’t find it, and collapse into your bed. In the morning, he’ll just say he let himself in with the spare key you gave him. Easy. All he has to do is disable the window alarm he’d gotten for you, and then he’s home free.

The alarm trips, and Jason moves to silence it but then realized it doesn’t matter, you’re still up, working at your computer.

He freezes as you glance over your shoulder, then turn around to face him. He still has his gear on. Shit.

“Uh, hi,” you offer, looking at him with a curious glance as he races to figure out an excuse. “I don’t think we’ve met before?”

This throws him for a loop. You’re reacting very well to a vigilante crawling through your window at 2:30 in the fucking morning. But you’ve given him an opening, and he’s going to take it.

“No,” he says shortly, wincing behind the helmet. He’s never spoken to you like this and instantly hates the tone he’s using, but he’s got a persona to keep up. Or something.

You nod, seemingly unfazed. “No worries. Do you work with Red Robin?”

What? Why are you asking about Tim? Do you have some secret Red Robin crush that he’s going to have to push Tim off a building for?

Dumbfounded, Jason answers, “Uh, sometimes?”

You nod again. “Do you think you could give something to him for me?”

What the shit is happening right now?

As if to help tip Jason’s world off its axis, you’re interrupted by a tap at the window. Jason looks to see Red Robin crouched on your fire escape. You wave him inside.

“Hey, Escher,” Tim says. “Hood.” Jason has no idea what the fuck is going on.

“I’ve got the script,” you say, holding out a flash drive to him, but Tim shakes his head. “No good. They updated the security.”

“Well, shit.” You turn and dump the USB stick into a glass of water on your desk. “It’s a paperweight now. Only took me five hours to figure out.”

“I know,” Tim says, clearly frustrated. “They keep outmaneuvering us.”

Wait, wait. Jason’s still three steps behind you. “Escher?” he demands.

Both you and Tim turn to look at him, frowning. “Like, M.C. Escher? But, spelled ‘emcee,’” you say, as if that explains anything. “It’s my screen name.”

“You two know each other?”

“Yeah, we work together.” Tim raises an eyebrow. “You didn’t know that?”

Jason shakes his head, and Tim looks at you for a flash of a moment before turning back to Jason. “Sorry,” he mouths, shrugging. Jason waves him off. He’ll deal with that later.

Tim turns back to your computer screen, but your eyes stay on Jason, narrowing. “What does it matter if we work together? Do I know you from somewhere?”

Shit. You were always too sharp for your own good. Jason’s tongue is glued to the roof of his mouth. “Uhh…”

You fold your arms over your chest. Behind you, out of your field of vision, Tim grins at Jason, delighted. Asshole.

“We don’t normally work with civilians,” Jason says, fishing for an excuse.

You sniff, rolling your eyes. “And yet, here you are. Which, the way, you haven’t explained. What are you doing in my bedroom?”

Fair. What is he doing in your bedroom? Would it freak you out if he said he was a burglar? Too late for that now.

“I told him to meet me here,” Tim says, pulling Jason’s ass out of the fire. “Sorry I didn’t tell you first.”

You shrug. “S’okay,” you say, spinning back around in your desk chair to face the screen.

Over your shoulder, Tim mouths, “you owe me.” Jason gives him the finger.

“Do you have a safe copy of the new security system?” you ask, looking at Tim intently.

He shakes his head. “Not yet, Oracle is working on duplicating it.”

You slump down in your chair. “Drat. I hate waiting.”

“Yeah,” Tim sits on the floor next to your bed, knees to his chest. “She said it’d be ready in a few hours.”

“Balls.” You fidget with a pen on your desk.

“Hold on. How did you start working with Red over here?” Jason asks. He knows you work in tech, that you’re a programmer, but he didn’t realize you were building code for fucking Batman.

Tim laughs. “I found them solving random problems on a Swedish forum.”

Jason blinks. Okay.

“Well, yeah. You found me there. Oracle found me hacking your comm links,” you grin, pleased with yourself.

Holy shit. “You got into the comm links?”

“Yeah,” you nod, satisfied. “I’ve done it twice now,” you add smugly.

“Don’t tell B,” Tim warns. “He doesn’t know. Oracle said she wouldn’t tell.”

Wow. You must be the real deal. He wonders if he can get you to fuck with Bruce’s plans, just to be a shit. "How long have you been working for the Caped Crusader, then?"

"I don't work for Batman," you say primly, as Tim sighs. "I help him out when you guys can't get your shit together."

Jason snickers under his breath. "Sore subject, huh?"

"They don’t like B," Tim confirms from the floor. "If you did it would make everything easier," he grumbles.

"It's stupid," you insist. "Come on, how is this a viable solution to any long-term problem?"

Jason laughs outright as Tim sputters. "He's a detective! He detects!"

"Then why does he have to dress up like that?" you point out. “You can be a detective in normal clothes, you know.”

"He needs armor, he keeps getting shot at!"

"Explain the cape, then," you shoot back. "Justify that monstrosity."

"It's fucking idiotic," Jason adds, piling on gleefully. "It'd be different if he could fly, but he just hops around."

Tim gasps, affronted, while you crack up in your chair. "Thank you. I mean, look at yourself, Red. You're sitting on my bedroom floor in a goddamn cape."

"It looks cool," Tim says defensively.

"No," you counter, "that looks cool." You point your finger in Jason's direction, and he feels his face heat up.

"Oh, come on," Tim scoffs. "You think his costume is cool?"

"Uh, yeah," you say, eyes taking Jason in as you nod. "Very cool. Very hot."

"Oh my god," Tim mutters. "It's tactically stupid. Why are his forearms exposed?"

"So I can see how muscley they are." You stare at them, eyes wide. Jason coughs awkwardly, and your eyes flit back up. "Sorry," you say, not sounding sorry at all. "I like leather."

"Of course you like his costume," Tim mutters under his breath.

"What's that supposed to mean?" you shoot at him, and Tim flusters. "Why do you care if I don't like your costume?"

"Yeah," Jason adds, letting some menace fall into his voice. "Why do you care if they don’t like your costume?"

"I didn't—I wasn't trying to—"

"I have a boyfriend," you interrupt, looking at Tim scornfully.

"They have a boyfriend," Jason parrots, grinning behind the helmet.

"Oh my god. I know you have a boyfriend. Relax," Tim pacifies you. "Relax," he adds, nodding at Jason. Jason grunts.

Before you can argue further, there’s another tap at your window, and Cass slips softly into the room. You light up. “Hello, my love!” you greet her excitedly. Cass raps you on the top of your head, and you beam up at her. Your hands twitch toward her before you stop yourself, folding them in your lap. Cass turns to Jason, placing her hand carefully on his arm. He bumps against her, waiting until she pushes back lightly. She then moves onto Tim, tugging gently on a lock of his hair, before depositing a flash drive on the desk. You snatch it up eagerly.

From Oracle, Cass signs.

“It’s O’s duplicate!” Tim plucks it from your fingers, driving it into your desktop.

“Be nice to her,” you warn, running a hand over your computer as the file loads. Strings of code write themselves across your screen. Jason moves forward to get a better look at you. He can’t help it, he wants to see you in action. Your face is scrunched up, tongue between your teeth as your eyes flash back and forth, following the cursor. “It’s incomplete.” You squint at Tim. “What gives?”

Tim tsks. “I don’t know. Let me get Oracle.” He puts a hand to his ear. “Oracle, come in.”

Barbara’s voice answers in Jason’s ear. “Here. I know, I know, it’s not all there,” she says, annoyed. “Let Escher know that I had to reverse engineer it from what we found.”

“She says she has to reverse engineer it,” Tim repeats.

You drum your fingers on the desk. “Okay, what else does she know?”

“What else do you—”

“Hold on, this is stupid,” you interrupt. “Can you, like, put her on speaker? Actually,” you click over to another screen, enter a command. “You’re broadcasting live, O.” Jason hears Barbara’s sigh through the speakers of your computer. “That’s three times,” you add smugly.

Jason let’s out a low whistle. Damn. You’re really good at this.

“We've got to stop meeting like this, Escher.” Barbara almost sounds amused. “How did you get in this time?”

“Hiya, babe.” You click back to your project. “That’s for me to know and you to never find out. I don’t want you closing your back door.”

Barbara chuckles. “Red and I will shut you out.”

“But for how long? I’m too slippery, baby.” Jason almost blushes underneath his helmet. It always trips him up when you talk like this.

“I had to reverse engineer the code from what it spit out when I tried to get in this time,” Barbara explains. “Can you fill in the gaps?”

“Some of them.” You type quickly, deleting code as you get error messages and retyping just as fast.

“Wait, here…” Tim points to something on the screen.

“Yeah, okay,” you back up to where he’s pointing and add something.

“There’s something about the updated security,” Barbara adds. “I think there’s a pattern somewhere.”

“Where?” you demand.

“I don’t know. Gut feeling. But I think I’m right.”

“Do you think there’s something generating new code?” Tim asks. “Like, a program that’s spitting out new security?”

“Oh.” Your fingers still on the keys, face relaxing. “Yeah. Good call, Red.” You scan the code again, scrolling back to the top. “Okay. This changes things.” You start from the beginning, erasing whole sections of Barbara’s work and typing out new code. “Well, shit,” you laugh under your breath. “This is some sexy-ass code we’re looking at.”

“You can fill in the blanks?” Jason asks.

You glance up at him. “Of course I can. I wrote it.”

“What?” Tim shouts. “This is you?”

“It’s me,” you confirm. “Guilty.” A small smile plays around your lips. “Sorry.” Cass steps forward, pinching your ear until you yelp.

“Fuck, Escher.” Tim rubs the bridge of his nose. “I didn’t know you were a traitor.”

“Chill, bird brain,” you say defensively, leaning out of Cass’ reach. “This was from, like, five years ago. I needed some cash.”

“You could be on B’s payroll,” Tim offers.

You snort as Barbara huffs a laugh over the comm line. “Fat chance, I’ve been trying to convince them for months.”

“I’m not a fucking lapdog. I play by my own rules,” you insist.

“Yeah?” Jason can’t help but push you. “And what rules are those?”

You cock an eye at him warily. “The rule of not tying my kite to some lunatic.”

Jason nods. Can’t argue with that one.

“Anyway,” you turn back to the computer. “Because I wrote it, I can build you the malware.”

“To get past the security or to neutralize the program spitting out new code?” Barbara asks over the line.

“Dealer’s choice,” you say, then stick your tongue between your teeth as you squint at the screen. “I can make both happen.”

The comm crackles in Jason’s ear. “Oracle, come in,” Bruce barks.

Tim whips his head toward you with a crack. “Nothing from you now, Escher,” Barbara warns. “I’m patching him through.”

You grin, eagerly pretending to zip your lips.

“Here,” Barbara answers.

“I heard from one of my informants,” Bruce’s monotone growl fills the room. Jason catches you roll your eyes and almost bursts out laughing. “They’re going to get into the controls for Blackgate prison.”

“This is Black Mask?” Barbara clarifies.

Bruce grunts as your eyebrows shoot up. “This is Black Mask?” you whisper, except you’ve never been very good at whispering. Tim slices a hand over his neck to silence you as Jason moves to your computer. He’s been eyeing the program you’re using to broadcast the comm connection, and he thinks he’s found the mute button. He taps a key and then turns his head toward you. “Off?”

You nod. “Off. Thanks. This is Black Mask’s security?”

“Yeah, he’s making a move against the jail. He’s going to get some of his guys out,” Tim explains.

“Hmm. Hmm hmm hmm.” You tap your fingers against your chin.

“What?” Tim folds his arms over his chest.

