#find electrician near me

[clarkelectric1]

Electrician Nearby

Are you in a bind and in need of a trustworthy electrician nearby? Our team of skilled professionals is dedicated to providing you with exceptional electrical services that exceed your expectations. From minor repairs to major installations, we approach every job with the same level of attention to detail and expertise. Visit Clark Electric today to know more about our services. 

[londonfaultfindingexperts]

In the thriving city of London, electrical mishaps can strike any moment. These mishaps can be very destructive at times. They can destroy everything disrupting the flow of your day or even pose serious hazards. They have a serious destruction capacity. When you face a sudden electrical emergency, you need the rescue service in an instance. Here, hiring the best 24-hour emergency electrician becomes a priority. 

At London Fault Finding Experts, we claim to be different. We understand the urgency of such situations. We have the commitment to providing swift and effective solutions round the clock. Knowing some of our specialties becomes mandatory for you. These services can bring you many advantages in the end!  

[4i47]

Overhaul Your Living Area: Letting Loose the Possible of Home Enhancement

""

Home is where the heart is, and what better means to boost the heart of your home than via home improvement projects? Whether you're wanting to raise the worth of your residential or commercial property, create a more functional space, or simply offer your home a fresh makeover, home improvement offers endless possibilities. From little updates like a fresh layer of paint or new fixtures, to bigger remodellings like kitchen remodels or washroom makeovers, there are plenty of means to change your space right into an area that absolutely mirrors your style and satisfies your needs.Paragraph 2: Home

renovation not just improves the aesthetic allure of your home, yet it additionally improves the total capability and convenience. Think of having a kitchen that is not just aesthetically magnificent however also made to take full advantage of efficiency and simplicity of usage. Or photo on your own relaxing in a beautifully renovated shower room, complete with modern fixtures and extravagant surfaces. By buying home enhancement, you can create an area that is not only visually attractive yet likewise tailored to match your way of life, making everyday living extra delightful and hassle-free. So, whether you're an experienced do it yourself fanatic or choose to hire specialists, don't take too lightly the power of home enhancement in changing your living room into a location you truly like returning to.

Read more here electric technician

[helloemergencyservices]

Common Electrical Problems at Home

The safety of your home depends largely on the integrity of its electrical system. Just as the heart pumps life into the human body, electricity powers your home, with the power to provide you with comfort but also the risk of serious danger if not handled with care. 

[9kmovies-biz]

Electrician Jobs in Bangalore

Urgently required Position: Electrician No of Post : 2Experience: 3 to 5 years Salary: 22 to 28kGender : Male onlyLocation:Peenya Bangalore.Garments industry experience only #Electrician #Jobs #Bangalore

[mostlysignssomeportents]

You can’t shop your way out of a monopoly

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in TUCSON (Mar 9-10), then SAN FRANCISCO (Mar 13), Anaheim, and more!

If you're running a business, you can either invest at being good at your business, or good at Google SEO. Choose the former and your customers will love you – but they won't be able to find you, thanks to the people who choose the latter. And if you're going to invest in top-notch SEO, why bother investing in quality at all?

For more than a decade, Google has promised that it would do something about "lead gens" – services that spoof Google into thinking that they are local businesses, pushing down legit firms on both regular search and Google Maps (these downranked businesses invested in quality, not SEO, remember). Search for a roofer, a plumber, an electrician, or a locksmith (especially a locksmith), and most or all of the results will be lead-gens. They'll take your call, pretend to be a local business, and then call up some half-qualified bozo to come out and charge you four times the going rate for substandard work:

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/business/fake-online-locksmiths-may-be-out-to-pick-your-pocket-too.html

Some of them just take your money and they "go back to the shop for a tool" and never return:

https://www.riverfronttimes.com/news/when-a-fake-business-used-a-real-st-louis-address-things-got-weird-32087998

Google has been promising to fix this since the late aughts, and to be fair, it's a little better. There was once a time when a map of Manhattan showed more locksmiths than taxis:

https://blumenthals.com/blog/2009/02/18/google-maps-proves-more-locksmiths-in-nyc-than-cabs/

But GMaps is trapped in the enshittification squeeze. On the one hand, the company wants to provide a good and reliable map. On the other hand, the company makes money selling "ads" that are actually payola, where a business can pay to get to the top of the listings or get displayed on the map itself. Zoom out of Google's map of central London and the highlighted landmarks are a hilarious mix of "organic" and paid listings: the British Museum, Buckingham Palace, the Barbican, the London Eye…and a random oral and maxillofacial clinic in the financial district:

https://twitter.com/dylanbeattie/status/1764711667663831455

Hell of a job "organizing the world's information and making it universally accessible and useful," Big G. Doubtless the average Londoner finds the presence of this clinic super helpful in orienting themselves relative to the map on their phone screens, and it's a real service to tourists hoping to hit all the major landmarks.

It's not just Maps users who'd noticed the rampant enshittification. Even the original design team is so horrified they're moved to speak out about the moral injury they experience seeing the product they worked so hard on turned into a giant pile of shit:

https://twitter.com/elizlaraki/status/1727351922254852182

Now, when it comes to locksmiths, I'm lucky. My neighborhood in Burbank includes the wonderful Golden State Lock and Safe, which has been in business since 1942:

https://www.goldenstatelock.com/

But you wouldn't know it from searching GMaps for a locksmith near me. That search turns up a long list of scams:

https://www.google.com/maps/search/locksmith/@34.1750451,-118.369948,14z/data=!3m1!4b1?entry=ttu

It also turns up plenty of Keyme machines – these are private-equity backed, self-serve key-cutting machines placed in grocery stores. Despite Keyme calling itself a "locksmith," it's just a badly secured, overcaptilized, enshittification-bound system for collecting and retaining shapefiles for the keys to millions of homes, cross-referenced with billing information that will make it easy for the eventual hackers to mass-produce keys for all those poor suckers' houses.

