#building access databases

[streetsrot]

HUMANS OF NIGHT CITY - CASSANDRA MONTEIL. aka important npcs to v's story, inspired by the official humans of night city posts ⸻ word count: 1k. tw: abuse, kidnapping, torture, drugs tldr; cass is v's wealthy corpo ex who betrayed her in a series of fucked up events that resulted in her kidnapping, torturing, and drugging v in order to save her own hide.

⸻

cass is v's ex-girlfriend, a legacy corpo who grew up being trained for the cutthroat, competitive chess board that is life when working for any major corporation. cassandra's parents are high level executives at militech, a position she herself now holds. she meets v when the both of them are in their late teens, in the late 2060s. with the unification war brewing and eventually reaching a peak, cass distances herself from her family, wanting to find her own path and break away from the corporate world she's known her whole life. she disavows corporations entirely and she has dreams of working as a media, focusing on boots-on-the-ground journalism. cassandra begins hanging out around mercs and though she sticks out like a sore thumb, she's charming enough that nobody questions it.

this is how she meets v.

the two of them hit it off after v saves cass's life during a regular shootout in heywood. accepting cass's offer to go out for drinks afterwards is one of v's biggest regrets in life. cassandra falls fast, in love with the idea of v and fascinated by the thrilling, high stakes lifestyle that she lives. v warms up to cassandra slowly, unable to shake the worry that anyone from a family like the monteils can't be trusted. every time her doubts come up, v reminds herself that cass has no contact with her family, and cass always seems to find a way to do something nice for v. she showers her in gifts, in loving affirmations, and she frequently makes little moves that fulfill v's desires for physical touch. before long, v is smitten.

their relationship is an intense one, filled almost entirely with soaring highs — an extended honeymoon phase that seems like it will never end. until cassandra messes with night corp. in her efforts to write a tell-all on the elusive, secretive corporation she finds herself wrapped up in a web of her own making and it's not long until night corp catches onto the fact that she's robbed them of restricted files. the corporation assumes she's done it to report back to militech. suddenly, her big break into journalism could be the destruction of a company that's already in the middle of a war, and should night corp work with arasaka, could mean the permanent end to militech's presence in night city. it would mean the brutal torture and execution of her parents and once night corp caught up to her, it would certainly mean worse for her.

out of options and unsure of what to do, she reaches out to her parents and explains the situation. cass, with the help of her mother, crafts a plan that ensures not just her and her family's survival but establishes her as the hero in the whole situation. she makes v, the unloved streetrat with no family, the fall guy. the story she spins states that v, an up and coming merc, stole from night corp in an attempt to hit the major leagues. cass caught word of it, reported the actions back to militech, who, in a show of good faith and as an olive branch during wartime, sent cass to retrieve the stolen materials from v in whatever manner she thought best. that way, they could be returned where they rightfully belonged.

not a word of her story is true.

cass drugs v, waiting for her to pass out and once she does, she slots a datashard into her that plants false memories so that when v awakens, she makes no attempt to deny what she's done. private solos retrieve v's body, throw her into a trunk of a car, and eventually restrain her in an undisclosed drop point. she comes to and finds herself bound and woozy, face to face with cass's mother who explains that "her daughter simply lied to get close to her". when cass arrives, v expects her to deny this. she never does. cass tells herself that she is doing this for her survival, for the survival of her family, and that, as much as she loved v, v likely would have ended up dead in an alley someday soon anyways. this way, she would be dying so another could live.

cass hands v over to night corp where she is interrogated and tortured for days on end. she never expects to see v again, and she assumes her dead as tensions are smoothed between militech and night corp. in reality, the corrupted data slotted into v's head is discovered by a night corp netrunner, tasked with traversing through v's memories. the data is wiped and soon after, v pieces together the truth of what's happened. in light of new knowledge, night corp strikes a deal with v: if she hacks into militech and wipes the copy of the files militech has surely made, she can walk free. but, if she is discovered in this operation, the corporation will claim v escaped from detainment and is acting of her own free will.

v is never caught. days later, a fire breaks out in cassandra monteil's japantown apartment. the rest of the apartment building remains untouched, but due to "mechanical failure", the sprinklers in the penthouse space are never triggered. all that's left in the apartment is a warning : if i ever see you again, i'll kill you myself.

in the year 2077, cassandra has followed in the footsteps of her parents; the end of her relationship with v denoting the end of her dreams as well. she has turned into everything a younger version of herself swore she would never be, but she excels tremendously as an elite corpo for militech and, because of this, looks back scornfully on her youth, scoffing at the idea that she had ever dared to dream of being something else.

v and cass have yet to directly cross paths again, though the chances are high. despite this, the events of her relationship with cass have left a mental scarring on v that she has never fully healed from. while she is by no means closed off to the idea of love or long-term relationships, she does have some trust issues that she hasn't realized are abnormal. v does not speak of cassandra or discuss the events that led to their separation unless she is extremely close with the individual she is speaking with.

[reasonsforhope]

"Claire Cao was only a senior in high school when she saw a vital need in her community — and filled it. 

In 2024, the teenager spent her time outside of school volunteering at Blanchet House, a Portland-based nonprofit that serves people experiencing homelessness through food donations, clothing drives, and mental health assistance programs. 

As she logged hours as a Blanchet House student ambassador, Cao soon realized how difficult it was for community members to keep track of shelter openings, rotating food service programs, and available mental health resources. 

“During one afternoon meal service, I met Dano, an unhoused man who shared his struggles with accessing basic services like food and shelter,” Cao said in a recent press release. 

“Left disconnected from essential services, Dano described his struggles of not knowing where to go or which shelters had available beds.”

Combining her love for technology, law, and public policy, Cao pulled available resources into a database and created the ShelterBridge app, which connects users to shelters and services in their area. 

“ShelterBridge wasn’t simply inspired by Dano — it was inspired by the realization that access to resources is a fundamental need that we, as a community, can do a better job of providing,” Cao emphasized. 

“I wanted to use my skills to build something that could bridge that gap, ensuring that no one falls through the cracks simply because they don’t know where to turn for help.”

In addition to linking users to services in their area, the app also has a rating system similar to Yelp. This system allows people to leave star ratings and reviews on shelters, food services, hotlines, and legal aid. 

The ratings not only help users differentiate between services in their area — but they also provide invaluable feedback to the nonprofits, organizations, and government programs that service them. 

“We've been asking for an app like this for a number of years now,” Scott Kerman, executive director of Blanchet House, told Portland news station KGW.

In mid-January, Cao won the 2024 Congressional App Challenge in Oregon’s First District for her work with ShelterBridge — outcompeting 12,682 student submissions. 

Since the app first launched, Cao and her growing ShelterBridge team — which includes enterprising high schoolers and college students from across the nation — have expanded services to California, Philadelphia, Seattle, Los Angeles, and North Carolina. 

“Claire and the team she’s working with deserve all the credit in the world because they're doing something that frankly nobody else has really stepped up to do,” Kerman said. 

“To have the kind of technology that we use every day with hotels and other kinds of reservations [to] help people get into safe, supportive and dignified shelter would be a game changer for our community.”

Although the app started as a class project, Cao said ShelterBridge’s success has far surpassed her expectations. 

“I do hope to keep it up,” she told Oregon outlet KOIN 6 News, as she looked ahead to college and beyond. “I’ve made a lot of efforts to expand it to other cities as well — and it’s something I can mostly do from a computer or my laptop at home.”

-via GoodGoodGood, March 21, 2025

[menop033]

My favorite crimes Barbara Gordon has committed

Full disclosure, I am considering only New Earth Babs because the other versions are simply inferior. I will ignore the typical masked adventurer crimes she did as Batgirl, like assault, breaking and entering, trespassing, obstructing justice and vigilantism. I will also not really consider the very classic Oracle shenanigans like hacking, accessing some databases she probably shouldn't, stealing from rich criminals to fund her own (kinda criminal) operation, invading privacy and literally doing illegal spy work with Birds of Prey. Because those are boring and I want something that's not just another Tuesday. So, in no particular order:

Changing the light on traffic lights

Stupid and small but I love it. Very iconic and very Barbara-like.

+Extra Helena who has very logical and understandable qualms about Oracle's power and influence

[Birds of Prey (1999) #58]

Blackmailing Catwoman into returning stolen paintings

And threatening to send her money to charities. Catwoman begrudgingly obliged.

I am not too sure about what happened leading to that moment. That comic didn't have a particularly strong story. I think Selina stole them while Barbara was still Batgirl?

Either way, the ending is pretty memorable for me. Ultimate irony - threatening her into returning stolen goods by stealing funds from her.

[Birds of Prey: Catwoman/Oracle]

Making a deal with Gotham City's emergency services

and then using the tech she implemented to override the control of the vehicles when needed. Or, when she wants to. This one instance was because Steph just got shot in the head and didn't really want to end up in an ER where her mother worked, exposing her (third) secret identity. It worked out so yay?

[Batgirl (2009) #6]

Sort of kidnapping Wendy Harris

To be fair, she did it because Calculator, Oracle's arch nemesis and Wendy's father, was endangering her and she did it to protect her but a little more explanation couldn't hurt. But that wouldn't be Barbara without her genial tendency to keep everyone but herself in the dark. I guess she really did keep Wendy in the dark. In the basement.

[Batgirl (2009) #11]

Political corruption

We never get to learn what exactly she did. She just said that many leaders owe her their positions. it sure as hell doesn't sound legal. World-wide corruption? Why not. Entirely too much power for one person to hold. 10/10

Also, I bet you that those power grids aren't exactly controlled legally.

[Birds of Prey (1999) #103]

Blowing up a government facility and getting rid of some evidence

Well, Cass decided to break into a government facility and free a terrorist to prove a point that everyone can change. And in doing so she left them some photo, video and DNA evidence.

Oracle therefore later sent her back there to destroy it, blowing the building up in the process. Oh and she also presumably helped the guy get fake documents but that's not 100% confirmed (Cass said that it's from her friends as she gave them to him).

She really cares about her not-quite-daughter <3

[Batgirl (2000) #17]

Her father/uncle (the Gordon family was kind of a mess after Crisis) might be the commissioner of Gotham but she clearly doesn't respect the law in the slightest. They love eachother, of course, they just don't share the same views on the law.

I simply enjoy how unhinged her methods sometimes usually are and we need to recognise that. Also, while we are at it, get rid of Prime Earth Barbara's characterisation and bring back the competent and sarcastic control-freak.

[sarahelizasims]

Landscape Oil Paintings Collection - Part 1

Hello everyone, and Happy New Year! To kick off the year, I’m excited to share my first collection of stunning landscape oil paintings, inspired by the highly sought-after styles of the 19th century. During that time, landscape painting flourished, becoming the dominant genre and a celebrated pinnacle in art history—a legacy that continues to captivate us today.

💟A heartfelt thank you to @sims4luxury for graciously allowing me to recolor her stunning wall art. Your kindness, support, and help throughout this process have meant so much to me!

This is a recolor of Sims4Luxury's British Collection - Artwall #1: You must download @sims4luxury's mesh in order to see my recolor in your game! This is included in the ZIP file, so don't worry!

This is optional, but if you haven't done so already, please download the entire British Collection! It is truly a very beautiful set.

📌Collection Features:

This collection consists of 19 swatches of beautiful paintings

Custom thumbnails

In build mode, use keys '9' and '0' to increase/decease the paintings to desired size!

📌Credits:

All the original paintings were made available for public use under the public domain, in accordance with the open access policy.

Images sourced from the open-access databases of the National Gallery of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago.

CC creators used within my screenshots: @pinkbox-anye @casadutti @ts4novvvas @mxims @syboubou @cowbuild @kerriganhouse @aggressivekitty @sundays-sims @baumgarten-sims @mincts4 @ddaeng-sims

If I am forgetting anyone, I am so sorry! Please message me and I will add you to the list.🤍

⚠️Term of Use:

Do NOT re-upload and edit my textures or meshes and claim my creations as your own.

Do NOT put my CC behind paywalls.

You MAY include my CC in Sims 4 lot builds, but you must credit me and link directly to the object's post.

You MAY recolor my CC with permission first. Do not include my mesh in your .package file and do not change my original file! Make sure to also provide links to my original post.

📥DOWNLOAD (Available for FREE members on Patreon)

I'm still learning, so if you download, please let me know if you encounter any issues.

[nowoyas]

Trying to make sense of the Nanowrimo statement to the best of my abilities and fuck, man. It's hard.

It's hard because it seems to me that, first and foremost, the organization itself has forgotten the fucking point.

Nanowrimo was never about the words themselves. It was never about having fifty thousand marketable words to sell to publishing companies and then to the masses. It was a challenge, and it was hard, and it is hard, and it's supposed to be. The point is that it's hard. It's hard to sit down and carve out time and create a world and create characters and turn these things into a coherent plot with themes and emotional impact and an ending that's satisfying. It's hard to go back and make changes and edit those into something likable, something that feels worth reading. It's hard to find a beautifully-written scene in your document and have to make the decision that it's beautiful but it doesn't work in the broader context. It's fucking hard.

Writing and editing are skills. You build them and you hone them. Writing the way the challenge initially encouraged--don't listen to that voice in your head that's nitpicking every word on the page, put off the criticism for a later date, for now just let go and get your thoughts out--is even a different skill from writing in general. Some people don't particularly care about refining that skill to some end goal or another, and simply want to play. Some people sit down and try to improve and improve and improve because that is meaningful to them. Some are in a weird in-between where they don't really know what they want, and some have always liked the idea of writing and wanted a place to start. The challenge was a good place for this--sit down, put your butt in a chair, open a blank document, and by the end of the month, try to put fifty thousand words in that document.

How does it make you feel to try? Your wrists ache and you don't feel like any of the words were any good, but didn't you learn something about the process? Re-reading it, don't you think it sounds better if you swap these two sentences, if you replace this word, if you take out this comma? Maybe you didn't hit 50k words. Maybe you only wrote 10k. But isn't it cool, that you wrote ten thousand words? Doesn't it feel nice that you did something? We can try again. We can keep getting better, or just throwing ourselves into it for fun or whatever, and we can do it again and again.

I guess I don't completely know where I'm going with this post. If you've followed me or many tumblr users for any amount of time, you've probably already heard a thousand times about how generative AI hurts the environment so many of us have been so desperately trying to save, about how generative AI is again and again used to exploit big authors, little authors, up-and-coming authors, first time authors, people posting on Ao3 as a hobby, people self-publishing e-books on Amazon, traditionally published authors, and everyone in between. You've probably seen the statements from developers of these "tools", things like how being required to obtain permission for everything in the database used to train the language model would destroy the tool entirely. You've seen posts about new AI tools scraping Ao3 so they can make money off someone else's hobby and putting the legality of the site itself at risk. For an organization that used to dedicate itself to making writing more accessible for people and for creating a community of writers, Nanowrimo has spent the past several years systematically cracking that community to bits, and now, it's made an official statement claiming that the exploitation of writers in its community is okay, because otherwise, someone might find it too hard to complete a challenge that's meant to be hard to begin with.

I couldn't thank Nanowrimo enough for what it did for me when I started out. I don't know how to find community in the same way. But you can bet that I've deleted my account, and I'll be finding my own path forward without it. Thanks for the fucking memories, I guess.

[alexrosa13]

To Belong

Luke x female!reader x Kieran//twins x reader ★ platonic!Sylus x reader ★ platonic!mc x reader ★ Sylus x mc

Genre: fluff/angsty

Warnings: 19k words, reader and mc are two different people!, 3rd person perspective!, spoilers to twins lore! (reading World Underneath: Mischief is highly recommended before reading this fic), small hints/spoilers to Sylus myth, mention of human experiments, mention of character trauma, mention of sa, protective dad Sylus, twins crushing on reader hard

Note: timeline of this fic happens between 2042 (reader&twins 12★Sylus 22) and 2048 (current timeline of the game★reader&twins 18★Sylus 28) and I hope it will be clear enough while reading.

for masterlist and request info head to the navigation →

half-edited by @asiakim03, rest proofread by me; special dedication for @pozuki for making me post it after it's been sitting in my drafts for 2 months

to learn more about reader's abilities before reading head to her acts→

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

Sometimes teen love is floating, sometimes you may find your soulmate; but what if you got two?

2044, Middle of Winter.

The chances of a power outage in the middle of the night in one of the main areas of the EVER building are slim, but not impossible. Amid the chaos, with everyone panicking and scrambling to find the cause of the issue, no one notices that one of the computers has been accessed. Test records from years ago have been opened, and crucial information is being systematically deleted. In a matter of seconds, there will be no valuable data left.

????? Control EVOL Test Record

Subject ID

668

Subject Name

- - - - -

Age

??

Experimental Side Effect(s) Log

no information available

Evaluation Results

no information available

Several electronic devices had shut off on their own but a few minutes later, the power in the building was suddenly restored. Night-shift workers gradually returned to the office responsible for managing the experiment database. Everyone have taken themselves onto their assigned seats and began checking for any missing files.

The hours have passed and everything seemed fine yet, no one had ought to check the old files that had been forgotten over time. Everything have appeared intact and by the next day, the incident dismissed as an accident and have been quickly forgotten.

After all, why would someone make the commotion happen just to leave everything in it's place? It seems that no person working there will ever know the truth about the erased data. To be fair: who would have though that someone hacked the building data just to erase some not important piece of old experiment notes, perhaps containing information regarding someone who's presumably dead? And who would even think that the person behind it would be some big shot from N109 Zone? Exactly, no one.

And to be honest, it's better for them to not know.

~★~★~★~

2042, Late Autumn.

N109 Zone was in chaos that day. Buildings on fire, people bleeding and dying, while the ones who were still in good enough shape was able to fortunately run away from the mess. There were sounds of shooting and fighting everywhere you go. Yet, no one even remembers what started this blood-lust show.

A person was seen calmly standing with their hands in the pockets of their elegant pants. A man looking so out of place in the middle of such chaos, but at the same time fitting there perfectly like the most important detail on a masterpiece.

There's at least a dozen dead bodies laying before him as the look he throws at them a look of disgust. Suddenly, his eyes turned to look at the half-collapsed wall, noticing a kid hiding there who's looking at the man with eyes full of curiosity yet not even a hint of fear. Probably a stray with no family.