“I originally sold it to the Falcones.” You flick your hair out of your face. “Guess they sold me out behind my back.”

A security program that’s making its way through the mob? That’s…really useful, actually.

“Can you get in and stop them?” Bruce asks.

“Maybe,” Oracle hedges. “Hold on, I have to call in reinforcements.” She mutes Bruce’s line. “Escher, you’re up.”

“Wait, you want it now?” you say, aghast. “Christ, how long do I have?”

“Act quickly.” Bruce orders. “My intel says they’re moving at 3:45am.”

Your eyes fly to the clock on your monitor. “What the fuck!” you screech. “That’s in forty minutes! I can’t do it in forty minutes! I have to break through my own walls!”

“Escher,” Barbara starts, just as Tim says “listen, you have to—”

“I can’t, it’s not enough time!” you wail.

“Hey, hey,” Jason cuts in. “Easy. Don’t worry, love. You can do it.”

You look at him fearfully. “You haven’t even told me what to do!”

“Just get past the security,” Jason says patiently. “Don’t worry about shutting down the whole program.”

You nod at him, eyes wide.

“Deep breaths, now,” he instructs. “Come on, in for two, hold, out for four. We’ll do it together. Ready?”

You nod again.

“Okay.” Jason sucks in a breath, loudly so it’ll register over the modulator. You copy him, inhaling, holding, and exhaling on his rhythm. After a few breaths you shake your head, turning back to the computer.

“Alright. I can make it happen.” You resume typing, eyes narrowed as you focus.

“We’re alright, B, I’ve got someone on it,” Oracle says, satisfied.

Tim turns to Jason, clearly impressed. Jason shrugs. You’ve been together for a while now, he knows how to pull you out of a spiral.

He turns back to you. You’re ripping through code at a hundred miles an hour, hunched over the keyboard. Jason grimaces, he’s always trying to get you to sit up straight to help your tech neck. He’ll have to rub out the knots in your shoulders later.

Jason feels Cass’ eyes on him, and he tilts his head toward her. Less than forty minutes, she signs to him. I’ll have to take it back to the Clocktower.

Jason’s thought of that. He evenly points his chin in your direction. You can handle it, he knows you can. Cass nods.

Tim coughs quietly, and Jason raises his head to look at him. “You want the keys to the castle?” he mutters.

He means code you built that generates new security programs. Jason nods. “But that’s just between us, yeah?” It would be loads easier for Jason if he keeps the code out of Bruce’s hands. Black Mask has been operating in Jason’s territory, and Jason has a long string of investigations against him, well-beyond the scope of this Blackgate shit. Bruce needs to keep his nose out of it.

Tim scoffs. “Fine. Seems like you should get first dibs anyway.” He nods towards your desk where you’re still working stubbornly.

The room is silent, all three of them letting you work. After a few minutes, Tim steps toward you. “Here, you need any hel—”

Jason throws an arm out to stop him, just as Cass grabs his wrist and tugs him backwards, shaking her head. He holds up his hands in surrender.

Fifteen minutes later, you rap your knuckles on your desk. “Oi, peanut gallery!” You spin around in your chair, smiling wickedly. “I solved your case for you!”

“It’s not a case,” Tim mutters, and Jason scoffs.

“Don’t be jealous, RR,” Babs says over the line. “You can both be the prettiest.” Tim splutters as you laugh delightedly.

“Nice job,” Jason says, placing a hand on your shoulder. You grin up at him. He catches Cass and Tim share a look, sees her sign something too fast for his eyes to follow.

“Batgirl’s bringing it to you now, Oracle,” Tim says as you unplug the flash drive and hand it to Cass. You wave to her as she slips through the window.

“My backup came through,” Babs reports to Bruce. “They’ll be obsolete in a few minutes.”

“Copy.” The line fizzles as Babs cuts him off.

“Fuck yeah,” you grin in satisfaction. “Nothing like hearing that overgrown Bat say ‘copy.’”

Jason cackles as Tim rolls his eyes. “Oracle,” he says loudly. “Hood was in the dark about our friend here.” His eyes flick to you before he looks at Jason meaningfully.

And just what the fuck does he think he’s doing? Jason all but snarls at him.

“Huh. I could’ve sworn you were smarter than that, Hood,” Barbara admonishes.

“Shut up, O,” he grumbles. Jason glances at you to make sure you haven’t caught on to what they’re talking about, but you don’t seem to be paying attention; you’ve pulled up Steam and are scrolling through your game library.

“Maybe it’s time to clue them in. Take off your party hat,” Barbara says meaningfully. Tim nods forcefully.

“Butt out,” Jason says half-heartedly, but it doesn’t stick. He’s been thinking about telling you about Red Hood anyway; you’ve been together for a year and a half. He’s been…well, he’s scared. But maybe he shouldn’t be.

“We’d have to vote on it,” he says gruffly. Tim pumps his fist in the air. “In person,” he says meaningfully. Comm links aren’t safe, apparently.

“You have my vote,” Babs says confidently. “And Batgirl’s, too, she’s here.” Barbara pauses meaningfully. “I’m happy for you, Hood.”

“Me too!” Tim pipes up immediately.

“Yeah, yeah,” Jason waves them off, like his heart isn’t pounding. “Can you call everyone over?”

“Roger that.” Barbara seems pleased. “Hood is asking us all to meet near him,” she broadcasts aloud. “Sending you coordinates.”

Dick, Steph, Bruce, and Damian all copy. Jason steels himself. “Alright, RR, time to go.”

You glance at him as he moves toward the window. “Heading out?”

“Yeah,” Tim answers. “Got a big family meeting to get to.” He grins at Jason.

“Okay. See you around. Nice meeting you,” you say to Jason, before turning back to your screen.

“Uh, yeah,” he says uncomfortably, while Tim snickers. “See you later.”

The troops have already assembled two rooftops over. “Hood, what’s the situation?” Bruce asks sternly.

“The situation,” Tim starts happily, “is—”

“Hold on,” Jason cuts him off. “Disconnect comm links.” He watches warily as everyone takes them out of their ears.

“Compromised?” Dick asks with concern.

“Uh, yeah.” Jason scratches the back of his neck. “Listen, uh…” he looks at Tim helplessly.

“Jason’s dating Escher.”

“What!” Dick screams as Steph claps her hands together excitedly. “Why didn’t you tell me you were dating anyone?”

“Uh—”

“Fuck, yeah!” Steph interrupts. “This is great! Escher’s the freaking best!”

“Language,” Bruce says as Jason takes off the helmet to glare at Steph accusingly.

“We play Minecraft together,” she explains. “I didn’t know you two were dating!”

“Wait, hold on. I thought you all knew about that.” Jason shifts his glare to Tim.

Tim shrugs. “Only me and Babs knew,” he says.

“Timmy, why didn’t you share!” Dick groans, bounding over to ruffle Jason’s hair.

Jason pushes him away, trying to swipe his feet out from under him. Dick dodges easily, throwing a light right hook in return. “Wasn’t any of your business, now was it?” Jason says gruffly.

Tim looks at Dick, raising his eyebrows. “Didn’t want to get on his bad side.”

“Fair.” Dick grins softly at Jason, bumping shoulders with him. “Nice job, Little Wing.”

Jason blushes. “Yeah, yeah.”

“Congrats, Todd, but why are we all here?” Damian interrupts.

“I’m gonna tell ‘em,” Jason says simply. “About this. If it’s cool.”

“Fine with me,” Steph says instantly.

Tim nods, “seconded. Babs and Cass say it’s fine with them, we asked before we went dark.”

“Well, who am I to stand in their way,” Dick half-jokes, but he’s looking at Bruce with serious eyes. So is Jason.

“I’ll follow Father’s ruling,” Damian says stoutly.

That leaves the big man himself. Bruce smiles gently. “Of course, Jaylad. We’re all happy for you.”

Jason blushes all over again. “Thanks, old man.” He lets out a breath.

“But we have to ask Duke,” Bruce adds meaningfully.

“I texted him, he says it’s fine,” Tim says quickly. “But also, uh—” he holds his hand to his ear.

Warily, Jason puts his comm back in. “Jason, what the fuck!” you shriek. “What the fucking fuck is this!”

“I forgot to disconnect,” Babs says sheepishly.

“Jason, you ass! Why didn’t you tell me you ran around in a fucking costume?” you shout down the line. Steph and Dick keel over laughing. Jason realizes everyone has taken the liberty of putting their comm back in.

“Baby, please,” he says resignedly.

“Baby?” Dick mouths, beaming.

“Don’t you fucking ‘baby’ me!” you holler.

“Babe, you are a hacker,” he points out. “How come you didn’t share that with the class?”

That makes you pause. “Fair fucking point, I guess,” you mutter. Jason sees Bruce try to tug the comm out of Damian’s ear, but Damian dances out of reach.

“Uh, also, can you cool it with the swearing?” Jason asks. “There’s a kid here.”

“…if it’s Robin I am going to throw up.”

“Hello,” Damian says helpfully.

Your end of the line is silent.

“Hey, Escher, it’s Spoiler!” Steph cuts in. “Nice job shacking up with Hood.” She eyes Jason evilly.

“This is a fucking ambush,” you grind out. “Jason, you fucking ambushed me.”

“Language,” Bruce orders gently. Tim just about busts a gut while Jason waves frantically at Bruce, shaking his head rapidly. “Nice to meet you over the phone,” Bruce adds. Dick gives him a thumbs up.

“…likewise,” you say eventually. “I hope you’ll excuse me, but this has been insane, and I’m disconnecting. Jason, get your as— get back here after you’ve finished your family dinner.” Your end goes dead.

“They seem nice,” Bruce says after a moment. “We’ll have to talk about how they got into the comm links,” he looks at Tim reproachfully.

“See you later, Hood,” Dick says easily, nodding at your building.

Jason turns back to your apartment. He can already see you in the window, arms crossed over your chest. You’re trying to scowl at him, but he can see the smile trying to escape.

He shrugs his shoulders, grinning. You throw up your hands but beckon him anyway. Come on, come back.

Don’t worry, Jason’s coming.

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ailelie · 4 months ago

Text

Installing Linux (Mint) as a Non-Techy Person

I've wanted Linux for various reasons since college. I tried it once when I no longer had to worry about having specific programs for school, but it did not go well. It was a dedicated PC that was, I believe, poorly made. Anyway.

In the process of deGoogling and deWindows365'ing, I started to think about Linux again. Here is my experience.

Pre-Work: Take Stock

List out the programs you use regularly and those you need. Look up whether or not they work on Linux. For those that don't, look up alternatives.

If the alternative works on Windows/Mac, try it out first.

Make sure you have your files backed up somewhere.

Also, pick up a 5GB minimum USB drive.

Oh and make a system restore point (look it up in your Start menu) and back-up your files.

Step One: Choose a Distro

Dear god do Linux people like to talk about distros. Basically, from what all I've read, if you don't want to fuss a lot with your OS, you've got two options: Ubuntu and Linux Mint. Ubuntu is better known and run by a company called Canonical. Linux Mint is run by a small team and paid for via donations.

I chose Linux Mint. Some of the stuff I read about Ubuntu reminded me too much of my reasons for wanting to leave Windows, basically. Did I second-guess this a half-dozen times? Yes, yes I did.

The rest of this is true for Linux Mint Cinnamon only.

Step Two: Make your Flash Drive

Linux Mint has great instructions. For the most part they work.

Start here:

The trickiest part of creating the flash drive is verifying and authenticating it.

On the same page that you download the Linux .iso file there are two links. Right click+save as both of those files to your computer. I saved them and the .iso file all to my Downloads folder.

Then, once you get to the 'Verify your ISO image' page in their guide and you're on Windows like me, skip down to this link about verifying on Windows.