(Hilariously, Keyme claims to be an "AI" company):

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200114005194/en/KeyMe-Raises-35-Million-to-Further-Its-Mission-of-Building-the-Premier-Locksmith-Services-Company-in-the-Nation

But despite the fact that you can literally see the Golden State storefront from Google Streetview, Google Maps claims to have no knowledge of it. Instead, Streetview labels Golden State "Keyme" – and displays a preview showing a locksmith using a tool to break into a jeep (I'd dearly love to know how the gadget next to the Slurpee machine at the 7-Eleven will drive itself to your jeep and unlock the door for you when you lose your keys):

https://www.google.com/maps/place/KeyMe+Locksmiths/@34.1752624,-118.3487531,3a,75y,350.19h,90.21t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1ssHrtqjqvgFir3NBauMy13Q!2e0!7i16384!8i8192!4m15!1m8!3m7!1s0x80c2959cd65dbb1b:0x4b3744cf87492a71!2sBurbank+Blvd+%26+N+Hollywood+Way,+Burbank,+CA+91505!3b1!8m2!3d34.1750025!4d-118.3493484!16s%2Fg%2F11f37_3lq8!3m5!1s0x80c2951cedbf4d39:0xe8ff9fd5872e66e9!8m2!3d34.1755176!4d-118.349!16s%2Fg%2F11mw7nr4fx?entry=ttu

It's pretty clear to me what's going on here. Keyme has hired some SEO creeps and/or paid off Google, flooding the zone with listings for its machines. Meanwhile, Golden State, being merely good at locksmithing, has lost the SEO wars. Perhaps Golden State could shift some of its emphasis from being good at locksmithing in order to get better at SEO, but this is a race that will always be won by the firm that puts the most into SEO, which will always be the firm that puts the least into quality.

Whenever I write about this stuff, people inevitably ask me which search engine they should use, if not Google?

And there's the rub.

Google used predatory pricing and anticompetitive mergers to acquire a 90% search market-share. The company spends more than $26b/year buying default position in every place where you might possibly encounter a new search engine. This created the "kill zone" – the VC's term of art for businesses that no one will invest in, because Google makes sure that no one will ever find out it exists:

https://www.theverge.com/23802382/search-engine-google-neeva-android

That's why the only serious competitor to Google is Bing, another Big Tech company (Bing is also the primary source of results on Duckduckgo, which is why DDG sometimes makes exceptions for Microsoft's privacy-invading tracking):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo#Controversies

Google tells us that the quid-pro-quo of search monopolization is search excellence. The hundreds of billions it makes every year through monopoly control gives it the resources it needs to fight spammers and maintain search result quality. Anyone who's paid attention recently knows that this is bullshit: Google search quality is in free-fall, across all its products:

https://downloads.webis.de/publications/papers/bevendorff_2024a.pdf

But Google doesn't seem to think it has a problem. Rather than devoting all its available resources to fighting botshit, spam and scams, the company set $80 billion dollars alight last year with a stock buyback that was swiftly followed with 12,000 layoffs, followed by multiple subsequent rounds of layoffs:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

The scams that slip through Google's cracks are sometimes nefarious, but just as often they're decidedly amateurish, the kind of thing that Google could fix by throwing money at the problem, say, to validate that new ads for confirmed Google merchants come from the merchant's registered email addresses and go to the merchant's registered website:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

Search is a capital intensive business, and there are real returns to scale, as the UK Competition and Market Authority's excellent 2020 study describes:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5fe4957c8fa8f56aeff87c12/Appendix_I_-_search_quality_v.3_WEB_.pdf

But Google doesn't seem to think that its search needs that $80 billion to fight the spamwars. That's the thing about monopolists, they get complacent. As Lily Tomlin's "Ernestine the AT&T operator" used to say, "We don't care, we don't have to, we're the phone company."

That's why I'm so excited about the DOJ Antitrust Division monopolization case against Google. Trusting one company to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," was a failure:

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-google-monopolizing-digital-advertising-technologies

I understand why people want to know which search engine they should use instead of Google, and I get why, "There aren't any good search engines" is such an unsatisfactory answer. I understand why each fresh round of printer-company fuckery prompts people to ask "which printer should I get?" and I understand why "There are only six major printer companies and they're all suffering from end-stage enshittification" isn't what anyone wants to hear.

We want to be able to vote with our wallets, because it's so much faster and more convenient than voting with our ballots. But the vote-with-your-wallet election is rigged for the people with the thickest wallets. Try as hard as you'd like, you just can't shop your way out of a monopoly – that's like trying to recycle your way out of the climate emergency. Systemic problems need systemic solutions – not individual ones.

That's why the new antitrust matters so much. The answer to monopolies is to break up companies, block and unwind mergers, ban deceptive and unfair conduct. "Caveat emptor" is the scammer's motto. You shouldn't have to be an expert on lead gen scams to hire a locksmith without getting ripped off.

There are good products and services out there. Earlier this year, we decided to install a (non-networked) programmable pushbutton lock. I asked Deviant Ollam – whom I know from Defcon's Lockpicking Village – for a recommendation and he suggested the Schlage FE595:

https://www.schlage.com/en/home/products/FE595PLYFFFFLA.html

I liked it so much I bought another one for my office door. Eric from Golden State Lock and Safe installed it while I wrote this blog-post. It's great. I recommend both of 'em – 10/10, would do business again.