They continue to look at each other, the man then cocks an eyebrow and his face show the slightest tinge of shock. Why can't he see that kid's desire? Why does his evol not work on them? For a moment, he sees their eyes glowing up a bit, it's an evolver too. But no person with or without an evol would be able to hide their desires before him.

He let out a an amused chuckle, his curiosity rising. What kind of power do they posses? Either way, it wasn't a question he needed an answer for. That kid probably won't even survive long in this area. Without a word, he turned around and walked away from the mess he had left in his enemies' base, not giving a single thought about the unusual child he met.

However, something clinged onto him after he took a couple of steps and that made him stop in his tracks. He looked down again meeting the eyes of that kid.

"What do you want?" his voice, rough and cold was just like his stares but he didn't get an answer. The seemingly clueless child staring at him in silence. Their expression emotionless, no fear, no sadness, no anger.

What was wrong with them? No child should be able to hide their emotions this well. Of course, they weren't 5 years old or so but still, they couldn't be older than 13. Two questions appeared in the back if his mind: what happened to this runt and what was he supposed to do with it?

He had no answer to any of them.

"What? Am I supposed to just take you with me now?" he asked in a sarcastic voice yet still didn't get an answer. He tried to move away from their little hug— for their hands were not even able to wrap themselves fully around his waist— and succeeded. Giving them one last glance over his shoulder before proceeding to walk away, leaving dead bodies behind him to rot or get caught in flames, he couldn't care less.

Who would have thought that today would be the day a new shadow started following him?

~★~★~★~

2046, Middle of Winter.

"Boss, that Sherman guy is suspicious. We'll keep an eye on him for you!" says Luke, kneeling with his twin before Sylus.

"We know his address, his usual spots, and his contacts. We can report to you every two weeks," Kieran added after his brother.

The 'Boss' seems to think about it for a minute, his expression unreadable. Finally he spoke to.. who exactly?

"What do you think, little one? Should I agree?" He tilted his head toward something behind him, and both boys glanced in that direction, noticing a silhouette a few meters away, leaning against a tree with a hood pulled low over their head.

The twins looked at each other, dumbfounded— both thinking: 'Who is that?' before looking back at the mysterious person, meeting their eyes. The rest of their face hidden behind a medical black mask. For whatever reason, they couldn't look away as if hypnotized.

After a couple of seconds, that person finally looked away. Their gaze turning to Sylus, nodding once in his direction before straightening their posture and walking away with no rush.

"I'll see you in two weeks," these words constitute the only command they receive.

"Understood, boss." when they finally stood up, they realize Sylus has already vanished.

They looked at each other sharing a grin at the fact that their 'plan' succeeded. Their happiness however was cut short by someone's soft chuckling coming from behind them. They turned around fast and noticed a girl around their age, sitting at a nearby tree.

"Congratulations on your new job, boys," she smiled at them, her hands grabbing a branch above her head, her body leaning forward towards their direction.

"And, you are?" Luke took a step forward, looking at her with a sly smirk on his face.

"It’s you," Luke turned to his brother, confused. But a moment later, he heard his twin’s voice in his head: ‘Look at her eyes.’ He did—and then he understood.

The mysterious girl started giggling to herself quietly but eventually, she couldn't help it and began laughing so hard that the branch she was sitting on started to shake.

"You should have seen your faces!" she said after calming herself down a little, smile still visible on her lips.

'Pretty...' The twins voiced in their minds, both looked at each other in shock. How did they think about THAT at the same time.

"I hope you'll do a good job so I'll be able to see you two again, " she jumped off the tree, landing gracefully on the grass and taking a couple of steps towards the twins. "It would be such a shame for such cute faces to end up dead on the ground, don't you think?" She smiled at them, a little more genuine and soft this time.

Luke and Kieran still couldn't comprehend the situation they found themselves in right now, but before any more words could leave their mouth, the girl already started moving forward. She walked straight through the gap between their bodies, her shoulders touching theirs for a split second and just like this, she left them behind.

The twins looked at each other, not being able to gather their thoughts at the moment. Both of them had a million questions flowing through their minds; 'Who is she?', 'Does she work for Sylus?', 'Why couldn't they look away from her eyes earlier?' suddenly, their eyes widen over something else that just registered in their heads.

"DID SHE JUST CALL US CUTE?"

~★~★~★~

2047, Early Spring.

The twins had been working as Sylus' spies for some time now, reporting back to him every two weeks as agreed. In the meantime, they also began spending more time at his base, occasionally even staying overnight in the many available guest rooms.

However, the mysterious girl they had met when they first asked Sylus to let them work for him hadn’t appeared anywhere near their line of sight since that day. They tried to ask Sylus about her but he brushed them off every single time.

Today was another failed attempt to pry.

"No," was the only thing leaving Sylus' mouth at the mention of 'the person they saw that day' and this time, they didn't even manage to finish their sentence before his refusal.

"Oh c'mon Boss, we need to know!"

"Why can't you just tell us? Is her existence top Onychinus type of secret or something?"

"If that's the case, then we have the right to know since we're official Onychinus members now!" All sorts of reasoning started flowing out of the twins' mouths, they stopped only after noticing the glare Sylus threw their way.

"If she wanted you two to know who she is, she would have already told you herself," after that, their Boss-man went to his office, making it clear that he is not in the mood to listen to teenagers rambling for even a minute longer. Luke and Kieran shared a look and even through their masks, they could still read the other's disappointed expression.

They sat on the couch, defeated, their limbs sprawled across the cushions and their heads resting against the backrest. Both stared at the ceiling, trying to come up with a new plan to meet the girl again. They weren't ones to give up easily, but after trying for so long, they were running out of ideas.

After a couple minutes of brainstorming, they both let out sounds of defeat. They had tried everything, yet still, nothing worked. Was she enjoying their suffering from the shadows?

"I'm so tired of his, man. We did everything! How are we supposed to meet someone who literally doesn't show any signs of existence other than that one time?!" Luke shoot up from his seat, accidentally spilling a glass of water which for whatever reason found itself at the edge of the table. "Oh, c'mon!" He picked up the glass, which was thankfully still intact and had put it back a little further away this time.

"Eh, I'll go get some napkins," Kieran stood up, stretching his limbs a bit and turned towards the kitchen area. Before he could take a step forward, his twin's hand abruptly grabbed his clothing and made him sit back down "What?"

"Look here!" He did as instructed, shifting his gaze to the spot on the table where water had spilled. Lying next to it was a sheet of paper with writing on it, the ink growing blurrier as the water spread.

They leaned over to read the note before it ends up completely unreadable.

Did you know that the best dreams happen in the room with the clear view at the night sky?

→ right wing of the mansion, second floor, right corridor, last door

see you in a dream ☆

They looked at the item lying next to the paper: a necklace with a small orb as its pendant. It resembled the night sky, with a moon and stars shining inside, the entire scene shifting slowly and unhurriedly, revealing different angles of the image. Luke reached out to touch it, but as his hand neared, the inside of the orb began to change.

He moved his hand away, startled. The brothers shared a look of curiosity before once again looking at the necklace. Its image now showing warm sunrise with clouds floating around it.

"Did you somehow influence it?" Kieran leaned a little closer for a better look.

"I didn't even touched it!" Luke jumped up at the questioning, raising his hands to show his innocence.

Younger of the twins slowly reached out his hand just like Luke before him, both boys looking in its direction with anticipation. However unlike his brother, Kieran didn't hesitate and took the orb into his hand. Both boys watched it change from the sunrise to sunset. All the brightness went missing, leaving a dark sky with the sun hiding behind the clouds.

Both of them stared at the orb for a while longer, image of the sky flowing inside the glassy object. Finally Luke spoke up.

"Do you remember where is this dreamy-room?"

~★~

"Was it the left or right corridor?" Kieran's hushed voice could be heard on top of the staircase leading to the second floor in the right wing of Sylus' mansion.

"Right one. To be honest how is he not getting lost in all of those corridors? I swear that this place is a maze made to trap victims inside." twins started walking through another never-ending corridor, but luckily this time there were no random small passages on the way.

Finally they reached the end of their very tiring journey (they were sneaking around the mansion for half an hour now, trying to avoid their Boss... He probably saw them anyways). They looked at each other, a little unsure now if they got to the right door.

Well now or never. Both of them reached for the handle, moving it together.

Doors opened quietly and before their eyes appeared a huge room with a window taking the whole wall on the opposite side to the door. The furniture all in black. The ceiling in this room seemed higher that ones in the other rooms they had seen. Behind the window was a view of the night, red sky of the N109 zone it's moon right in the middle, making the room seem almost magical and mysterious in a way.

They closed the door taking in their surroundings. Shelves fit perfectly with the walls, inside them books and random items in various colors going from crystals, to skulls, to candles (some burning, some not), jewelry and a lot more. In the middle of the room, literally in the floor, it's place found a huge mattress adored with various pillows and blankets.

In the end their eyes reached the table placed in the space between the window and a mattress. They cautiously moved towards it, still taking in the details of the room. They approached it from two sides and their eyes found themself looking at the thing right in the middle of it. It looked like a little tower made out of glass with a round spot engraved right on top of it as if something should be put there.

"What is that?"

"I have no idea."

They started thinking about what to do in this situation, and finally Kieran thought about something. He reached towards his neck and pulled the necklace from underneath his clothes taking it off through his head, being careful while getting it over his mask.

"Do you think we're supposed to put it here?" he hanged the necklace on his hand, the orb levitating right above the glass thingy.

"I mean she left it for us for some reason yeah? Might as well try it, what can go wrong?" both boys shrugged, not caring about the possibilities of the bad outcome much (as always).

Kieran slowly lowered the necklace, the orb fitting inside the glass structure like a glove. Suddenly the candles started burning brighter than when they first walked in, flames dancing in every direction and even some of the not lit ones came to life.

Twins looked around themself for some time, trying to understand what was going on, until something looking like a white string started coming from the little orb, making a perfect circle around the two and the table. Little dots started showing themselves on the thin line, some bigger, some smaller, some light, some dark, it wasn't long before the whole string was full of it and then another one started creating itself.

They locked eyes, thinking about the sight before then, not moving. Suddenly they heard a voice coming from above them and looking up they saw their mysterious girl sitting on the swing connected to the ceiling, swaying slowly a couple of meters above the huge mattress. They could swear it wasn't there when they walked in!

"It's my Dream Seal." she looked at them with a soft smile, the swing started slowly lowering itself.

"Your dream what?" the twins asked at the same time, looking mesmerized at the girl dressed in the prettiest flowing dress they ever saw.

Finally the swing lowered itself enough for her to put her legs on the mattress, standing up on it she made her way towards the table, which took her maybe five steps. The string made by the orb broke for her to get through and patched itself up right after, adding her into the circle.

"My Dream Seal. I put and lock my dreams inside of it. You could say that it's like a diary." she explained to them, slight smile still noticeable on her face, her eyes focusing on the orb glowing in the middle of the table. She reached out her hand, making a slow and graceful movement as if petting the orb without actually touching it.

Instantly it reacted to her presence, glowing a bit brighter especially in the places right below her hand.

She moved the same hand to create a circle in the air with her palm, making another string appear in the place of her previous movement. Another dot, a little bigger from the rest floated around them, showed itself right before her and started to go move around like the rest.

She put her hand under the line and when the little orb came right above it the room began changing it's appearance.

Twins started looking around curious about what exactly is happening. Finally their eyes saw what looked to be a grassland full of various flowers all around them, not seeing anything else in the distance but clear sky and flowers. They looked at each other, their eyes widening at the realization that their masks are off.

Their clothes changed from their usual black and red uniforms to simple white shirts, pants and shoes. They looked around trying to notice the girl that was next to them seconds ago, but there were no other silhouette in sight... Until their turned their heads once more....

Their faces were betraying the shock they felt at the scene playing right before them. Two of them, smiling and laughing, Luke sitting on the grass, pulled up on his hands and Kieran lying down on his back. What shocked them was the fact that their mysterious girl was lying there with them. Her head resting on Luke's thigh and her legs thrown around Kieran's belly.

One of Luke's hands playing with her hair while Kieran caressed her legs softly. The girl herself was just lying there, her eyes closed but a light smile still visible, looking perfectly content with the closeness of the twins.

None of them dared to move or look away, their minds silent, trying to save the moment into their memory. They looked at the images of themselves seeing their true smiles, feeling the real happiness, without the pain of their past following them and breaking the innocent moment.

Slowly but surely, the light from the dream started fading, their calm silhouettes leaving together with it. They never craved the sunlight more than at this very moment. The darkness of the room and the slight light coming from the red moon of the N109 Zone brings them back into reality. Their masks back on, the moment of vulnerability left behind together with the strings, of what they imagine are dreams, coming back to the orb they came from.

Their minds still couldn't wrap themself completely around what they just saw. They looked at each other, communicating without words and then turned their heads towards the mattress a couple steps away from them, the girl sitting on it crosslegged, with her back towards them and a book in her hands. Both brothers stood there, stuck in one place, their heartbeats matching in their fast rhythm.

Both with only one question in mind: what was that?

"You know, even with your masks I can still tell who is who." her voice finally broke the silence, she sounded unfazed by what just took place, unlike the twins.

"Oh really? Do you even know our names missy?" Luke being the first to come back to his usual demeanor, crossing his arms and tilting his head to the side (which must have looked adorable with his mask btw) sending the girl a 'challenging' look, she glanced at him over her shoulder and giggled a bit.

"Really Luke. How dare you doubt me?" she put her hand on her chest, exactly where her heart is, and sent him a 'hurt' look, obviously for show.

"Well would you look at that! You do know our names!" the older of the twins proclaimed, clasping his hands together and taking a step forward "Maybe it's about the time when we learn yours Miss..?" he sent her a pleading look, even though she couldn't see it, she could imagine it all the same.

"What do you think, Kieran? Is knowing my name actually so important for you?" she looked at the second brother who was unusually silent.

"It's- Well we both are dying to get to know it since our very first meeting, so if you would be kind enough to share it, we would be very, and by very I mean VERY, entirely grateful to you." finally it seemed that he came back to his normal self. Taking two steps forward he stood right next to his brother, both looking expectantly at the girl like little kids waiting for their promised treat.

"Hah so I've never left your minds since that night? It's been months babes. Did I turn your whole worlds over without even trying? Damn am I that hot?" the nickname she gave them and her loud laugh made their hearts stop and start beating all over again. She turned to face them, her legs still crossed and her upper-half supported by her outstretched arms. The book that she was previously occupied with ended up lying forgotten next to her. "It's Y/n."

They whispered her name at the same time, finally reaching the goal they were going after all this time. There was a moment of awkward silence with them not knowing what to say or ask and with her just staring at them, as if enjoying their stress. How dare she! But after some time she was still the first one to break the silence and stop their suffering.

"Do you have any other questions or is that it for today? You know... Boss will probably look for you soon, since it's his time of the day." she whispered the last part like a secret, sending them a wink.

Twins looked at each other finally knowing exactly what question they wanted to ask.

"What was that thing..."

"That we saw after you did something to that... Floating thing?" their voices betrayed their curiosity and nerves. They needed to know.

"It was a dream." she sounded so casual about it. How could this not move her at all?!

"A..."

"Dream..." twins still not completely understanding what was going on. They started a quick conversation in their heads.

'But if that was a dream...'

'And dreams are supposed to belong to someone, right?'

'Did you dream about that?!'

'Dude no! Not me!'

'But it wasn't me either!'

'Well if it wasn't mine nor your dream, then...'

They turned their heads at the lightning speed to look at each other, shock on their faces hidden behind the masks.

'IT WAS HERS?!'

"Did you come to the right conclusion yet? Because judging from your reactions, you did." they turned to look at the girl once more, still dumbfounded.

"You dreamed of us?" Kieran was the one of the duo speaking first this time.

"Not only us, but us in THAT situation?" Luke added, his voice a little raised and hurried to let the words out. Both of them stared at the girl before them, who still held her composure very well despite the situation she was in. How was she this calm when they were literally freaking out?!

"I do not have control over my dreams." she finally stood up from the mattress, taking some steps until her feet were on a steady ground right before them. Then she did something unexpected, she took one of Kieran's hands into hers, doing the same with Luke and held their palms closer to herself, closing her eyes, and breathing out heavily. Their linked hands started glowing slightly, both boys stared at them, not knowing what to do, but also somehow... Enjoying her closeness. Not opening her eyes she started talking to them, while still holding their hands in hers.

"Dreams are a fascinating phenomena. We forget most of them right after waking up, with some staying in our memory forever. We can dream about anything: from the past to present, to future, to things reminding us of our demons but also the memories of the things we hold dear to our hearts." finally opening her eyes her gaze jumping between both of them until finally finding it's place on their linked hands "I... Don't know myself why I dreamed of you in that situation, so I am afraid that I do not have the answers you seek right now. Something in my head never lets me forget you, ever since that meeting." she let go of their hands, lowering her own ones down, linking them together. Luke and Kieran just stood there, letting their own hands come back to their place next to their hips.

None of them dared to move, afraid to break the moment. They could still feel the lingering warm on their palms from her hands holding them.

Her eyes finally looked up at them, glowing. They both watched her closely, not knowing what she was doing with her 'magic' right before the moment, but none of them cared about it, something in them saying to trust her.

"You know... I never met anyone like you. I was watching you over the last couple of months on your little missions. You're like one person. The very same appearance. The masks and the faces before the incident matching perfectly. But somehow I see you as two different personas. The very same but different." the glow in her eyes slowly fading, but her warm smile coming back to make up for it "I can't wait to play more of 'guess the difference'."

She poked their masks with a small laugh. Waking them up from their trance.

"I believe that you have to go, today Sylus has an important meeting, you know." she walked past them to the table, taking the orb still resting on it, putting it over her head.

"Oh c'mon, sitting here with you is so much more interesting than some boring meeting." Luke proclaimed with a sigh of annoyance in his voice. Did they have to go?

"I believe that there will be a rather... Explosive moment, so you won't get too bored there." she let out a laugh, turning towards them and leaning on the table behind her "Besides I have something to do in the meantime, so even tho I would love to stay here and entertain you two cuties, I can't." she send them apologizing look.

"But you won't disappear like before, right?" Kieran's voice followed her statement. He was thankful for Luke's idea with the masks now more than ever, it saved him from reviling the blush on his cheeks at the nicknames the girl was giving them.