Once it is verified, you can go back to the Linux Mint guide. They'll direct you to download Etchr and use that to create your flash drive.

If this step is too tricky, then please reconsider Linux. Subsequent steps are both easier and trickier.

Step Three: Restart from your Flash Drive

This is the step where I nearly gave up. The guide is still great, except it doesn't mention certain security features that make installing Linux Mint impossible without extra steps.

(1) Look up your Bitlocker recovery key and have it handy.

I don't know if you'll need it like I did (I did not turn off Bitlocker at first), but better to be safe.

(2) Turn off Bitlocker.

(3) Restart. When on the title screen, press your Bios key. There might be more than one. On a Lenovo, pressing F1 several times gets you to the relevant menu. This is not the menu you'll need to install, though. Turn off "Secure Boot."

(4) Restart. This time press F12 (on a Lenovo). The HDD option, iirc, is your USB. Look it up on your phone to be sure.

Now you can return to the Linux Mint instructions.

Figuring this out via trial-and-error was not fun.

Step Four: Install Mint

Just follow the prompts. I chose to do the dual boot.

You will have to click through some scary messages about irrevocable changes. This is your last chance to change your mind.

I chose the dual boot because I may not have anticipated everything I'll need from Windows. My goal is to work primarily in Linux. Then, in a few months, if it is working, I'll look up the steps for making my machine Linux only.

Some Notes on Linux Mint

Some of the minor things I looked up ahead of time and other miscellany:

(1) HP Printers supposedly play nice with Linux. I have not tested this yet.

(2) Linux Mint can easily access your Windows files. I've read that this does not go both ways. I've not tested it yet.

(3) You can move the taskbar (panel in LM) to the left side of your screen.

(4) You are going to have to download your key programs again.

(5) The LM software manager has most programs, but not all. Some you'll have to download from websites. Follow instructions. If a file leads to a scary wall of strange text, close it and just do the Terminal instructions instead.

(6) The software manager also has fonts. I was able to get Fanwood (my favorite serif) and JetBrains (my favorite mono) easily.

In the end, be prepared for something to go wrong. Just trust that you are not the first person to ever experience the issue and look it up. If that doesn't help, you can always ask. The forums and reddit community both look active.

#linux mint #linux #deWindows #de365 #deGoogle

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river-taxbird · 1 year ago

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Have YOU got an old Windows PC Microsoft has told you can't run Windows 11? It's time to give it a new life!

How to install Windows 11 on unsupported PC Hardware using Rufus. You can also disable some other Windows 11 bullshit like data harvesting and needing a Microsoft account.

It has been in the news a lot lately that Windows 11 isn't allowed to be installed on PCs without certain requirements, including the TPM 2.0, a chip that was only included in PCs made in 2018 or later. This means that once Windows 10 stops receiving security updates, those PCs will not be able to (officially) run a safe, updated version of Windows anymore. This has led to an estimated 240 million PCs bound for the landfill. Thanks Microsoft! I get you don't want to be seen as the insecure one, but creating this much waste can't be the solution.

(I know nerds, Linux is a thing. I love you but we are not having that conversation. If you want to use Linux on an old PC you are already doing it and you don't need to tell me about it. People need Windows for all sorts of reasons that Linux won't cut.)

So lately I have been helping some under privileged teens get set up with PCs. Their school was giving away their old lab computers, and these kids would usually have no chance to afford even a basic computer. They had their hard drives pulled so I have been setting them up with SSDs, but the question was, what to do about the operating system? So I looked into it and I found out there IS actually a way to bypass Microsoft's system requirement and put Windows 11 on PCs as old as 2010.

You will need: Rufus: An open source ISO burning tool.

A Windows 11 ISO: Available from Microsoft.

A USB Flash Drive, at least 16GB.

A working PC to make the ISO, and a PC from 2018 or older you want to install Windows 11 on.

Here is the guide I used, but I will put it in my own words as well.

Download your Windows 11 ISO, and plug in your USB drive. It will be erased, so don't have anything valuable on it. Run Rufus, select your USB drive in the Device window, and select your Windows 11 ISO with the Select button. (There is supposed to be a feature in Rufus to download your ISO but I couldn't get it to work.?

Choose standard windows installation, and follow the screenshot for your settings. Once you are done that, press Start, and then the magic happens. Another window pops up allowing you to remove the system requirements, the need for a microsoft account, and turn off data collecting. Just click the options you want, and press ok to write your iso to a drive.

From there you just need to use the USB drive to install windows. I won't go into details here, but here are some resources if you don't know how to do it.

Boot your PC from a USB Drive

Install Windows 11 from USB Drive

If you had a licensed copy of Windows 10, Windows 11 will already be licensed. If you don't, then perhaps you can use some kind of... Activation Scripts for Microsoft software, that will allow you to activate them. Of course I cannot link such tools here. So there you go, now you can save a PC made from before 2018 from the landfill, and maybe give it to a deserving teen in the process. The more we can extend the lives of technology and keep it out of the trash, the better.

Additional note: This removes the requirement for having 4GB Minimum of RAM, but I think that requirement should honestly be higher. Windows 11 will be unusable slow on any system with below 8GB of RAM. 8GB is the minimum I think you should have before trying this but it still really not enough for modern use outside of light web and office work. I wouldn't recommend trying this on anything with 4GB or less. I am honestly shocked they are still selling brand new Windows 11 PCs with 4GB of ram. If you're not sure how much RAM you have, you can find out in the performance tab of Task Manager in Windows, if you click the More Details icon on the bottom right. If you don't have enough, RAM for old systems is super cheap and widely available so it would definitely be worth upgrading if you have a ram starved machine you'd like to give a new life.

#Windows #Windows 11 #tech #tech advice #pc #TPM 2.0 #rufus #open source #open source software #technology #tech tips

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rylem33 · 10 days ago

Text

Finding the Words

Quinn clicked her lighter once, let it burn, then snapped it shut again. She wasn’t smoking, she just liked the sound and to watch the flame flicker.. It helped pass the time and calm her attitude. She hated most things, including being bored.

Including lame ass frat boys that stepped into her peripheral.

She didn’t look, just said, “No.”

“Hey, at least let me say something first,” came Josh’s upbeat voice.

She sighed and finally looked over. “Do I look like I’m in the mood for idle conversation?”

Josh chuckled, undeterred. “Okay, point taken. Are you in the mood for a bet?”

“That’s worse.”

“One track,” he said, pulling out his phone. “You listen and let me know your honest opinion. I bet you’re going to like it.”

She folded her arms. “Wow, the confidence. What’s the song, some trendy pop nonsense?”

He stood and gave her a smug look. “No, it’s mine.”

That caught her a bit off guard.

“Wait, yours like… you made it?”

“Yep.”

“Oh, this is going to be fun.” She teased. “Is it, like, your soul? Your ‘true expression’? Please tell me there’s a ukulele involved.”

“Just synths. Some vocal distortion. It’s kind of—”

“—‘hard to define,’” she cut in, smirking. “Let me guess—it’s ‘raw,’ ‘authentic,’ and ‘better with headphones’?”

Josh chuckled. “Exactly.”

“And you want me—of all people—to listen to your pet project and not rip it apart?”

He nodded. “If you can.”

She stared at him.

He met her gaze, steady. “I mean, you could just refuse. I won’t tell anyone how you were too scared to listen to my song. Probably.”

She clenched her jaw. “You think I’m afraid of your grade school magnum opus?”

“I think you’re too busy rebelling to know what you actually like anymore. And you’re probably afraid you might like it.”

Quinn clenched her jaw. She was trapped. If she backed out she was weak and scared. If not, she was doing what this lame ass told her.

She yanked the headphones from his hand, already sneering. “Fine. Let’s hear your little passion project. If I die from secondhand cringe, I want you to tell people I went out brave.”

Josh just smiled. “Of course, the bravest of souls.”

She put on the headphones, crossed her arms, and sat down on the curb.

Josh hit play.

· · ·

Three minutes passed and the song ended.

Josh raised an eyebrow. “Well?”

Quinn opened her mouth. Nothing came out at first.

Her brain was… blank. Not just the song—everything. She couldn’t remember a single second of the last few minutes. Nothing.

Shit. She couldn’t say that.

So she shrugged hard and casually tossed him the headphones. “Wow. Okay. Real bold move opening with that many… triangles.”

Josh blinked in confusion. “Triangles?”

“Yeah. You know. That pingy synth sound? It was like… being trapped inside a video game made for virgins.”

Josh chuckled. “Right. Got it. Too many triangles.”

He reached into his backpack and held out a small USB drive. “You should check out my other tracks. That one was just the intro.”

She rolled her eyes so hard it almost hurt. “Seriously?”

He offered no explanation. Just kept holding it out, smiling.

She took it, fully intending to chuck it in the nearest trash can the second he turned around. Instead, she slid it into her hoodie pocket without thinking.

Then, as she turned to walk off, she flipped him off over her shoulder. “Enjoy your delusions, Mozart.”

Josh gave a little salute, still grinning.

She stalked across the quad toward her home.

Somewhere unnoticed, in the back of her mind, an odd beat pulsed.

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

Quinn kicked her door shut with her boot, the deadbolt catching with a satisfying clunk. She tossed her bag onto the floor, ripped off her hoodie, and flopped face-first onto the bed.

It was late. She should’ve gone to sleep. But her thoughts were wired. That loser Josh had actually gotten under her skin. That was the part that pissed her off. Him smirking like he’d won something.

She grunted into the pillow. “Ugh. Nerd.”

She reached for her vape and instead pulled out… the USB.

“Wait. What?”

She sat up, flipping it between her fingers. She threw this. Didn’t she? Right when he handed it to her. She never pocketed it.

At least… she didn’t think she had.

She stared at the little metal thing for another second. Then, with a huff, pushed herself off the bed and shuffled to her laptop.

“Whatever,” she muttered, jamming the drive into the port. “I’ll post this shit all over the socials and roast his ass for messing with me.”

She saw the first file in the folder.

“track01_the_initiation.mp3”

“What kind of lame title is that?” she mumbled. “It’s gonna be some weirdo art-school ambient garbage.”

Still, she clicked.

The music began quietly. Barely audible. A pulse, like a heartbeat beneath water. Then layers. Synths, soft and smooth. A voice curled in the mix.

She leaned forward, trying to understand the voice.

What is it saying?

. . . .

Her eyes blinked open.

She was on the floor. She was on her knees on the floor.

She gasped and jolted upright, scrambling away from the center of the room. Her legs were shaky. Her skin glistened like she’d been sweating.

“What the fuck…”

She looked at the clock. Time had passed, but she didn’t remember any of it. Again.

“Goddamn it,” she snapped, kicking the leg of her chair.

She never zoned out like that. Not unless she was blackout drunk. And even then, not like that.

And despite everything her hand was already reaching for her mouse.

If only I try it one more time, I can hear what it ‘s saying….

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

It’s playing again. I can’t hear the words. There are words, I know there are. But they won’t come into focus.

They’re always just out of reach. My thighs are open. My hand’s already there. I don’t remember putting it there. But I can’t take it away. If I can only hear the words. Then I can stop reaching for it.

I’m panting. God, I’m panting. My fingers are soaked. The song keeps looping. I know it’s looping, but it feels different each time. I’m grinding into my own hand.

I’m still chasing the words. I need to hear them.

My skin tingles with need. What are the words…..where are the words…I need the words…..

I scream when I finish. My body quakes from the release.

I still want to hear the words.

I’ll do anything….anything… if he’ll just say them to me.

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

It’s quiet. Still. My hands are resting on my lap, where they’re supposed to. My legs are aching from being in this position for so long. Despite this, I don’t shift. I don’t fidget. I wait.