Name your price for 18 of my DRM-free ebooks and support the Electronic Frontier Foundation with the Humble Cory Doctorow Bundle.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/05/the-map-is-not-the-territory/#vapor-locksmith

Image: alicia rae (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kehole_Red.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en

--

Budhiargomiko (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wasteland.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

[perfectlyperfectstranger]

Corey Cunningham x Reader

Gif is NOT mine

Note: No gender is specified for the reader im almost 100% positive.

This is my first time writing and this does end on a cliffhanger im sorry😭 just so i can think the ending over make sure it goes how I want it to.

This follows Halloween ends storyline btw.

Warning: Slight cheating at the end but not really since Allyson and Corey aren’t confirmed to be together.

You and Allyson had always been close friends so when one day she calls you after a shift talking about some really cute guy with brown hair and glasses she worked on earlier in the day you had to joke. “He wasn’t like, dead was he?” You snicker while saying. “No he wasn’t dead, he was very much alive.” Allyson says and from here tone you can practically hear the eye roll. You chuckle “Thats great for you Allyson. Listen Ill call you later I gotta close up over here.” You both say your goodbyes.

As you are locking up each window you hear something. You raise a brow reaching for your phone and a heavy object near by which happens to be a wrench. Turning on the flash of your phone you start making your way towards the noise only to find a man standing outside the front door looking slightly frantic. You quickly walk over and open the door. “Is there something that I can do for you?” You ask the man who only stares for a moment trying to group together what he wants to say. “…You wouldn’t happen to have a cable jumper and a battery would you?” He says in a soft and quiet voice. You think for a moment debating your choices he notices your hesitance. “Please..? Even just a ride home would suffice. I could always just come back in the morning with what I need.” You sigh. “Alright let me just grab my things then we can get you home.” You step aside and let him in hurrying to gather your things placing down the wrench. He watches you move around grouping up your things. “So you’re a electrician huh? Im a mechanic ” He says attempting conversation his voice shaky and nervous. “Really? What shop d’you work at?” You say as you nod your head towards the door signaling ‘we can go now’. As you both open your car door he responds. “I uh work with my stepdad not many other places will hire me really.” You turn your head to look at him before starting the car. “I don’t see why not you look like you’re in perfect condition for some work.” He seems slightly surprised at your words but decides not to question how you live here and don’t know him. “Im Corey by the way..” You keep your eyes on the road. “Im Y/n, now then Corey. Wanna tell me where your place is?”

After arriving to his home you stop. “Thank you for the ride you really helped me out.” He says a little rushed you nod your head to him and smile softly. “Its no problem. You have a good night Corey.” After you say goodbye you drive off headed back to your own place.

A few days pass by and your working late once again a couple of minutes till close. The door opens and you don’t look up for a moment till the person stops at the desk in front of you. You look up from what you were doing. “Hey Y/n!” A slight smile spreads across your face as you roll your eyes. “Geez you’re coming to annoy me on the job now?” You say teasing as you look back to Allyson. She scoffs “Whatever you don’t know what you’d do without me.” You chuckle softly and ask her what it was she came by for. “Well…” She says reaching into her bag and pulling out a small poster promoting a halloween party at the near by bar. “I don’t know Allyson.. You know I don’t really care for these things.” But with how persistent she is you eventually find no point in further arguing. “Please.. Im gonna bring the cute guy from the hospital too.” You roll you eyes and smile. “Alright.. are we supposed to wear costumes?” She nods at your question. “You should dress sexy you never go out, jump at the opportunity.” She smirks.

The time for this small event at the bar approaches and you’re getting ready your hair and makeup done putting on your costume. You look at yourself in the mirror and shake your head with a smile thinking of how in the world Allyson convinced you into agreeing.

You get to the bar and call Allyson to see if shes already here. She picks up and says she coming out right now. You see her and step out of your car. She smiles “You look so good!” You look at her outfit “I thought you were dressing up too?” She shrugs with a smirk showing she never had the intention to actually wear a costume. You sigh and smile at your sneaky friend as she starts to drag you inside the bar. She takes you to the counter where a man is sitting with a scarecrow mask on. “Corey this is my friend Y/n.” You raise a brow curious if this was the same Corey that came by your work a few days ago. He has the same brown curly hair. Corey moves his mask to the side and shyly smiles, you softly smile. “Hey Corey.” Allyson raises a brow as to say ‘You know each other?’ You explain how the two of you met.

As the night goes on you feel yourself let loose. You all are having a good time when Corey heads back up to the bar leaving you and Allyson to dance. When you suddenly see him dart out the door Allyson sees too and starts heading for the door she asks you to come with her just in case he’s feeling sick. Once you get out he looks frantic like on the night you met but more scared and worried. You tune out there conversation deciding its not really any of your business that is till you hear a very upset Corey. “Im not your fucking project Allyson!” She tries to defend her words but he’s already turning and walking off seeming rigid. “Y/n.. Do me a favor and follow him. I wanna be alone and clear my head.” You look at her sad and nod giving her a hug before jogging to catch up with Corey. “Hey…” He takes in a breath trying to calm himself. “You doing okay.?” You ask softly. He nods, you see a car driving up in your peripheral as the car comes to a stop in front of you Corey seems to freeze. You narrow your eyes and watch as a group of teens step out of the car. They immediately start taking to harassing Corey talking down to him he’s holding his weight well for now so you don’t step in. That is until the boys start putting their hands on him after he said some stuff about the boys dad. You shove one away and try to smoothly knock him out not wanting to fight with a kid. But thats when you see that Corey has gone over the bridge thats when you stop fighting with them.