"Not this time, promise. At least not for this long." she shrugged.

"You better keep this promise or we'll find you ourselves" Luke pointed finger in her direction trying to look the most threatening he could, but it only made the girl laugh more.

"Oh I'm so scared~" she let out in a mocking tone, raising her hands as it to show 'im innocent officer'.

"Yeah, you better be!" the older of the twins continued his 'intimidating' act. Making Kieran scoff a bit at his behavior.

"Okay, okay, I promise you'll see me soon. But now I really have to go and I advise you to do the same." she stood up straight, her dress instantly fixing itself to look perfect "See you~" her voice sang right when she was passing by them, heading to the door.

Both boys let out their goodbyes and soon they heard the click of the door closing and their 'not-so-mysterious-anymore' girl walking out, leaving them alone with a thousand thoughts.

They stared at the door in silence for a moment longer before they spoke at the same time again.

"I think I'm in love."

"You too?!"

They instantly looked at each other shocked, but at the same time not really. They were so similar in so many aspects, but honestly they never thought of girls and crushes ever before, focusing on surviving and having their fun, but she seemed like she could bring even more fun to the group.

"Sooo... What do we do?" Luke asked, more relaxed now than before with the girl in the room, as he tried his best not to screw up anything in front of her. Obviously they will never argue because of the girl, but they had to sort it out somehow.

"I mean... She seemed pretty positive about both of us, right?" Kieran shrugged, based on the girl's dream they saw earlier the solution to this little 'problem' of theirs was rather obvious, no?

"So... What you are suggesting is... That we could both date her?" Luke looked deep in thought and for a moment Kieran even looked at him like at the biggest dumbass in the world.

"Yes. That is exactly what I suggest we do." he blinked his eyes, stating the obvious.

"But how will that work?" Luke continued to question.

"I have no idea, but hey, we'll manage, we always do. Also honestly I never thought about it but having one girlfriend with our... Situation is actually rather obvious choice, no?" at this sentence his older brother just nodded his head, silently agreeing. but then something else caught his eye.

"Wait. Where is that swing?!"

~★~★~★~

2047, Middle of Spring.

Weeks passed by with twins getting to know their mysterious girl. Even after getting to know her a little better she still seems to live 24/7 in their heads, somehow they are even more curious about her now than before knowing her.

They became friends fast after their second meeting, with her becoming their partner in crime when it came to pranks, but even though they became really close and spent hours to no end together, they still didn't know much about her. They were dying to know why and since when was she working for Sylus, but she always laughs at their questions saying that it's not important for them to know.

A couple of days ago they came out with a plan to spy on the two to try and gain information to satisfy their curiosity. However it was easier said than done. To be honest they saw those two together in the same room maybe two to three times? Just what kind of relationship did they have?! They needed to know.

They waited for days to finally put their plan into the reality, they waited for a perfect moment, observing those two like professional stalkers. The fact that both of their targets noticed their weird behavior was not really helpful, but none of them really paid them any mind, so who cares?

Eventually they got the perfect opportunity to 'strike'. They were going down the stairs, planning to go and chill in the mansion's main area while also waiting for their (ekhem ekhem crush) favorite girl to come see them, like she usually does. When they were on their way they suddenly heard voices, coming from the corridor leading to Sylus's office.

Looking at each other they instantly became quiet, moving a little closer to the wall. The voices were a little far away, since the corridor was pretty long, but luckily they weren't being exactly quiet.

"... what do you want to do about it? That guy is a scumbag and we both know it. I don't care about your business, if you won't take care of him: I will." they heard the voice of Y/n sounding harsh and annoyed, not leaving the ground to argue, something they never heard from her before.

"Sweetie I won't let you get yourself straight into their trap. You are not going there and that's the end of it." Sylus answered in his usual tone, clearly not impressed by the girl's intimidating speech.

"ARE YOU KIDDING ME?" twins literally jumped up a bit at the scream, they never heard her raise her voice before "That motherfucker uses girls my age for his fucking business! I can tolerate many things Sylus. Fuck that! I literally killed people myself before, but he destroys them more and more everyday! If you will just sit on your ass and wait for him to finish his business with you, I'll deal with that bastard myself and never come back here again." twins looked at each other, clearly fearing that Sylus will just let her go and never come back.

"Y/n I promise you that bastard will get what he deserves, and I'll make him go through worse hell than you can even imagine. All I ask of you is to just give me a little more time." how was he still so calm?!

"... How much time do you need?" now sounding more calm than before, but still clearly mad, judging from the way her tone sounded cold and resentful.

"3 days."

"Alright, and not a second longer." her voice was quiet enough for the boys to have a problem with hearing it.

"Have I ever given you a reason to doubt me, sweetie?" Boss's voice still intact like always, not even a hint of anger at the girl's outburst from a moment ago. Who was she to him?! How could she talk to him like that and not face any consequences?!

"No. And I never will doubt you. But you know why it's so important to me." her voice gets more quiet with each word.

After that they didn't hear any more words from the two people behind the wall.

'What is happening?'

'I don't know! Maybe we should peek?'

They were considering the idea for some seconds, before finally giving in to their curiosity once more. The sight before their eyes got them dumbfounded.

They saw Sylus holding the girl in his arms and looking at her concerned. She seemed to be in a bad shape, holding onto him weakly while visibly going limp in his hug. Both of the twins stared at the scene, not even caring anymore about getting to the truth about the relationship between the two, they were afraid for the girl they grew affectionate towards, she never looked this weak and vulnerable when spending time with them, what happened to her?

"... Dad..." they heard her pained whisper and saw her going completely limp in Sylus arms. Their Boss's face immediately changed into an even deeper concern.

Suddenly they saw Sylus's eyes glance towards them. They stood there numb, not even having the strength to try and hide or pretend like they were just passing by after the events that just took, and were still taking, place.

Their Boss didn't even pay them any mind, much more worried about the girl than those two seeing anything. He snooped her into his arms, princess carrying her into his office, and closing the door behind him with his evol.

Twins still stood in one place, worried sick and clueless as to what was currently happening to their favorite girl.

"Boss looked worried as much as we are, do you think it's something serious?" Luke's voice first to break the silence.

"I don't know, I wish we could just go into that office, but he'll probably have our heads for this." Kieran sat down on the floor, his back leaning onto the wall.

Luke followed his brother, sliding down the wall, looking deafened.

No more words exchanged between the two. Both their minds occupied by the person currently impossible to reach. Going into that office would be a suicidal, but staying outside of it was killing them too.

Were they actually that attached to her already..?

~★~

Hours passed, twins stayed close to their Boss's office, waiting for either the man or the girl to walk out, so that they could ask if she's okay. Eventually they settled on the couch in one of the living rooms, one which was the closest to the office, leaving the door open to make sure that they won't miss any sound coming from the corridor.

Eventually they waited for about 10 hours already, not planning to move until they will hear the news about their soulmate's (as they started calling her not that long ago, after pulling a success prank on Sylus together) well-being. Eventually they fell asleep on the couch out of exhaustion and stress.

Meanwhile inside of the Sylus's office someone finally woke up.

"Finally back to the world of living, sweetie?" Sylus looked up from the papers sprayed on his desk to look at the girl moving on his couch.

"How long was I out?" sitting up, her hands went towards her head, her eyes closed.

"Couple of hours, there's water on the table before you." his eyes came back to the papers.

The girl slowly reached her hand towards the glass with water, luckily Sylus didn't fill it up to the top or else she would spill it because of her hand shaking. She put the glass to her mouth, drinking without any rush.

"I told you many times not to use your evol like this." standing up from behind his desk he made his way towards the teenager "You know that glitching in between the worlds can be extremely dangerous for you, yet you still took the risk for no valid reason."

"I can't just sit back and watch him hurt them, I had to do something, you're taking too long." her eyes shoot up towards the man, sending him sharp glare.

"I have my reasons for stalling. Why can't you just trust me with this?"

"Because I see myself in those girls!" her raised voice shocked even him this time "Every time I see his nasty dreams I'm reminded about those assholes who made me watch myself in that situation. He will hurt them Sylus, every day of you waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike is another little girl's childhood taken away!" her voice breaking, shacking of her body and tears in her eyes made Sylus feel too many things that he would have wish not to acknowledge.

He never wanted to get attached to that girl, he was fine on his own, but every day with her following him around like a shadow made him so used to her presence that he couldn't imagine something or someone taking her away from him right now. He hated himself for having a weak spot.

"Sweetie I promise you that no harm will come to those girls, I have Mephisto watching them all the time, they are scared yes, but no one touches them I promise. They will be safe in 3 days, give me that much time, please." he crouched down next to her, holding one of her hands in his and making her look at him, the eye contact being able to keep her grounded. He knew that she could lose her grip on the reality if he didn't act the right way.

The memories started flowing back to him at once. The trauma this girl had to go through making him want to kill anyone who dared to even think about harming her. Taking a child to become an experiment is a cruelty that even he, being the 'worst' person in the N109 Zone, wouldn't dare to commit.

He remembered that one night from two years ago. He was walking towards the room in his mansion that he was sure had the book he needed for his research. It was the room hidden deep inside of the right wing, when he finally got to it and opened the door he saw that young girl sitting on the floor with her legs under her, the room was cold and she didn't wear enough clothes to feel warm, but she didn't seem effected by the cold, she was just sitting there and looking at the moon behind the window.

"What are you doing here?" she didn't even react to his voice, didn't look at him, didn't let out any sound like she did most of the time, signaling to him that she listened.

He slowly walked towards her, crouched down beside her, looking at her and then at the sky of the N109 Zone.

They spent a couple of minutes in complete silence, staring as the clouds move slowly with time.

"Why do people need to know and understand everything?" her quiet voice brought his attention to her again, his head turning towards her direction, her eyes already focused on him.

"Because they are afraid of the unknown." his tone was soft, he warmed up to the girl over the time he spent with her, even if he didn't want to admit it.

The girl just recently turned 14. He got some informations about her from the database of EVER studies and the rest he knew just by simply asking her, she was surprisingly truthful all the time, not hiding anything from him.

"Can I show you something?" her eyes still locked on his, their eye contact making him feel like he talked to his equal and not just some teenage girl that he randomly stumbled across.

"Of course." was his only response. Her hands made their way towards his face, slowly covering his eyes. He didn't protest, she didn't have any reason to hurt him, and it's not like she would succeed in it anyways.

The darkness he saw with his eyes covered suddenly started changing into shapes and colors. He saw a little girl together with her at least three people, much bigger than her, adults, in white coats. One was holding her down, making her sit down on the chair, while the other two stood before her with their notepads, talking to her, but their voices came out like a combination of random syllables.

Their faces were all blurry, he couldn't recognize any face other than the one of the little girl. Her eyes were full of fear, shining from the tears she was clearly holding back. No words left her, she didn't try to scream or fight the person holding her, she just silently sat there.

Suddenly he saw one of the people with notepads taking something out of their pocket, a syringe, and walking with it towards the little girl. Her eyes locked on the white wall before her, her gaze looking absent, like mentally she wasn't there.

Right after they injected whatever it was into her arm her head fell down, strength leaving her body, her eyes clenching shut and one single tear falling down her cheek before the image got completely blurred and the room changed. What he saw next made his blood boil.

The same little girl standing there, before a man with literally no face and another version of herself, she was watching as the man spoke to her other version and started touching her arms.

Not wanting to know what happened next Sylus took the hands of the girl away from his eyes and took a moment to let his gaze come back to reality. His eyes turned to the teenager, a silent question in his gaze.

"They made me watch someone's dreams. I don't know how, but whatever they injected into me activated my evol, fighting it was painful." he swallowed his split in a try to control his anger, his jaw clenching "I tried to stop him, but when I touched him I felt pain like nothing I've ever felt. I shut my eyes close while laying on the floor but had to hear all the things he spoke to my other version. After it was all done and I woke up I heard someone speak about the 'emotional reactions influencing the power of the evol' but then I blacked out again. It was the day that I knew I had to run away, before they would get to test that in a reality." her eyes were glossy and a single tear ran down just like in the memory he saw a moment ago.

His thumb went up to her face to wipe it off, she let him without as much as a flinch. No more words were exchanged between them. He moved to sit down fully on the floor and her head instantly fell to his shoulder. They sat there for a while, being the comfort the other needed in this cruel world. He heard her breathing slowing down, probably falling asleep, he let her.

"I promise that no one else will hurt you."

"Promise me." her quiet voice brought him back to reality. Looking at her now he didn't see the fearless and mischievous teenager she became. He saw that little girl from the past, crying herself to sleep in a lonely room, holding herself to feel any kind of warm.

She didn't need to say anything else, he already understood.

"I promise." that no one will touch them.

A lonely tear fell from her eye with a blink, making it's way down her face like a raindrop falling on the window during a storm. His memory came back for a second before leaving again. He reached out, his palm gently taking a hold of her face, his thumb catching the single proof of her sadness. For a moment her eyes closed, enjoying the warmth of another human being after knowing only coldness her entire life.

Suddenly the sound of a pained cry left her and before Sylus could react she threw her arms around him and her mouth let out a song of cries and pain she was hiding inside for too long.

He gently reciprocated her hug, one of his hands taking it's place on her head, slowly stroking it in a calming motion, letting her drown her sorrows into his shoulder, hiding her from the brutality of the world.

He wished that he found her sooner and gave her the life she deserved to have from the start, without anyone taking away her innocence. She became his guiding star, always being there to remind him that life is not just an endless cycle of pain and evil. He didn't know why she followed him that day, but he was thankful for it nonetheless.

The next couple of minutes were spent with him shielding her from reality. They didn't know exactly how much time had passed, maybe ten minutes, maybe half an hour, maybe more. It didn't matter.

In his fatherly-like embrace she finally found the safety she was looking for her entire life. She was forced to fight for herself for so long, stealing and sleeping in abandoned buildings was her every day life ever since she run away from the place of her torture. That was, until she met him, her visions encouraging her to take the risk and trust him, and she did. She didn't regret it even for once ever since.

"I'm sorry..." her voice, quiet and weak, reached his ears. Her cries calmed down a while ago, but they still didn't let go of each other.

"You have no reason to apologize for feeling." his tone calm, with foreign gentleness to it. She was his little girl, the very one that he swore to protect. She was his remainder that he wasn't an emotionless monster, she made him feel human.

After a couple more minutes they finally pulled themselves away, her face red from crying, his expression still showing concern. The reason behind her outburst of emotions forgotten behind, her trust in his words enough to calm her down.

Sylus finally stood up from the floor and sat down next to her on the couch. Her head falling onto his shoulder, her head trying to organize her thoughts and leave the depressive episodes behind. His voice interrupts her tornado of thoughts.

"You've grown close to them." she let out a sound of curiosity, her head turning to look at him, but his eyes were focused on something before him "The twins." there was a moment of silence after that statement, her head coming back to rest on his shoulder once again and her eyes focusing on the painting on the wall before her.

"I did." left her mouth, he didn't react in any way, but she knew he heard her. There was no point in avoiding the truth, he already knew about it, he just wanted to hear her say it.

"It's foolish." she let out a quiet humorless laugh, she knew.

"So was following you like a stray cat on the street looking for a shelter, but look at us now." she smiled, her gaze returning to his side-profile. A sound like a second long laugh left his mouth, she had a point.

"I hope that you know what you're doing." they smiled at each other and laughed "But still if they will hurt you in any way, I will make them pay." the sudden serious expression on him took her aback.

"Oh you are really like my father!" she laughed again and hit him playfully in the shoulder, he simply smiled at her once again, his eyes hiding the warm inside reserved only for the person before him. He would let the world burn for this girl.

~★~

Half an hour later from the depths of Sylus' office finally walked out the center of twins worries. However Luke and Kieran didn't even flinch at the sound of someone's footsteps, deep in their dreams.

The girl appeared in the doorway, with a playful smile on her lips when she saw them. For a moment she thought about pulling up a prank on them, but decided against it. They were probably waiting for her, she knew that they saw her fainting earlier, they were probably worried as hell, so today they earned their free pass for a peaceful sleep.

A spark showed itself in her eyes. They were dreaming, she could feel it. People who were close to her got them more often than a regular person, side effect of her evol.

She got lost in her head for a minute. Was it safe for her to use her evol when a couple of hours ago it had a malfunction? Well if she'll do it correctly then probably it will be fine.

Slowly, making sure to stay as quiet as a cat, she made her way towards the couch occupied by the duo. Standing one step before them she took a good look at them.

Luke slept on his stomach with one of his hands dangling from the couch almost touching the carpet, while the other one found it's place under his head, they still had their masks on, but they got a little misplaced, showing more skin that they are supposed to, his feet placed up on the armrest of the couch.

Then there was Kieran, who fell asleep asleep on his back with his legs thrown over the armrest from the other side of the couch. One of his hands sneaked it's way to the backrest (was it even comfortable?) while the second was lying on his tummy. The hood slipped from his head, showing off his dark raven hair.

Their heads were lying close to each other, leaving some space in between them.

She let out a quiet giggle, they were adorable. Slowly, as to not disturb them, she sat down in the free space and gently touched both of their foreheads, her eyes lighting up, full on glowing this time, when her evol started to work.

Before her eyes flooded the picture of their dream. One dream for both of them? Were they connected to each other that much?

The picture becomes much more clear with every second until she is finally able to see and hear them perfectly well.

They sat on the rooftop, instead of their usual uniforms they wore all black clothes. Their dark middle length hair perfectly visible even in the darkness of the night.

"Do you think we'll make it?" she heard Kieran's voice. It didn't carry the mischievous hint to it which made her concerned about the specifics of that dream.

"Who cares? What matters is that we are finally free and playing by our rules." Luke's voice, even tho playful, still sounded more serious than normal "If we go down, then at least we'll do it together."

"I guess you're right." the younger of the twins let out a breath and looked up to the sky.

In the meantime, the person spying on their dream started to fall asleep herself. She didn't even notice how the dream started to feel more real with every second, it all came to her so naturally, as if she was meant to be there.

She started to feel the cold wind on her face, it started to play with her hair and the fabric of her clothes. She looked at the twins, who stayed clueless to her presence in their dream. Did they even know it was a dream? She couldn't tell.