Josh moves across the room.

I don’t look until he’s closer. I’ve learned not to anticipate. Anticipating isn’t the same as listening. And listening is… everything.

I lift my eyes to him. That’s allowed. My mouth parts just slightly. My chest tightens. It’s the stillness right before something beautiful happens.

Please say something.

He doesn’t.

That’s okay. I can wait. I’m good at waiting now. It’s what I was trained to do. I remember that I used to be impatient. Sharp-tongued. Mean, even. It’s funny to think about. That girl… she was exhausting.

Josh takes one more step toward me and I stare up in anticipation.

Please. Please say something.

“Say hello, Quinn.”

Oh—oh god—

“Hi, Josh.” The words float out of my mouth before I know I’ve spoken them.

He sounds so good. He always sounds good. But when he talks to me? When he tells me what to do? It’s like… like a warm hand inside my chest. Pulling. Pressing. Filling. I feel full. I feel soft. I feel—

“Good girl.”

My thighs squeeze together.

Yesyesyesyes

I nearly gasp but catch it in my throat. I shouldn’t make noise unless he tells me to. I know that. I remember learning that.

When he praises me… it’s like I’m being fed. Like I didn’t know how hungry I was until that moment.

Josh moves behind me. I feel his fingers glide down the curve of my hair and onto my shoulder. I want him to continue. I want to feel his hand upon my breast. Between my legs.

“You used to hate me.”

Did I?

I blink.

I try to remember the hatred, the scoffing, the eye-rolls. But they come like echoes underwater.

That doesn’t feel real. Not anymore.

He speaks again, slow and patient.

“You used to be angry. Cold. Disrespectful.”

Maybe. I guess. I don’t know anymore. All I know is this.

He leans closer, his voice right beside my ear.

“You used to think you couldn’t be tamed.”

I exhale.

My eyes flutter.

But I was wrong.

I smile.

I won’t speak again.

Not until he tells me to.

#f2f transformation #personality change #hypnosis #mental change

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elliespassagerprincess · 29 days ago

Note

I was reading your fics and had an idea...

What about if yandere!Ellie falls for reader and basically goes through the motions to get reader to herself, only to be confused when reader isn't scared at all.

Bc plot twist, reader is also yandere for Ellie 🤯

So basically Ellie just kinda did all the work for reader without knowing but in the end they are together and all happy bc they see themselves as soulmates

Two Halves of the Same Obsession - ellie williams x reader

hi anon!! i hope you like it! this story actually reminded me of a fic i wrote 2 years ago lmfao... this deadass made me reminisce

pairing: yandere!ellie williams x fem!reader

requests are open, send me your thoughts!

HUGE WARNING: stalking, obsession, possessiveness, psychological manipulation, toxic, codependent dynamics, mild violence and psychological instability, mature themes, sexual tension (no explicit smut, but heavily implied), not a safe or healthy depiction of romance, mental instability / emotional breakdowns, mention of murder, suicide

summary: Ellie watches you. Memorizes you. Loves you in a way that defies logic—so deeply it eats at her bones. She was always good at being invisible, good at hiding in shadows, good at peeling people apart from a distance. But you? You were the first thing she didn’t want to tear apart. You were something she wanted to keep whole. Keep close. Keep forever.

masterlist

This story contains dark and emotionally intense themes—please read with care. You are responsible for what you consume online. Please read the warnings before reading.

You always feel her first. That pulse behind your spine.

That breath that doesn't belong to you, coiling at the back of your neck. A hunger you don’t name, but know. Deeply. Intimately.

Ellie thinks she’s clever. And she is.

But not clever enough to know she was being watched, too.

She thinks she’s the predator. But you’ve been letting her bite.

Ellie Williams lives between seconds. She’s the ghost in the lecture hall corner. The whisper of worn Converse across linoleum.

The pen stroke in your notebook that wasn’t there a minute ago.

She sits behind you in class every Tuesday and Thursday, breath held like prayer. Green eyes heavy-lidded, dragging themselves over the curve of your neck. She copies your scent to memory. Cedar and static. She opens your water bottle when you leave it unattended, just to feel your lip gloss on her fingertips.

She’s sick.nShe knows it.

But it’s a beautiful kind of sickness.

The kind that doesn’t hurt unless you leave.bAnd you never do.

You noticed her months ago. Her eyes were too loud for someone trying to stay quiet.

You caught her staring. Not once. Not twice.

Thirty-seven times in a single week.

And when you turned to meet her gaze, she flinched—but never looked away. That’s how you knew.

People like that don’t run. They wait for you to chase.

She followed you home once.

Or… thirty-seven times.

Her boots left prints in the soft dirt outside your apartment window. You watched them disappear in the rain. And when they came back, you left your curtain cracked open, just enough for her to see the silk of your slip against your skin.

You were never scared. You were interested.

Ellie thinks she’s orchestrating this. She thinks she’s the architect of obsession.

What she doesn’t know is that you’ve never once touched your own homework. That you slipped a USB drive into her bag three months ago and waited. That she’s been doing your assignments, your lab reports, your essays—all because she thought it was her idea.

She did your assignments. She memorized your schedule. She followed you home. And you…

You let her.

Because you knew. You always knew. And you didn’t run.

You fed her guilt like candy. You let her spiral until helping you was an offering to her own madness.

She doesn’t know you saw her notebook. Your name written a hundred times between calculus notes and botanical diagrams. The sketch of your smile, detailed down to the shape of your molars. The phrase mine mine mine mine scribbled in green ink along the margins like scripture.

She thinks you haven’t noticed the Polaroid tucked in her sketchbook. She thinks you don’t know she broke into your dorm while you were in the shower.

She thinks you’re innocent.

But you?

You’re just patient.

The confrontation happens like all love stories do— on a night soaked in moonlight and desperation.

You're waiting on her porch. Sweater too big. Eyes too bright.

Lips parted like an invitation or a threat. She freezes at the sight of you.

“You followed me,” she says. Voice cracked open, thin as smoke.

You tilt your head. Smile.

“I know.”

The silence screams.

She swallows. “You… how long have you—?”

You stand. Walk slowly.

“Long enough to know you only follow me on Tuesdays, because that’s when your roommate works late.”

You take a step closer.

“And that you don’t touch yourself unless you’ve seen me smile that day.”

Another step.

“That you wore green three times last week because it’s the only color that doesn’t make you feel like a liar.”

Ellie’s mouth parts like she’s drowning. You lean in, breathe her in, just like she’s done to you a thousand times.

“You thought I didn’t notice?” you whisper. “Baby, I wanted you to.”

She kisses you like it’s the first and last time she’ll ever be allowed to.

Like she’s sorry for hiding. Sorry for wanting. Sorry for touching things she wasn’t supposed to.

And you let her. Because you wanted her to break.

You wanted to ruin her.

And she wanted to be ruined.

The obsession becomes something holy. She stops pretending. Stops hiding. She clings to your side like a second skin. Does your laundry. Sleeps on the floor by your bed unless you let her in. Writes Mrs. Williams in the fogged-up glass of your shower.

You start dressing for her. Reading her journal. Leaving her love notes in Latin under her pillow.

The world becomes you-and-her-you-and-her-you-and-her.

It’s toxic. Violent. Fragile. Perfect. She watches you sleep.

You pretend not to see. She claws at your skin when she thinks you’ll leave. You threaten to kiss someone else just to see how far she’ll go.

You get off on the obsession. She gets off on the worship.

And in your twisted little cathedral, there is only one truth: You were made for each other.

“You think we’re soulmates?” she whispers one night.

Her voice is hoarse from crying.

You nod, mouth pressed to her temple.

“I don’t think. I know.”

Ellie’s grip tightens around your wrist. “I’d kill for you.”

“I know,” you whisper back. “I’d let you.”

She chokes on a laugh, breath catching between your ribs. There’s no heaven for girls like you.

But hell? Hell is home.

And you built it together.

The first time Ellie hears it from you—the full truth, not veiled in suggestion or innuendo—it’s not from your mouth. It’s in a letter.

Folded neatly, slid into her sketchbook between pages of your smile.

“You always thought you were the monster.

But I let you come closer.

And you never asked why.

You watched. I danced.

You touched. I moaned.

You bled. I licked.

You were my favorite story before you ever spoke to me.”

Ellie stares at it for two hours. Her hands shake. She reads it again.

Again.

By the time you knock on her door, she’s on the floor, fingers stained in graphite and something feral, eyes bloodshot from sleepless need.

“Do you love me?” you ask, softly.

She doesn’t respond. She lunges. After, she sobs in your chest.

“I wanted to keep you clean,” she whispers, shaking.

You laugh like broken glass.

“You don’t get it, Ellie. I was never clean.”

Days blur. She builds a shrine of you in her closet.

A hairbrush.

Your lipstick, uncapped and half-melted.

A sock you “accidentally” left under her bed.

Your test answers—filled out in her handwriting, not yours.

You spray her pillow with your perfume when she’s not looking.

You leave voice notes on her phone in the middle of the night. Nothing but breathing.

She listens to them on loop until her ears ring.

Your favorite game becomes pretending you’re strangers again.

At cafés.

On the bus.

In alleys behind bars you’re not old enough to drink in.

She approaches you like prey. You taunt her like bait.

You say, “Please don’t hurt me,” and she growls, “Not unless you beg.”

Ellie carves your initials into her thigh one night. You find out because she sends you a picture.

No caption. Just blood and love and lunacy.

You show up at her apartment two minutes later, barefoot and panting. She opens the door and you slap her.

Then kiss her. Then cry. Then laugh.

Because you're both insane. But at least you're insane together.

You move in with her. Of course you do.

There are no toothbrushes. Only one.

Hers. Yours. Ours.

She tapes your photo to the ceiling above her bed. You let her tattoo your name just below her ribs. She sobs while she does it. You kiss the ink.

Neither of you will ever leave now.

One night, you press her face to your stomach.

“Do you ever want a baby?” you ask, quiet.

Ellie flinches. “Like… now?”

“No. Just… in the future.”

Ellie kisses your belly, slow and reverent.

“If it’s with you, yes. I’d give you anything.”

You smile. But your voice is ice.

“Good. Because I already stopped taking my pills.” you say knowing that to have a baby with another women is much more complicated,

But Ellie looks up, wild-eyed. Shaking. Worshipping.

You trace her lip with your thumb.

“Wouldn’t it be beautiful? Something made from obsession?”

You both spiral after that. Sex becomes war. Love becomes theology.

You pray on your knees between her legs. She offers her neck like communion. She wears your clothes. You wear her thoughts. You both stop existing as separate things.

People notice.

Friends fade.

Your families whisper. But neither of you hear them. Because there's no outside anymore.

Only her.

Only you.

Only us.

One day, you find her pacing the hallway, mumbling. She's got your schedule in one hand, a knife in the other.

“Someone touched you,” she says, not looking at you.

You nod.

“I saw.”

She looks up, eyes glowing like a creature in the dark.

“I’ll kill them.”

You cup her face gently. Kiss her once. Then again, softer.

“No need, baby,” you whisper. “I already did.”

Ellie cries harder than she ever has in her life. And she laughs, too.

Because you're not just her obsession. You're her twin flame.

Her god. Her grave.

You sleep that night with your hands tangled in her hair. And she murmurs into your skin—

“Promise you’ll haunt me if I die first.”

You kiss her pulse.

“We’re never dying. We’ll just… rot together.”

It doesn’t last. Of course it doesn’t. Things like this never do.

Even poison turns to ash if you hold it in your mouth long enough.

Ellie begins unraveling first. Not in ways you can see. In ways you feel.