You immediately run to the slope connecting under and above the bridge you make it down and don’t see Corey. You feel yourself begin to panic when you hear something from the sewer tunnel. You reach for your phone turning on the flashlight before walking in. Then you see him leaned against some concrete out cold you immediately try waking him. “Corey.. Corey come one you gotta get up.” Shaking him trying to make him open his eyes you hear him groan. “Cor-“ Then suddenly everything goes black.

You start waking up groggily blinking your eyes. You look around at your surroundings looking to your right you see Corey still unconscious. The events of last night begin coming back and suddenly your in a rush to get up and get Corey up as well. “Corey!” You say getting up whisper shouting. “Corey lets go we gotta go!” You say shaking him awake with urgency in your voice. He starts to blink awake “Hey.. Come on lets go.” You say helping him up hurrying to get out of here. He walks behind you, You make it to the end turning to make sure Corey is still right there. Hes a little bit behind your about to call out to him when suddenly a hand reaches out and chokes him. You gasp and are sent into a panic looking around for something anything heavy to hit this random arm with. You see a wooden plank and grab it before immediately hitting this mysterious arm the plank breaks and you look over where the arm came from and lock eyes with the Michael Myers. You freeze and he drops Corey once you realize he let go of Corey you grab his arm and immediately rush out of there scared.

You both had been walking for some time not saying anything when a car pulls beside Corey the window rolls down the man speaks to him but Corey says nothing the man quickly drives off seeming startled.

The two of you head to your place. After getting there you ask Corey to go take a shower so the sewer smell goes away you walking to do the same after giving him a pair of sweatpants and a baggy shirt. You exit your bathroom dressed and he exits the guest bathroom in the clothes you gave him. “Corey come sit on the couch.” You say softly. He does as you ask and you go to grab things to clean his wounds and wrap them. You kneel in front of him cleaning the scraps on his face. “How did you land.” He looks at you for the first time since getting out of the shower. “What..” You make eye contact with him. “How did you land?” Asking him slower than before. “M’back.” You stand asking him to lay on his stomach lifting his shirt to look at his bruised back. You take a ice pack and slowly place it on his back to sooth the bruises. Corey whimpers slightly “Sorry.” You say softly.

After all those events you didn’t feel quite normal. You don’t know what it was but it feels like theres this hunger when you get angry the need, urge. You try not to think about it much not hearing from Corey or Allyson. That is till you get a phone call. “Hello.” You say without much emotion in your voice. The person on the other end doesn’t respond for a moment. “Its Allyson I need you to come by Corey had earlier and I want to talk to you.” You make your way over there Allyson ranting to you about the odd things she was seeing happening with Corey. “Did something happen that night after the party?” She asks you, You make eye contact with her. “No we just walked and eventually got to his place and split off.” You lied, you aren’t sure why but you did. You soon enough leave Allyson’s place heading to your car not before Laurie stops you. You look her in her eyes, she seems startled immediately moving out of your way and deciding whatever she was going to say is no longer important. Once your in your car you start pulling out making your way to Corey’s. You knock on his door, a older woman answers. “Is Corey here.” You say nearly monotone. She seems to be slightly agitated with your question her husband stepping to the door and pulling her away before telling you Corey was upstairs. You open his bedroom door, he’s standing in front of his mirror with his scarecrow mask on you look around and spot a mask on his dresser. Examining it before pulling it over your head, looking in the mirror before looking over at Corey and moving the mask to the side. Leaning in unknowingly…

[quietlyimplode]

the language of flowers and silent things

Whumptober 2023: Day 16 - Don’t go where I can’t follow

Warnings: whump but nothing explicit

Word Count: 2k (gif not mine)

Summary: Yelena sends a coded message, a trap or askance for help?

A/N: <3

Masterlist

Whumptober Masterlist

.

‘Meet me in Stockholm. Come alone.’

The coded message bypasses Tony’s AI and Natasha feels it could only be Yelena.

The message is accompanied by coordinates to a café and time.

Natasha smiles at the old language and tries to explain to Clint, that the coordinates and time are wrong.

By swapping the second number and reversing it, you get the true coordinates and time.

It’s not Stockholm.

It’s Rome.

Not 1pm but 4am.

The date reads for the next day.

She still thinks the ‘come alone’, still stands though.

There’s a distinct happiness and apprehension that comes and Natasha pushes the feelings down, she can’t afford hope.

Not just yet.

Clint is adamant on coming, but Natasha worries that if he does, it’ll spook Yelena into leaving, and when he puts it to the others she finds that Tony also wants to help.

Steve stands back and watches the arguments unfold until she explodes at all of them.

“Likely we have one chance at this. You,” she points to Clint, “don’t need to come, you do however need to broker peace with Fury, so on the off chance she does want to defect we have a place for her. Shield may be gone but he can still pull the strings. And you,” she points to Tony, “can do the behind the scenes setting everything up. If she comes here, can you find her a place to stay? Somewhere near mine or Clint’s apartment. She probably won’t stay there but maybe the offering of it, could entice her to come. Pepper knows what I mean, there’s money in my bank account to lease it; just use that?”

Natasha puts her hand up as Tony starts to protest, “just use the money? It’s not like it’s my only bank account.”

She smiles.

“And you, Captain, sorry, I don’t think symbolism of America is quite what I need right now.”

He nods back.

“It’s fine, Sam and I have a lead on Bucky anyway, you don’t think it’s all connected do you?”

She shrugs, stepping towards him.

“Where’s the lead?” Clint asks.

Steve looks at Tony who makes it appear on the screen.

“It actually is in Stockholm, Tony’s AI picked him up in the Vasa Museum and tracked him to Strotorget where it lost him. The main square was too busy,” he tells her.