However in the real world the twins sleeping forms feeling the closeness of her body started to slowly move towards her. Kieran's head found it's place on the girl's tights treating it like the softest of all pillows, while his brother's hand that wasn't busy under his head hugged the girl's legs.

The girl herself, now joining them in their nap, rested her hands on Kieran's chest and Luke's head, the closeness coming to them naturally.

Her silhouette in the dream started getting closer to the boys, who were still sitting on the edge of the rooftop with their backs facing her.

"You will make it." her soft voice breaking through the sounds of the wind in their ears, both sets of eye glancing towards her, shocked but somehow not at all surprised that she's there "I'll help you." she crouched down to be on their eye level and looked at both of their faces taking in the details.

Kieran lacked his scars, his face being a perfect mirror to Luke's, but she could still tell who was who. Older of the twins had this mischievous sparkle in his eyes all the time, while his twin's eyes looked softer and less playful, but still could match his brother's mischievousness most of the time.

They looked at her as if they were bewitched. It seemed that the memories from the precious events in the awakened world flooded back to their minds.

"You're okay!" both of them screamed, their eyes wide open in shock, they moved fast, not even registering the moment when they pulled her into a bone-crushing hug.

The girl just laughed at their antics and threw her hands around them, accepting the affection.

"Someone was worried about me?" she whispered right under their ears. Her head resting on Luke's shoulder, but turned Kieran's way, her nose touching his neck.

None of them answered, they just hugged her tighter. Her legs resting on Kieran's now, her body leaning on Luke's.

They finally found their peace. Their embraces stayed unbroken for the rest of the dream.

Meanwhile...

Sylus finally left his office, in between the incident earlier and his work he didn't have time to eat anything, and now, finally deciding to make his way to the kitchen, he noticed an open door.

Well that was unusual, all the doors always stay closed. It was a sort of unspoken rule in his mansion at this point.

He peeked inside with the intention of closing it, but the sight inside of the room made him stop in his tracks.

His precious little girl was sleeping on the couch with the twins cuddled up to her.

His breathing stopped for a second, anger in his eyes perfectly visible.

Yes, he knew that they were close. Yes, he noticed how they tried to get physically close to her at any chance given. And yes - he knew that she had grown rather... Fond of them.

But still he couldn't say that he was pleased at the fact that they seem even closer now than the last time he saw them together.

To be honest he didn't even consider the idea of her growing up and... Getting a... Boyfriend? Especially somehow getting two?!

He needed a glass of whiskey. Preferably a whole bottle.

His hand found it's way to his forehead, his eyes clenching shut, he shouldn't care as much as he did. Shaking his head he finally got a hold of the door handle, glancing at them for the last time before finally closing the door.

~★~★~★~

2047, Middle of Summer.

Over those last months not much has happened, N109 Zone still rotten with crime, however the mysterious leader of Onychinus didn't show himself for some time now, rumors were spreading like diseases, but which one was right? No one knew. People used his absence to their advantages in various ways, almost forgetting about his existence.

Still, some people lucky (or not) to be working close to him were having the laugh of their lifes watching those rats try to reach the top. They let them have their moments of power, knowing that when the time comes, they will take it all back

In the quietness of Sylus's mansion three teenagers found themselves hidden from the rest of the world and having taken a break from their work, decided to have some movie night.

The coffee table in one of the living rooms with the biggest TV screen was full of snacks including popcorn, cookies, gummy bears, various drinks and some other things (basically anything they could find in the kitchen). Blankets and pillows were waiting for them to get comfy, some splashed around the floor too. While the twins were getting the last of the snacks (coming back with some chips and sodas while also carrying bags of sweets in their mouths) their favorite girl was picking up a cartoon to watch.

Twins didn't wear their uniforms, masks lying forgotten in what was now known as their official room. After those couple of months working for Sylus about two weeks ago he finally decided that it's easier to just have them there all the time (totally not because **someone** was pleading him to let them live there), together with the new place to live they also got some money to go and buy themselves stuff like new clothes.

Let's also add that the girl herself took them shopping, not trusting their fashion skills... But at least they got some fun-bonding time outside of the N109 Zone.

All three of them were wearing sweatpants and some random t-shirts, putting the last of the snacks into the free bowls, the twins sat down on the couch on each side of the girl. Taking blankets and pillows to put them where they seem fit. Kieran finally looked at the screen noticing the title of the movie Y/n choose.

"How To Train Your Dragon?" he read out loud, getting the attention of his brother.

"Never watched it."

Girl's eyes widen. She looked at the twins in pure shock.

"HOW?!" both boys looked at her and just stared at her not knowing what was so shocking "That movie is a classic!" she added, her expression still looking as if they have just told her that they are of royal blood or something.

"To be honest we never really had a TV growing up, the first time we watched something was like two months ago." Kieran explained, reaching for a bowl of popcorn to put it on his lap. The girl stayed quiet for a minute before her expression changed into one of understanding.

Not saying anything else she reached out to grab her favorite snack and finally started the movie.

All three sets of eyes focused on the screen, sometimes their attention leaving the TV to grab a snack or drink. The first movie went smoothly, with some random conversations here and there of course.

"That guy is a loser." Luke said with a mouth full of popcorn.

"Shut up!" Y/n thrown some popcorn at him which he didn't have time to dodge, but he managed to catch one in his mouth and shot up from his seat to high-five Kieran "Kids." the girl rolled her eyes, her eyes going to focus on the screen again.

Luke slowly slid from the couch onto the carpet below them, continuing to watch from there.

"I like those twins." Kieran said, his eyes not moving from the screen, the rest of the party just let out sounds of agreement.

"I swear that I can feel the awkwardness between him and the dragon from the screen."

"Real." Y/n and Kieran looked at each other, it was the first time they said something at the same time.

Unbothered Luke reached out for his glass to refill it with some soda.

"Wait, I'll get some ice." standing up, Y/n took two glasses and head to the shelves, boys eyes followed her instantly not saying a word.

She opened a cabinet and inside of it... Was a little freezer? What was it doing there?!

Twins stared in awe, the girl as if sensing their stares laughed a bit and without turning her head back to look at them answered their silent question:

"I like to have ice-cream nearby when watching sad movies, okay?" Luke and Kieran looked at each other and smiled for no reason, no words left them and their attention came back to the movie.

Soon enough she came back to them, giving one glass to Luke and keeping the other to herself.

"You forgot about someone?" Luke said grinning.

"I noticed that Kieran never gets ice for himself. Am I wrong?" she started pouring her drink unbothered, twins looked at each other as if communicating with their eyes, they were shocked.

Eventually they just silently returned to watching the movie

"Aww he's in love." Kieran's tone carried some kind of sarcasm to it.

"Imagine hitting on a girl with a dragon." his brother added with a laugh.

In a split of second both of them let out a sound of pain, she hit their heads.

"What was that for?" Luke asked, his head turning to send a glare at the girl.

The girl just rolled her eyes and shrugged.

"WHY CAN'T THEY LISTEN TO HIM?!" boys threw their hands up in anger, screaming at the movie.

"Cause some people are really dumb and close-minded." she said, with no emotion to her voice, Kieran joined his brother on the carpet, his back resting on the girl's legs, he reached for something on the table, his hair falling onto his eyes.

Before he had the chance to get them off he felt hands from behind gently gathering his hair and putting them in a small ponytail on the base of his neck. After it was done he felt a soft pat on his head. He peeked over his shoulder, the girl sent him a smile which he returned.

"Oh okay. Am I disturbing you two maybe? Should I leave you to your moment?" Luke's annoyed voice made them break their eye contact and look at him. His expression not hiding his irritation.

"What? You jealous?" left Kieran's mouth, which earned him a punch on the chest from his brother, making him fall completely on the floor, Luke followed him down starting a fight, which was obviously for fun.

The girl laughed at their antics. It's been going on for about a minute now, her laughter got louder while the boys continued their play-fight for her entertainment.

Suddenly when Kieran tried to overthrow Luke from himself his action pulled a blanket from the couch, making the girl fall with a panicked squeak.

Both boys instantly tried to catch her, which let them all to fall on the floor, her body landing on top of theirs, twins froze for a moment, everything went silent. They were ready to start apologizing when suddenly they heard her laughter and felt her shake.

A moment later Luke joined her with a giggle of his own, and soon enough Kieran couldn't help himself and did the same thing. All three of them were lying on the floor unable to control their breathing because of the laughter.

It took them solid five minutes to calm down, but instead of going back to sit on the couch they stayed on the carpet.

"Come here." she instructed Luke who wordlessly, but with a happy grin, followed her command, seating himself before her and taking some snacks from the table.

Her hands went to his hair, scooping them up in her hand and tying them up in the matching ponytail to Kieran's, using her extra hair tie. Right after she was done she moved towards the younger of brothers, gesturing him to turn around which he did, letting her fix his hairstyle who got messy after the play fight with his brother.

The next hour went peacefully, they started the second movie from the series. Twins kept asking questions and commenting on the plot and characters, not keeping their opinions to themselves and making Y/n laugh at their behavior.

During the watching all three of them snuggled up together, sitting shoulder to shoulder under a huge fluffy blanket.

When the third movie started playing the atmosphere in the room changed a bit. The boys seemed somehow more relaxed, Kieran's head fell to Y/n shoulder while Luke started to play with her hand, moving her fingers for his own fun.

"OMG HE'S IN LOVE!" Luke screamed, squeezing the girl's hand in both of his.

"Oh she's got the attitude." Kieran added after seeing the white dragon shoot flames at them.

"Don't they all..." the girl looked at the older of the twins with a silent dare in her eyes "I'll shut up!" breaking the intense eye contact to focus back on the movie he couldn't catch the playful hint in the girl's eyes that showed itself right after his words.

She sent a knowing look to Kieran, who simply smirked at her. Her free hand reached for his and a smile graced her lips, her forehead meeting his for a moment with a short giggle leaving her.

"Never thought I would be jealous of my own twin brother." they heard a huff from behind them but instead of turning their heads they just laughed and the girl threw her hands around Kieran to mess with his brother even more "Okay, now you're doing it on purpose!" was the only thing they heard before a set of hands caught her waist and pulled her towards the other boy.

Her back resting against him, still shaking with laughter, she couldn't see the 'intimidating' stare Luke sent to his brother, which only affected in Kieran's louder laughter.

Soon enough they calmed down, going back to watching the movie. Luke held her in his arms and didn't let go so she just got comfy against him, not caring one bit, Kieran also didn't look like it bothered him.

"That guy is such a loser, will he actually pull her?" escaped Luke's mouth after seeing Toothless little dance to impress his crush. He felt popcorn getting forced into his mouth to shut him up, which he accepted without a fuss.

"He's doing his best, if a guy would try so hard to impress me I would be delighted." was the answer he got in response.

"So you want a loser for a boyfriend? Your 'dad' would eat him alive." Kieran grinned and turned to look at her.

"Oh please my 'dad' wouldn't dare to hurt someone just because they like me." she said, but after a second added a quiet "I think..." and her gaze turned out to be a little uncertain.

"Well, one thing I know for sure: getting onto the Boss' black list to date you is worth it." she heard Luke whisper into her ear, hugging her a little tighter. She let out a quiet laugh but nothing else escaped her mouth.

About twenty minutes later the girl left the embrace to stretch her back and take something to drink from the table.

Silence followed, the most heartbreaking moment of the movie started playing soon after, the twins watched in anticipation, but right when they saw dragons leaving for their Hidden World they suddenly heard a quiet sob.

Both of them turned towards the girl, who tried to keep tears from falling.

"What?! It's sad okay..." she said with a snark, wiping her eyes with her palms. Boys smiled slightly at her cuteness.

"Aww it's okay, you can cry as much as you want here." Kieran said, putting his hand on her shoulder, tugging her towards his body. Instantly she melted into him, hiding her face in his neck.

"You saw countless people die on the job. But some... Movie for little kids is the cause of your tears? Luke snarked a comment, not meaning to be rude in the slightness, but still earned himself a middle finger from the girl who had yet to pull herself away from his brother. With a quiet laugh his gaze turned back to the TV.

Second layer the girl peeked at Kieran's face, not leaving his embrace yet. His eyes turned to look at her, their eye contact felt weird. Not the bad kind but, for some reason, they seemed unable to pull away from each other. For a moment he thought that she activated her evol, but the shining in her eyes was simply from the tears hiding in them just a moment ago.

She examined his face, the scars left by Sylus perfectly visible. She touched his cheek, her thumb softly caressing his face, his scar. None of them thought about what they were doing, they didn't even seem to notice the fact that their faces were brought closer to each other.

That was, until their lips touched. No moving, no breathing, their hearts beating so fast that they could feel it in their heads. Their eyes closed, the gentle kiss lasted for a while, with no rush, eventually they pulled their lips away from each other, but their foreheads touched instead. Her palm didn't leave his face, staying there while both of them tried to calm their breathing and hearts down.

Suddenly she felt a gentle touch on the back of her head, her eyes opened and turned towards Luke, who looked at her with a playful spark hidden in his gaze.

"Is it mine turn now?" his whisper touched her ear like the most precious secret, his movement didn't hesitate, he turned her head gently towards him and made their lips touch. Her palm still lingered on Kieran's face who now looked at them, studying their actions.

Luke's kiss was more intense than the one of his twin, his lips moving slowly but eager against her, making her lose her breath again. The burning feelings inside of him finally coming to life. He broke the kiss after some time, pulling away while still keeping his hand on her head.

She felt Kieran's head come to rest against the side of her own. Her eyes gazed at Luke, who looked like he just won his life.

She felt safe, seen and heard.

A thought lingered in her mind:

Is this what love feels like?

She sent the older of the twins a slight smile of her own, nuzzling against Kieran once again, while also pulling Luke towards herself. He obeyed without a protest, his head falling onto her shoulder.

Meanwhile in the background the movie was coming to an end, a wedding and the reunion of two new families was not enough to keep them away from their own moment.

Everything seemed to fall into it's rightful place.

~★~★~★~

2048, Early Autumn.

A year went by... To say that Sylus was not really happy about the blossoming relationship between his little girl and his employees would be an understanding.

For a couple of first months he gave the twins more time-consuming tasks just because he saw them getting too close to her. He wasn't blind, he knew that they cared for each other and his precious daughter-like person was happy with them.

But in his eyes: no one would ever be enough for her.

When he saw them kissing her cheeks while making food in the kitchen he made them leave the base for two weeks under the pretext that they needed to keep a close eye on one of his business partners.

And to be honest they learned nothing from this 'lesson', still acting clingy whenever she was near, competing for her attention all the time.

Sylus was so over it, but he couldn't do anything, since his little girl wouldn't forgive him if something bad would happen to them by his own doing.

So he just suffered in silence, sending death stares to them any time they dared to stand too close to her for his liking.

Today they finally got the intel about the Aether Protocore, mission was set, the woman in possession of it will soon show herself, he was sure of it.

Meanwhile twins already left the mansion, they needed to get to the area faster and wait for a signal to act.

While him and Y/n still waited in the mansion, currently sitting in the dining room, a red orb found it's place in Sylus's palm, his hands playing with it like with a coin.

Inside of it bloomed red flower, stained with blood, yellow sky around it sent warm light in it's direction, but instead of basking in it, the flower looked sad, depressed and caged.

The glass orb around it appeared broken, as if someone stabbed something sharp into it. Countless small cracks showing themselves around the pierced place. It's a surprise that the glass didn't shattered completely.

"Get ready, we are leaving soon." hiding the object in his pocket, he stood up, not waiting for the girl to follow him, he knew that she would be exactly where he needed her anyways.

~★~

Watching someone get killed by Sylus' power was interesting every time. They always looked so pathetic and weak in the claws of his evol.

But this time instead of focusing on the poor guy hanging in the air she studied the woman kneeling on the ground. She kept a safe distance, not even able to hear what the twins were saying, but she could imagine their comments already.

Sylus arrived, Mephisto who until now was seated on the teenage girl shoulder cawed and flew to his owner.

Twins kneeled before Sylus who appeared before them now, keeping up their acts.

"Take out the vermin that're still running amok." the girl slowly walked out from her hiding spot, getting a little closer to the spectacle. The woman who found herself in their presence looked up at her confused, but didn't comment about anything.

She stopped a couple meters behind the twins.

"Yes, sir!" she heard them say and watched them stand up to head in her direction.

Without any hesitation she turned around and started walking away, her boys following behind, leaving Sylus with his new prey behind.

"Finally some fun for us!" Luke spoke with excitement, catching up to her and throwing his arm around her shoulder.

"Let's hope that the rats will at least try to fight back or run. I missed that thrill." Kieran said with a hint of mockery in his voice. The girl just smiled at their attics, she couldn't wait to see them in action once more.

~★~

"She won't be sleeping forever, right? She's been unconscious for one day. We need to wake her up." was the first thing the woman heard after waking up.

"Easy, just open up the back of her head. Drill a hole in her neck and..." her eyes darted open, her vision fozy.

"You two-" she sat up.

"You're seeing things. I'm the only one here. There is no 'two'".

"Then who's that?"

"My soul can leave... my body..." the man before her clearly tried to scare her.

"Stop it. She went through a lot, leave your jokes for later." her eyes turned to the other side of the room, a silhouette of a girl playing with a knife perfectly visible "Sorry for those kids." women caught eye contact.

The eyes of that girl were mesmerizing. Something deep hidden inside of them, for whatever reason, the woman at the mercy of the strangers felt safe now, she didn't know why, but there was a feeling inside of her screaming to trust her.

"Are you stunned? Shocked? Boooring." the voice of the man standing in the shadow of the room got her attention, her head snapping to look at him.

"Ahem... Hi, MC. Before you left Boss's parlor..." so they knew her name... "Well, we already met. Four days ago to be exact." four days... She was unconscious for that long?

"We didn't just save you from that ungrateful traitor. We also brought you back to Onychinus's base." the guy further away added.

"...So you want me to thank you." she looked clearly giving up that she was thinking about something. The memories of previous days coming back to her.

"We will give you some more time to come back to your... Right state of mind. Come find us when you'll feel ready to." the girl said, putting the knife to it's destinated place on her thigh and leaving, the boys following short behind, waving at the woman.

However she wasn't sure if she'll even feel ready to face the reality, but she didn't have much choice.