The way she stares at you for hours, unmoving. The way her hand trembles when you say someone’s name that isn’t hers. The way she cries when you’re asleep, whispering your name like it’s the only word she knows.

You hear her chanting it into the sink drain. To the fridge. To the window.

You don’t stop her. You just watch.

Because madness is more romantic when it’s shared.

She builds a room for you in her head. You watch her disappear into it. Day by day.

Until the girl you love is no longer real— Just a mirror reflecting you back in pieces.

One morning, she’s sitting on the floor with a kitchen knife and a baby onesie. You don’t ask why. You just kneel beside her.

She holds the onesie to her chest and says,

“I want to put something in it.”

You tilt your head. She doesn’t elaborate. And you don’t want her to.

Because you know what she means.

Your obsession was a fire. Now it’s a coffin. And you both crawl inside it together.

You start hearing whispers too. At night. In the hallway. They say your name like Ellie says it. Like it’s sacred. Like it’s a wound. You hold your breath and wonder if it’s God. Or just her.

The murders start with mercy. A neighbor who asked too many questions. A professor who said you weren’t “applying yourself.”

Then: a girl who smiled too long. A man who bumped your shoulder. Then: a stranger who wore your shampoo.

Ellie calls it cleansing. You call it offering.

And when she brings you their earrings, you wear them all at once. Your ears bleed. But you smile.

The last time anyone sees you, you’re both at a park. Feeding ducks. Holding hands.

Your lips are red. Ellie’s are cracked. And your shadows are holding each other, too.

You kill each other on a Tuesday. Not with knives. With trust. You give her a bottle of wine laced with everything you know will stop her heart slow and soft. She drinks it without asking.

Because she knows. Because you both planned it without words.

Ellie dies first. You lie next to her, curled into the shape of her ribs.

You whisper: “I didn’t want a baby. I just wanted something that needed me like you did.”

Then, you kiss her still-warm mouth. And take your dose, too.

They find your bodies days later. Arms around each other. Mouths open. Fingernails broken.

And a note scrawled in both your handwriting:

“We weren’t made for this world.

So we made our own.

Rot with us, or leave us in peace.”

The city breathes a little easier after that. But not your home. That apartment smells like iron and flowers for weeks.

And the closet? Where she kept the shrine? No one dares open it.

Because some obsessions don’t die.

They wait.

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sweetiebugwrites · 1 month ago

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The Boardwalk|| Jason Todd x fem!reader

Fandom: DC, Batman

Pairing: Jason Todd x fem!reader

Words: 1853 ( good year)

Notes: Jason Todd is easily my favorite batfam kid. This is probably out of character.

Warnings: Language, minimal violence, none others known.

Summary: Y/N and Jason make a good team.

The warehouse sat like a decayed animal at the edge of Gotham’s East End — gutted windows, rusted beams, and a crooked sign that was missing several letters, now only reading “E..i.t. Im.or.s.” No one came here unless they were desperate, or they had business with her.

The Red Hood happened to be both.

Jason Todd stepped out of the shadows, his boots silent on the concrete floor. The warehouse smelled faintly of dust, motor oil, and something sweet — vanilla, maybe. It always smelled like her, even when she wasn’t there.

She was, though. Of course she was.

Y/N sat near a table stacked with files and USB drives, several small monitors, and various equipment. Her posture was coiled like she was about to melt into the back of her chair. But Jason knew better. Beneath the quiet exterior and nervy glances was a mind like a scalpel — sharp, clean, and willing to cut if she had to.

“You’re late.” She said without looking up.

Jason’s helmet tilted with mock offense. “You’re gonna help me.” Only offering a small scoff and a direct command rather than a ‘Hi, how are ya? Please help me, I’m struggling. :(’

Y/N finally turned, her eyes warm with amusement but her lips struggling to keep from smiling. “This is my place of business, you’re just gonna demand my assistance?”

He walked towards her slowly, movements full of purpose. The feared Red Hood — kevlar plates gleaming in the dim warehouse light, holsters snug, twin pistols holstered at his sides — a predator to anyone and everyone.

But here? With her?

“That's why you're dating me then, right?” He asked, voice lower now, the edge of the helmet giving it that filtered edge. “Because I’m a walking red flag with a tight schedule?”

Y/N’s lips curved slowly and with a glint in her eyes, she watched him. “You’re more of a walking caution sign with very little communication skills.”

Jason chuckled and pulled off his helmet. His hair was a tousled mess, and there was a new cut above his eyebrow, already crusted with dried blood. Y/N’s eyes lingered there, concern flickering like a match behind her reserved stare.

She didn’t reach for him — not yet — but Jason knew that look. She would, once the conversation veered away from business.

“Tell me you’ve got something good.” He said, leaning against the edge of her desk, eyes scanning the scattered information. “I need a location on Dalcanetti’s new stash. He's running weapons through Gotham Heights, and intel says someone big is funding him.”

Y/N nodded once. “I heard. Word is he’s not acting alone anymore — he’s linked up with a couple familiar figures. You’re not just dealing with stolen hardware now, Jay. You’re stepping into multinational territory. Bloodier hands. Bigger guns, you know how that goes.” She rolls her eyes and waves her hand as she explains.

Jason's jaw tightened. “All the more reason to stop them now.”

She handed him a drive, her fingers brushing his glove. For a moment, their eyes locked. Y/N quickly looks away and toward a nearby screen of Gotham Harbor.

“I mapped their recent shipments. You’ll want to hit the docks early tomorrow night. But—” her voice dropped, “—you’re going to need backup.”

Jason’s brow rose. “Don’t tell me you’re pushin Damian again.”

Y/N finally smiled — that rare, glowing thing he never got tired of coaxing out. “He’s brutal and efficient. He looks up to you. Also, he listens to me. Mostly.”

Jason snorted. “He listens to you because you bring him cookies and tell him stories about Victorian assassins.”

“He listens to me.” She said simply, with a hint of pride.

Jason leaned in closer, a teasing warmth radiating from him as he took in her profile, a hint of blue from the computer‘s glow.

Y/N looks up at him through her lashes. “Jealous?”

“Terrified.” Jason cringed at the thought. “He’s like a ten-pound gremlin with a katana and a superiority complex.”

They laughed — softly, like the sound wasn’t allowed to echo too loudly in a place like this.

Then Y/N stood to match his posture, bringing her thumb to graze the cut on Jason’s forehead, collecting a small crimson droplet.

“It’s bleeding again.” She murmured.

“And you’re worrying again,” he replied, catching her hand gently. He turned her palm over, pressing a kiss to the inside of her wrist. “It’s just a scratch. I’ll heal.”

Y/N studied him, quiet as always, like she was looking for signs of the boy underneath the mask. The one who’d once come back from the grave, heart stitched together with rage and purpose.

“You always say that.” She whispered.

He tilted her chin up, eyes soft now. “I always do. I’m like Frankenstein if he was cool.” Jason winks to Y/N, attempting to lighten the mood.

The warehouse was silent again, save for the distant hum of traffic far beyond its rusted doors.

Jason brings her close to him. Armor and all, as she melted against his torso, easily morphing into his arms.

“I’ll come back.” He said again, stubbornly into her hairline, pecking her temple in reassurance.

Y/N nodded into his chest. “And I’ll be waiting. With more files. And maybe cookies.”

Jason grinned. “Your moral compass is shady, your files are illegal, and I’m pretty sure your cookies are made of sin.”

“And yet you love them.” She mumbled.

“I love you,” he corrected. “, the cookies are just a bonus.”

Both of them turn as an alert pierces the otherwise quiet lot, echoing off the unsound building. A brief shared look has them both sighing before parting ways, this mission was about to happen a lot sooner.

The metal door of the warehouse slammed shut behind him, the echo fading into the bones of the building like a warning. Jason was gone, melting into the city like smoke and gunmetal, one step ahead of the storm.

Y/N sat still for a beat, watching the door long after he’d vanished. Then she turned back to her terminal.

“Alright, big guy,” she muttered under her breath, slipping on her headset and pulling up the dockyard surveillance grid. “Let’s get you eyes.”

With a few keystrokes, she accessed the city’s grid, patching into traffic cams, infrared scans, and satellite pings above Gotham’s Port District. A blinking red marker lit up Slip 12B. The shipment was still there — for now.

She opened her comms taking a deep breath as she calculated the roundup.“Red Hood, you’ve got three armed sentries on the west side of the warehouse. Fourth’s patrolling near the cargo crates. No visible snipers, but I’m guessing there’s a backup crew on standby.”

Jason’s voice crackled through; distorted slightly behind the modulator, but otherwise calm. “Copy that. Quiet entry. Low and fast.”

Y/N’s eyes flicked to her second screen — a secure Batline. She hesitated for a second before wildly tapping into a private frequency. She groans at the initial wait, nerves blistering at the tension. “Oracle, come in. I need to contact Batman.”

There was a pause, then a familiar female voice came through. “He’s on patrol. What’s going on?”

“It’s bigger than we thought. The shipment’s moving tonight, earlier than expected. Red Hood is on-site. But this isn’t just Arkovic muscle. It’s… layered. The funding routes — I tracked one of them through shell corporations. There’s a link to Sionis.”

Barbara’s voice sharpened. “Black Mask?”

“I need backup at the docks. Quickly.”

“I’ll alert Bruce.”

Y/N leaned closer to the monitor. On-screen, Jason was already inside the perimeter, moving like a shadow between stacks of rusted shipping containers, guns drawn but silent. Efficient, deadly and so alone.

Suddenly, another alert popped on her screen — a new signal from the port’s automated freight system. Her fingers flew across the keys. “No,” she muttered. “No no no—” The manifest had changed. The shipment wasn’t just being guarded. It was being moved.

“Red Hood, change of plans.” She said, voice low but urgent. “They’re rerouting the cargo. It’s being loaded onto a private vessel. Slip 17. They’re moving fast.”

“How fast?”

“Fast.” She winced.

“I’m on it.”

She heard the shift in his voice — that switch from focused to furious. It was the tone he used when someone tried to outplay him.

As Jason moved, Y/N’s monitors lit up — tracking his heat signature as he darted between cover, closed the gap, and took out the guards with silent, brutal precision. The footage was grainy, but she could tell: his movements were sharper than usual. More desperate.

He wasn’t just fighting to stop a deal now.

Another terminal pinged. She turned to it and read the new patches from the company shipping the crate.

She froze.

The account numbers weren’t Arkovic’s like she had thought. It was listed under Janus Holdings. Also known as Black Mask’s personal financial shell. “Oh shit,” she whispered. “He’s not just funding this. He’s running it.” Her heart pounded. Her hands moved faster. She transmitted the new intel to Jason and Oracle, eyes scanning for every scrap of detail.

Then the screens blurred as everything shifted — violence breaking out through her feed, Jason engaged, red streaks of muzzle flash lighting up the cameras.

And then —

Silence.

It was hours later when the door of their apartment clicked open.

Y/N was already on the rickety couch, curled in one of Jason’s hoodies, surrounded by open files and a half-drunk mug of tea. She looked up the moment she heard the boots hit the hardwood.

Jason stepped in slowly — no helmet, bloodied knuckles, a tear along his armored shoulder, and exhaustion clear in his eyes.

She stood immediately.

Neither of them said anything at first.

He crossed the room, dropped his weapons by the table, and pulled her into his arms. No longer clad in armor — just Jason, flesh and blood and breath, holding on like the world might fall if he didn’t.

Y/N buried her face into his chest.

“I..” She mumbled. “I thought—”

“I know,” he said softly, fingers sliding into her hair. “I’m sorry.”

They stood there in silence — warm, tangled, alive.

Eventually, she pulled back just enough to look up at him. “You were right.”

“About what?”