She looks to Tony and nods.

“I didn’t know you were helping?”

Tony gestures around.

She shakes her head, cutting off his cocky retort.

“No, you follow your leads and I’ll follow mine, hopefully both of us will get some answers.”

She can feels Clint’s gaze on her.

“I’m coming,” he tells her, “whether you want me there or not.”

Rolling her eyes, Natasha nods; “fine but you’re coming to talk to Fury with me.”

.

The train station in Rome is busy, like the airport.

Clint climbs up the rafters dressed as electrician and hopes that he’s been inconspicuous enough that no one has noticed his ascent.

“Nat, I have eyes on you,” he tells her, “three exits and a café to your right.”

He uses the sight to look at the furthest exit.

“Do you think she’ll come as herself?”

“Blonde hair and all?”

Clint knows she can’t answer, but he likes to talk all the same.

“What’s your opener going to be?” he wonders, out loud.

“How’s it going? Long time, no see?”

He looks at the the other exits, not seeing anyone matching Yelena’s description.

A young girl approaches Natasha and immediately she stands.

Clint’s heart sinks, of course Yelena would be underhanded and use little girls to lure Natasha.

It’s effective.

He watches her move, following the girl.

“Nat, stop, no, don’t follow her,” he huffs, adjusting his potion and tailing after her from above.

The second exit, he thinks.

“Natasha, do you hear me? Don’t be a fucking idiot and get played,” he tells her.

He reaches a dead end from above and is forced to just watch as she makes her way to the exit. He races back the way he came, hoping she takes small steps as he loses sight of her.

He hasn’t even seen Yelena.

“Nat. No. Don’t got out, don’t go where I can’t follow, slow down I’m almost there, just wait,” he swears almost out of breath, as he hurries down the ladder.

By the time he reaches where he last saw her, she’s gone.

.

“Can you help me find my sister?” the little girl asks Natasha.

“I lost her and I can’t find her.”

Natasha’s heart sinks, as openers go, it’s a pretty good one she’s got to admit.

“I’ll help you find her,” Natasha replies.

“That’s what she said you’d say,” the little girl smiles.

“Follow me.”

Natasha stands, hears Clint’s warnings, his panic, as the little girl moves seamlessly through the crowd.

If she stops, she knows she’ll lose her.

“She wants to see you alone, she says your boyfriend can’t come,” the little girl says, eyes following Natasha as she walks backwards and then forward.

“Follow me.”

They exit through a news agency, the girl nodding to the owner as she leads Natasha through.

The exit leads behind the shops, into a thin corridor the girl running down so that Natasha has to hurry to catch her.

“Follow me,” the girl giggles.

And then, she disappears.

Natasha turns where she did, and comes face to face with Yelena.

“Hello, big sister,” Yelena says, gun held at Natasha chest.

“So easily you fall into a widows web,” she taunts, and then, pulls the trigger.

.

Clint calls Tony, he has no idea what to do.

They’ve disappeared and whilst he knows how absolutely flawless Natasha is at running and hiding, he feels they should have planned this better.

He knows she is compromised when it comes to Yelena, but he didn’t think she would be stupid.

“Can you get a live map or the area?” he asks in greeting.

If Tony is put off by it, he doesn’t say, he just sends Clint a real-time map on his tablet and tells him to swipe through the cameras and exits.

“Can you track where Natasha went?” he asks, looking at all the available ways of exit.

Tony does so, far quicker than Clint knows he ever would, and then sends them back to overlay the camera.

“Car park,” Tony surmises, “or basement, is there a basement?”

Clint growls in frustration, “which one!?”

“Car park,” Tony tells him, “I think.”

Clint runs, heading to the endless car park, and the rows of cars outside.

“Which one!?” he asks, “where do I look?”

Tony doesn’t answer.

“You can’t find her can you?”

He starts with the first row, then down the column and feels the desperation bubbling.

“Nat, you idiot, why did you have to be such an idiot?” he mutters to himself, “not compromised, my ass.”

“I’ll run the full diagnostic,” Tony promises, “we’ll find her, I swear.”

.

“Wake up,” Yelena says, wafting smelling salts underneath Natasha’s nose.

“Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey,” she smiles, squatting in front of Natasha.

“Isn’t that what Melinda used to say to us?”

Natasha opens her eyes and watches Yelena pace.

Her arms tied to a metal chair, knotted into her legs as there’s no movement in either.

Yelena stops and looks.

“Are you going to kill me?” Natasha asks bluntly.

Yelena rolls her eyes.

“Isla came to see me, was that you?”

Not answering, Natasha tries the restraints again.

“I think it was. It’s what Isla alluded to anyway. The tracker, you disabled it, and now they just want me back. The thing is, I like being free. It’s only been months and already I know. I have this headache, and it’s like I’m forgetting something- I can’t concentrate- that I need to do something.. But the only thing I can think of is you.”

The pause is large as Natasha waits for her to continue.

“I don’t know whether to forgive you or kill you and if the thing that I need to do; the thing that will set me free, is something that they’ve programmed in my head. A fail safe, for both of us. I kill you, then I kill me,” she holds the gun away from both of them, and places it on a chair opposite Natasha.

“Forgive you, or kill you,” she repeats, “but to be honest, I don’t think I can do either.”

She moves slowly around, the cadence of her voice slow.

“I had to see you, to see if I could perhaps do both, maybe one and then the other and maybe this headache would go away.”

She picks up the gun and sits on the chair.

Natasha hesitates.

“What do you think now?”

Yelena stands, emptying the bullets, placing them in front of Natasha.