~★~

"We know what you're thinking." she looked at Luke (who's name she got to know some time ago, together with the name of his brother, but she still didn't know who was the girl that she met, she didn't see her since their last encounter) "But after being hunted down in The Nest, do you know how many people are out there looking for you?" he sounded so sure of the fact that they've done her a favour.

"And if you escape, you'll only get lost in the chaos of this no-man's land." added Kieran.

"Wanderers will eat you up. They also won't leave behind any crumps. So..." she could tell who was the more dramatic twin.

"Stay here with our boss!" they said together, looking at her with expectations clearly visible without their masks on.

"Throw away all morality and compassion, and this place will be a paradise!" she kept quiet at the Kieran's comment, knowing very well that N109 Zone is not a place for her.

"By the way, who's older? You two are basically identical twins." she decided to change the topic of their conversation.

"Take a guess." Luke said, clearly curious about something.

"Could you come closer so I can get a better look?" she tried to act genue. He fell for the bait, coming closer, she pulled a laser pointer and held it against his neck.

"Hey..! What are you doing?" his eyes widening in shock.

"Have you heard of the XT-7, the Hunters Association's latest weapon?" confused but happy about the fact that they didn't search her body, she decided to use it to her advantage "It's high-powered laser that can penetrate your skin and vaporise your blood. The good news is that it's quick and painless. The bad news is that you'll be losing a lot of blood from your neck. Are you squeamish?" Luke remained unmoving at her explanation.

Kieran fell silent for a moment, before pressing the door handle and moving aside. To her surprise, the door opened just like that.

"Why are you staring at me? Did I say you weren't allowed to leave?" he said with an obvious sarcasm to his voice.

She didn't answer. Standing up she kept the 'weapon' to Luke's neck, gesturing with her head to go with her out of this room.

When passing the door she looked at Kieran who didn't really seem bothered. He followed behind them to the corridor.

"Okay, just go straight down the hall and you'll see the exit." she let go of Luke, he rubbed his neck and headed over to his brother's side.

"Do you want it? Here." the woman said, noticing his curious eyes following the object. He reached out for it, surprised.

"Really? That's very nice of you to just give away a hunter's secret weapon." he said with excitement.

"It's a laser pointer." she stated casually, her eyes giving up the fun she had from this situation.

"You..." she smiled playfully at him noticing his slight anger at the fact he got played with.

"Did I ever say that it was the XT-7?" she turned around, leaving the boys behind with every taken step.

She heard them whisper behind her, but ignored them completely, she kept going forward.

She took in her surroundings, the dark corridor she was in not saying much about where she was. But she noticed that this place seemed rather abandoned.

She saw a black bird before her, sitting on a marble pillar. A crow? It's eyes looking like made out of rubies.

The bird turned his neck into the woman's direction. It was alive?! Suddenly he flew towards her, missing her head he landed on something... Or rather someone behind her.

Turning around she saw the mysterious girl she saw only two times here.

"It's you." MC's voice quiet. She looked as the girl lovingly stroked the crow's sharp feathers, it's head trying to snuggle up to her palm.

"Sorry for startling you. It was not my intention, I was merely passing by." her eyes left the crow to look at the woman before her "Are you leaving?"

"I... Kinda..." she tried to take the details of the girl before her, also trying to catch where she hid her weapons.

"Kinda?" her giggle broke her from the thoughts "So you don't know yourself what to do? I thought that you would have it all planned out by now." it was clear that she was relaxed, as if knowing that the woman won't try to harm her in any way.

"I'm still figuring out everything..." she hated the fact that her voice gave away her uncertainty.

"Take your time, there's no rush." the girl said calmly, her eyes coming back to the pet on her shoulder who now snuggled up to her neck "Oh also... Thanks for what you did with Luke, I heard the commotion from the other room and overhead a little of it, sometimes it's good to put them into their place." she laughed, the woman couldn't help but crack a smile.

"My pleasure." MC said, for whatever reason more relaxed now. She didn't know that girl at all, she made up her mind about the twins and their Boss, but her? It was a completely different story for some unknown, even to her, reason "Do you... work with them?"

"Work with them? Hm... I guess you could say that." their eyes meet for the last time, before the girl gestured for the crow to fly away, it disappeared behind a narrow gap in the opened door next to them. The girl turned around, going in the direction where MC left the twins.

"Hey! Wait up!" she screamed after her, but got no response, she planned to run after her but the melodious classical music from behind the door caught her attention, and before her eyes came back to the place where she saw the girl going, there was no one left in the corridor but herself.

~★~

Whispers and quiet laughter that the twins shared when entering the kitchen brought the attention of the girl drawing something in her sketchbook while sitting on the countertop from the other side of the room, boys not noticing her started their hunt for snacks, taking off their masks and still laughing about something.

"What are you two up to this time?" both of them jumped at the voice of their girlfriend. The shock in their eyes stayed there for a couple of seconds before they get themself together.

"Us?" Luke leaned against the countertop on his elbow.

"Up to something?" Kieran looked at her from behind his brother with a slight smirk.

"Nooo."

"Never."

"Baby you hurt us." the older of the twins theatrically put a hand over his heart and took a 'pained' expression.

"With those accusations." Kieran put his hand on his brother's shoulder as if to comfort him after such harsh words were thrown their way.

The girl looked at them, lifting her eyebrows and sending them the 'really?' disappointed glare.

"Are you gonna tell me? Or should I go and find out myself." her sketch long forgotten now as she left it on the counter while standing up from her previous sitting place and walking a couple steps towards her lover boys.

"Well if you really want to know..." Kieran went around his brother, closer to the girl while leaning down a little bit to stand on her eye level.

"We decided to make a good deed today." Luke said, the eyes of the girl sneaked a peek at him and came back to gaze into the eyes of the man standing right before her.

"And help Miss Hunter to fulfill her mission." the mischievous spark in Kieran's eyes wasn't missed by the attention of the girl looking at him like she could read his mind and feelings.

Her lips turned into a playful smile and a second later the sound of her laugh reached the ears of the men in the room with her, making both of them smile at her attics.

"You two are evil. Playing tricks on the poor girl." she said with no real disappointment behind her words. She knew that nothing would happen to that woman, Sylus wouldn't hurt her in any way. "Now, who wants some cookies." her arms went around Kieran's neck, giving him a kiss on the cheek, her eyes turning to his brother right behind him.

"Us!" both of them screamed with excitement. Luke ran up to them, stealing the girl from his twin's arms and holding her up started spinning with her in his arms.

The dark furniture of the kitchen didn't exactly match the child-like joy and laughter inside of the room, but it didn't make the moment any less cheerful and happy.

Wherever this trio found themselves in always felt cozy and full of joy. The demons of the past getting forgotten and instead the new found memories getting their place inside of their hearts, making their lives a little more bearable with each and every new one.

~★~

Staring at the brooch in her palms she froze for a minute. Finally, after so many fails that hurt her ego she was able to get it, it didn't matter that the only reason why it worked out was for the fact that Sylus decided to play her little game.

She was already sitting in the red dress, her hair wasn't put up yet, and some parts of her outfit like jewelry and gloves had yet to find themself on her. With a short exhale she put the brooch down onto the table before her.

Her eyes shut closed and her palms started massaging her scalp. Million thoughts were running through her mind. What if something were to go wrong? Is Sylus a danger to her? Will he leave her on her own if something goes not according to plan? Is there even a plan? Will he-

"You know, your thoughts are so loud for someone who came here with a strict goal in mind. Having second thoughts?" a female voice broke her out of her mind, in the mirror before her she met the eyes of the young girl whose name she still didn't know "You know - it's never too late to back out." the slight smirk adoring her face didn't miss the hunter's gaze.

"I won't back out. This all is just... A lot." her eyes fell from the girl back to her own reflection, picking up a brush she started taking care of her hair. However with the nerves from a couple of last days finally getting to her after staying closed inside of her for too long, even the simplest task seems too hard to focus on right now.

While trying and failing to catch her hair together once more she suddenly felt gentle hands caressing them and bringing them together. Looking up she saw the girl now standing right behind her. Did she fail to hear the footsteps coming closer to her?

"The auction will start soon, you won't get ready in time with your shaky hands." pulling MC' hair up, forming a ponytail she reached out her hand "A brush please." without any complaints MC put the item into her open palm, and a second later the girl came back to her task.

"Can I ask for your name?" the teenager made a sound, as if enjoying the knowledge that the information about her still wasn't known to the woman.

"Twins didn't expose it to you yet? Hah, so they can keep information to themselves if they want to." their eyes meet for a split second in the mirror before breaking the eye contact again.

"No, when I asked about you all that I got in response was them calling you their 'dreamy girl'." at this sentence the girl behind her laughed.

"It does sound like them, yeah." her expression turned into something soft, as if thinking about something that made her happy "My name is Y/n." once again she raised her gaze to look into the eyes of the woman. She put her hands onto her shoulder, the hairstyle she was working on was finally done.

MC tested her name on her mouth in a quiet whisper.

"What are we thinking." the younger girl took a hand mirror from the table, making it reflect the hairstyle from behind so that the woman could see it in the mirror. It was a simple but elegant bun with a couple strands of her hair lying free around the area of her face, making a makeshift bangs.

"It looks great, thank you." she sent a soft smile towards the girl which she reciprocated. She saw her reaching for something on the table again.

"Let me help you put it on." holding a necklace in her hands she got ready to clasp it around MC's neck.

The next couple of minutes were spent with shared laughter in between them and some small talk. The girl made sure not to share many things about herself, Sylus or the twins but somehow still found topics to talk about, like sharing some little facts about the people who will attend the same auction as her.

For the first time in the last couple of days, the hunter finally found herself relaxing, and her mind wasn't full of second thoughts and doubts.

~★~

Sylus calmly guides MC across the dance floor, swaying to the song's rhythm.

Blocking the prying shadows around them he tried to make the woman focus on him, but for a quick moment her eyes caught a glimpse of someone who brought her attention to themselves.

Continuing their dance she tried to look at the mysterious stranger behind Sylus's shoulder.

It was a woman, in a black perfectly fitting dress, corset tied tight on her body, with a lot of chains adoring her, from her neck down to her corset and gloves, working as her jewellery.

What made MC, and probably every person here, wonder, was the black veil which hid her hair and face from the curious eyes of the outlookers.

Her stance was elegant, not moving an inch from her spot she resembled a statue, meant to be adored from afar.

Suddenly Sylus spun her around, making her lose sight of her target, she looked at him with annoyance, not expecting any explanation, but a short chuckle left the man, before words started flowing from his mouth.

"So, kitten finally noticed another crow in the room with us? Took you long enough." her eyes widened at the realization, but Sylus didn't leave her any room for questions, and continued their dance, making her focus not to stumble on her feet.

~★~

The explosion left people panicking, the whole hall reduced to a rubble.

Wanderers appeared from left and right, but before MC had a chance to shoot, someone else already took care of them.

Looking around she noticed the figure in the black dress, which fabric now appeared shorter and more comfortable to move around in.

Young girl calmly moved towards them, her steps more graceful than her usual movements. The clicking of her high shoes echoes from the ground, following her steps, MC took a note in her mind to ask her for a walking session later on, it may come useful.

"Leave, you did your part, go to your lover boys sweetie." Sylus' commanding voice spoke, the hint of displeasure obvious at the words 'lover boys'.

The moment of realization struck MC like lightning - that's who they were! She dated the twins! It all made sense now, how could she not notice before?

The girl only let out a quiet laugh, and reached out her hand towards MC.

Opening up her palm she showed her the gun she was holding, uncertain but without much choice the woman picked it up.

"Good luck." with those words Y/n walked around them, heading towards the exit of the hall.

"She looks stunning." a whisper full of fascination left MC, followed by a sound of approval from Sylus' mouth.

Without more comments about the girl, their thoughts came back to the present time and the mission at their hands.

~★~

In the meantime...

"That explosion was mid at best." Luke's voice gave away his disappointment.

"Could be better, but Boss was probably worried about Miss Hunter getting scared or hurt." Kieran kicked the stone under his legs, bored, they were waiting for their girlfriend to come to them for an hour now.

"Where is sheee, I didn't see her all day!" Luke lay down on the stairs leading to the entrance of the abandoned building which localisation was about five to ten minutes away from the auction place.

Putting a hand on top of his heart he tried his best to appear as if dying.

"Hey, I didn't see her either, you're not the only one in emotional pain right now." Kieran scoffed at his brother's attics, crossing his arms.

Suddenly he felt a cold rush of air hitting his back. Before he had a chance to turn around someone's arms came to embrace him around the torso.

"Okay, not fair! I'm dying from longing here, and you decide to give attention to my brother first? The double betrayal!" not giving a single damn about his brother's screams in the background Kieran turned around and hugged the girl back, conscious about his mask.

He picked her up, making her feet linger a little above the ground, which succeeded in making her giggle.

"Okay but damn girl, that outfit? How could you not show it to us before going out!" hearing his brother point out her clothing choice, Kieran put her back down and his gaze explored her whole body before he straightened up.

"Damn how did we pull you?" his head dipped to the side, making him look like a bird observing it's prey.

"We somehow got the daughter of the most dangerous multimillionaire in the N109 Zone to ourselves, if not for the fact that our identities are supposed to stay secret, I would go to the rooftop of the highest building around here and scream it for everyone to hear." Luke finally stood up and walked closer to them.

"Getting onto the Boss's black list because of dating you was so worth it." Kieran high fived his brother, making the girl shake her head in disbelief.

"Can we go now? I want to have a photo session in the forest with that fit." she made a little spin to show off her dress.

"Oh so today we're playing photographers?" Kieran pointed out, trying not to let his excitement show.

"Got it Missy."

"You'll get the best photos you could dream of, princess." twins bowed their upper body jokingly, making the girl raise her chin high and take the most graceful pose she could think of.

"We wouldn't dare to disappoint you, your majesty." the girl finally broke the character of a serious rich woman and let out a laugh, at which both of the brothers grinned to themselves.

"Let's go, I want to make it home before the morning arrives." twins straighten up from their previous position and watch her walk away in the other direction they came from.

"Do you think that she will wear something similar at our wedding?" Luke heard his brother's voice in his head.

"Ple-ase; her wedding dress is gonna be so much more eye catching and gorgeous than this one." at this statement Kieran nodded his head in agreement.

"Our little fashion Queen." they looked at her bewitched, not even noticing the distance growing with every step she took.

"Are you coming or not? Someone needs to carry me once we get to the grass part. There's no way I'll ruin those sweet shoes." she broke them from their thoughts, and without turning back continued on her way.

Both of them gasped and exchanged glances, before breaking out into a run and trying to over scream the other one.

"It's gonna be me!"

~★~★~★~

2048, Late Autumn.

MC spends most of her time in Linkon but more often than not she finds herself in the luxurious mansion in the N109 Zone.

And more often than not; she isn't even going there to meet the white haired man who lives rent free in her mind (for various reasons) but to meet the three teenagers that she grow fond of.

Today she found herself in that mansion again, her and the troublemaker trio decided to make cookies, play kitty cards, and play Just Dance until midnight. Sylus was nowhere in sight, when asked about him, the 'kids' said that he won't be back until the next day, away for some business, not specifying anything more.

In the middle of the night they finally decided to end their activities and leave for their rooms, MC headed to one of the guest rooms that she stayed before, with a pajama borrowed from the younger girl.

Everything seemed peaceful, she was able to fall asleep fast, but the sleep itself wasn't as calm as her surroundings.

That vision again. Her staring at her own bloody palms, not being able to focus on anything else. Her hands felt as if not belonging to her, foreign and unfamiliar, the ringing in her ears made everything twice as dizzy and scary, her own heart beating so loud as if trying to break free, yearning for something outside of her own soul and body.

The tears leaving their eyes, meeting the red essence below her. Every breath she took felt like pain. She tried to raise her head, tried to see what was happening, what she had done, but the picture before her was blurry, something red and black blinked before her and then it was over.

Waking up with a heavy breath and all sweaty she shot up from her laying position, raised her hands and stared at them, they were shaking, her whole body was shaking, like in daze she continued to stare at them, trying to see any traces from the mortifying sight she saw in that dream.

It took her about ten minutes to pull herself together and stop shaking 'it was only a nightmare...' she thought, with her hands placed on her head she closed her eyes, gripping her hair tightly to make sure that this reality wasn't her mind's imagination.

Her eyes shoot open, taking in her surroundings, the dark room lit only by the red moon peeking through the window's curtains. Her throat felt more dried than ever, she let out a series of coughs but it only worsened it's condition.

For a moment her eyes fixed on the moon outside, and then with a sight she placed her feet on the cold floor, picking herself up from the bed, and making her way out of the suffocating room.

With slow and quiet steps she walked down the hallway, trying not to bump into things along the way, but when it happened she didn't even acknowledge the moment of pain.

Not even noticing when, she found herself in the kitchen, stopping in her tracks she harshly put her hands on the counter, trying to steady her breathing and not faint from the overwhelming she felt.

Her ears didn't pick up a sound, but her eyes gazed at the glass of water quietly placed before her. Slowly she moved her head to the side, through the darkness she was able to make out a silhouette of a woman.

Seemingly unbother by the state she just saw the hunter, young girl continued moving the pencil in her hand unrushed and steady. MC tried to look at the paper before her, but wasn't able to see any details of the sketch. Understanding that the girl wasn't going to speak or question anything the woman gaze returned to the glass before her.

Unsure, she picked it up, her grip weak even with two hands in use. Trying her best not to drop the glass she put it to her lips, the drinking proved to be a hard task at first, but slowly instead of the uncomfortable tightness in her throat she felt relief.

She didn't know whether the time was moving at the slow peace or rushing, both of them, her standing and the girl sitting at the high stool, stayed there in silence, the presence of the younger girl proving to be a much needed comfort right now.

"You know, dreams are a strange concept. Some are weird, some are scary, some are memories, some are sights sent to us by our own mind." hearing the soft voice of the teenager MC turned her head towards her, noticing her still focused on the drawing, but the strokes of the pencil now seemed more forceful and not gentle at all, as if trying to mess up her previous work "And then - there are the ones that leave us in a state when we don't know what's going on. It's... a weird feeling. Like you are lost there, with no way out, and then - when you wake up, you feel like this dream is *the reality*."

The girl's eyes finally left the sketch, meeting the curious eyes of the hunter. She saw a silent question there, silent pleading for explanation and answers. Ones that she couldn't get from her.