“ He’s using Arkovic as a puppet.”

Jason’s eyes darkened, jaw tightening. “Then we go deeper. We cut off every limb until he shows himself.”

Y/N nodded. “I’ve started tracing Janus. I already flagged two of the holding accounts.”

Jason leaned in, resting his forehead against hers. “You don’t sleep enough.”

“You don’t duck fast enough.”

He huffed a tired laugh.

They stood like that for a long time — wrapped in city heat and fatigue and the kind of silence that doesn’t need to be filled.

#fic #dc universe #jason todd #oracle #batman #jason todd x reader #jason todd x you #gotham #ooc

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alongtidesoflight · 4 months ago

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in wake of yet another wave of people being turned off by windows, here's a guide on how to dual boot windows and 🐧 linux 🐧 (useful for when you're not sure if you wanna make the switch and just wanna experiment with the OS for a bit!)

if you look up followup guides online you're gonna see that people are telling you to use ubuntu but i am gonna show you how to do this using kubuntu instead because fuck GNOME. all my homies hate GNOME.

i'm just kidding, use whatever distro you like. my favorite's kubuntu (for a beginner home environment). read up on the others if you're curious. and don't let some rando on reddit tell you that you need pop! OS for gaming. gaming on linux is possible without it.

why kubuntu?

- it's very user friendly

- it comes with applications people might already be familiar with (VLC player and firefox for example)

- libreoffice already preinstalled

- no GNOME (sorry GNOME enthusiasts, let me old man yell at the clouds) (also i'm playing this up for the laughs. wholesome kde/gnome meme at the bottom of this post.)

for people who are interested in this beyond my tl;dr: read this

(if you're a linux user, don't expect any tech wizardry here. i know there's a billion other and arguably better ways to do x y and/or z. what i'm trying to do here is to keep these instructions previous windows user friendly. point and click. no CLI bro, it'll scare the less tech savvy hoes. no vim supremacy talk (although hell yeah vim supremacy). if they like the OS they'll figure out bash all by themselves in no time.)

first of all, there'll be a GUI. you don't need to type lines of code to get this all running. we're not going for the ✨hackerman aesthetics✨ today. grab a mouse and a keyboard and you're good to go.

what you need is a computer/laptop/etc with enough disk space to install both windows and linux on it. i'm recommending to reserve at least a 100gb for the both of them. in the process of this you'll learn how to re-allocate disk space either way and you'll learn how to give and take some, we'll do a bit of disk partitioning to fit them both on a single disk.

and that's enough babbling for now, let's get to the actual tutorial:

🚨IMPORTANT. DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS ON A 32BIT SYSTEM. ONLY DO THIS IF YOU'RE WORKING WITH A 64BIT SYSTEM. 🚨 (win10 and win11: settings -> system -> about -> device specifications -> system type ) it should say 64bit operating system, x64-based processor.

step 1: install windows on your computer FIRST. my favorite way of doing this is by creating an installation media with rufus. you can either grab and prepare two usb sticks for each OS, or you can prepare them one after the other. (pro tip: get two usb sticks, that way you can label them and store them away in case you need to reinstall windows/linux or want to install it somewhere else)

in order to do this, you need to download three things:

rufus

win10 (listen. i know switching to win11 is difficult. not much of a fan of it either. but support's gonna end for good. you will run into hiccups. it'll be frustrating for everyone involved. hate to say it, but in this case i'd opt for installing its dreadful successor over there ->) or win11

kubuntu (the download at the top is always the latest, most up-to-date one)

when grabbing your windows installation of choice pick this option here, not the media creation tool option at the top of the page:

side note: there's also very legit key sellers out there who can hook you up with cheap keys. you're allowed to do that if you use those keys privately. don't do this in an enterprise environment though. and don't waste money on it if your ultimate goal is to switch to linux entirely at one point.

from here it's very easy sailing. plug your usb drive into your computer and fire up rufus (just double click it).

🚨two very important things though!!!!!!:🚨

triple check your usb device. whatever one you selected will get wiped entirely in order to make space for your installation media. if you want to be on the safe side only plug in the ONE usb stick you want to use. and back up any music, pictures or whatever else you had on there before or it'll be gone forever.

you can only install ONE OS on ONE usb drive. so you need to do this twice, once with your kubuntu iso and once with your windows iso, on a different drive each.

done. now you can dispense windows and linux left and right, whenever and wherever you feel like it. you could, for example, start with your designated dual boot device. installing windows is now as simple as plugging the usb device into your computer and booting it up. from there, click your way through the installation process and come back to this tutorial when you're ready.

step 2: preparing the disks for a dual boot setup

on your fresh install, find your disk partitions. in your search bar enter either "diskmgr" and hit enter or just type "partitions". the former opens your disk manager right away, the latter serves you up with this "create and format hard disk partitions" search result and that's what you're gonna be clicking.

you'll end up on a screen that looks more or less like in the screenshot below. depending on how many disks you've installed this might look different, but the basic gist is the same. we're going to snip a little bit off Disk 0 and make space for kubuntu on it. my screenshot isn't the best example because i'm using the whole disk and in order to practice what i preach i'd have to go against my own advice. that piece of advice is: if this screen intimidates you and you're not sure what you're doing here, hands off your (C:) drive, EFI system, and recovery partition. however, if you're feeling particularly fearless, go check out the amount of "free space" to the right. is there more than 30gb left available? if so, you're free to right click your (C:) drive and click "shrink volume"

this screen will pop up:

the minimum disk space required for kubuntu is 25gb. the recommended one is 50gb. for an installation like this, about 30gb are enough. in order to do that, simply change the value at

Enter the amount of space to shrink in MB: to 30000

and hit Shrink.

once that's done your partitions will have changed and unallocated space at about the size of 30gb should be visible under Disk 0 at the bottom like in the bottom left of this screenshot (courtesy of microsoft.com):

this is gonna be kubuntu's new home on your disk.

step 3: boot order, BIOS/UEFI changes

all you need to do now is plug the kubuntu-usb drive you prepared earlier with rufus into your computer again and reboot that bad boy.

the next step has no screenshots. we're heading into your UEFI/BIOS (by hitting a specific key (like ESC, F10, Enter) while your computer boots up) and that'll look different for everyone reading this. if this section has you completely lost, google how to do these steps for your machine.

a good search term would be: "[YOUR DEVICE (i.e Lenovo, your mainboard's name, etc.)] change boot order"

what you need to do is to tell your computer to boot your USB before it tries to boot up windows. otherwise you won't be able to install kubuntu.

this can be done by entering your BIOS/UEFI and navigating to a point called something along the lines of "boot". from "boot order" to "booting devices" to "startup configuration", it could be called anything.

what'll be a common point though is that it'll list all your bootable devices. the topmost one is usually the one that boots up first, so if your usb is anywhere below that, make sure to drag and drop or otherwise move it to the top.

when you're done navigate to Save & Exit. your computer will then boot up kubuntu's install wizard. you'll be greeted with this:

shocker, i know, but click "Install Kubuntu" on the right.

step 4: kubuntu installation

this is a guided installation. just like when you're installing windows you'll be prompted when you need to make changes. if i remember correctly it's going to ask you for your preferred keyboard layout, a network connection, additional software you might want to install, and all of that is up to you.

but once you reach the point where it asks you where you want to install kubuntu we'll have to make a couple of important choices.

🚨 another important note 🚨

do NOT pick any of the top three options. they will overwrite your already existing windows installation.

click manual instead. we're going to point it to our unallocated disk space. hit continue. you will be shown another disk partition screen.

what you're looking for are your 30gb of free space. just like with the USB drive when we were working with rufus, make sure you're picking the right one. triple check at the very least. the chosen disk will get wiped.

click it until the screen "create a new partition" pops up.

change the following settings to:

New partition size in megabytes: 512

Use as: EFI System Partition

hit OK.

click your free space again. same procedure.

change the following settings to:

New partition size in megabytes: 8000 (*this might be different in your case, read on.)

Use As: Swap Area

hit OK

click your free space a third time. we need one more partition.

change the following settings to:

don't change anything about the partition size this time. we're letting it use up the rest of the resources.

Use as: Ext4 journaling system

Mount Point: /

you're done here as well.

*about the 8000 megabytes in the second step: this is about your RAM size. if you have 4gb instead type 4000, and so on.

once you're sure your configuration is good and ready to go, hit "Install Now". up until here you can go back and make changes to your settings. once you've clicked the button, there's no going back.

finally, select your timezone and create a user account. then hit continue. the installation should finish up... and you'll be good to go.

you'll be told to remove the USB drive from your computer and reboot your machine.

now when your computer boots up, you should end up on a black screen with a little bit of text in the top left corner. ubuntu and windows boot manager should be mentioned there. naturally, when you click ubuntu you will boot into your kubuntu. likewise if you hit windows boot manager your windows login screen will come up.

and that's that folks. go ham on messing around with your linux distro. customize it to your liking. make yourself familiar with the shell (on kubuntu, when you're on your desktop, hit CTRL+ALT+T).

for starters, you could feed it the first commands i always punch into fresh Linux installs:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get upgrade

sudo apt-get install vim

(you'll thank me for the vim one later)

turn your back on windows. taste freedom. nothing sexier than open source, baby.

sources (mainly for the pictures): 1, 2

further reading for the curious: 1, 2

linux basics (includes CLI commands)

kubuntu documentation (this is your new best friend. it'll tell you everything about kubuntu that you need to know.

and finally the promised kde/gnome meme:

#windows #linuxposting #had a long day at work and i had to type this twice and i'm struggling to keep my eyes open #not guaranteeing that i didn't skip a step or something in there #so if someone linux savvy spots them feel free to point them out so i can make fixes to this post accordingly #opensource posting

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vergess · 1 year ago

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Please, please explain how to install and use linux like I'm 5 years old. I'm so sick of windows adding AI and other bullshit to my already struggling elderly laptop but I'm really not good with computers at all so I have no idea where to start with Linux.

Okay, so, I'm going to break this down into steps I would give the average tumblr user first, and then if any of them are confusing or use words you don't understand, ask me and I'll explain that step in greater detail.

Step 0) BACK. UP. YOUR. SHIT.

NEVER EVER EVER CHANGE YOUR OPERATING SYSTEM WITHOUT A COMPLETE BACKUP OF ALL YOUR FILES.

Step 1) Learn your machine. You need to know:

How much RAM you have

If your processor is 32 or 64 bit

How big your hard drive is

On windows, you can find out all of this by going to the start menu, typing "about" and opening the first result on your system instead of the internet.

For additional instructions, visit this page.

Step 2) Pick your Linux.

There's like 10,000 kinds of Linux, each tailored to particular functions that the end-user (that is you!) might want to have. The sheer amount is very daunting, so first I'm going to give my suggestions, then I'll explain how to pick for yourself.

For Mac users, I suggest Kubuntu. For windows users, I suggest Mint Cinnamon. If your laptop is really REALLY old, I recommend Sparky Stable, which is the lightest weight Linux I would ever suggest for a new user. In every case, download the version suited to your processor (32 bit can be labelled "x86" or "32 bit"; 64 bit is always labelled "64 bit").

If you want to try a different type of linux, you'll need to make sure your laptop meets the "minimum specs" or "system requirements." These numbers tell you how much RAM, processor and hard drive space the linux will use. (That's why you needed those numbers at the beginning.)

Step 3) Collect your supplies. You're going to need:

An ISO burning program compatible with your current system, like Balena Etcher.

A copy of the ISO file for the Linux you want to use.

Your laptop.

An 8gb or larger USB flash drive.

Step 3) Make a bootable USB drive

Install Balena Etcher, hitting "okay" and "next" when prompted. Last I checked, Etcher doesn't have adware attached, so you can just hit next every time.