“There is a part of me that angry. So angry and confused. I want them to tell me what to do. Tell me what my next mission is, give me some structure to my life. There’s nothing. Just endlessness,” she pauses.

“Is that what life is? Is it what freedom is?”

“But no, you’re not the one that needs to die,” she finishes. “I see that.”

Natasha feels the adrenaline fade and the drowsiness of the drug run through her.

“Your people will be coming soon,” Yelena says, not moving.

“You can come with me, with us,” Natasha offers.

“If you wanted too, of course.”

She pauses in the offer, trying to gauge Yelena’s reaction.

“You could be a freelancer within the remnants of Shield or under their employ. Defection,” she offers.

“Or, you could just be here, with me,” she says softly.

Yelena stands.

“You left me,” she says off handed, “you didn’t come for me.”

The words hold such sadness that Natasha doesn’t know what to do with them.

“I’m sorry,” Natasha repeats, unsure what else to say.

“I don’t want your apology, not now, but I do know, I maybe, I think I know why. I think…”

Pacing, Yelena holds the gun.

“They’ll be here soon,” she repeats, still not leaving, perhaps wanting to hear what Natasha is saying.

“There’s an address in my top left pocket,” Natasha tells her, “it’s your apartment if you want it. Leased under Fanny Balankov.”

Yelena’s small smile at the name and the inside joke gives Natasha hope.

“There’s money, passports and an offer of defection, or if it feels better, freelance supports, it doesn’t offer the same protections but it does give more options and no full debriefing that usually takes months.”

Natasha feels like she’s doing this wrong.

Clint should be here. He did it for her, he knew all the right words to say, all the ways he could give her hope.

Right now it just feels like she’s failing her sister again.

“They’ll be coming for you,” Yelena repeats, sitting down.

“Yeah,” Natasha replies.

“They are.”

.

Clint finds her in the basement, tied to a chair.

Gun raised he points it at Yelena.

“Hello,” she says casually, “you must be Clint.”

If he’s surprised, he doesn’t show it.

Yelena holds her gun away and shakes her head.

“Put it away, we’ve called a surrender,” she smiles.

He does as she asks, but only because there’s no way he’s going to be responsible for taking down Natasha’s sister, he doubts they would get close anyway.

Yelena turns to Natasha.

“Be seeing you,” she nods, and then sets the smoke grenade off, forcing Clint to rush to Natasha.

By the time the smoke clears, Yelena is gone and Natasha is untied.

“What happened?” he coughs, leading her to the exit.

Natasha is silent until they reach the car.

“I don’t think I did a good job at convincing her,” she whispers.

Clint half hugs her as he opens the passenger door.

“Maybe you did better than you think,” he consoles.

.

[fluffytheocelot]

Carmen Week Day 5: AU

AWW YE HERE WE GO BOIS I HAVE BEEN SO HYPED FOR THIS ONE! Sorry its a bit late lol

Anyways--

Last Wolf is very near and dear to me, it was the first fic I actually had the confidence to write, but Thief's Guide is almost completely my own. It's not based off of another series, pretty much all the worldbuilding and plot is mine. Last Wolf still follows the timeline and plot of the original show (changed and added to of course, but the original show is the backbone.

A Thief's Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse is exactly what it sounds like lol. Carmen and her friends surviving in an apocalypse while on the run from VILE and ACME, complete with a dope soundtrack.

And Julethief of course :) because i love them

This is definitely an AU I wanna write down, I promise. Uhh maybe when I get this chapter of Last Wolf out I'll start??? Maybe. We'll see lol.

Feel free to drop me an ask about it! or last wolf too lol.

Dope soundtrack:

if the song came out during or before 1986ish, then its probably something the characters would listen to (namely Carmen, jamming to cassettes she scavenges on her Walkman). anything after that would just be soundtrack/credits music if it was a show.

uhhh story info under the cut lol

Around the mid 1980s, Dr. Bellum's unnamed predecessor was experimenting with a virus that, well, turned people into zombies. The test run soon got out of hand, however, and the virus quickly spread to the entire world.

Technology pretty much stays the same. Radios, paper maps, Walkmans, stuff like that. Music and TV obviously aren't getting widespread release anymore, so anything that came out past like, 1986 doesn't exist.

(Wow Fluffy that's so unrealistic there's no way people wouldn't quarantine themselves to stop it-- *looks at 2020* nevermind)

VILE uses it as a power grab, offering people shelter, food, etc. in exchange for joining. Fun.

There's incredible amounts of chaos and violence for the first decade or so, until late 1999 when VILE faculty member Dexter Wolfe is assumed to have been caught and killed.

Two things happen: ACME arises as a direct rival to VILE, and VILE acquires a certain Black Sheep.

ACME wants to find a cure. VILE wants the apocalypse to keep going so they stay in power. VILE and ACME are both much more well known.

Black Sheep grows up in a VILE compound, learning all her important thief skills of course, as well as the skills needed to survive the apocalypse: Firearms, bows, blades, living in the wilderness, etc etc. Pretty much anything you can think of needing to know in the apocalypse, Carmen learned when she was like six lol.

She officially enrolls at about 15, and escapes at 16.

Eventually she figures out VILE wants the apocalypse to keep going and escapes into the night on horseback, with Cookie Booker's stolen hat and coat.

She's on the run for a while and eventually winds up in Ontario, where she meets a recently orphaned 12 yr old Player. The two become fast friends and pretty much grow up together over the next few years. Carmen is very protective of Player and teaches him how to survive in case anything happens to her.