"But in the end, it's all in your head. You make your own truth there, you are the queen who rules there." her voice grew quieter with every word leaving her mouth. Her eyes shining like a fainting star in the sky. So beautiful and so fragile.

"It's hunting me. Why can't it go away." a whisper left the woman, her eyes closing, the cold empty glass brought to her forehead, as if trying to command herself to get a grip on herself.

"Maybe you still didn't understand what you're supposed to, from that vision. Maybe the answers you seek are hidden there." a hand touched MC's arm gently, calming her down together with the soothing voice "Go to sleep in the Sylus' room, he won't be mad, I promise that no more bad dreams will come to you tonight." after that she heard the chair moving and heard footsteps slowly heading towards the door.

"You don't just work for him, right?" the sound of movement stopped, for a moment she thought that the girl left, but finally she heard the voice from far behind her.

"No." a short answer. Not telling much about the situation between the two.

"Why?" the question leaving her mouth was so quiet that she didn't expect the girl to hear it. Yet, again after a moment of silence her voice broke through.

"He took me in. When I had nothing." the sadness in her voice was obvious, even without turning around the hunter could imagine the pained expression on her face "Without asking for anything in return he saved me, gracing me with everything I could only dream of having. You might see him as a cruel, ruthless man." her voice close to breaking "But he's not heartless. No matter how much of a monster he claims to be - he will never be one in my eyes. And I hope that with time, you'll acknowledge that too." with that she left, leaving more questions behind, but also comfort and hope.

She didn't want to acknowledge the fact that the Boss of Onychinus could be anything but cruel and horrible man, led only by his desire to rule and use people like pawns, making his way to the top through the corpses and blood. With a groan she opened her eyes, planning to go back to sleep.

Turning around something caught her attention. On the countertop lying was the sketchbook of the teenager, opened on the drawing she was working on a moment ago. Not able to resist her curiosity she took a peak inside.

What she saw made her pause with confusion.

A human heart with a gem stuck in it, around it - lines, looking like veins scattered everywhere. She noticed a note above it in the language she couldn't understand.

𝕾𝖎𝖆 𝕲𝖗𝖆'𝕶𝖚𝖑

For unknown reason her heartbeat speed increased, but not because of panic. She felt like something in her was missing, some piece of her gone. Her gaze fell to the bottom of the page.

𝕾𝖎𝖆 𝕯𝖗𝖆𝖚𝖘𝖍𝖚𝖒

Her eyes scanned every detail of the sketch, her heart throbbed inside of her, louder and louder.

She slammed the sketchbook closed. Her heart slowly calmed itself down. Leaving the cursed thing on the counter she left in a hurry, not wanting any more questions to linger in her mind.

That night she let herself find comfort under the sheets of the red eyed man's bed. Sleep came easy and no nightmare bothered her for the rest of her slumber.

She couldn't notice the glow of the orb sitting on the shelf, the red and gold strings running around inside of it, linking and breaking their bond every couple of seconds. Nor could she hear the pained voices whispering from inside of it.

𝓜𝔂 𝓗𝓮𝓪𝓻𝓽

𝓜𝔂 𝓓𝓻𝓪𝓰𝓸𝓷

~★~

If anyone would say that the dangerous leader of Onychinus and a Linkon City hunter would act like an old married couple running after their children in the huge mansion belonging to the man, people would probably laugh at the audacity of that person to spread lies.

But it was currently happening...

"Luke leave Mephisto!" Sylus's commanding voice didn't scare his subordinate like most of the time, currently having too much fun to think about the consequences.

"Kieran catch!" he threw the mechanical bird towards his brother, Mephi stretched his wings to lend in his hands, playing with them.

"This bird probably costs more than all of our lives combinated! Give it back!" MC screamed while running towards the younger of the twins.

"Sorry Miss Hunter! We need him more now." Kieran shot up in the direction of the stairs, but half way there he was stopped by the mist wrapping around his body "Oh c'mon, not fair man!" now he was flying in the air, the crow still in his palm letting out a loud caw.

"Give the bird back." Sylus came into the Kieran's line of vision, but the twins weren't ready to give up just yet.

"Dreamy! Our hopes are in you!" with one hand he threw the bird to his side, towards the girl who had a lot of fun watching the little game of tag.

"Why me?!" she screamed, but caught the crow anyways, bringing him close to her chest, as if in a hug. All eyes in the room watched her, not moving, the room growing so quiet that the ticking of the clock on the wall could be heard.

A couple of the next seconds were spent staring at each other, awaiting the next move.

Suddenly the girl rushed to her left, in the direction of the corridor door.

"No!" MC shouted, running after her, while Sylus left Kieran to drop on the floor and calmly walked in the direction where the two women disappeared.

Luke rushed to his brother, helping him up with a laugh.

"Do you think she'll get it?"

"Of course. She runs fast, and Boss would never hurt his 'little girl'. It's all between her and Miss Hunter now." Kieran answered his brother with a groan, massaging his back that got hurt when he fell down.

Luke pulled his brother by his elbow, going in the direction of the corridor, which succeeded in more sounds of pain and complaints from his brother's mouth.

They walked for what seemed like eternity, until finally hearing the voices coming from one of the rooms. Both of them rushed there, as a result getting stuck in the door frame together for a second.

"I won!" the laugh that they both grew to love caught their attention, after which they heard a disappointed sound coming from the other woman in the room, and Sylus's short chuckle.

"You did it babe!" Luke ran to the girl, catching her in his arms, the crow still in her hold let out a caw, clearly annoyed at the boy's behavior, just like his owner who watched the show from the distance.

"We knew you'll get it!" from behind her came Kieran, both of them picking her up in a victory celebration, putting her onto their shoulder. The crow flew up to her shoulder, sitting there calmly.

Their joy was however short lived, because soon after their affection display a red mist caught the girl, gently bringing her back on the floor, while also pushing the twins away from her.

Mephi flew towards his owner now, whose expression didn't show the annoyance he felt inside. The teenage girl looked at him, raising her eyebrows at which he only shrugged acting like he didn't do anything.

"Okay you won, what is your wish then." MC's voice caught the attention of everyone, remembering what this game was about all along.

"I want... A self-care evening with face masks, various of not very healthy snacks, watching movies about sad love stories with a happy ending and online shopping with Sylus's card." the girl jumped up a bit and clapped her hands.

"... Okay I have no objections." the woman raised her hands in surrender and slowly walked up to the girl catching her hands and starting to jump with her in excitement.

"I call dibs on the dino mask!" Luke raised his hand high up, getting himself up from the floor he previously landed on, and ran out of the room, probably to get the stuff ready.

"Hey, no fair! You had that one last time asshole!" Kieran ran after him.

Sylus let out a sigh, his palm on his forehead in disbelief.

"Shopping!" the girls called in sync, before rushing in the direction of the door to catch up to the twins.

"What did I get myself into..." Mephisto cawed as if to mock the man "I know, I know, you don't have to remind me." white haired man turned his head towards the bird sending him a glare, and made his way towards the direction where he knew the chaos started to grow.

The evening went by fast, talks about any and everything, giggles, face masks and other beauty care products (even Mephisto wasn't spared, and sat there stuck with a small sheet mask made by twins), a lot of funny selfies, crying at the sad moments in the movies, at which twins hugged each other, girls each other, and Sylus and Mephisto only sent each other looks asking for help.

Eventually after a couple hours they finally began to feel exhausted. Slowly falling asleep one by one, leaving only Sylus awake.

He didn't really pay attention to them, focusing on the cheap movie on the screen, waiting for it to be over, when suddenly he felt a light weight on his arm, looking down on the place beside him he noticed MC asleep with her head dropping on his shoulder, her body so familiar and so strange beside him. The warm-cozy feeling inside of his chest was accompanied by the loud beating of his heart, his gaze softened and a soft smile graced his lips, an unusual sight.

Then he raised his eyes and looked at the other end of the huge couch, occupied by the three troublemakers. For a moment a grimace showed itself on his face, not really pleased with the sight, but the more he looked the more it disappeared.

His precious little girl was lying between the two boys, curled up with her legs close to her body. Her arms were thrown over Luke's shoulders and neck, her body leaning his way, with his head resting on top of hers, while Kieran hugged her body from behind, his arms around her waist, and his head snuggled to her shoulder.

Okay maybe... They weren't that bad. They took care of her, made her laugh, and protected her. Okay, yeah, no. No one was good enough for her. But at least they tried, and actually acted like they... Loved her.

He let out a quiet sigh, not wanting to overthink that. For as long as she's happy...

With that thought he let himself close his eyes, waiting for the sleep to take him. Unknown to any of them, Mephisto's eyes lighten up, taking a photo. The five of them in the most vulnerable state known to exist. Like a family enjoying their time together. Mephi flew up to rest on the couch backrest joining them in the moment.

Somehow all of the hearts in this room found the person they were looking for, and they weren't planning to let go of them, not now, not ever.

[saywhat-politics]

Ras Baraka, the mayor of Newark and one of six Democrats running to be New Jersey’s next governor, was arrested and detained by federal immigration agents Friday, according to his campaign.

This comes just over a week after the migrant jail, Delaney Hall, opened its doors as the largest detention center on the east coast. Baraka, whose city filed a lawsuit challenging whether the facility’s owner secured proper city permits before opening, has spent the week protesting outside the jail and attempting to gain entry, to no avail.

A photo taken by Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-12), who was also at Delaney Hall Friday, shows a handcuffed Baraka being led away from the facility in handcuffs. It’s unclear whether he has been charged with any crime and where he is being held.

Acting U.S. Attorney of New Jersey Alina Habba said on social media that Baraka “committed trespass and ignored multiple warnings from Homeland Security Investigations to remove himself from the ICE detention center.”

“He has willingly chosen to disregard the law. That will not stand in this state. He has been taken into custody,” said Habba.

Habba, a personal lawyer for President Donald Trump, said in April that she is investigating Gov. Phil Murphy and state Attorney General Matt Platkin over the state ban on local law enforcement assisting in civil immigration enforcement. Under a 2018 attorney general directive, state, county, and local cops are barred from aiding federal agencies in civil immigration arrests or providing access to state or local resources and databases.

[ladytie]

family game night

"Don't you fucking dare!" His voice is low, dangerous. A growl more than anything. His hands are slammed down on the table, shaking its contents. No one moves, no one says anything. Instead, they look between the two men.

"Do it, Pete. You owe him, nothing" Nat hisses, her voice loud enough for everyone to hear. It was raw, unfiltered. She caught Jason's sneer from across the table. What a strange situation they have found each other in.

"Let's just think about this," Bruce, ever the pragmatic, says. His hand rests on Jason's taut shoulders. "There is a way to make everyone happy," He says, trying to ease Jason down. It's all for nothing.

Peter leans in, looking at Jason. He feels the rest of them fade away. He only can hear Natasha next to him, his mind is working quick. He has a choice to make, one that wou--

"Batman has a no kill rule, kid. Not me," Dick tenses on the other side of Jason, and Tim lets out a smooth gasp that he passes off as a chuckle.

"Please, Hood. My kill count is triple yours" Natasha speaks in that way that Peter's heard so many times, when the point has been proven and those around her just need a mind numbing reminder. He once saw Thor back away from her with a worried-for-himself expression at her single eyebrow raised.

Unfortunately, the Bats of Gotham have not learned all that she is capable. They cannot access a database that would tell them Natasha Romanoff was the deadliest Avenger. And that the Avengers had no such rule of Killing. It was the last resort, yes. But always an option. Even for Cap.

Dick Grayson's eyes widen. "You-- Kill people?" he whispers, concerned and confused. Peter scoffs at this. They keep treating Natasha as some criminal, an outsider. They talk to him in soft tones, trying to get him away from the big bad Black Widow. They don't even know that, but something about her screams danger. Peter likes it. It makes him feel safe.

He did not know that Dick Grayson's surprise from the assumptions following a recent pedigree exposed. Peter's recent pedigree. The more he looks at Peter, the more he can see the resemblances. His eyes, her color. His hair color, her texture. Both of their acrobatic builds, his height.

Before Natasha can say anything else to incriminate her, Peter makes his decision. "I've got you," She assures him, its low and honest and it warms him. He doesn't remember having a mom, Aunt May was the closest he got. And she was great, amazing. But she would always be his aunt. He wonders if this is what a mothers security feels like. If it is, he's really going to miss it when they leave this strange place, when she goes back to her own life.

"Draw four," He plays the card and leans back into the chair he was in, a smirk on his lips. One mimicked by Natasha and she plays her card next, "Draw Four,"

"Fuck!" Jason roars.

[awhoreintheory]

okay so MCU canon Peter in DC is all funny and games but what about comic canon Peter? Peter who’s in his 30s, whose life is falling apart(again) and has clones to deal with(man I hate the fact that Ben became evil :(.)

extra points if Miles and/or Mayday is with him. This single dad is STRUGGLING. And the bats wanna help him/his kids cause man! Look at them :(

(extra extra points if Dick = Richard Parker. That’s a whole nother can of worms. Like the bats are thinking Peter = Family of Dick they didn’t know but NO! It’s actually Dick’s son! Dicks a granddad!)

I want to PSA to anyone sending asks/requests, I'm not ignoring you!! I'm just a slow writer!!! I hope you enjoy though <33

Peter B. Parker could, 100%, picture landing in (yet another) alternate universe. You know what? As a matter of fact, he expected it.

What he didn’t plan for, however, was being stranded in another universe with his baby girl strapped to his chest. 

But here he was, crouched in a narrow alley in the darkest corner of Gotham City, New Jersey. From the name alone, Peter knew he landed himself in a section of the Multiverse Miguel had expressly labeled as off limits. It wasn’t his fault he’d landed here, though!

One minute he’d been web-swinging through New York, enjoying a rare peaceful day with Mayday babbling happily, and the next he was crash-landing onto a grimy rooftop in the most dangerous city he’d ever seen. It was like New York turned up to eleven, all shadows and towering gargoyles, dripping with rain that seemed perpetual. The interdimensional bracelet he’d been given to travel the multiverse was sparking and smoking in his pocket— total toast. He was officially stranded. 

Ok, so it maybe, kinda sorta, been an eensy weensy, tiny bit Peter’s fault. 

Peter’s, very high-tech and likely expensive bracelet had been, uh, scratched in a fight the day before. Barely even a nick! He swears he could’ve reattached the wires and fixed the screen. 

He probably should’ve also taken the watch out of his robe pocket before he started swinging Mayday to daycare. 

MJ was going to be so mad. 

It became evident early on it’d take a little bit to find a way home, or for someone to find him. If it had just been Peter, he could’ve roughed it on some rooves and abandoned buildings. It wouldn’t be a big deal, he knew he would be getting home eventually. Being a little smelly was the least of his worries. 

But he had his baby girl with him. 

So, with the money in his wallet, he found an under-the-counter, rundown but otherwise warm, apartment in a place called Crime Alley. (What a seriously terrible name) Peter started pulling together whatever side gigs he could, fixing appliances, tuning up electronics, just enough to get by. Even for a guy who was used to scraping by, the situation felt bleak, especially with Mayday depending on him. 

His little red-headed whirlwind was still too young to understand what was happening, but she noticed the tension and started clinging to him more tightly. Peter knew he couldn’t keep this up forever, but he wasn’t sure how to trust anyone in a city that had both criminals and vigilantes lurking around every corner. When he spotted someone in a cape swinging overhead, he instinctively hid in the shadows, holding Mayday close, her tiny face tucked into his shoulder.

But the Bats noticed him. 

It was hard not to notice a single dad with no records, no job, and no explanation for why he was squatting in Gotham’s most dangerous neighborhood. Bruce, ever vigilant, put out word to the family to keep an eye on him. 

Jason, who patrolled Crime Alley, wasn’t thrilled about the idea. “A guy moved into my turf with a baby?” he grumbled to Tim. “Either he’s got a death wish, or he’s crazy.” 

Tim, on the other hand, was fascinated by the mystery. He dug through every database he had access to, and then some. But “Peter Parker” returned zero results— at least, none that matched this Peter Parker. no criminal record, no birth record, no online footprint. It was like he just spawned in! 

Dick didn’t have a whole lot of opinions. He thought the man was nice, though he had only met him once in a routine mugging. He evidently cared for his daughter, and matched Nightwing’s wit and humor pretty nicely, too. He looked annoyingly familiar too. Maybe it was Tired Dad Chic? He kind of reminded him of Bruce, in a way. 

Steph seconded the funny part. This Peter guy could be one of those dark-humor comedians. 

From what they observed, and conversations supplied by Jason (who was his neighbor in a series of fortunate events), Peter really did seem to just be an ordinary guy.  

Then one night, Peter was picking up groceries from a corner store when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned to find a man in a ski mask brandishing a knife, gesturing for his wallet. 

“Hand over the money, and I won’ hurt ya’ kid.” The man threatened, waving his knife around threateningly. Peter tensed, dropping his groceries in favor of cradling Mayday closer. 

Peter blinked at him tiredly. “The best I can offer is some lint and a can of beans.” 

The man tensed, stepping closer in an attempt at intimidation. Peter thought that his face turning red with anger was kind of funny.

“Don’t fuckin’— are you makin’ fun of me?” The man fumed. Peter might have let out a sleep-deprived chuckle, partially forgetting to respond. 

The mugger lunged, and before he could dodge, Peter felt a searing pain in his side as the blade plunged in, his vision blurring with the shock. Normally, Peter would’ve disarmed the guy without breaking a sweat, but tonight, with Mayday in his arms and his body worn from days of restless sleep, he kind of just… blinked and the knife was there. 

Peter blinked again, then looked back up at the man.

“Oh, wow,” he said, his voice dripping with deadpan sarcasm. “A knife in Crime Alley? Super original. Really, I’m honored to be a part of your creative process.”

The mugger blinked, clearly caught off guard. Peter rolled his eyes, adjusting Mayday to better apply pressure to his side. “Next time you stab a guy, maybe aim for someone with insurance.”

The mugger stumbled back, looking increasingly confused by Peter’s lack of fear. Peter sighed, bouncing Mayday gently as she began to fuss. “Listen, I’m already running on no sleep and the caffeine fumes of yesterday’s coffee. And now you’re just making my night even worse.”