Plug your USB drive into the laptop.

Open Etcher.

Click "flash from file" and open the ISO file with your Linux on it.

Click "Select target" and open the USB drive location. Hit the "flash" button. This will start writing all the linux installer data to your flash drive. Depending on the speed of your machine, this could take as long as 10 minutes, but shouldn't be much longer.

Step 4) Boot to the USB drive

This is, in my opinion, the trickiest step for a lot of people who don't do "computer stuff." Fortunately, in a rare act of good will, Windows 10 made this process a lot easier.

All you'll need to do is go to settings, then recovery, then advanced startup and pick the button labelled "use a device."

This tutorial has images showing where each of those is located. It's considered an "advanced setting" so you may get a spooky popup warning you that you could "harm your system by making changes" but we're not doing anything potentially harmful so you can ignore that if you get it.

Step 5) Try out linux on the flash drive first.

Linux installs using a cool little test version of itself that you can play around in. You won't be able to make changes or save settings, but you can explore a bit and see if the interface is to your liking. If it's hideous or hard to navigate, simply pick a new linux version to download, and repeat the "make a bootable USB" step for it.

Step 6) Actually install that sucker

This step varies from version to version, but the first part should be the same across the board: on the desktop, there should be a shortcut that says something like "install now." Double click it.

Follow the instructions your specific linux version gives you. When in doubt, pick the default, with one exception:

If it asks you to encrypt your drive say no. That's a more advanced feature that can really fuck your shit up down the road if you don't know how to handle it.

At some point you're going to get a scary looking warning that says 1 of 2 things. Either:

Install Linux alongside Windows, or

Format harddrive to delete all data

That first option will let you do what is called "dual booting." From then on, your computer will ask every time you turn it on whether you want Windows or Linux.

The second option will nuke Windows from orbit, leaving only linux behind.

The install process is slower the larger your chosen version is, but I've never seen it take more than half an hour. During that time, most linux versions will have a little slideshow of the features and layout of common settings that you can read or ignore as you prefer.

Step 7) Boot to your sexy new Linux device.

If you're dual booting, use the arrow keys and enter key to select your linux version from the new boot menu, called GRUB.

If you've only got linux, turn the computer on as normal and linux will boot up immediately.

Bonus Step: Copy Pasting some code

In your new start menu, look for an application called "terminal" or "terminal emulator." Open that up, and you will be presented with an intense looking (but actually very harmless) text command area.

Now, open up your web browser (firefox comes pre-installed on most!), and search the phrase "what to do after installing [linux version you picked]"

You're looking for a website called "It's FOSS." Here's a link to their page on Mint. This site has lots and lots of snippets of little text commands you can experiment with to learn how that functionality works!

Or, if you don't want to fuck with the terminal at all (fair enough!) then instead of "terminal" look for something called "software manager."

This is sort of like an app store for linux; you can install all kinds of programs directly from there without needing to go to the website of the program itself!

#Asks #Answered asks #octopusdreamsofaquaticsheep

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ebolagranola · 4 days ago

Text

Just had some straight up creepypasta shit happen. Computer suddenly bluescreens and it boot loops a few times. It takes forever, but it loads up again. The windows 10 background is old, and something feels off. I type my password. Doesn't work.

That's okay, it's long, I mess it up a few times. But eventually I take it slower. More deliberately. Making absolutely sure I get every single letter and symbol correct. Doesn't work. I do it again. Doesn't work. There's this desperate panic. I was watching malware videos before this happened, and had recently downloaded a lot of game mods I really didn't know much about. I put in security questions for my windows installation, but they weren't coming up when I requested to reset my password. Just a strange pop up asking to insert a password reset usb.

Then, I realize. The name displayed for the windows profile is different. It's… Older. I made the name of my new windows installation "Grace" just for convenience with recording for ChainmailChasers, but my old laptop drive installation was named Ebola. Uncertainty clouds my mind. Nervously, I type in my old password. Due to faded memories, my first attempt is the wrong password. But the second… Works.

It buffers just a little too long, just like the previous failed password attempts did, pausing as if the computer itself wasn't sure if the password was correct or not. But the desktop loads. My old desktop. It's so laggy from the drivers being incompatible that most of my mouse clicks aren't registering. My other drives showed up out of order in the file explorer, meaning they weren't wiped, but were blocked from access by windows. I didn't have authorization.

Google searches only pull up Blue Screen of Death results. No one is talking about my issue. I hit control alt delete and I only have two options: Shut Down and Restart. I shut down. It refuses to. I have to hold the power button. I load the bios, and wander around until I find the boot priority. Something so simple but specific that it felt deliberate. The crash had somehow swapped the boot priority from my SSD to my old laptop drive which is connected by SATA to USB. I swap it. It works.

Powershell /sfc scannow (a built-in windows utility that detects and automatically repairs damaged windows installation files) finds nothing. MalwareBytes detects nothing. My computer runs flawlessly again. All my accounts are untouched. But still, I'm left with this lingering feeling. Seeing that old desktop again, after a year… It was like seeing a ghost. Also, if this all sounded fairly circumstantial, imagining dealing with all of this high.

#chainmailchasers #chainmail chasers #creepypasta #digital horror

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machine-saint · 8 months ago

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Eka, do you have any beginner tips for learning Linux? Or recommendations? 🪡

hello mysterious sewing needle anon! I'm not sure what the "beginner" distro is these days, maybe Mint?

in no particular order:

definitely make sure you have a "backup" machine.

get comfortable using a terminal. you'll want to do this sooner or later. if you have a command called foobar, "man foobar" and "foobar --help" (that's two hyphens) will generally show you help.

fish is a good shell, imo more newbie friendly than sh or bash or zsh or whatever.

get comfortable with your distribution's package manager of choice, and prefer installing stuff from it if you can. it's a vastly better experience than windows's "download random shit and let it install itself".

for other things, flatpak is a reasonable alternative.

if you're editing config files by hand, make a backup copy of them. there are some fancy tools for managing config files but I'm not aware of any that are beginner-friendly.

if you fuck up your system so bad you can't get a graphical environment, you can use ctrl-alt-f2 to switch to a virtual terminal

if you fuck it up so bad you can't even boot, you can boot off a USB stick, mount your hard drive, and fix it that way. the installer you use for your distro will work for this.

when it comes to desktop environments, I have no particular opinions on gnome vs plasma vs. whatever else is out there because I use sway because I'm cool. anything that describes itself as being based on "Wayland" is newer, and some things might not work as well (screensharing), but will have better support for HiDPI displays

many Steam games that are not officially supported on Linux can be made to run anyway, and will run just as well. I don't remember the setting for this. for non-Steam games, not sure.

overall, have fun! it has its quirks but I'm happy knowing that my computer isn't going to try to force telemetry and AI nonsense onto me

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rhonuscorner · 1 month ago

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SO, ABOUT THAT ART GIVE AWAY I'M HOSTING

I'm very sorry to say I have to cancel it due to circumstances beyond my control.

The main reason for this is that my PC, on which I do 99% of my art, broke down a few weeks ago and it's gonna be probably at least another month before I get it back. Maybe I'll get lucky and it'll be sooner than that but I'm not holding out any hope, I've been having nothing but bad luck lately lmao.

Longer description of what's been going on is under the cut (which I'm also going to use as an excuse to rant about it because I've been very frustrated lmao) but yeah.

I've been using my old laptop since and I still have my old art tablet, but I've been holding off on doing art on it. Motivation issues aside, I don't really enjoy doing art on it (my PC spoiled me lol) and I also don't have access to my usual art resources, like Clip Studio Paint (I know I can swap devices but I'm not going to). I haven't been able to work on any of the MerMay stuff I had planned, I have a huge back log of AU art I wanna do and I have to prepare for Art Fight... and now I don't know if I'm gonna have enough time for that either so I'll postpone that to next year. Sucks because I've never participated in Art Fight before and I was really looking forward to joining, but it is what it is (I swear this has become the motto I live by lately).

I was going to draw give-away winners in a week, but I'm at a point where adding planned art onto what I already have and want to do is just causing me stress, especially because it concerns art for other people. So for the sake of my sanity and what little motivation I still have, I have to cancel the give-away. :(

I'm really sorry to everyone who signed up to participate, and massive thanks to those who did sign up. Maybe I'll re-run it in the future.

So my PC broke down on the 21st of April. It worked perfectly fine the day before but that morning it kept hanging on the same screen during start-up and I couldn't figure out why. I can solve simple problems like the rare blue-screen but I'm not tech-savvy enough to deal with hardware and messing with the BIOS is way beyond my comfort zone.

So I called my brother, who is very tech-savvy and he came to my place to take a look where he spent the next 3 hours trying to locate the issue. No matter what we did, we could not even get the PC to boot from a USB to run a repair, the BIOS wouldn't save changes we made, it was a mess.

He ended up taking my PC over to his place where he had the proper tools to figure it all out. At the time we thought it was a processor issue, since all the signs pointed to that being the culprit.

Turns out it was one of my hard drives 🙄 If only we had thought to just remove those one by one while the PC was still at my place, because it booted up just fine once we removed the dead one. Didn't occur to us at the time, yes we were dumb. And yes, I lost a whole bunch of stuff (we tried to recover data but to no avail) but that's the least of my concerns. Anyway, he ran some tests, checked out all my other hardware and drives and everything got a clean bill of health but we figured, since my PC was already at his place anyway, he might as well run a full systems check too, stabilization tests, all that good stuff. Some good ol TLC for my beloved hard working PC. He also needed to put in a new SSD and order new thermal paste because he'd taken off the processor.

Due to annoying circumstances, that order took a while to arrive.

He then messaged me last monday that for some reason, even with the new thermal paste applied, my processor was running really hot and he couldn't figure out why. So he was going to immediately order a new, bigger tube and try again.

My hope was that by the end of this week I'd be able to pick my PC up, back in perfect working order.

My brother messaged me again yesterday when I came home in the evening to tell me he fucked up. Even with all of his experience and skill, he's not immune to making a mistake. He told me some of the thermal paste got into the port on the motherboard the processor connects onto (or something to that effect) and while he was able to clean it with isopropyl, two of the little pins there accidentally broke off. That's not something he can fix. My motherboard is completely borked now.

I'm not mad at him or anything, accidents happen (he's already mad enough at himself), but it sucks big time.

The motherboard has to be replaced which is not something he's comfortable doing right now (understandable), so my PC will have to go back to where it was built... which causes a whole slew of new problems relating to transport which I don't care to get into right now (lets just say, bad previous experiences), plus the fact that my warranty ended in February.

I don't know what the costs are gonna be at this moment and while yes, my brother offered to cover everything since he's the one who broke it, I told him we'll split it. He's already done so much for me, gifted me the new SSD and made other costs he won't let me pay for (like the thermal paste and the thingemabob he ordered to recover data from dead drives). I have the best bro ❤️

So yeah. I'm gonna be stressing about this big time until my PC is safely back home, fully functional.