They make their way to Boston, pick up Zack and Ivy, and Team Red is complete! (for now)

Along the way they eventually acquire our favorite grumpy ninja, Carmen's favorite ACME agent, an aussie electrician and a couple more surprise people ;)

Carmen also discovers she may be the key to ending the apocalypse, but is ACME really what they say they are?

[poem-today]

A poem by Brian Brodeur

THE CARPENTER'S TALE

There's going to be an accounting. And it'll be the weird stats that come out of somewhere. And this is one of the stranger ones.

—Kerry Breen, This American Life, 8/13/2021

Most of us laughed at being called "essential" in those first weeks of New York's quarantine. We'd grease a hinge or patch a rotten sill,

replacing sunk beams under a snack machine, painting classrooms. Though it felt like cheating, I'd never seen the schools look so pristine.

Then, in April, at our team meeting, our boss clears his throat and his voice softens. Putting down the cruller he's been eating,

he says, "Next week, we start building coffins." One of us laughs. Another spills his coffee. I tell my boss, "Get out of here. Build coffins."

He looks up from his clipboard and glares at me, then gives us all the plans his boss gave him: "We'll be building coffins for the city."

On Monday, I show up at this school gym outfitted as a shop. On cinderblocks, beside the bleachers with the lights turned dim,

our prototype: a six-foot plywood box standing on its end where the feet would be. Above the prototype and scoreboard clocks,

a championship banner's "Victory" had begun to sag where flags of UN nations cling to the ceiling. Under Germany,

we set up cutting and assembly stations, a place where we can urethane the boards. Electricians rig fans for ventilation

and 10 of us plug in extension cords. We stack up drafts of plywood on the floor— a draft is 50 sheets. Our only words

concern the lack of Mets and Yankees scores, how hot the gym gets, who brought Gatorade. We run through 2x4s and they bring more—

wash, rinse, repeat. I mean, we're getting paid, but after so long it occurs to me: My god, they really need this many made?

No one gives us an end. We build 150, stacking them from one side of the gym to the other, five coffins high—no one can see

above the shrink-wrapped freight pallets of them. I back the forklift into the elevator and drive down Concourse near the stadium

and down another street to a tractor trailer. The forklift's so slow people honk at me. Honk at a guy carrying coffins—or

scream at me to move. This goes on three weeks. I find it—I don't know—bizarre, I guess, not one person ever stops to ask me

what I'm doing, everyone obsessed with toilet paper. Then, passing on foot, a guy who speaks Spanish stops to zip his vest 

and says, "Morte," finger-slicing his throat. "Sí," I say, and he just shakes his head and walks away. I slam the trailer shut.

Our team built 450 in the end, and there were other teams in other districts across the whole Department of Ed.

No one I tell has ever heard of this. Why would they? Not exactly good PR— Guess what we used schools for. You'll never guess. …

But now that things are waning, more and more I feel alright, like I can let it out. It wasn't war—if it had been a war

we'd know what happened, what it was about, how much we'd lost, what people did out there. I'm sure someone will make a final count,

and we'll deal with each last expenditure, but that's years off, and this is not a war.

Brian Brodeur

More poems by Brian Brodeur are available through his website.

[helloemergencyservices]

Hiring a Professional Electrician Nearby

Professional electricians are accountable for their work and will provide guarantees and warranties for the jobs they handle. This guarantees that the electrical work is done correctly and that you are getting a quality service from the professional electricians.

Are you searching for Electrician Near Me? Emergency Electrician in Liverpool is there available 24 hours for you. Don’t worry about the schedule because we provide service around the clock; middle of the day, middle of the night or early in the morning. 

[faillen]

me, at the end of peaceful property ep 3: I will give Tarnsai and Ride their happy endings istggggg

anyway, hopefully coming to an ao3 near you? we shall see. i wrote a little:

The kitchen lights start to go about two months after Tarnsai finds out. “Oi, come on,” she huffs, hands on her hips as she stares up at the still flickering bulb. Turning it off and then on again doesn’t make it stop either. She glares across the room at the box of lightbulbs that the shopkeeper had assured her would work. “Super reliable, my ass.” This is what she got for buying a secondhand house, that’s for sure. First it had been the doors not closing properly whenever it rained—drifting open no matter how much she checked to make sure the bolt had caught—and now this. Which was much more inconvenient to live with, and live with it she would have to, since she definitely couldn’t afford getting an electrician this month. Tarnsai was pretty sure homeownership wasn’t supposed to resemble being trapped at a club with bad strobing, but here she was, and there weren’t even fun cocktails to make it kind of bearable. Sighing, she turns the lights off—no point in getting a headache—and by the dim light filtering in from the living room, shifts the chair she’d been using as a makeshift step stool back to its spot at the dining table. A warm breeze ruffles her hair and she frowns, looking up to check the windows. But they’re firmly shut against the muggy late night heat. Weird.

[alwritey-aphrodite]

Omg congrats on 300 hon!!! Here's to 300 more!!! After some serious contemplating, I went with a prompt instead 👀 "standing on your tip toes to reach your partner's lips" + Poe?

It was common knowledge that Poe Dameron was an absolute menace.

No matter the situation, he would find some sort of way to tease you. It didn’t matter if you were alone in your quarters, doing maintenance on Black One, or out on a mission: he’d find an opportunity to get on your nerves.

You knew it was his way of dealing with all of the stress and tension of the war, of keeping both of your lives a little bit lighter. And, as much as you hated to admit it, sometimes his antics put a smile on your face, accompanied by a roll of your eyes.

Today, though, he seemed more keen to get on your nerves than usual. Maybe he was feeling stir-crazy, adrenaline building up with nowhere to go. Maybe he just wanted to be near you, spend time with you while you worked. Or, maybe, he just likes to be a smart ass and annoy you.