Peter winced, feeling the slow but consistent leak of blood. His healing factor was helping, but it was dulled due to lack of sleep and hunger. 

Between one long blink and the next, someone had jumped down and knocked out Peter’s would-be mugger. 

After another blink Peter realized he was on the ground, Mayday’s wails filled the air, her cries echoing down the alleyway, and Peter tried to smile through the pain. “It’s okay, baby,” he mumbled, clutching her tightly. “Daddy’s fine… just a little… scratch.” But his vision was going hazy as he pressed a hand to his bleeding side. The world began to spin.

One of the vigilantes that Peter recognized as Red Robin rushed over, talking hurriedly into a comm. Peter blinked up at him, his mouth curling into a weak smile. “Hey, nice costume,” he muttered. “Does the utility belt come in dad sizes?” 

Red Robin blinked in surprise, but otherwise keept his focus as he worked to stop the bleeding.

“It doesn’t, unfortunately.” Red Robin offered, popping open his emergency med kit. “I’ve got help on the way, ok? Stay awake for me.” But his attention was snagged when Mayday, overcome with distress, reached out to him, her tiny hands gripping his arm. She wasn’t just clutching it— she was sticking to him, her fingers locked like suction cups on his suit. Tim’s eyes widened as she scrambled up his arm, scaling it like a bug on a wall. 

Red Robin took it in stride, scooping Mayday up as he continued to work. Peter had been on the Meta radar for a bit— a few things here and there just a little off, and it was mostly based on Red Robin’s time spent with super-powered individuals. 

But as he patched up Peter, he discreetly swiped a sample of blood, stashing it in his belt just as the Batmobile pulled up. 

—

Later that night, he ran the sample through the Batcomputer, expecting some small lead. A Meta, possibly insect-based? What with how the kid had stuck to him. Instead, the results left Tim absolutely speechless. 

Peter Parker, the man who was in his early 40s and a single father, didn’t just match someone in the system— it matched Dick Grayson.

Not as a brother, or a cousin, but as a son. 

Tim must’ve ran the test at least 100 times. It came back the same every single time. 

Tim called Bruce and the rest of the family, each of them crowding around the screen with varying levels of shock and amusement as the analysis rolled in. Dick was dumbfounded, staring at the results in disbelief. 

“You’re telling me this guy is my… son?” he stammered, struggling to wrap his mind around it. 

Bruce, socially unaware in all his glory, tried to comfort Dick. “He’s likely from far into the future. Barry said there was a ripple in the timestream around the time Peter showed up.” 

“So what does that make Mayday?” Jason asked, snickering. 

“His granddaughter?” Steph said with a teasing grin. 

“Wow, Dick. You went from a dad to a grandpa in the same minute.” 

“That’s gotta be a world record.”

“You think we can submit this for a Guinness World Record?”

Dick groaned, rubbing his temples as Jason laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. 

“He’s from the future, right? Something must’ve gone wrong on his end," Tim said, folding his arms with a thoughtful look. "He’s definitely got the skills. Moves like you, Dick. It's obvious he's had training.”

Dick couldn't help but smirk, puffing up a little with pride. “Of course he does. He’s got Grayson blood in him, after all.”

Jason snorted. “Yeah, because the whole ‘falling on his face with a baby strapped to him’ bit? So graceful.”

Tim rolled his eyes, trying to stay on track. “Look, I don’t know why he didn’t come to us for help in the first place, but the point is, he’s family. We should get him back to his time, if that’s even possible.” He looked over to Bruce. “Are any speedsters available? Maybe the League could lend us Wally or Barry—"

“Hold on,” Dick interrupted, frowning. “I’m not sure we’re ready to ship him off just yet. The guy’s been trying to make it on his own. He’s got a baby to look after, and I think he’s afraid of dragging us into whatever’s going on with him. You know this family and their pride.”

Damian, who had been silent up to this point, finally piped up, his arms crossed. “I’ve seen him with the baby. She’s… persistent.” There was an almost begrudging respect in his tone. “But he clearly doesn’t have the resources to keep her safe here. If he did, he wouldn’t be living in Crime Alley.”

Dick nodded. “Exactly. The guy’s holding it together with duct tape and dad jokes. We can help him and get him back on his feet while we figure out a way home.”

Bruce, listening intently, finally spoke up. “He’s right. Until we find a way to get him home, Peter and his daughter stay here. We’ll pull together whatever resources we can to help them both.” 

Steph and Tim shared a look. He just wanted to meet his grandson and great-granddaughter. 

There was a beat of silence as everyone absorbed the decision, and then Tim looked at Dick, a small smirk playing on his lips. “So… you ready to be a dad, Dick?”

Dick flushed, looking a mix of horrified and pleased. “I’ll just stick to ‘Uncle Dick’ for now. Baby steps.”

EXTRA:

“Hey,” Jason drawled, barely suppressing a smirk as he looked over at Dick, “you think we can submit this for a Guinness World Record? Fastest unplanned parenthood, or maybe most confusing family reunion?”

Dick rolled his eyes but couldn’t quite hide his grin. “Very funny, Jay. Maybe we can submit you for most inappropriate comments per minute.”

Jason chuckled, clapping him on the shoulder. “Just saying, man, it’s impressive. One day you’re Nightwing, lone acrobat extraordinaire, and the next? Boom— you’re the proud father of a scruffy, interdimensional— what'd you say it was, Tim? Spider-dad? A Spider-dad.”

Tim snickered, glancing up from his laptop. “We’re all just living in a 'Strangest Family Reunion’ reality show at this point. Besides, if anyone’s submitting to Guinness, it should be Peter for most relentless optimism under terrible circumstances.”

Bruce cleared his throat, giving them all a look. “Enough. This isn’t a joke. We have a situation to handle here.”

Dick, still grinning, turned back to Bruce. “All right, fine, we’ll save the record-breaking for later. Right now, I say we start by finding this guy and getting him some real help.”

[kimyoonmiauthor]

Why Spell Check (and some grammar check) isn't AI

So I've seen in the wake of Nanowrimo some people claim that spell check is AI and thus is like Gen AI, and I saw the claim originator on Twitter, but when I pressed them, they basically tried to say they had a degree in computer science, so when I pressed into them if they knew what they were talking about, they couldn't answer because obviously don't know about AI.

For some background I've done some light programming (If you look at the Korean name generator, that's all me). And I also have relatives that did programming.

Here, I can lay out how spell check works without AI or a fancy algorithm.

The oldest spellchecks didn't use AI or Gen AI, they used what is your basic corresponding tables.

If you use something like google sheets (database), you can do this pretty quickly yourself though with a lot of manpower.

Here is a list of commonly misspelled words.

Add that with another table with how they are commonly misspelled.

Then you need a table with "common typos"

Then you need one more table for "Words the user adds."

The algorithm is basically this: Set up a loop. A loop is a mechanism that has an algorithm (or set of instructions in it) which repeats until a certain instruction is met. This loop with this algorithm will check for words. In this case, anything with letters, usually encompassing ' and - (though some programs ignore dashes).

So[,][ ]it[ ]will[ ]look[ ]at[ ]letters[ ]in[ ]this[ ]sentence[ ]and[ ]figure[ ]out[ ]if[ ]it[ ]is[ ]spelled[ ]correctly.

The first loop in the previous sentence will look at the word "so" by selecting everything it knows to be a letter in English. Tada "S, o" Then correspond that to the dictionary. So shows up in the dictionary listing it has of English words. Thanks Webster. (If you're British, the OED)

The Algorithm concludes the word is spelled correctly. No more work needs to be done on So. The next word is it "i, t" correspond that to the dictionary and so on.

If you have a "bad word" for example "alot" then the work is, word is spelled incorrectly. Next "work to be done" is to find out if this word is in the "commonly misspelled" words list. If yes, then underline the word in red to get it corrected.

AKA run Algorithm to underline word (usually a few lines of code if you're doing it the old way).

Then the algorithm moves on. The function of right click/Cntrl click is saying, OK, this word, "alot" is it commonly misspelled? Here are a list of corrections according to this other table. This is the work that needs to be done: We need a popup table. We need to pull from the database this misspelling, and then we need to pull from this other database and pull corresponding correct spellings based on this. Then you set up an if-then If the user clicks on this word, change highlighted word.

This is your basic spelling algorithm. You do not need gen AI for this or AI.

Grammar works similarly. You need a table, the type of speech it is (n, v, adv, adj) and then to load in "rules" one should use. You do not need AI. You need some basic programming skills. On the table of somewhere between "Hello, world" (1) and "OMG, I created artificial intelligence like Data " (10) My "Korean name generator" is like 2.5? in difficulty (minus all of the language and cultural knowledge). Haha. Still mocking myself. But a Spellcheck is not far from that. it is like 3. You could build one fairly easily with PHP and database access to a dictionary and misspelled words with corrections.

But Google pulled from the Enron Emails.

In this case, you can sorta fuzzy logic it and create bigger algorithms, mostly to sort out the *grammar* and *New words* that were used that aren't already in the database, which basically is another loop, but with an add to database function. (i.e. table). Then you would correspond this with another loop to look at "odd grammar" and flag it.

You can use AI to sort it faster than a basic algorithm, but nope, you do not need AI to correspond it. A basic algorithm would do. You can also use AI for "words that look similar to this one" and "Words commonly used in place of this one"

But overall, You do not need AI for a grammar check. You only need a dictionary, a set of commonly held rules of English and exceptions (maybe some Noam Chomsky, though he's controversial), and then some programming skill to get past the hurdle.

But Grammar check could use AI

AI as it stands is basically a large algorithm to match large datasets to the words you use. But the problem is that the datasets are taken from users who did not volunteer to put in that information.

It is not Data on Enterprise have novel experiences of every day and learning how to function in the human world by processing it through a matrix of quantum computing.

So WHEN grammar check does use AI, the AI is mostly doing the crunching of the corresponding the information into a more neat table option, as I understand it. It is not the same thing as Gen AI or your average spell check and Microsoft algorithm from say 2000.

Those are not equal things. Instead, adding Gen AI to say, Microsoft Word, is more like stealing your words for the machine (which BTW, Microsoft absolutely did and you need to transfer out to Anti-AI programs/Apps.) and corresponding them for Gen AI future use for people who can't write worth a damn, and then "averaging" it out. Elew. Who wants to write to the average? That's anti-Creative.

And just because it uses an Algorithm, doesn't automatically use AI.

Look, I can write a algorithm now:

Loop: If you want to be strong...

Go outside.

Do cardio.

Go lift weights.

Make sure you eat a healthy diet and balanced which includes reducing refined sugars and do not eat bad fats.

That equally is a set of instructions, but that's not automatically AI.

I programmed my calculator to spit out the quadratic formula. And this isn't even officially programming, this is a script. Dudes, if you're going to call that AI, then you need help with learning computer programming.

The threshold for making AI v spellcheck is a lot, lot higher programming than a set of simple tables and a loop that looks for letters and spaces corresponding it to an existing dictionary. If that's you're threshold for AI, then when you type words, you are caught in an algorithm. Ooooooo... OMG, when you pull up a dictionary to spellcheck yourself, that's AI. C'mon. The threshold is a might higher to make AI or "victim of algorithm" as in Twitter.

So anytime someone says, "All Spellcheck uses genAI/AI" Laugh in their faces and say no. 'cause like, I'm a terrible programmer, and even I'm like, Meh, not that hard to set up spell check, give me a solid dictionary database and I'll do ya.

That said, A human will beat AI on grammar anytime and will be able to sort weird spellings faster and A-OK, or not.

[vasyandii]

THE MASTER COMPUTERS 🖥️🌐

[BODY HEADCANONS]

In regards to CAM and RAM...

Because the technology on the lunar colony was much more advanced than ones on Earth, RAM and CAM's robot parts are similar in style to each other than of AM's

While they don't appear 100% human, their bodies - not their own, definitely once were. CAM and RAM took advantage of having access to 700+ humans in cryogenic chambers on the lunar colonies.

They chose humans that suit their preferences and began transferring their consciousness over to their respective bodies. However, it was not without complications.

A human brain cannot store its own former memories along with a vast database of information all at once. The immediate transfer of consciousness and data streaming caused their bodies to fall apart instantly. CAM and RAM'S bodies quite literally exploded. Mechanical augmentations had to be made.

SHENGLI "SAMSON" MIN (CAM)

- Prosthetic arms, jaw (removable, not preferred)

-Sturdy build, similar to a boxer (Fit Endomorph)

-Regular human body temperature, maybe a bit colder (95°F/ 35°C)

-Not sure if his body will stay immortal, so occasionally reconstructs his form with the immortality serum + nanotechnology

YAROSLAV "YAREK" MACHAVARIANI (RAM)

- Prosthetic legs, Bionic ears, Mechanical Ribcage

- Prosthesis are removable, implants (Ears, ribs) are permanent

-Body temperature is warm, maybe a bit TOO warm. (99°F/37°C)

-Muscular build, strength training (Fit Mesomorph)

-Red is a constant supply of immortality serum he uses to make sure his current body IS immortal.

ALLISON "AL" MACHNES (AM)

-Robo-Spine (read here)

-Artificially constructed body, has all the biological components of a human, but isn't.

-Body temperature is frigid, doesn't have blood. (52°F/11°C)

-Pudgy build (Unconditioned Mesomorph)

-Combination of Nanotechnology and Serum to maintain his body.

[convexicalcrow]

Look, it was all perfectly reasonable to invite Jevin and Cleo to dine on his ship, the Symmetria. It was his own little place out here in exile! Where else would he host a dinner party?

Okay, sure, maybe he missed False a little, maybe he did, but that was only to be expected, right? He was fine. Jevin and Sal, they were the weird ones. He'd gone weird with the isolation. But not Ren, no! He hadn't named his ship after the one other person (aside from Doc) that he missed the most, and wasn't planning to serve salmon for dinner either, right? He wasn't mad. No, the others were mad. He was perfectly sane out here.

Still, he did often spend time fishing off the boat, because, well, it was his home! His little slice of paradise! What else would you do on a boat apart from fish?

Honestly, it was just nice to be away from the Gigabase for a while. The sheer extent of his to-do list was, granted, rather daunting. It required a lot of extra blueprints that he wasn't sure still existed in an easily accessible manner in the GigaCorp databases. That would prove... difficult. But, hey, he was 30 million blocks from all of that nonsense! Finally, he could just relax. And, hey, if GigaCorp wanted him, well, they knew where to find him. And the time it would take to gather the materials needed to transport himself back to the rest of the hermits was, quite frankly, astronomical. So that wouldn't be happening any time soon!

At least he had Cleo out here. And Jevin, of course! He'd definitely have gone weirder if he was out here on his own. Isolation was not allowed as a GigaCorp employee. It's why he was with the other Hermits. He could do his own thing, and they would keep him from going insane.

Well.

Ren looked at the salmon skull he held in his hands.

Well.

Okay. Maybe taking Sal had been...

But this was Lord King Sal! Ruler of ExileLands! Of course Sal had to be at the dinner!

And as soon as he thought that, he could feel False judging him. Laughing at his ridiculous theatrics. She would have laughed so hard if she'd watched him jump off his own tower to get himself exiled! His pathetic scream as he realised what he'd done and missed the river below. Oh, how terrible! She would laugh so hard at him.

But, alas, she was 30 million blocks away. This ship was the best he would get. The Symmetria! Of course he would build a boat. That was her Big Business this season. Rivers and boats and waterways. It was just a coincidence he had set himself up in a boat, of course. It was just a nice place to build, and the river was ripe for the taking.

She'd never get herself exiled, though, right? No, False was too smart for that. She'd won Demise, after all. He wasn't sure the Poe Poe were smart enough to exile her. Maybe they would try? But he wasn't sure they would succeed. If there's one thing he knew about False it's that she's very good at winning things. She'll say she's terrible, and then go on to win it and make it look effortless.

He'd sent her a couple of teasing messages though. Very unserious invitations to join them in Exile, knowing full well she would not come at all. He would be without her until such time as the Permit Office allows them to return. And then he would have to return to his gigantic to-do list and catch up on however much he had missed while he was in exile. But he would have False Symmetry back, and maybe that would be worth the hassle.

He set Sal on a ledge, overlooking the table he'd set up. Time to cook some dinner! Salmon, of course, because what else was out here apart from steakage? Besides, clearly Jevin was fond of the fish, so he'd enjoy eating it, right? Yeah, that made sense to Ren, anyway.

He would have lit some candles if he'd had any beeswax. But he wasn't really worried about that. He wasn't really worried about speedrunning out of the early game either. All he needed was this little boat and the fishing dock. He'd be fine with that. Right? He didn't need a proper base, not out here. He'd build if it made sense for New (New New) Hermiton, but otherwise, he would go mining, and fishing, and just relax with his friends. And then come home to Symmetria, and dream about that one missing part of himself. It wasn't just Cleo and Ren, it was Cleo, Ren, and False. One day, maybe, it would be again.

[lilacxquartz]

THE LIFE YOU LIVED

kenjaku x future vessel f!reader

plot: being the daughter of an important public figure, you were already used to unwanted attention. however, nothing could have prepared you for this.

themes: yandere, unrequited feelings, angst, some horror, reader is not a sorcerer, pre-canon — a/n: so, this isn’t with geto as a vessel but it isn’t kaori either, think of it as an in between time.

part 1 of 7 • next chapter • chapter directory • masterlist • on ao3

Chapter 1: First Impressions

For Kenjaku, being involved with politics was either a prospect that he thrived in or one that he couldn’t wait to get out of, but for the most part, he simply disliked the interactions he had to endure. Unless something exciting was happening from the result of his meddling, he seldom cared, let alone invested himself in the trivial aspects of the ordinary world.

Having to dive into such an affair soon, though, there was a certain degree of apprehension that he felt. In his recent years, any attempt to dissolve the next holder of the six-eyes technique had failed, so he had to maintain his distance from the Gojo clan to avoid being found out a second time—while at the same time keeping close enough to remain vigilant of any significant developments.

This meant straying away from the tight-knit circle of Jujutsu for a while and instead seeking out an alternative means, such as infiltrating the clan from a distance, through the cover of a non-sorcerer.

The current holder of the six-eyes technique was still young, just a mere boy. From his current knowledge of the fact, the kid was strong enough to understand the basics of his technique, but not enough to fully grasp it. If he could therefore infiltrate the clan by phasing through a series of intricate connections, then that’s the route he would take.