Until then, ugh :')

#personal

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weirdmageddon · 2 months ago

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with the help of a friend i successfully transfered everything from my PREGNANT surface 3 tablet from 2016 high school with swollen batteries after some frustrations and scares.

the battery swelling and screen warping had happened over a month ago and i hadn’t had plugged my tablet in since then. but today i wanted to get my paint tool sai brushes and textures off of it, only to be reminded of this. so i talked to one of my newer friends who happens to work at a computer repair shop and he swung by my place since he does home visits anyway.

i didn’t actually know how volatile bloated batteries truly are in reality. especially if they’ve been discharged for over a month. people online say theyre dangerous and you shouldnt even turn your device on, but i have a feeling they’re saying that so people don’t get carried away continuing to use them. but i’m smart and know this thing is finished, but i need data that is on here.

my friend says that he’s had customers use laptops with swollen batteries exclusively on the charger for over 6 months after he told them to get it replaced.

when he comes over we plug it in. the fearmongering internet says you should NEVER EVER plug in a device with swollen lithium ion batteries, so i was scared something was gonna happen or the batteries were going to get hot and swell as chemical reactions happen in them. but nothing happened. the internet lied to me. nothing happened. plugging it in was actually necessary to get past the 0xc0000225 blue screen error which i had been receiving even before the batteries swelled so much they opened the screen. it was unpredictable if it would boot up with that or not, sometimes it did sometimes it didn’t. my tablet would also sometimes shut down at random with no warning in the middle of drawing and that’s when i knew i needed to start looking for something else. but yeah so nothing happened and having it plugged in was essential in order for my tablet to not shut off in the 3 hours it took to transfer data to a USB stick.

and my tablet didn’t even get hot the entire time. (though i turned the screen brightness down to 0 in order to protect against any potential source of excessive heat during the process.)

over a decade’s years worth of paint tool sai brush settings …. welcome back on my main laptop where i use my intuos pro to draw now. i will probably be more inclined to make more art now :D

this post was originally a lot longer and more detailed about the technical scares if something were to have gone wrong but tumblr eated it with a background refresh :\ e.g., the memory chip in this device is soldered on, not removable like a m.2 SSD, so if something happened to the hardware, then my data would be unrecoverable.

my friend even bought a portable windows drive to boot into WinPE but thankfully it wasn’t necessary. he brought the USB keyboard since my surface 3 doesn’t recognize the finicky external keyboard attached by magnetic pins until the boot-up process is over and you’re at the lock screen, so it wouldn’t have been possible to do advanced boot during startup with the F8 key (which we also didn’t actually need anyway, since plugging it in got rid of the blue screen booting error).

#mine

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ambroziadelphine · 2 months ago

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Forgotten (Bucky Barnes x Reader) Part 5

Marvel Masterlist Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

"First rule of going on the run is don't run, walk." Nat said as we strolled through the mall, Bubs was out of his bright vest, his plain black coat making him look more common, helpful he wasn't full grown yet considering his breed size so he's less obvious. Steve was looking around as he had a ballcap and glasses on, Nat's hood was up as I had my hair all tucked in a beanie, damn my hair be an uncommon color.

"If I run in these shoes, they're going to fall off." Steve said making me crack a smile. We headed up to the apple store, Nat using a laptop to decrypt the USB.

"The drive has a Level Six homing program, so as soon as we boot up S.H.I.E.L.D will know exactly where we are." She said as Steve looked around, Bubs sitting at my feet beside him.

"How much time will we have?" He asked.

"About nine minutes from.." she paused, putting the USB in. "Now." She said and I ever so slightly slowed time for everything but us. It was only enough to delay about 10 seconds per minute, giving Nat a little extra time for this.

"Fury was right about that ship. Somebody's trying to hide something." Nat said, her brows furrowing as she worked on it. "This drive is protected by some sort of AI. It keeps rewriting itself to counter my commands." She said, Steve leaning against the table slightly as he looked at her.

"Can you override it?" He asked and she pursed her lips.

"The person who developed this is slightly smarter than me. Slightly." She said, glancing at Steve and I as she said the last word, a chuckle coming from me.

"I'm gonna try running a tracer. This is a program S.H.I.E.L.D developed to track hostile malware, so, if we cant read the file, maybe we can find out where it came from." She said, working before a sales person came up to us and I winced, reluctantly bringing his slowed down ass into the time speed so they wouldn't notice the difference.

"Can I help you guys with anything?" He asked and I just kept my head down, pretending to look at another laptop vaguely beside them, Nat putting on her charm as she smiled and put a hand on Steve's shoulder.

"Oh, no. My fiancé was just helping me with some honeymoon destinations." She lied, Steve smiling sheepishly to play along.

"Right. We're getting married." He said dumbly making my stifle a laugh, shaking my head slightly as Nat turned back to the computer.

"Congratulations. Where are you guys thinking about going?" The sales guy asked, Steve glancing at te computer as he looked back at the guy.

"New Jersey." He said, I facepalmed at his bad acting skills and thanked god this guy looked like a bit of an idiot.

"Oh." He said before he got a look on his face and I could tell Steve tensed, thinking he recognized him before pointing to him and squinting. "I have the exact same glasses." He said, a small snort coming from me making Nat smirk.

"Wow, you two are practically twins." She mused making the sales guy chuckle.

"Yea, I wish." He said, doing this weird hand gesture to Steve's body. "Specimen." He said with small laugh.

"If you guys need anything, I've been Aaron." He said, holding up his name tag as they said their thanks and he wandered off and exited the time speed.

"You said nine minutes. Come on." Steve said, checking his watch as I sighed, slowing time to 20 seconds a minute.

"Relax." Natasha said before she smirked a moment later. "Got it." She said and Steve looked at it closely.

"Know it?" Nat asked, Steve furrowing his brows.

"I used to. Let's go" He said as we left with the USB in hand, getting out of there as soon as possible. "Standard tac team. Two behind, two across, two coming straight at us." He said as he grabbed Bub's collar, letting my shrink myself as we passed a corner as I laid in Bub's fur.

"If they make us, I'll engage, you hit the south escalator to the metro with Bub." He said, trying to take control of the situation but Nat wasn't having it.

"Shut up and put your arm around me. Laugh at something I said." She said without missing a beat.

"What?" Steve asked, confused.

"Do it." She said, putting his arm around her as he did as she said, all of us walking blissfully passed the two tac team members, Steve giving a glance behind them when they were fully behind us. We got on an escalator and I put a hand on Bub, rubbing his head as I leaned close to his ear.

"Head down." I said, Bub's doing as said as he lowered himself further from view, Nat getting Steve to kiss her as Rumlow passed us on the escalator when we went down. "Good boy." I whispered to him, giving him small scratches as his tag wagged, a grin on my face before we were off with Steve holding his leash again.

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

It didn't take us long to ditch Natasha's car and take a truck which Steve hotwired, headed to New Jersey as Bub ate in the back with me from a bowl after we picked up some food. We had been on the move so quickly we couldn't take time to stop and find Agent Hill, so he was with us for the time being. Something I think Steve is a little grateful for so he didn't feel as worried about me. Nat had her feet up on the dash, arms crossed as Steve drove.

"Where did Captain America learn how to steal a car?" She asked him, a small smile coming to my face at that, not something I had actually considered asking.

"Nazi Germany." He said, Nat humming before Steve turned to her. "And we're borrowing. Take your feet off the dash." He said as I chuckled, petting Bub's head before he pawed at his now empty bowl, nudging the water bottle held in my hand as I smiled, pouring some out for him which he happily gulped up.

"Alright, I have a question for you, which you do not have to answer." She said, before furrowing her brows a little. "I feel like, if you don't answer it though, you're kind of answering it, you know." She rattled on, Steve rolling his eyes.

"What?" He asked, a sneaky smile on Nat's face as she turned to him.

"Was that your first kiss since 1945?" She asked making me laugh.

"That bad, huh?" He asked jokingly as she laughed a little.

"I didn't say that." She defended ass Steve nodded.

"We, it kind of sounds like that's what you're saying." He said, I just shook my head at this because it was kinda true in what it sounded like.

"No, I didn't." She said her voice cracking in her amusement. "I just wondered how much practice you've had." She said making me snort, covering my mouth.

"You don't need practice." Steve scoffed, Nat shrugging with a smirk.

"Everyone needs practice." She said, Steve getting obviously flustered.

"It was not my first kiss since 1945. I'm 95, I'm not dead." He said, Nat looking away for a moment before turning to him with a half smile.

"Nobody special, though?" She asked and I smiled sadly, Steve giving a scoff.

"Believe it or not, it's hard to find someone with shared life experience." He said, Nat waving him off.

"Well, that's all right. You just make something up." She said making me chuckle.

"What happens when they find out?" I asked her, she gave me a playful glare.

"What, like you?" He asked her, she shrugged and looked at him.

"I don't know. The truth is a matter of circumstance." She mused, shaking her head as she looked forward. "It's not all things to all people, all the time. Neither am I." She said, Steve giving her a long look.

"That's a tough way to live." He said.

"It's a good way not to die, thought." She hummed, a moment of silence settling over the car before Steve turned to her again.

"You know, its kind of hard to trust someone, when you don't know who that someone really is." Steve said, a sigh coming from me as I thought of that. I didn't know Winter, but I still trusted him. He still made me feel safe and I wanted to protect him, so I guess Steve's words are true only depending on the situation.

"Yeah." Nat said softly, looking away before looking back. "Who do you want me to do?" She asked, Steve giving her a tiny smile.

"How about a friend?" He asked, a small chuckle and smile coming from her.

"Well, there's a chance you might be in the wrong business, Rogers." She said, silence settling over the car we finally arrived to our stop. We all got out and looked around, an old army base here as we approached the fence.

"This it?" Steve asked as Nat pocketed her detection thingy. I didn't know what the hell it was.

"The file came from these coordinates." She said as we all stopped by the gates.

"So did I." Steve said, my eyes turning to the land before me in realization that this was where he had trained and served in the military.

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

Walking around as we looked for something was tough, but Steve had directed me to stay behind a bit, meaning I was mainly just playing with Bub's, having a ball I'd throw a few feet, just enough to keep him in sight as he'd then race back to me with it, his long legs pushing him quickly as he'd skid to a stop on the ground. I wasn't listening as they talked, just keeping an ear out incase they called me over, which happened a few moments after I threw the ball again for Bub.

"Did you find it?" I asked as I ran closer, Bub's not far behind with the ball in his mouth. Steve and Nat were in front of this big building obviously sheltered underground.

"We think so." He said before looking around and sighing, coming up and putting his hands on my shoulders. "I want you to stay out here and stay low. I don't want to risk you and Bub getting hurt if this is a trap." He said as I sighed and nodded, gathering Bub's as I walked to a nearby building, sitting down in it's shaded spot where Steve could clearly see me from the building door. I waved to them as they entered, hoping thing went okay as Bub laid his head in my lap, pushing his ball to me as I smiled and kept throwing it for him, getting bored quite quickly as I pulled at the grass.

They were only in there for about 15 minutes before I heard something strange, Bub's ears back as he started pulling on my sleeve, urging me to move away and I frowned. I got up, letting him pull my a few more feet away before I screamed as the loudest bang I've ever heard sounded from behind me, a force knocking me to the ground as I felt the ground shake a little. I flipped around on my back, breathing heavily with wide eyes, panic running through me as I struggled to get up, running to what used to be the building Nat and Steve had gone in. I felt my heart beating in my ears as Bub's ran to me, my eyes still wide in shock as I checked him over in my dazed state, seeing he was thankfully alright. I turned back to the rubble and felt my dazed state fade, fear and panic for my friends flooding in as I felt tears welling me my eyes.

"Steve?! Natasha!" I called, supersizing myself as I began hurriedly moving rubble, my body feeling like ice as I yelled for them, Bub helping as he sniffed them out. I saw something move and saw Steve's shield as I rushed over, pulling rubble from around them as they both had taken cover in a small hole they found. Natasha was unconscious and I quickly helped him pick her up, both of us rushing with Bub hot on our tails to hide as Helicarriers flew overhead.

#bucky barnes #james bucky buchanan barnes #bucky x reader #captain america #winter soldier #james buchanan barnes #bucky x you #steve rogers #original character #xoc #mutant oc #captain america winter soldier #the winter soldier #xreader

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