“Maker, Dameron, can’t you find something else to do?” You ask, feet sticking out from under an x-wing, BB-8 whirling around you.

“Nope,” he responds, popping the ‘p’ sound in the most obnoxious way possible.

You roll yourself out from under the ship, and fix Poe with a look that says ‘please let me work for five minutes before I lose my mind’. He understands, smiles gently at you, and plants a kiss on your oil-stained forehead.

“I’ll see you later!” He yells out as he retreats, BB trailing behind him.

You loved to spend time with Poe, but you’d been feeling overwhelmed and strung out, and Poe understood that. He always understands you, never takes it personally when you get a little frazzled with him and send him off, because he knows he can be a bit much for you at times.

Plus, he knows you’ll always come back to him, ready to be smothered in his attention and affection.

Tonight, when you return to your quarters, Poe has already showered, biding his time until your return by reading over some reports, BB sitting quietly by his feet. You strip from your grease-stained coveralls and spend more than enough time in the shower, letting the hot water work over your muscles.

When you exit, you’re ready to spend the rest of your evening with Poe, even if he insists on being a shithead.

But, as you exit the ‘fresher, Poe is not sitting in the same chair he was before, BB-8 gone as well. It doesn’t take you long to find him: he’s in your small kitchen on a step ladder, fixing a light that has gone out the night before.

Craving time with him, you go and stand by him, craning your neck to talk with him as he tries to fix the light. Competent as he is, he’s certainly not an electrician, and it takes him a while to replace the light.

“Alright, come down and we can watch a holo or something.” You say, pushing off the counter you had been leaning against.

“No thanks,” he says, trying and failing to hide a smile.

You sigh, in a good natured way, and cross your arms.

“What will it take for you to hop off that stool?”

“A kiss.”

“A kiss?”

“Mh-hm.” He looks all too proud of himself, but he’s too cute not to indulge him.

So, you lift yourself up on your tiptoes, kissing him gently before grabbing his hands and pulling him off the stool. He stumbles a bit, right into your arms. Despite his teasing, there’s no one you’d rather spend your time with, no one else you’d rather indulge on their silly requests.

Because, it’s really no secret that you’d do anything for Poe. And, you know he’d do whatever you asked of him, whatever you needed from him. So, you smile into the kiss and pull him a little closer, feeling beyond lucky to have him in your arms.

[dangerouscommiesubversive]

WIP Wednesday

I got tagged by @materassassino and why the hell not, I have so many WIPs right now.

From the King-Ohger thing I started today:

“Good!” Jeramie finally lets go of his waist and gives him a pat on the shoulder. “Then let’s go find Gira, normally around this time he’s in the library—he’s been doing his very best to learn about, you know, economics and civil infrastructure and so on, ‘king things’ as he calls them, but he really needs a dictionary to be convenient while he’s reading.” He heads down the hall, reaching over as he does to take Yanma’s hand like they’re gross teenagers on a date. “He’s very much enjoying having access to Himeno’s library, as a matter of fact, she also has an excellent drama collection. I’ve been timing him, we’re trying to see if he can make one of his villainous king extempores last a full ten minutes.”

Towed along slightly behind him, Yanma stares, distracted from the warm feeling now pervading his entire body by his own bafflement. “You two really made for each other, weren’t you.”

“Mm. I try not to give too much credence to the idea of fate, but it is very convenient that we mesh so well, isn’t it?”

“So what’s with this, then? What do you want me for?”

“Well, we’ve both got a minimum of two functioning eyes, don’t we?” Jeramie glanced back at him with a sunny smile. “Matters of theoretical fate or narrative determinacy aside, one of the ways in which we mesh well is that we’ve both got excellent taste.”

“You–I–do you always talk like this?”

“Like what?”

From an extremely silly SVSSS thing that's mostly back-burnered at the moment but which I think about a lot:

Shen Qingqiu awoke one morning with his face rather awkwardly smushed into his husband's armpit and discovered, to his intense displeasure, that he was being narrated.

Initially, of course, he was simply displeased to be awake, and assumed that the voice he heard was someone speaking in the near distance. It was only when he was standing in front of the bronze mirror in the bathroom, cleaning his teeth, that he fully processed what was happening.

"What the fuck," he said to the mirror.

Once his teeth were actually clean, his hair was at least out of the way, and he'd put on clothing that didn't have any Binghe-induced rips, he sat down to figure out what the hell was going on. He certainly wasn't hearing the dry, computer-cheerful tones of the System, which hadn't actually spoken to him in some time. Nor did it sound like anyone he knew or knew of in the world of Proud Immortal Demon Way. (Not that he would have particularly appreciated being narrated by Sha Hualing or Tianlang-jun or someone, but it would have given him somewhere to start.) As far as he could tell the voice belonged to a woman, who was probably an adult and definitely slightly congested. She wasn't a very deep voice, or a very high one–sort of mid-range, whatever that was called. She was also speaking English, with what he thought was an American accent of some kind, which seemed like it was probably important. Shen Qingqiu's English had never been very strong, but it was good enough to understand what she was saying most of the time, at least, and if this kept up his fluency would probably improve. Score one for skills with extremely limited application in this world.

Did Proud Immortal Demon Way even have an English translation?

"Binghe," he said, when Binghe came into the room with breakfast, "you can't hear a woman speaking right now, can you?"

Binghe blinked at him. "No, shizun. Which woman was it? Should I talk to her?"

And last, from one of the ghost story interlude shorts:

“Huaisang, you’ve got to stop throwing things at the electricians.”

Too...many...WIPs...

Anyway! I will tag @giraffeter @plushie-sentai and @timetoddddavis!