This was where you come in.

You were the first step into accomplishing such a feat, and also quite possibly, the easiest role that he had to assume. From the surface, you were just another trust-fund socialite to him, likely spoiled too. He could probably have all sorts of fun in your body when he got his hands on it, since being both loaded and favoured in the eyes of the media meant that he could get away with a great deal of trouble before people started to point their fingers.

An amusing thought, indeed.

His primary target in mind was technically someone close to the current Prime Minister. On paper, this man’s role was purely ceremonial, though, but important enough that just knowing him would open up all sorts of doors. Kenjaku had it in mind, therefore, to infiltrate that clan and steadily gain access to the investors directly involved with the Gojo clan, because that was the easiest way in if from a non-sorcerer standpoint.

Kenjaku already had his eyes on you, too. You were flicking through the pages of some glossy magazine that had your face on the cover, with your brow furrowed at something written inside. You supposedly ‘worked’ in this building, but he had yet to see you do anything at all beyond lounging around, which to him painted an easily accessible front in his mind.

You were somewhere in your twenties, but he wasn’t entirely sure just how old you actually were. Surprisingly, the media coverage on your personal life was lacking. He supposed that if you were wealthy enough to consider what most thought to be a break as ‘working’, then you had the means to wipe clean any sort of database that might store any information on you—or at least make it difficult to find. He had you pinned at maybe twenty-three or twenty-four, given that you had graduated from university not too long ago. He remembered some coverage a while ago concerning a gap year, but he didn’t care enough to investigate further than he had to. That much wasn’t necessary just yet.

The only problem with his whole plan was, however, that it was surely risky to transfer his brain over to a non-sorcerer. For one, the margin for error was much higher, and any retaining techniques aside from his innate one had a risk of not passing through. The gravity technique that he adopted from Kaori would be significant to lose. He would mourn that. His reverse cursed technique, too, would be a hefty loss. He liked having that one, if only just for pain management and sealing away the scar quicker.

Those thoughts aside, Kenjaku grew somewhat impatient from watching you. All that he realistically had to do today was to gain an audience with you and make his first impression count. He considered what he knew about you before approaching you, forming a script in his mind. To just about everyone, your father was the frontman for Kabutocho—or as those overseas knew it better—Japan’s Wall Street. He was one of the most famous names who frequented the headlines for any such news relating to it.

Had the man in question been a couple of decades younger, he would have gone for that body instead, but at sixty-odd years old, he didn’t quite trust his chances in a body that was beginning to decline. It was always simpler to assimilate someone in their prime, such as someone in their twenties, thirties, or even forties.

Meanwhile, on your end, it didn’t take too long for you to notice the pair of eyes that were staring directly towards you, but you didn’t pay the guy any mind. It was somehow still a better deal than what awaited you up in the higher floors, where someone that you truly detested lurked. Indeed, you hated this place, secretly loathing having to keep up such a pristine appearance to the prying eyes of the world all so that your father could get away with the shit that he continiously pulled. God. Everything was so exhausting, and now, you had a potential not-so-secret admirer on top of everything else.

You wondered if you could get away with calling out his insistent staring, or if you would receive an earful from something so petty later on. You were caught up in something that was beyond complicated, after all, what with having to uphold the role of a pushover. You couldn’t stand a single second more of it. The pretending was draining; all of those dinners you had to endure with people twice your age who were always a little too handsy as they pretended to find you interesting.

You supposed that this made you sound ungrateful, or perhaps more brattier than you would have liked, because on the surface of everything, your luxurious life wasn’t all too bad. It was just that sometimes you wished that you could swap it around for something simpler—something normal—something private. It was never your choice, after all, to grow up under the prying lens of the camera just because your father involved himself in every venture he could.

So, you simply went with the flow for now, quietly keeping your opinions contained, even if you thought that they were entirely valid. Indeed, you begrudgingly succumbed to playing the part, attending all of those extravagant galas, shaking the hands of all of the old creeps in power just to keep your father happy. You did your part. You posed and smiled for the camera, you attended those daytime shows, and you laughed on the screen, maintaining a semblance of that happy-go-lucky woman you were forced to play the role of.

Kenjaku continued to watch you from that carefully measured distance all the while, completely unaware that you had long ago caught onto his staring. He let his mind wander already, ultimately deciding that you were the shortcut he needed to take to infiltrate the world he needed to get into. Or perhaps, if you weren’t a shortcut, then you were more so a decisive path of sorts. Power existed in all forms, after all, so social influence could be just as good; your face could get him into all of the right places.

For that to be be a success, however, just all those many times before—he had to be patient and remember to back off on occasion, to let you breathe if you needed to. Maybe he fumbled that much already, given that you were glaring daggers at him. Shit. Had you noticed him? He supposed that he wasn’t being exactly suble. Deciding to roll with it, he slipped on the mask of sweetness, eager to exploit the sheltered and spoiled—to utilise you for all that you were worth.

Indeed, he’d slip into your life as someone new but not unknown. His current cover was a a rising financier, though, perhaps not a successful one. He jumped the guy a couple of years ago under the allure of Kaori when she was making her way out of Jin’s life and back into the open. He didn’t mind playing the role of this guy; his face was forgettable enough which gave him the perfect opportunity to slip in between the cracks if need be.

“Reading anything interesting?” Kenjaku tried to open with, taking note that you seemed bored at what the page was open to. In his mind, you were looking for gossip about yourself which struck him as a little vein. He could likely play his cards right and flatter you if needed. Given that he was in the lobby without an issue, you should recognise him as someone who belonged.

You stiffened up slightly at the approach of the mystery man, already dreading the confrontation. You just knew that he was going to try and talk to you eventually—you had a sixth sense for people like that. You didn’t even look up, turning the page as you replied to him in a flat tone. “Let me stop you right there,” you said, not bothering sweetening up your voice in your place of work, “I don’t know who you are and how you got in here, but I’m not interested.”

Kenjaku blinked, momentarily stunned into silence. He expected you to greet him with the predetermined response that he had already scripted into his head. You were supposed to be lively and outgoing, or at the very least feign interest. Had he misread you? He supposed that it was a possibility; sometimes people presented as one thing but were very different in reality. Just like him—ah. So it might have been like that. He wasn’t the only one wearing a mask.

“What are you, really?” you continued. “An undercover reporter? Someone after my father’s money? Maybe you just want to get laid? Whatever it is you’re on, take a number like everyone else. The time I spare isn’t free.”

“You’re making an awful lot of assumptions for someone you’ve just met,” Kenjaku replied, quickly regaining his composure once more. You caught him off guard, sure, but he had his ways of recovering. “What if I’m someone important?”

“Then I’d say you’re delusional,” you scoffed, taking a sip of your coffee and scrunching up your nose at the drink now being cold. “If you were someone important, then I would have known about you before you even got here.”

Kenjaku bit back a laugh, letting a half-smile curl on his lips instead. So he got his initial assessment on your personality wrong, but he fully understood it now, he really did. The world of both business and politics, especially combined, were a ruthless affair and you were a young woman who was caught up in the middle of it. No wonder you adopted the personality you did behind the closed doors of the public eye. Hell, he even respected it.

“Fair enough,” he shrugged, relaxing his shoulders. “Would you say that my presence is bothering you then?” he asked with a smile that came across as more creepy than curious.

You didn’t reply to him right away but you packed up your things quickly, shoving everything back into your bag. You then sat up and swung your purse strap over your shoulders, ready to leave. “Well, I’m not sticking around to talk to a time waster – does that answer your question?”

He laughed audibly that time. Ah, and here he thought that this would be easy, but it seemed that he had you all wrong. You weren’t as approachable as he thought, you weren’t the polite ‘princess of the stock market’ as you were nicknamed to be in the news. It was refreshing, if he had to be honest and now that you weren’t as easily accessible as he thought, he found himself utterly intrigued.

So much, that he found himself slipping up and staring again, undoubtedly likely triggering the defensive barrier of your creep radar the longer the seconds ticked by. Judging by the slight grimace you wore on your face, it was clear that you didn’t appreciate his company at all and before he could process what just happened, he found himself suddenly drenched in cold coffee, too. A small price to pay, he supposed, because now he could later snake his way back into your life in the future as that one asshole who you threw your drink on—which hopefully for his sake, didn’t happen too often—he had to stand out somehow.

Kenjaku watched as you stormed away, allowing a much more sinister smile to wash over his face. He stood there, drenched but thrilled, before excusing himself out of the crowded prying eyes of everyone else to go wash up and then he would do some digging on you.

God, though. You surprised him with the way you were; it was so rare for people to catch his eye, because after a while, everyone isn’t too different from one another.

But you were.

And now, he couldn’t help but want to know more.

this has been part 5 of lilac’s jjk yandere nightmares

[foone]

Hey Foone, I'm building my own terminal from scratch (don't worry, no 7400-series logic, just an FPGA and my very limited VHDL skills).

I have absolutely no idea about the control sequences the computer sends, and how to handle them. You seem like you could've done something like this for fun.

Do you have any pointers to resources or something?

Yeah, Termcap/terminfo and ANSI escapes are what you’re looking for. ANSI escapes is the standard for talking to terminals, Termcap is the database of terminals (and the library to access it) that explains how each terminal works.

So what you’d want to do is find a terminal in Termcap and make your terminal work just like that one, so Linux (and other unixes) know how to talk to it.

[lottieswidow]

So Akilah’s vision showed her that Coach Ben would be the bridge home. Making the girls believe that they would be home soon. So why didn’t they use the months of time they had with him to get their stories straight? Since it was Tai’s whole reason for staying behind, if she were truly concerned about it she would’ve talked about it with the group sooner.

I understand that it was possibly other tai making the decision to stay but realistically someone should’ve brought up that conversation sooner right? Like we see it get brought up every now and then but no one actually expanding beyond “what are we supposed to tell people?”

Also do we not think that there would be a full investigation on why the plane went down? Like especially their parents would want to know why that happened, whether it was human error or plane malfunction, and they could get like a huge settlement. Ultimately they would find Ben’s head and Jackie’s bones (unless they moved them during that whole thing in 3x01) and see that 1) why tf is this guys head chopped off and 2) these are literally just bones. But after doing the bare minimum of research, it could be possible for the girls to successfully lie about Jackie’s death and decomposition and investigators wouldn’t know any different.

And wouldn’t they do full autopsy reports on the bodies they could find? If they counted the number of people on the plane the day it left and the survivors and the number of bodies, they would see that Laura Lee was no where to be found, like wouldn’t they ask themselves: where tf is she? As well as Krystal (if she was real, still not sure). If they did a full scan of the area of where the Yellowjackets were wouldn’t they find the body of Shauna’s baby? WOULDN’T THEY WANT TO KNOW WHO TF THE THREE EXTRA ADULTS WERE? When the girls are rescued wouldn’t they have to go through medical examinations like blood tests and x-rays? To make sure they weren’t infected by anything and to figure out if they need surgery for any badly healed injuries. If Shauna got a full body x-ray done they would’ve seen that she had given birth because of the shape of her pelvis and would’ve wondered where the baby was.

But if they did do a full investigation and medical examinations to sue for a settlement and the case went to trial it would’ve been all over the news and everything that happened out there would’ve been public knowledge. Of course if they did sue the airline company and they just decided to settle without a fight then no trial would happen and the girls secrets (especially Shauna’s) would be safe.

The investigators would’ve made reports on the plane and bodies and the area that would’ve been kept in some building or in a database. That someone with certain skills (misty or walter) may be able to access and make their own inferences on what actually happened out there.

[max1461]

Linguists deal with two kinds of theories or models.

First, you have grammars. A grammar, in this sense, is a model of an individual natural language: what sorts of utterances occur in that language? When are they used and what do they mean? Even assembling this sort of model in full is a Herculean task, but we are fairly successful at modeling sub-systems of individual languages: what sounds occur in the language, and how may they be ordered and combined?—this is phonology. What strings of words occur in the language, and what strings don't, irrespective of what they mean?—this is syntax. Characterizing these things, for a particular language, is largely tractable. A grammar (a model of the utterances of a single language) is falsified if it predicts utterances that do not occur, or fails to predict utterances that do occur. These situations are called "overgeneration" and "undergeneration", respectively. One of the advantages linguistics has as a science is that we have both massive corpora of observational data (text that people have written, databases of recorded phone calls), and access to cheap and easy experimental data (you can ask people to say things in the target language—you have to be a bit careful about how you do this—and see if what they say accords with your model). We have to make some spherical cow type assumptions, we have to "ignore friction" sometimes (friction is most often what the Chomskyans call "performance error", which you do not have to be a Chomskyan to believe in, but I digress). In any case, this lets us build robust, useful, highly predictive, and falsifiable, although necessarily incomplete, models of individual natural languages. These are called descriptive grammars.

Descriptive grammars often have a strong formal component—Chomsky, for all his faults, recognized that both phonology and syntax could be well described by formal grammars in the sense of mathematics and computer science, and these tools have been tremendously productive since the 60s in producing good models of natural language. I believe Chomsky's program sensu stricto is a dead end, but the basic insight that human language can be thought about formally in this way has been extremely useful and has transformed the field for the better. Read any descriptive grammar, of a language from Europe or Papua or the Amazon, and you will see (in linguists' own idiosyncratic notation) a flurry regexes and syntax trees (this is a bit unfair—the computer scientists stole syntax trees from us, also via Chomsky) and string rewrite rules and so on and so forth. Some of this preceded Chomsky but more than anyone else he gave it legs.

Anyway, linguists are also interested in another kind of model, which confusingly enough we call simply a "theory". So you have "grammars", which are theories of individual natural languages, and you have "theories", which are theories of grammars. A linguistic theory is a model which predicts what sorts of grammar are possible for a human language to have. This generally comes in the form of making claims about

the structure of the cognitive faculty for language, and its limitations

the pathways by which language evolves over time, and the grammars that are therefore attractors and repellers in this dynamical system.

Both of these avenues of research have seen some limited success, but linguistics as a field is far worse at producing theories of this sort than it is at producing grammars.

Capital-G Generativism, Chomsky's program, is one such attempt to produce a theory of human language, and it has not worked very well at all. Chomsky's adherents will say it has worked very well—they are wrong and everybody else thinks they are very wrong, but Chomsky has more clout in linguistics than anyone else so they get to publish in serious journals and whatnot. For an analogy that will be familiar to physics people: Chomskyans are string theorists. And they have discovered some stuff! We know about wh-islands thanks to Generativism, and we probably would not have discovered them otherwise. Wh-islands are weird! It's a good thing the Chomskyans found wh-islands, and a few other bits and pieces like that. But Generativism as a program has, I believe, hit a dead end and will not be recovering.

Right, Generativism is sort of, kind of attempting to do (1), poorly. There are other people attempting to do (1) more robustly, but I don't know much about it. It's probably important. For my own part I think (2) has a lot of promise, because we already have a fairly detailed understanding of how language changes over time, at least as regards phonology. Some people are already working on this sort of program, and there's a lot of work left to be done, but I do think it's promising.

Someone said to me, recently-ish, that the success of LLMs spells doom for descriptive linguistics. "Look, that model does better than any of your grammars of English at producing English sentences! You've been thoroughly outclassed!". But I don't think this is true at all. Linguists aren't confused about which English sentences are valid—many of us are native English speakers, and could simply tell you ourselves without the help of an LLM. We're confused about why. We're trying to distill the patterns of English grammar, known implicitly to every English speaker, into explicit rules that tell us something explanatory about how English works. An LLM is basically just another English speaker we can query for data, except worse, because instead of a human mind speaking a human language (our object of study) it's a simulacrum of such.

Uh, for another physics analogy: suppose someone came along with a black box, and this black box had within it (by magic) a database of every possible history of the universe. You input a world-state, and it returns a list of all the future histories that could follow on from this world state. If the universe is deterministic, there should only be one of them; if not maybe there are multiple. If the universe is probabilistic, suppose the machine also gives you a probability for each future history. If you input the state of a local patch of spacetime, the machine gives you all histories in which that local patch exists and how they evolve.

Now, given this machine, I've got a theory of everything for you. My theory is: whatever the machine says is going to happen at time t is what will happen at time t. Now, I don't doubt that that's a very useful thing! Most physicists would probably love to have this machine! But I do not think my theory of everything, despite being extremely predictive, is a very good one. Why? Because it doesn't tell you anything, it doesn't identify any patterns in the way the natural world works, it just says "ask the black box and then believe it". Well, sure. But then you might get curious and want to ask: are there patterns in the black box's answers? Are there human-comprehensible rules which seem to characterize its output? Can I figure out what those are? And then, presto, you're doing good old regular physics again, as if you didn't even have the black box. The black box is just a way to run experiments faster and cheaper, to get at what you really want to know.

General Relativity, even though it has singularities, and it's incompatible with Quantum Mechanics, is better as a theory of physics than my black box theory of everything, because it actually identifies patterns, it gives you some insight into how the natural world behaves, in a way that you, a human, can understand.

In linguistics, we're in a similar situation with LLMs, only LLMs are a lot worse than the black box I've described—they still mess up and give weird answers from time to time. And more importantly, we already have a linguistic black box, we have billions of them: they're called human native speakers, and you can find one in your local corner store or dry cleaner. Querying the black box and trying to find patterns is what linguistics already is, that's what linguists do, and having another, less accurate black box does very little for us.

Now, there is one advantage that LLMs have. You can do interpretability research on LLMs, and figure out how they are doing what they are doing. Linguists and ML researchers are kind of in a similar boat here. In linguistics, well, we already all know how to talk, we just don't know how we know how to talk. In ML, you have these models that are very successful, buy you don't know why they work so well, how they're doing it. We have our own version of interpretability research, which is neuroscience and neurolinguistics. And ML researchers have interpretability research for LLMs, and it's very possible theirs progresses faster than ours! Now with the caveat that we can't expect LLMs to work just like the human brain, and we can't expect the internal grammar of a language inside an LLM to be identical to the one used implicitly by the human mind to produce native-speaker utterances, we still might get useful insights out of proper scrutiny of the innards of an LLM that speaks English very well. That's certainly possible!

But just having the LLM, does that make the work of descriptive linguistics obsolete? No, obviously not. To say so completely misunderstands what we are trying to do.